Well, let's not kill the messenger. Davidson approaches the discussion in this way both because it is his area of interest, and because it presents a common ground for disparate branches of conceptual relativism. — Banno
Well, do you believe that the cat is on the mat? then you will hold "the cat is on the mat" to be true. And if not, then I suppose you will not. — Banno
A side issue - I think this is wrong, in that it gives primacy to strings over cats. Both are perhaps real. — Banno
Where? It's just that the you use notation may differ from that in the article. Is a, for instance, an individual? — Banno
Let Jenny be out 2-year-old. there are four possible beliefs she might have:
Jenny believes that other people have minds
Jenny does not believe that other people have minds
Jenny believes that other people do not have minds
Jenny does not believe that other people do not have minds
some of these can be paired up consistently, others, not without contradiction. You perhaps have taken be as asserting the second option; but I wish to assert both the second and the last - that is, that Jenny has no beliefs about the minds of other people. — Banno
. Basically, I'm saying none of Davidson's targets equate non-translatability with incommensurablility... — Isaac
As I've been trying to explain, I don't see belief in binary terms, belief is a probability statement. I have a degree of certainty that the cat is on the mat. Not believing it then simply doesn't make sense, Not believing it is just believing some alternative, contradictory thing, with a greater degree of certainty. — Isaac
What are the underlying constituent parts common to both Jenny's world and ours? — Isaac
Except... going back to minds, it doesn't work. What are the underlying constituent parts common to both Jenny's world and ours? Jenny just has to feel that there are other minds, she has to develop the actual neural networks which alter her actions to behave as if there were other minds. It's not a linguistic matter. The same is true of all fundamental cognitive models, all complex scientific models, anything where we have not got good cause to assume shared beliefs are constituting the models. — Isaac
So 'teaching' doesn't make any sense to Jenny (how can someone give her information, where would it have come from?), different emotions in other doesn't make sense to Jenny (how could others feel differently about things?)... — Isaac
It's the word "underlying" that I object to; it suggests some sort of fundament were there is none. — Banno
"B is true :=: (∃p). B is a belief that p & p." — Isaac
"B is true :=: (∃p). B is a belief that p & p." — Isaac
This seems to still fall to my counterexample, that there can be truths that are not believed. — Banno
I'll grant that Kuhn emphasises the psychology of science while Davidson emphasis the language. — Banno
And do you claim the same fro truth? Is it subject to degree? — Banno
I cannot see how you can sensibly divorce one from the other. Conceptual schemes are as much about cats and mats as they are about sensory inputs. There need be no justification between what counts as cat and what as mat. — Banno
Directly perceptible things... common referents(says Davidson). — creativesoul
Ans so with Jenny. The feeling will not suffice. She demonstrates her understanding of other minds by changes in language and behaviour.
SO I think I can agree with what you are saying while maintaining that it's the language and associated behaviour that really count. — Banno
Davidson, in discussing partial incommensurability, describes it as differences of belief, not of conception. I gather that you do not think this applies in Jenny's case, since she has no beliefs about other minds. I'm suggesting that the situation is better described as a difference in belief, since that allows us to challenge the erroneous beliefs and hence to help Jenny build a theory of mind; in a way that simply saying "she lacks the concept..." does not. — Banno
the ideally best thing is that we should have beliefs of degree 1 in all true propositions and beliefs of degree 0 in all false propositions. But this is too high a standard to expect of mortal men, and we must agree that some degree of doubt or even of error may be humanly speaking justified.
Let's take the definition that "B is true" iff "B is a belief that P and that P":
(A) There are less than 3 bodies in orbit around Saturn at the moment.
(B) There are exactly 3 bodies in orbit around Saturn at the moment.
(C) There are more than 3 bodies in orbit around Saturn at the moment.
Let P = (A) or (B) or (C), the disjunction of all three of them. P is true since it exhausts all possible cases of the number of bodies in orbit around Saturn. I will believe that P.
This entails that (A) is true, or that (B) is true, or that (C) is true. By the above definition, this entails that (A) is a belief or that (B) is a belief or that (C) is a belief. But I don't believe in any of them, I simply believe in the disjunction — fdrake
As for beliefs necessarily being probability distributions assigned to sets of statements, this is also quite contentious, there's no probability distribution that assigns indifference to the list (1)...(n) even when there is no information about (1) to (n ) — fdrake
the Principle of Indifference can now be altogether dispensed with; we do not regard it belonging to formal logic to say what should be a man's expectation of drawing a white or a black
ball from an urn; his original expectations may within the limits of consistency be any he likes; all we have to point out is that if he has certain expectations he is bound in consistency to have certain
others. This is simply bringing probability into line with ordinary formal logic, which does not
criticize premisses but merely declares that certain conclusions are the only ones consistent with
them.
↪creativesoul Yes, but the idea behind those accounts is to indicate why the "is true" holds... — Janus
....it seems that what we're talking about is a difference in what constitutes a 'belief' rather than anything else. — Isaac
Directly perceptible things... common referents(says Davidson).
— creativesoul
This presumes that the creation of a referent is never axiomatic, — Isaac
Is it?
Seems to me that some argue that it's superfluous/redundant, and others show/argue what it means. — creativesoul
If it was "superfluous/ redundant" then there would be no need to mention it in the first place. — Janus
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