The scents and sounds become significant(meaningful) as a result of becoming part of a capable creature's correlations drawn between them, possible food items(prey), their own hunger pangs, etc. Prior to becoming part of those correlations, they were not at all meaningful for the aforementioned animal. Rather, they were just sounds and scents. — creativesoul

So you're arguing for semantic holism?

The tao that can be told
is not the eternal Tao
The name that can be named
is not the eternal Name.

The unnamable is the eternally real.
Naming is the origin
of all particular things. — Lao Tzu

You better believe it!

The tao that can be told
is not the eternal Tao
/.../
You better believe it! — unenlightened

When put that way, what was the gist of the motivation for the debate about whether beilef is propositional or not?

I got the feeling that it was about whether belief in God (and other religious claims) is justified.

My feeling could be wrong, of course.

The scents and sounds become significant(meaningful) as a result of becoming part of a capable creature's correlations drawn between them, possible food items(prey), their own hunger pangs, etc. Prior to becoming part of those correlations, they were not at all meaningful for the aforementioned animal. Rather, they were just sounds and scents.
— creativesoul
So you're arguing for semantic holism? — baker

I'm arguing that all belief is meaningful to the creature forming, having, and/or holding the belief; that all belief consists of correlations drawn between different things; that some language-less creatures have belief; that not all belief is propositional in content; that all our accounting practices of an other's belief(and our own) are propositional in form.

...what was the gist of the motivation for the debate about whether beilef is propositional or not? — baker

If all belief has propositional content then either propositions somehow exist in their entirety prior to language use in such a way so that language-less creature's belief can have propositional content or language-less creatures have no belief.

...what was the gist of the motivation for the debate about whether beilef is propositional or not? — baker

Correcting a long-standing conventional error of treating propositions as equivalent to belief(conflating belief and propositions) that stemmed from epistemology(JTB), by virtue of neglecting the stark differences in the truth conditions of some belief as compared to the truth conditions of a proposition in general when both are represented by the same marks, such as "The man with ten coins in his pocket will get the job" or "Either Jones has a Ford or Brown is in Barcelona".

...what was the gist of the motivation for the debate about whether beilef is propositional or not? — baker

Presenting a notion of belief that is amenable to evolutionary progression and doesn't lead to anthropomorphism when talking about the minds of other animals.

I got the feeling that it was about whether belief in God (and other religious claims) is justified. — baker

Nah. I'm pretty sure Banno and I are on much the same page when it comes to belief in God.

Misattribution. This is important.

We might all agree that having a belief is not like having something in one's pocket. — Banno

Important, and a bit ironic, given that I've never said otherwise, but you've acted as if I have.

I don't think we are disagreeing about anything; I thought it was you that had doubts, since you said "I don't know"; which suggests that you think we might disagree about something. So, what do you think we might disagree about?

Reasonably accurate, except for two small points. I would drop the use of "meaning" and say we takes truth as a given and uses the T sentence to provide a theory of interpretation. And there is a correspondence between word and world; one that is shown rather than said. We can tell that "schnee ist weiß" can be interpreted as "snow is white" by looking at its place in the lives of germanic folk.

Are you sure? Then our only point of disagreement is your refusal to acknowledge that events have propositional form; that states of affairs are shaped like propositions.

I got the feeling that it was about whether belief in God (and other religious claims) is justified. — baker

Read the debate. I explicitly rejected that link.

...states of affairs are shaped like propositions. — Banno

After all, setting out what is the case is exactly what propositions do;

...our common stock of words embodies all the distinctions men have found worth drawing, and the connexions they have found worth marking, in the lifetimes of many generations: these surely are likely to be more numerous, more sound, since they have stood up to the long test of the survival of the fittest, and more subtle, it least in all ordinary and reasonably practical matters, than any that you or I are likely to think up in our arm-chairs of an afternoon-the most favoured alternative method.

It should not be at all remarkable that our common stock of words includes a way of setting out how things are. Nor is it surprising that we have a way of marking utterances of this sort that are felicitous - they are true. We would also expect ways of talking about non felicitous utterances of this sort; in the case at hand, a way of talking about situations where someone takes what is the case to be one way when someone else takes it to be the other.

Propositions - statements - are about things and their relations; or as Creative puts it, they are about "correlation". Again, in saying that beliefs are correlations Creative is doing no more than saying that beliefs have propositional content.

On the way here we passed by the relation between words and the world; @Constance pointed to the "seamless, propositionless doing" of our everyday encounters with the world. @fdrake followed through on this. There is a way of understanding a rule that is not set out in more rules, but rather is shown in how we enact the rule. There is a way of understanding that "Snow is white" is true that is not only set out in the T-sentence '"Snow is white" is true only if snow is white', but understood in making snowballs, watching the drifting specks, shovelling the pathway. This is not said, but shown. That does not render it unsayable - after all, Constance, fdrake and I have indeed been saying it. The T-sentence sets out the very equivalence between word and world, but to see this, like the duck-rabbit, one has to be able to look at the T-sentence in two ways; what it says is a truth functional equivalence of two sets of words; what it shows is the relation between words and the world. Picture a T-sentence in which the equivalence is between '"Snow is white" is true' and white snow.

I thought it was you that had doubts — Janus

If I had any doubts, they were about what it was you were asserting. So if you now say we are in agreement, I won't disagree.

I'm arguing that all belief is meaningful to the creature forming, having, and/or holding the belief; that all belief consists of correlations drawn between different things; that some language-less creatures have belief; that not all belief is propositional in content; that all our accounting practices of an other's belief(and our own) are propositional in form. — creativesoul

This holds true for religious belief as well.

...as if religious belief were not simply a species of the belief genre. Your comments are specious. This is not a discussion of religious belief.

OK, fair enough. I guess if you cannot identify any points of disagreement then there effectively is none.

Banno's deflationary view doesn't match the sentence with some worldly fact, — fdrake

Well... it can be hard to tell:

The interesting thing is that a proposition will be true exactly when the state of affairs to which it applies is indeed the case. — Banno

We need a general relation between an individual and a possible state of affairs, to use when someone is wrong as to the truth. — Banno

Which show signs of systematic ambiguity (bordering on sophistry) between state of affairs as (A) unquoted statement and (B) worldly fact. Leading to this kind of thing,

Symbolically, x and "x" pick out the same x. — Andrew M

and

The stuff on the right hand side is in unmediated contact with the world;
— Banno — bongo fury

What do you think we are pretending then? We are not pretending that (some) words (sounds and groups of visual symbols) are associated with objects by us. — Janus

No, agreed, but the association itself is pretended, as you virtually allowed here:

the sound of the word or the visible written marks are associated with the objects they (are understood to [i.e. pretended to]) represent. — Janus

There's definitely a mapping game, but no definition at all to the mapping, unless we "agree to pretend".

It's obvious — Janus

Are you sure it's obvious to a bio-semiotician? With their signs, which are allegedly so different from symbols?

Like the weather or a carburettor, the neural collective is actually pushing and shoving against the real world.
That then is the semantics that breathes life into the syntax.
— apokrisis — bongo fury

Are you sure it's obvious to a bio-semiotician? You know, signs as allegedly so different from symbols? — bongo fury

Smoke may be a sign of fire, but it is not a symbol of fire. Seems obvious to me. I think Peirce's distinctions between signs, ikons and symbols make good sense.

Well... it can be hard to tell: — bongo fury

On the way here we passed by the relation between words and the world; Constance pointed to the "seamless, propositionless doing" of our everyday encounters with the world. @fdrake followed through on this. There is a way of understanding a rule that is not set out in more rules, but rather is shown in how we enact the rule. There is a way of understanding that "Snow is white" is true that is not only set out in the T-sentence '"Snow is white" is true only if snow is white', but understood in making snowballs, watching the drifting specks, shovelling the pathway. This is not said, but shown. That does not render it unsayable - after all, Constance, fdrake and I have indeed been saying it. The T-sentence sets out the very equivalence between word and world, but to see this, like the duck-rabbit, one has to be able to look at the T-sentence in two ways; what it says is a truth functional equivalence of two sets of words; what it shows is the relation between words and the world. Picture a T-sentence in which the equivalence is between '"Snow is white" is true' and white snow. — Banno

I think Peirce's distinctions between signs, ikons and symbols make good sense. — Janus

I'm very sympathetic to the idea that meaning is prior to language use, marks, symbols... However, I've found that apo conflates meaning with causality, and he's not alone in that regard. There's a notion...'natural meaning', perhaps, or something like that that believes that meaning is somehow prior to becoming meaningful to a creature. Smoke being called "a sign" of fire is exactly such a conflation when and if it is called such in the complete absence of a creature capable of drawing correlations between the two. In other words, I agree that smoke can become a sign of fire, but do not at all agree that it is in any situation apart from becoming and/or already being meaningful to a creature capable of attributing meaning.

We can believe things that aren't true, so why bring up T-sentences at all?

The T-sentence sets out the very equivalence between word and world, — Banno

You must mean possible worlds.

The debate between you and creative just comes down to how we want to define belief. We can define it any way we like, obviously.

Your sticking point has to do with some equivalence of word and world. Since words are commonly put together to say untrue things, there can't be any equivalence.

I used it here: https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/482981

In summary, it shows that the state of affairs is truth functionally equivalent to a proposition; since Creative accepts states of affairs, (calling them correlations...) it follows that states of affairs are truth functionally equivalent to true propositions. Creative accepts that beliefs involve correlations, erstwhile states of affairs, and hence has to agree that his correlations are truth functionally equivalent to a true proposition.

Nope. Not needed for the logic of T-sentences. If you are interested I can reference the Davidson articles that articulate this.

The debate between you and creative just comes down to how we want to define belief. We can define it any way we like, obviously. — frank

No, it doesn't. It comes down to his not recognising the propositional content of what he calls correlations.

Your sticking point has to do with some equivalence of word and world. Since words are commonly put together to say untrue things, there can't be any equivalence. — frank

This, and your comment re modality, leads me to think that you haven't grokked the logic of a t-sentence. IF the LHS of a T-sentence is false, and the T-sentence is true, the RHS will also be false.

This, and your comment re modality, leads me to think that you haven't grokked the logic of a t-sentence. IF the LHS of a T-sentence is false, and the T-sentence is true, the RHS will also be false. — Banno

”Snow is purple" is true IFF snow is purple.

How does this set out an equivalence of word and world?

What's the thing on the rhs?

It's a sentence of a language that has no truth predicate.

It's a sentence of a language — frank

it's not "Snow is white"; it's that snow is white.

it's not

”Snow is purple" is true IFF "snow is purple".

The sentence on the right is being used, not mentioned.