Hence when subjects try to understand subjectivity as an object, they must try to take a distance with their own subjectivity, which tends to lead to logical paradoxes. — Olivier5

The subjectivity being understood as an object, is the conception of subjectivity in general, the distance, as you say, I must try to take. It isn’t my subjectivity I’m attempting to understand, in which would be found the logical paradox.

That belief is a propositional attitude is not up for debate. It's just part of the logic of belief.

I believe that my cup is behind my laptop. Is that:

A) a belief directed at an event involving the cup
B) a belief directed at the statement "my cup is behind my laptop"
C) A&B both describe the same event
D) fourth option not covered.

If B), how does my belief about the cup become translated into a belief about a statement which refers to the cup without them becoming events of different types (cup regarding beliefs, statement regarding beliefs)?

If C) how do the two describe the same event? Are the two procedurally equivalent - does an agent's act which forms a belief regarding the cup always manifest as a belief regarding a statement about the cup with the event the belief concerns being the propositional content of the statement regarding the event?

If it's the propositional content of the statement that renders the two equivalent in that manner (the event of my cup being behind my laptop being the propositional content of "my cup is behind my laptop"), the statement which states it is only important insofar as it's a statement of an already held belief which actually regards an event. Every belief can be stated doesn't imply every belief regards a statement.

Ah, cheers. SO we arrive at

It just seems infinitely more useful to pin down what people actually mean by the word... — Kenosha Kid

Now this is something I have struggled with, hence my somewhat negative comment.

Perhaps a way to proceed would be to look at the definitions given in the SEP article.

Four uses are provided. The first is the phenomenal character of the experience, which you seem to be adopting. The second is as properties of sense data. The third, as intrinsic non-representational properties. The fourth, as intrinsic, nonphysical, ineffable properties.

The second is out of favour along with sense-data. The fourth is that which Dennett seeks to Quine.

Now I think those of us who reject qualia have been implicitly suggesting that the first entails the third and fourth, and that this is the position taken by Dennett.

How's that?

"My cup is behind the laptop" is true only if my cup is behind the laptop.

Hence, A is true only if B, and so C.

Thanks for your involvement. The argument was stale.

There's something here for everyone!

I haven't much commented on @Andrew M's posts because I found little there with which to disagree.

A concrete thing is something that is not predicated of anything else. So the cup and the person are examples of concrete things. Whereas physical contact is a relation between concrete things. Since it's predicated of those concrete things, it is abstract, not concrete. — Andrew M

Concrete things here seem to be just individuals. It's a cup and a person, not cups and people.

Burden of proof switching. If you give an argument that beliefs can only concern statements, I'll engage more.

Burden of proof switching. — fdrake

I don't see how. Any belief is a belief that... and the "that..." is always a proposition.

What more argument could you want?

...this is the position taken by Dennett. — Banno

I think this correct; consider:

The standard reaction to this claim is the complacent acknowledgment that while some people may indeed have succumbed to one confusion or fanaticism or another, one's own appeal to a modest, innocent notion of properties of subjective experience is surely safe. It is just that presumption of innocence I want to overthrow. I want to shift the burden of proof, so that anyone who wants to appeal to private, subjective properties has to prove first that in so doing they are not making a mistake. This status of guilty until proven innocent is neither unprecedented nor indefensible (so long as we restrict ourselves to concepts). Today, no biologist would dream of supposing that it was quite all right to appeal to some innocent concept of lan vital. Of course one could use the term to mean something in good standing; one could use lan vital as one's name for DNA, for instance, but this would be foolish nomenclature, considering the deserved suspicion with which the term is nowadays burdened. I want to make it just as uncomfortable for anyone to talk of qualia--or "raw feels" or "phenomenal properties" or "subjective and intrinsic properties" or "the qualitative character" of experience--with the standard presumption that they, and everyone else, knows what on earth they are talking about.

http://cogprints.org/254/1/quinqual.htm

I don't see how. Any belief is a belief that... and the "that..." is always a proposition. — Banno

Question begging! That only describes a belief which regards a statement. Were it you'd proved that...

What more argument could you want? — Banno

There are counterexamples.

(1) Someone looking at a face forms beliefs regarding where to look next based on where they have looked.
(2) Those beliefs do not get translated into statements regarding facial features, it's doubtable that they even could be - the process of forming them occurs sufficiently quickly that no intention towards a statement forms, an agent having an attitude towards a statement just doesn't have to be part of the process.

So there's a sense in which a belief need not regard a statement, that breaks the chain of equivalences; beliefs may regard events (expected events), rather than statements or descriptions of events.

If you do the thing where you ask me to state a belief which can't be translated into language, I'd point out to you that that's very disingenuous, as I've already given you an example of a class of beliefs which do not regard statements.

beliefs regarding where to look next — fdrake

You've just greatly enlarged the scope of belief... Do you really form a belief that you will now look at your keyboard, and then look at your keyboard, or do you just look at your keyboard?

Are you going to posit that any action one performs is actually a belief?

Most contemporary philosophers characterize belief as a “propositional attitude”. Propositions are generally taken to be whatever it is that sentences express (see the entry on propositions). For example, if two sentences mean the same thing (e.g., “snow is white” in English, “Schnee ist weiss” in German), they express the same proposition, and if two sentences differ in meaning, they express different propositions. (Here we are setting aside some complications about that might arise in connection with indexicals; see the entry on indexicals.) A propositional attitude, then, is the mental state of having some attitude, stance, take, or opinion about a proposition or about the potential state of affairs in which that proposition is true—a mental state of the sort canonically expressible in the form “S A that P”, where S picks out the individual possessing the mental state, A picks out the attitude, and P is a sentence expressing a proposition. For example: Ahmed [the subject] hopes [the attitude] that Alpha Centauri hosts intelligent life [the proposition], or Yifeng [the subject] doubts [the attitude] that New York City will exist in four hundred years. What one person doubts or hopes, another might fear, or believe, or desire, or intend—different attitudes, all toward the same proposition. Contemporary discussions of belief are often embedded in more general discussions of the propositional attitudes; and treatments of the propositional attitudes often take belief as the first and foremost example.

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/belief/

You've just greatly enlarged the scope of belief... — Banno

All that's required is a single example of a belief that does not regard a statement. I gave you an example of a process of forming beliefs that do not regard statements.

Do you really form a belief that you will now look at your keyboard, and then look at your keyboard, or do you just look at your keyboard? — Banno

You're parsing it in terms of beliefs which can be turned easily into statements in English. Beliefs in the above sense are more similar to: "highly weighted present visual information fits best into nose category which is anticipated to belong on a face therefore since previous experience of faces entails they are shaped in such and such a configuration and their salient features are expected to be in configuration Y promote eye movement towards expected location (given recalled face information) of salient facial features assuming they are in configuration Y", and that's an inaccurate post hoc rendering gesturing towards the process, rather than a verbatim statement of what occurs.

Are you going to posit that any action one performs is actually a belief? — Banno

Nah, I think any action involves belief formation in the above sense. They occur before we delineate actions post-hoc into linguistic categories too!

And I appreciate that that is the common use in philosophy, belief as a propositional attitude, but that's not the common use everywhere; what a neuroscientist or psychologist means by belief can be much different. Why accept that beliefs only concern statements just because philosophers tend to use the word that way?

It could turn out that the example of beliefs I gave is a misnomer, but it's equally a common usage! Beliefs as perceptual expectations. I don't see why anyone should accept "philosophers use the word this way" as an argument that it must be used that way, do you? Nevermind "philosophers use the word this way" as an argument for why their use adequately describes the phenomenon in question.

All that's required is a single example of a belief that does not regard a statement. I gave you an example of a process of forming beliefs that do not regard statements. — fdrake

No, you havn't. YOu've just presented some fumbling words about faces...

"highly weighted present visual information fits best into nose category which is anticipated to belong on a face therefore since previous experience of faces entails they are shaped in such and such a configuration and their salient features are expected to be in configuration Y promote eye movement towards expected location (given recalled face information) of salient facial features assuming they are in configuration Y" — fdrake

..."I believe that's a nose", written badly.

I think you'd need a belief that is neither true nor false (right nor wrong).

Does it really have to be pointed out that any belief that A is a beleif that A is true?

No, you havn't. YOu've just presented some fumbling words about faces... — Banno

Absolutely fumbling, because (1) the process by which my eyes forage someone's face to produce a stable image of their face occurs sufficiently quickly that no statements are generated within it and (2) because it's a terrible description of an eye movement as a realisation of a mathematical model that is currently promoting eye movements towards where a new facial feature is expected to be, the sense of "belief" there might be rendered as "I believe there will be facial feature X if I look there next", but that belief is held - in the sense of being a perceptual expectation - without being directed toward the statement. At best, the statement is added on afterwards (and it need not be, typically isn't).

If you're happy that it can be described post hoc as "I believe there will be facial feature X if I look there next", I would remind you that the statement has only been added post hoc, and that the perceptual expectation both concerns the face and does not involve any translation into a statement at all at the time.

You might be skirting about Bayesian analysis, which hangs on belief. What you describe is reminiscent of the function of neural network; neural networks are described in Bayesian terms. But look with care and you will see that Bayesian analysis uses belief as a propositional attitude.

Edit:

You might be skirting about Bayesian analysis, which hangs on belief. What you describe is reminiscent of the function of neural network; neural networks are described in Bayesian terms. But look with care and you will see that Bayesian analysis uses belief as a propositional analysis. — Banno

Assume there's a completely accurate Bayesian model of perception, its perceptual expectations in the model might be statable in a propositional form; like an equation; but that does not establish that their beliefs regard statements. On the contrary, what their beliefs regard are parameters; environmental, bodily and contextual factors; rather than statements regarding them. That is, perceptual expectations regard actions, environmental and bodily states and contextual factors. If they count as beliefs, then they are excellent examples of beliefs which do not regard statements; they regard things like heart rates, warmth, sound... not statements about them.

Does it really have to be pointed out that any belief that A is a beleif that A is true? — Banno

I thought he wanted to show that one can demonstrate belief without it being belief that A.

A test for that would be: is the belief truth apt? If so, it has to be propositional.

This only works if you take propositions to be abstract objects though.

If it is the case that we are both objects in the world and subjects taking account of it and/or ourselves, then the dichotomy cannot be used as a means to draw a distinction between us and our accounts...
— creativesoul

Us and our accounts are not the dichotomy, they are the same thing, in that the account is contained in us. An account is, after all, merely a judgement, thus the account belongs to that which judges. — Mww

Bolding above is mine

As I said, if it is the case that we are both objects in the world(and we most certainly are), and subjects taking account of the world and/or ourselves(and we most certainly are), then the dichotomy cannot be used to draw and maintain a meaningful distinction between us and our accounts. Your claim that us and our accounts are the same thing is based upon employing the dichotomy, and that conclusion conflates us and our accounts. Thus, you've just confirmed my reasoning for rejecting the dichotomy.

As I mentioned earlier but it bears repeating:The need to draw a distinction between our reports and what we're reporting upon cannot be overstated. Because employing the subject/object dichotomy results in an inability to draw and maintain such distinctions, and drawing and maintaining such distinctions is a required step in the process of acquiring knowledge of that which existed in it's entirety prior to our accounts of it, the employment of that dichotomy becomes an impediment, a self-imposed obstacle to our understanding that is impossible to overcome.

...My body (in the world of things) has arms and legs (objects included in the world of things) is an account I make as a judge of things in the world belonging to my body. My account is not in the world, it is in me as the judge of the relatedness of things. — Mww

These are exactly the sort of conclusions that put the conflation between us and our reports upon public display. They are very problematic, unacceptable, and prima facie... just plain false.

Your body is not an account. Your account is most certainly in the world.

The only way to reject the counter-argument favoring the necessary subject/object dualism, is to deny the human cognitive system is inherently a logical system... — Mww

Oh, but I beg to differ. I reject it for the reasons given.

It isn’t my subjectivity I’m attempting to understand, in which would be found the logical paradox. — Mww

I suspect you are trying to understand subjectivity in general, which would include your own subjectivity doing the trying. Or are you trying to understand the subjectivity of a certain person in particular?

On the contrary, what their beliefs regard (as?) parameters are environmental, bodily and contextual factors; — fdrake

...which are statements.

...which are statements. — Banno

No.

That’s where Michel Bitbol is going in his paper It is never known but it is the knower (thanks Wayfarer), following an intuition by Kitaro Nishida that our effort toward objective knowledge comes from consciousness and subjectivity but turns its back to it, while looking at its objects. — Olivier5

This can also be parsed in physicalist terms. The knower is the brain/body, whose activity is never known (it is blind to the neurophysical activity that enables, gives rise to and is involved in knowing).

A concrete thing is something that is not predicated of anything else. So the cup and the person are examples of concrete things. Whereas physical contact is a relation between concrete things. Since it's predicated of those concrete things, it is abstract, not concrete.
— Andrew M
Concrete things here seem to be just individuals. It's a cup and a person, not cups and people. — Banno

Look like just plain 'ole names to me.

"Sounds like" would be better.

Look! An argument for qualia.

...which are statements. — Banno

Only if you can assess the weight of a statement!

While there are all sorts of language less creatures incapable of drawing correlations between different things, those aren't of interest here, for such creatures aren't capable of attributing meaning, and consciousness is the ability to attribute meaning.
— creativesoul

Good. Now we can remove the ghost of anthropomorphism from the dialectic. I just needed assurance, if not actual verification, so....thanks for that. — Mww

I've a thread about attributing things that are unique to human beings to other animals/things. The personification of other creatures and the world; anthropomorphism.

I’m not onboard with your rendering of consciousness, but that’s ok.We may return to that after I’ve a better understanding of the intricacies of your account. — Mww

The differences between our approaches are certainly stark enough to be noted. Mine remains incomplete in ways that I'm always attending to. Kant's was far more complete. It just focused upon the wrong sorts of things.

Here's where I differ with Kant...

In order to know that A is not equal to B, we must know what both consist of, because knowing that they are not equal requires comparison/contrast between the two. If A is unknowable, then we cannot know what it consists of. If we cannot know what it consists of, then we cannot ascertain how it is different from B, because by definition all we can know is that it is.

We cannot pick and choose things from the Noumenal world. That's the very first step in comparison.

We cannot know that no thing is as it appears, despite our having long since known that some things are not.

Your body is not an account. Your account is most certainly in the world. — creativesoul

Ok.

A suggestion...

Can we at least agree that there is a difference between our bodies and our reports thereof?

Can we at least agree that there is a difference between our bodies and our reports thereof? — creativesoul

Not if you're a BIV.