I read both arguments and see it differently.

I suggest that belief is belief about the self.

"The mouse ran behind the tree" is really, an abbreviation for "I saw the mouse run behind the tree."

It is not the rightness of the proposition:

"The mouse ran behind the tree" to the world, but rather - the rightness of perception of the world by the self.

Consequently, the implied propositional content of belief is "I am right that...."

Further, we cannot put aside how we know that 'the cup is on the shelf' - for the content of belief is always belief about the self. The abbreviated "propositional" content reads "the cup is on the shelf" but in full is something more akin to:

(I am right that) the cup is on the shelf (because I remember emptying the dishwasher.)

or (I am right that) the mouse ran behind the tree (because my eyesight is not that bad)

Truth lies in the relationship between the organism and reality, and the propositional content of belief concerns the validity of that relationship.

It's all about how meaning emerges onto the world stage.

:ok:

I suggest that belief is belief about the self. — counterpunch

Some. Not all.

I explained why (I am right that) you're wrong.

You described metacognition. That is thinking about one's own thought and belief. In order to think about one's own thought and belief, there must be something to think about and a means for doing so.

You're not right if you believe that all belief is about the self, because that is not true.

You said:

...they believe that that proposition is true. The proposition is sometimes said to 'sit well' with the individual's other beliefs whenever there is no readily apparent disagreement between the proposition and the individual's worldview. I've no argument against that much.

Now you say:

You described metacognition. That is thinking about one's own thought and belief. — creativesoul

These statements are contradictory. Which would you prefer to retract?

These statements are contradictory. — counterpunch

Bald assertions won't do.

Well, okay then creativesoul - good talk. Maybe give my approach a little more thought and get back to me if you wish to discuss it. I "believe" it's right, and largely for the reasons you state:

The proposition is sometimes said to 'sit well' with the individual's other beliefs whenever there is no readily apparent disagreement between the proposition and the individual's worldview. — creativesoul

The notion of a level of interpretation that is not linguistic is counterintuitive. — Banno

I almost concurred.

:wink:

That which is interpreted is already meaningful. Some meaningful belief and behaviour exists in it's entirety prior to language use. Thus, if we have two language-less creatures, we can have one interpreting the other's behaviour when that behaviour is already meaningful to the other, and that level of interpretation would not be at a linguistic level. It does follow the same process as linguistic level interpretation though... drawing correlations between different things. It's just that none of those things in the case of language-less animals includes language use.

Head shaking and...

Growling and...

Dancing and ruffling feathers and...

Well, okay then creativesoul - good talk. Maybe give my approach a little more thought and get back to me if you wish to discuss it. I "believe" it's right, and largely for the reasons you state:

The proposition is sometimes said to 'sit well' with the individual's other beliefs whenever there is no readily apparent disagreement between the proposition and the individual's worldview. — counterpunch

That's about propositional attitude. Not all belief is equivalent to an attitude one has towards a statement/proposition. So, it's right in that particular sense. Some belief is equivalent to a propositional attitude. Not all.

Read the rest of that opening post, perhaps the entire debate and then get back to me if you wish to discuss it further.

:flower:

I read your opening essay and banno's before I commented on this subject. What did you read before you wrote it? Anything?

The problem with your essay is that you claim that the proposition is that 'the mouse ran behind the tree' - whereas, the proposition is always...

"I am right that..."

Imagine another person, stood closer to the tree. You say:

"The mouse ran behind the tree."

They say:

"No, it didn't."

Do you accept this as a fact, and change your belief as easily as you change your socks? No! Because what they are really saying is that you are wrong. You refuse to accept it, because propositionally, it's not about whether the mouse ran behind the tree. It's about whether you are right that the mouse ran behind the tree.

the proposition is always...

"I am right that..." — counterpunch

No, it's not.

I'm imagining one who is first learning how to use names such as "mouse" and "tree" to pick mice and trees out of the world to the exclusion of all else.

In that circumstance, "the mouse is behind the tree" could be an answer to a question and carry along with it some considerable uncertainty.

No, it's not. — creativesoul

Oh, yes it is!

I'm imagining one who is first learning how to use names such as "mouse" and "tree" to pick mice and trees out of the world to the exclusion of all else. — creativesoul

It's a little early for us to start thinking about children. We've only just met! Let's stick with adult brains, at least capable of knowing what objects are called, and having beliefs about them.

Thanks for your efforts. That's an excellent reply. — Banno

:up:

The "claim" is nothing but the commonplace that when what we say is true, it sets out how things are. I have difficulty in seeing how you might maintain that the world is interpreted and yet treat this interpretation as tacit; especially if that tacit interpretation is thought of as not being capable of interpretation in propositional form.

I think the contention isn't that "everything is capable of being set out in a statement", it's where that capability comes from and how it works.

The notion of a level of interpretation that is not linguistic is counterintuitive.

It might be counterinuitive to you? It isn't to me. I'm quite used to throwing more into the notion of interpretation than speech acts and statements. Eg, vision's involved, seeing-as is an interpretation, and there need be no words in a figure-ground relationship.

It might be worthwhile to make a distinction between linguistic interpretation and language involving interpretation. A linguistic interpretation would be a "setting out in words", a description etc, a language involving interpretation would be an interpretation which is informed by and partially constituted with language. Example; a doctor looking at a lung scan for an abnormality, a linguistic interpretation might be the speech act of making the assertion "There's an abnormality here", a language involving interpretation would be seeing the abnormality due to learning how to do it - from textbooks, demonstrations etc. The latter type is simultaneously more expansive and...

I gather the notion is that the world is already divided into cups and tables before these are spoken of; (the before here being a logical, not a temporal, priority? I understand time plays an odd role in Heidegger's metaphysics...)

construable as logically prior to the other. I claim language involving interpretation is logically prior to linguistic interpretation.

But I think it's worthwhile to note the temporal part too; I don't think this distinction between language involving and linguistic interpretation commits me to a temporal ordering between the two types; like one precedes the other; they're more like styles of engagement, ways of "reading off the world". The predicative as-structure; that which seeks, finds and judges propositions and their content; is very similar to Wittgenstein's "glasses" in the PI.

103. The ideal, as we think of it, is unshakable. You can never get outside it; you must always turn back. There is no outside; outside you cannot breathe.—Where does this idea come from? It is like a pair of glasses on our nose through which we see whatever we look at. It never occurs to us to take them off.

104. We predicate of the thing what lies in the method of representing it. Impressed by the possibility of a comparison, we think we are perceiving a state of affairs of the highest generality.

The pre-predicative one is more informal and pragmatic, taking off the glasses, the rough ground is blurry but saturated with articulable structure; an encoding in propositional content is one means of articulation. Both the pre-predicative and the predicative seem to be involved in most speech acts, and have distinct styles of content which interweave. Why distinct styles of content? Putting on the glasses of propositional form is a filter, it seeks statements and judgements, it encodes the world in their images. And "we predicate of the thing that which lies in the method of representing (encoding - me) it". If you stop seeing the world in terms of an expectation of sentential logical form, that doesn't stop it from being able to be parsed in accordance with that form. What the routine occurrence in everyday non-glasses-wearing acts does do, however, is show that such logical form shows up in the world (and it is there!) only when using the glasses to see it. It goes from a necessary component of interaction to a contingent one; you can take off the glasses, and the propositional form need not appear. Once you take of the glasses, things still "make themselves manifest" as it were, but are not outside of the scope of language, language is born in interaction with that rough ground. What is articulated has to be wrestled into sentences, and sentential form is the referee's count at the pin.

The predicative as structure is a means of representation of the world's articulable content which yields statements and judgements thereof, it summarises, encodes, condenses, judges. Nothing falls apart if you take off the glasses; and you might need them again for reading. The important thing is the glasses can come off; which destroys the monopoly on content which you're imputing to the propositional form. It only seems like a monopoly because you've got the glasses on.

So what I'm reacting to in your position is that you seem to me to be doing the same thing as in 104:

Impressed by the possibility of a comparison, we think we are perceiving a state of affairs of the highest generality.

"x" is true iff x. As a theory of meaning through redundancy, of comparing the world to a logical form your vantage point has imputed to it and finding a match - you were looking for one. I have no problem with the match. It's that you're using that to limit other styles of filtering the world. It seems you are claiming it is the only match, a necessary match. It's like you've got the glasses on and define seeing as seeing through those glasses! So from my perspective:

Well, if it is not propositional, what is it? What other form could it have?

The premises underlying those questions are wrongheaded; the form isn't of the state of affairs, it's discovered in seeing the world a certain way. That logical form arises in an interaction; statements have propositional content because we and the world put it there conjointly.

And even if there is some alternative form, that form must be capable of interpretation in propositional form.

I'll grant this, you can put the glasses on, but that only limits how the world shows up when they're on. The appeal for that claim is the logical priority of the pre-predicative; that the glasses can be taken off.

If you want examples of other ways of seeing the world that don't turn around what goes into statements; you're looking at other metaphysical vantage points. Maybe the world looks like interacting objects, manifestations of substance, dynamical systems, actor networks, monads, assemblages... I want to emphasise "other" in "other metaphysical vantage points"; claiming "the world is an object language" is a metaphysical claim.

I suggest that belief is belief about the self. — counterpunch

Sorry for interjecting and mentioning, but I will propose something related. I can speculate, without being animal behavior specialist, that at least in animals, the matter of fact may be divorced more strongly from their mental attitudes. They might possess intent and not knowing about "states of affairs", as was previously mentioned. In other words, the cat might acquire stimuli to perform a certain action, to initiate a process of some kind, mental inertia of some sort, starting from the image of a running mouse, which then continues to compel it to chase for food-object behind the tree, This implies that there is pursuit of the object, which means that it moves, as well as its location, because this is where we will chase the object, but the cat probably does not fully conceptualize that there is mouse running behind the tree and hence the pursuit, or at least has a very vague abstract awareness of its motivation. There is some implicit mental correlation, because the action associated with the prompting motivation is indicative of the current state of affairs, but not directly tied to it. I argue, that even in human beings, belief may be about intent, not about states of affairs. States of affairs just strongly correlate with some types of intent.

A hypothesis.

That is, on Russell's view (and yours) the sentence entails that there is a present King of France. The entailment is false, therefore the sentence is false. — Andrew M

Again, rather out of cuff interjection. How do we know which parts of the sentence are existentially bound and which refer to particulars. The sentence could mean that one well known presently ruling king of France is bald. It could mean that such a king presently exists and is bald. Or in some point in time (prior to reading the statement), a king of France existed and was bald. In fact, it could mean that a country named France existed at some point, that country had a person acting in a particular capacity, called king, he had a condition, which for lack of a better term was named baldness, and that person had it. It seems to me that the battle for revealing propositions behind isolated sentences is obscured by linguistic inadequacy, if we are talking about ordinary language and without context that implies the intent of the author. The result is speculation.

A hypothesis. — simeonz

Apology accepted, however, I think we need to stick with human, adult brains - capable of knowing what things are, and having beliefs about them, and articulating those beliefs. There's no insight to be gained, from the "beliefs" of babies, or the "beliefs" of cats - because they're not the same thing as an adult, human, articulated belief - with or without propositional content. If the purpose of this debate is to decide if the content of belief is propositional, how can we possibly examine that question in organisms incapable of articulating a belief? I'm really not sure what question you are answering.

If the purpose of this debate is to decide if the content of belief is propositional, how can we possibly examine that question in organisms incapable of articulating a belief? — counterpunch

When you say "organisms incapable of articulating a belief", you seem to imply that having a belief requires the bearer to be able to articulate what it believes. In fact, I think you might be suggesting that believing and articulating beliefs are the same at some level. Am I correct? Why do you think that that is the case? Or is it a definitional matter.

P.S. It seems to me that this is what the original debate was about.

So they probably hope the use-mention distinction is at least half-way not about pointing.
— bongo fury

Then what do they think use is doing, if not pointing? — frank

Everything in "How to do things with words", for starters? (I presume.)

Which is of course laudable. Why ever assume that thought is all in declarative sentences?

In which case, why ever think that meaning is all pointing?

It's a matter of being able to examine the belief - no more or less. Now I say that, I seem to recall some TV show, where they showed simple magic tricks to chimps. What I remember is the chimp's surprise that the ball was, or wasn't under the cup. One could argue the chimp had formed a "belief" about it, as demonstrated by their emotional response to discovering things were not as they had imagined. I'm not so familiar with cats that I could say, if they are capable of a similar expression of surprise - that betrays the existence of an expectation of a particular state of affairs, but I am familiar enough with cat owners to know, I cannot expect an objective opinion about their cat from them! Still, even if chimps are capable of beliefs - where does that get us? We cannot discuss with the chimp what it believed, or how it formed that belief, or in what terms it would express it. In terms of the question, "the content of belief is propositional" - we are no further along.

All I need is the movie to demonstrate that it's conceivable that there are aspects of the world that can't be pointed to by a sentence of English. — frank


If this were so, we would have no way to claim these were "aspects of the world"; as if you could show something and yet not be able to point to it. — Banno

I'm leveraging conceivability to shift the burden.

You need to prove that everything can be pointed to with a sentence of English because it's conceivable that our cognition is limited so that there are things that can't be.

The metalanguage points to the fixtures of some form of life. If there are things in the world that don't fit in our form of life, those things won't be expressable by a sentence of English.

The metalanguage is not the world. It's our form of life.

We cannot discuss with the chimp what it believed, or how it formed that belief, or in what terms it would express it. In terms of the question, "the content of belief is propositional" - we are no further along. — counterpunch

Either way, depends on how fundamental the question wants to be. On whether the debate assumes a point of reference of "human beliefs as commonly practiced presently". For me at least, acknowledging the limitations of the discussion is still a result.

Fundamentally speaking then, it seems to me that beliefs are possible as dispositions, intentions, attitudes. I don't see any reason why they should only form in an explicit structured mental language. I claim that even the structured statements boil down to attitudes, if observed closely and reduced to elements. Using surprise as impromptu verification principle, can it not form as the result of simpler, inarticulate neurological and psychological states? I am not talking about acting surprised, which can happen due to all sorts of non-sense, but about being confounded from contradiction between your experience and your current attitude.

Edit: As to where this would lead. Lets assume that beliefs are not articulate (merely) by definition, which could be argued for or against on taxonomical grounds, observing how the term will be used for a mental state that maps meaningfully to behavior patterns, as you alluded to in your response above. Then the speculation would indicate that dispositions are the basis for beliefs and not propositions. The latter merely correlate.

I've long been looking for points of agreement and disagreement between Davidson and Wittgenstein, the two recent philosophers with whom I am most in agreement. You've pointed to an apparent area of disagreement between them; so damn you and thank you.

I'd previously understood the pieces in and around your quotes as a breaking of the 'crystalline purity of logic' (§ 97, 107, 108) that is embedded in the Tractatus. It's the expectation that language should be made to conform to subject-predicate form, central to the project of the Tractatus, that is being rejected. Where Wittgenstein had thought that philosophy was the revealing of the hidden logical perfection of our everyday language, he now "rotates" the angle of our examination so that common language use takes primacy. He thus expands his view of language from nothing but propositions to everything, including propositions.

You it seems would take this further in positing that we might somehow have a language (or some such) that is outside of propositional forms, that in effect cannot be put into propositional form.

Compare what you have said with the Davidsonian rejection of incommensurability. If something is true in one language, and here we include any conceptual schema, then it will be true under suitable interpretations in any other language. The word is a fixed point in a triangulation between world, language and use. The great joy in this is the rejection of relativism, the reintroduction of the notion that sometimes folk say things that are wrong.

"An encoding in propositional content is one means of articulation". I'd suggest that any other form of articulation, given a certain requirement, must be interpretable in terms of propositions. That requirement is, that the articulation is to be about how things are, that it is to be the sort of thing that can be true or false.

This is not to rule out 'articulations' that are not subject to the rigour of being true or false; commands, questions, and so on; but also, showing the glory of a sunset, the horror of an injury.

So I agree that 'claiming "the world is an object language" is a metaphysical claim'; but all that has ben done in this metaphysics is to set up the language game of talking about how things are by setting out individuals and their relations. Yes, we set up the game of names, predicates, truth functions, and with it the notions of true and false; And for our purposes here, belief is part of that game. Hence, in so far as we can talk of our beliefs as being true or false, we must also include that their content is also capable of being true or false.

So I agree with you that belief is part of a much bigger game. Nevertheless, belief has propositional content.

There's a favourite Existentialist Comic of Sartre and Camus playing Candyland. Like Camus, I'm pointing out the rules of the game; Like Sartre, you are pointing out that we are not limited to the game.

You need to prove that everything can be pointed to with a sentence of English because it's conceivable that our cognition is limited so that there are things that can't be. — frank

Meh. If there is stuff that is beyond our reckoning, there is no point in talking about it. You want to "Eff" the ineffable again. If there are things in the world that don't fit in our form of life, those things would be entirely unrecognisable to us.

What happens is that stuff outside our reckoning is brought inside it by extending the language.

What happens is that stuff outside our reckoning is brought inside it by extending the language. — Banno

You don't know that. We may have to evolve to understand more of the world. We may have to ditch our previous languages altogether, as Russian communists imagined.

So yes. We talk about the world as we know it. That's all.

We talk about the world as we know it. That's all. — frank

...and in saying that you've said nothing.

I corrected your mistake. I wasn't trying to cure cancer.

My comment was in English, but I didn't think that worth mentioning, either; my apologies.

:up:

:wink: