If John had belief, he believed something. — frank
If John had fleas, he flead something.
If John had bad hair, he bad haired something.
If John had apple pie, he apple pied something.
If John had smarts, he smarted something. — creativesoul — Sapientia
Those seven terms have been called "John's belief", "not John's belief", and "a state of affairs". I'm just pointing that out. Anyone can go look for themselves... — creativesoul
Those seven terms have been called "John's belief", "not John's belief", and "a state of affairs". I'm just pointing that out. Anyone can go look for themselves...
— creativesoul
Yes, anyone can misinterpret what I'm saying. That's not unique to you.
. — Sapientia
That claim negates the other you keep making... — creativesoul
I didn't misinterpret. That's what you've done.
Set it out...
What is John's belief?
What is the object of John's belief?
What is the state of affairs?
What is the fact that John's belief is about?
A quick perusal through your recent posts will show that they all have the same answer... consisting of the same seven terms. That's not my problem. — creativesoul
What creativesoul is missing with these supposed analogies is that believing is more of a process than a having. I tried to point this out to him much earlier in this thread by arguing that animals believe, but do not have beliefs. 'Having a belief' suggests that one is the possessor of something or the holder of something; I hold a belief when I can formulate it such that I can grasp (understand) it reflectively. I say this reflective act requires language use, or at least we have no idea how it could be possible without language use, since we use language to do it. — Janus
Let A = some state of affairs (whatever that turns out to mean)
Philosophers would usually call "that <A>" a fact, by which it is meant that A obtains. This is a little unfortunate, because it makes the grammar of "<S> believes that <A>" puzzling.
If someone S has a belief regarding A, it could be that A does or does not obtain, that A is possible or not, likely or not, etc.
It seems most natural to call the object of S's belief this obtaining or not obtaining of A (or its possibility, likelihood, etc.), rather than A itself, but a little ambiguity here might be harmless.
As I suggested a long time ago, it might be fruitful to treat A as something like the indirect object of S's belief: S believes of A that it obtains (is possible, is likely, etc). You can do this with the elements of A as well, something like, "S believes of the cat that it is on the mat." — Srap Tasmaner
(Two reasons to lean this way: we can separate the referential and predicative functions of the proposition; it's one simple, not overly unnatural step toward the lambda calculus -- (λx . x is on the mat)(the cat) -- and we like lambdas.) — Srap Tasmaner
Again you are missing the distinction between pre-linguistic believing (which I think should be called 'expecting') and linguistic having of beliefs. Of course the latter is derivative of the former; the latter is a making explicit of what is merely implicit in the former. — Janus
I don't think that it poses any problem for my stance. — Sapientia
I could agree that pre-linguistic believing involves forming expectation(s) ("forming" in the sense that expectations could be changing), but what, over and above that would "holding" them involve, on your view? I could see the sense in saying that expectations could hold (until they change) but not they are held. — Janus
which I think should be called 'expecting' — Janus
Wasn't meant to. — Srap Tasmaner
Just chiming in. Endless one-on-one around here can get tiresome. — Srap Tasmaner
It's a nice word. You can do a whole lot with just "expectation" and "preference" and translating everything else into those two. — Srap Tasmaner
However, it means nothing more and nothing less than the creature has formed a belief by virtue of drawing correlations between 'objects' of physiological sensory perception and/or itself. — creativesoul
I don't think it is appropriate to talk in terms of the subject/object dichotomy when it comes to pre-reflective experience. This kind of talk is a projection of our own (linguistically enabled) reflections. — Janus
I can plausibly speak of an animals expectation, on the other hand, insofar as it is manifest in its body language. — Janus
I'm not sure there's any harm in adding belief talk here. But if the idea is that explicit appeal to induction will explain everything, that might not work out.
Say your cat has formed an inductive generalization that A is always followed by B, and given A concludes that B must be coming. That seems to explain the expectation of B.
But what explains your cat making the inference at all? The cat's belief that A is always followed by B, together with the appearance of A -- still gives you nothing. Either the cat makes the inference for a reason -- hard to see that working out -- or the cat is caused to make the inference. No explanation in the offing for that.
So if bare expectation is considered unsatisfactory, shifting to belief talk instead leaves bare unexplained inference. Maybe that's progress, I don't know. — Srap Tasmaner
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