If beliefs were only propositions then are you saying that your beliefs are only composed of visual scribbles and spoken sounds? — Harry Hindu

No.

Beliefs are not propositions. They are attitudes towards propositions. The belief is not "the cat is on the mat" but that "It is true that the cat is on the mat".

But in addition the model you use of talking as if things in your head were translated into language that is then transmitted and translated in things in your listener's head has been thoroughly critiqued, and found wanting. It's clear that it is much better to deal with the use to which one's utterance are put rather than to invent an enigmatic, disembodied entity called "the meaning of a word" that somehow floats from mind to mind.

If you are interested in formal representations of beliefs, the Stanford article on that topic is quite good.

As per all philosophical considerations, it takes for granted that beliefs are propositional attitudes.

@creativesoul, @neomac

It's wryly amusing to find oneself again the topic of discussion.

Let me know if you would like me to chime in. For a negotiated fee I will appear as a special guest speaker.

@Banno

> It's wryly amusing to find oneself again the topic of discussion.
And the good news is that I didn't finish yet.

> For a negotiated fee I will appear as a special guest speaker.
I'm afraid @creativesoul's cornucopia of ceremonious compliments to you are all you are going to get, sir.

Sarcasm is surely fun, so pls go ahead. It's simply that if you could add some good philosophical arguments on top of it, it would be even more fun.

You can quote someone by highlighting their text; a pop up will appear that will link their name and the text. As here:

that if you could add some good philosophical arguments — neomac

You have come in after what is literally years of discussion. If I were half as good a teacher as @creativesoul suggests, he would have been convinced of the error of his ideas long ago. To suggest that I have not provided "some good philosophical arguments" is puerile.

I wonder, did you perhaps miss the debate from whence this discussion came?

Here.

I suppose you did, but it seems worth checking, because you do not seem to be addressing what I actually wrote, so much as a half-understood inference from the writing of other folk.

It looks like it will be a slow wet day, so while I have no great desire to further flog this dead horse, I might rely if addressed directly.

Bye the bye, this supercilious style is intended to get on your goat. It keeps me as the centre of attention.

The criticism offered to @Harry Hindu is not too far from that offered to @creativesoul.

There's a way of thinking that supposes, given that we talk about this being red and that being red, that there must be a thing which is named by "red". Of course, there isn't. The red in the sunset has nothing in common with the red in the sports car; apart from the name.

The temptation is to reify the red into existence. But all we actually have is a way of talking that has proved useful.

That from Austin. He extended this to meaning - there's a way of thinking that supposes, given that we talk about this meaning this and meaning that, that there must be a thing which is named by "meaning". There need not be any such thing. Again the temptation is to reify meaning into existence. But all we actually have is a way of talking that has proved useful - that form Wittgenstein, who pointed out how useful it was for philosophers to look at the use of words rather than their meaning

So far as this goes I suspect @creativesoul would agree. But here we seem to differ, since I would extent this approach to belief, whereas he baulks.

There's a way of thinking that supposes, given that we talk about our believing this or our believing that, that there must be a thing which is named by "belief". Of course, there need not be. Why could it not just be a convenience for us to talk as if there were such a thing, perhaps a a handy way of summarising our attitudes and actions? He went to the shop because he wanted milk and he believed that's were he could purchase some, and so on...?

SO folk get mislead into looking for the essence of red when there isn't any such thing. And folk get misled into looking for beliefs in minds, as if they were bits of mental furniture. As if, were we to take a mind and dissect it, we would be able to find the belief that Moscow is the capital of Russia, or the belief that vanilla is better than chocolate. I suppose @creativesoul must think something like this, to explain why he is perplexed that a cat might have a belief while not being able to use language. For him, if a belief is an attitude towards a proposition, there must be propositions in minds, and so language.

But perhaps beliefs are a pretence invoked by folk who do use language, including propositions, simply to enable talk of the behaviour of others, including cats.

And here it comes back to the difference between belief and truth. We can explain the cat's going to the bowl by saying he believed it contained food, and this explains his actions whether there is food in the bowl or not.

Because sometimes beliefs are wrong. Truths are never wrong.

Perhaps talk of beliefs is just there to allow us to distinguish what others take to be the case from what we think to be the case; to allow us to explain behaviour that otherwise appears incongruous. We can explain why the cat went to the empty bowl if we infer that he was mistaken, and had taken it to contain food.

Hence, red is not a thing, but a way of talking about sunsets and sports cars. And beliefs are not things, but a way of discussing behaviour.

Hence, red is not a thing, but a way of talking about sunsets and sports cars. — Banno

So, if everyone remained shtum, nothing would be red.

Now you are writing in Yiddish?

Question remains regardless so no point kvetching about choice of words.

I have trouble sometimes differentiating between Hanover and your good self. The Yiddish doesn't help. Besides, this whole forum, indeed, philosophy itself, is kvetching about choice of words.

What was the question?

It's about the sense in which universals are real. Apropos of the broader point, I've been quoting from Russell's discussion in The Problems of Philosophy> The World of Universals, which concludes thus. Note he uses 'whiteness' as an example but 'redness' would do just as well.

It is largely the very peculiar kind of being that belongs to universals which has led many people to suppose that they are really mental. We can think of a universal, and our thinking then exists in a perfectly ordinary sense, like any other mental act. Suppose, for example, that we are thinking of whiteness. Then in one sense it may be said that whiteness is 'in our mind'. ... In the strict sense, it is not whiteness that is in our mind, but the act of thinking of whiteness. The connected ambiguity in the word 'idea', which we noted at the same time, also causes confusion here. In one sense of this word, namely the sense in which it denotes the object of an act of thought, whiteness is an 'idea'. Hence, if the ambiguity is not guarded against, we may come to think that whiteness is an 'idea' in the other sense, i.e. an act of thought; and thus we come to think that whiteness is mental. But in so thinking, we rob it of its essential quality of universality. One man's act of thought is necessarily a different thing from another man's; one man's act of thought at one time is necessarily a different thing from the same man's act of thought at another time. Hence, if whiteness were the thought as opposed to its object, no two different men could think of it, and no one man could think of it twice. That which many different thoughts of whiteness have in common is their object, and this object is different from all of them. Thus universals are not thoughts, though when known they are the objects of thoughts.

We shall find it convenient only to speak of things existing when they are in time, that is to say, when we can point to some time at which they exist (not excluding the possibility of their existing at all times). Thus thoughts and feelings, minds and physical objects exist. But universals do not exist in this sense; we shall say that they subsist or have being, where 'being' is opposed to 'existence' as being timeless. The world of universals, therefore, may also be described as the world of being. — Bertrand Russell

Edward Feser makes a similar point:

Consider that when you think about triangularity, as you might when proving a geometrical theorem, it is necessarily perfect triangularity that you are contemplating, not some mere approximation of it. Triangularity as your intellect grasps it is entirely determinate or exact; for example, what you grasp is the notion of a closed plane figure with three perfectly straight sides, rather than that of something which may or may not have straight sides or which may or may not be closed. Of course, your mental image of a triangle might not be exact, but rather indeterminate and fuzzy. But to grasp something with the intellect is not the same as to form a mental image of it. For any mental image of a triangle is necessarily going to be of an isosceles triangle specifically, or of a scalene one, or an equilateral one; but the concept of triangularity that your intellect grasps applies to all triangles alike. Any mental image of a triangle is going to have certain features, such as a particular color, that are no part of the concept of triangularity in general. A mental image is something private and subjective, while the concept of triangularity is objective and grasped by many minds at once. — Some Brief Arguments for Dualism

bolds added in both passages. The salient point being, universals are intelligible objects i.e. objects of thought, but are not the product of the mind. That is how I understand them.

Hence, red is not a thing, but a way of talking about sunsets and sports cars. And beliefs are not things, but a way of discussing behaviour — Banno

And yet the spoon remains in the drawer, as this particular spoon, whether I think about it or not. So particular spoons are things but the color red and beliefs are not, right?

If you like.

Oh, look - A post from Wayfarer! I wonder who it is for?

@Banno

You can quote someone by highlighting their text; a pop up will appear that will link their name and the text. — Banno

Unless there is a specific reason to adopt it, I still prefer my way of quoting. Anyway thanks for the hint.

> If I were half as good a teacher as @creativesoul suggests, he would have been convinced of the error of his ideas long ago.

Unless he too was just being sarcastic. Just kidding.

> You have come in after what is literally years of discussion.

Well that's an open forum, I'm afraid this happens especially if anybody is invited to debate.

> To suggest that I have not provided "some good philosophical arguments" is puerile.

No sir, I didn't mean to suggest that you didn't come up with "some good philosophical arguments" at all in your entire life. I didn't find good arguments in the posts I've read from the formal debate entitled "The content of beliefs is propositional" (Banno and creativesoul). Therefore I quoted your remarks literally and explained my doubts.

> I wonder, did you perhaps miss the debate from whence this discussion came?

I don't remember if I read this specific post that you are linking. But it doesn't add any argument to better support the claims I quoted and commented. On the contrary I found just more claims to question.

> you do not seem to be addressing what I actually wrote, so much as a half-understood inference from the writing of other folk.

Let me repeat it once more: I didn't find good arguments in the posts I've read from the formal debate entitled "The content of beliefs is propositional" (Banno and creativesoul). Therefore I quoted your remarks literally and explained my doubts.
So I am exactly addressing what you wrote. While we can't say the same of your claims about what I wrote. Can we? Indeed you never even quoted any of my last comments to your statements on the subject under discussion.

> It looks like it will be a slow wet day, so while I have no great desire to further flog this dead horse, I might rely if addressed directly.

You mean your pointless challenge: " If there are beliefs that cannot be presented in propositional form, give us an example".
What about this example: X believes that the present King of France is bald. Did I win anything?
You are forcing us to play a rigged game based on some unjustified assumptions. And when one is addressing what is wrong in your assumptions, in challenging them with the same question, you are implicitly accusing them of cowardly refusing to play your game. This looks either puerile or dishonest, to me.

> Bye the bye, this supercilious style is intended to get on your goat. It keeps me as the centre of attention.
Now it's your turn to address my last comments to your statements on the subject under discussion.
From my exchange with @creativesoul (the notes are quotations of your own statements @Banno):

- If proposition is a “more abstract entity” [1] supposed to be “common between certain statements”, then proposition are not statements, and they are not interchangeable with statements, yet he prefers to talk in terms of propositions as “statements that can be either true or false” [2]. Well if they are statements then they can not at the same time be intrinsic truth bearers and the content of our beliefs, why? Because believing that “the cup is on the shelf” is true, doesn’t equate to believing that "la taza está en el estante" is true, yet “the cup is on the shelf” and "la taza está en el estante" have the same truth value.
- Commands and desires are also considered propositional attitudes but they have satisfaction conditions not truth conditions as beliefs. And as long as beliefs and desires can express different attitudes toward the same propositions, propositions themselves are not intrinsically truth bearers by themselves [2], but only dependently on the direction-of-fit conferred by the intentional attitude.
- The manifest inconsistency of claiming that beliefs about statements are exactly the same as beliefs about the way things are [3] has been already spotted by you. But his other formulations elsewhere [4] turned out to be even more preposterous because claiming that beliefs are about how we think things are is exactly like saying beliefs are about how we believe things are (kind of intrinsically reflexive beliefs).
- He claims that both beliefs [5] and state of affairs [6] can be put in the form of a proposition, but if the possibility of putting in propositional form a belief is enough to claim that belief have propositional content, then it should be also enough to claim that state of affairs have propositional content. And since propositions are sentences that can be true or false [7], then also state of affairs can be true or false as much as beliefs can be, thanks to their propositional content.
- Implicit beliefs [8] can’t be verified until properly expressed (e.g. stated): “holding a belief true” can have both a dispositional and a non-dispositional account. In any case, considerations about truth-functional implications or equivalences based on propositional contents are fallible ways for belief attribution, because there are also irrational beliefs, conceptual indeterminacies and background knowledge that affect doxastic dispositions.
- The actual propositional content of a belief seems to be identified with the possibility of being put in propositional form [9][10][11], and that sounds like claiming that the actual content of a glass is water because one can pour water into the glass.
- If belief is a way to explain action [12][13] and cats do not show human linguistic skills, how could one possibly explain Lilly’s behavior by attributing to her a belief that a certain sentence about her environment is true? However this sounds too preposterous and it’s probably not what he means, what he more probably means is instead that the human capacity of rendering Lilly’s beliefs through sentences that can be true or false is what explains Lilly’s behavior. Which sounds as preposterous, doesn’t it?


[1] Propositions are a more abstract entity, being supposed as what is common between certain statements. So "the cup is on the shelf", "la taza está en el estante" and "bikarinn er í hillunni", I am told, are all different sentences in distinct languages that all express the same proposition.

[2] My preference would be to talk in terms of propositions as statements that can be either true or false, with the understanding that to a large extent the words statement and proposition are interchangeable

[3] To believe that the mouse ran behind the tree is exactly to believe that "the mouse ran behind the tree" is true; to deny this is to deny that our statements are about the way things are.

[4] Saying that beliefs have propositional content is nothing more than saying that beliefs are about how we think things are.

[5] that every belief has propositional content does not imply that every belief has indeed been put in propositional form.

[6] It should be clear from the preceding discussion that while it is not the case that every proposition has been stated, every possible state of affairs can be put in the form of a proposition.

[7] Statements are combinations of nouns and verbs and such like; Some statements are either true or false, and we can call these propositions. So, "The present King of France is bald" is a statement, but not a proposition. Since there is no present King of France, he can be neither bald nor hirsute. "The present king of France is bald" is not the sort of sentence that can be true or false.

[8] I take it that you believe that you have more than one eyelash. But I suppose that up until now, you had not given this much consideration. If that example does not suit, perhaps you might consider if you believe that you have more than five eyelashes, or less than 12,678. Or you might bring to mind some other belief about something which you had up until now never considered …
The point is that we each have innumerable beliefs that we have never articulated, indeed which we never will articulate, but which nevertheless we do hold to be true. All this to make the point that there are unstated beliefs…

[9] What we take to be true is what forms the content of a belief. What we take to be true can be expressed in a proposition. Hence, the content of our beliefs is propositional.

[10] beliefs are always about what can be put in propositional form. And this can be rephrased as that the content of a belief is propositional.

[11] My contention is that the content of beliefs are propositional. What is believed can be stated, and is held to be true.

[12] Lilly apparently believed that there was something objectionable out the window, and that her hissing and spitting were imperative in order to drive whatever it was away. This is at least part of what belief is about: that our actions follow from our beliefs, that what we do, we do in the light of what we hold to be true.

[13] My own inclination is more towards beliefs being a way of talking about, and hence explaining, our actions; that is, that they are not things stored so much as interpretations of what we do.

Look out the window, and up.

Unless there is a specific reason to adopt it, — neomac

it means your readers can go back to the original location of the post with a click. So yes, there are.

Cloudy, with pending rain.

But it doesn't add any argument to better support the claims I quoted and commented. — neomac

If what I said in the debate itself is of no use to you, then I have nothing more to add.

Cheers.

@Banno
I've argued at length and to the point what I think about your arguments. While you didn't serve me with the same treatment, instead you are continually dodging my direct challenges to your views, with cheap excuses and attack ad personam. Despite the treatment, I don't take it personally as much as you do. So I'm still waiting for a more focused feedback on my last comments about your views. I'm even ready to thank you for the effort, go figure ;)

The ineffable i.e. nonpropositional experiences of mysticism

Consciousness, the alleged pure subjective aspect of it, is nonpropositional; so said Wittgenstein (re private language argument).

It depends though on what we mean by belief and contents of belief.

Beliefs are not propositions. They are attitudes towards propositions. The belief is not "the cat is on the mat" but that "It is true that the cat is on the mat". — Banno

I don't see the difference in the meaning. Why would you say the cat is on the mat if you weren't implying that it was true that the cat is on the mat?

"Attitudes" doesn't really fit, or leaves one wanting to know: what kind of attitude, if not the attitude that the proposition, or idea, is true?

Beliefs are better described as predictions. We are prediction machines and predictions are attitudes of probability towards some idea or proposition. We often use the phrases, "I think", "I believe", and "I know" to refer to the level of certainty we have of a given idea, with the latter being the most certain you can be.

Saying, "The sun will rise tomorrow." is the same as making a prediction and we make predictions based on prior experiences in similar circumstances. The more experience we have in a certain circumstance, the more certain we become that similar future circumstances will be the same. A belief is no different. Beliefs eventually become knowledge with more justification.

But in addition the model you use of talking as if things in your head were translated into language that is then transmitted and translated in things in your listener's head has been thoroughly critiqued, and found wanting. It's clear that it is much better to deal with the use to which one's utterance are put rather than to invent an enigmatic, disembodied entity called "the meaning of a word" that somehow floats from mind to mind.

If you are interested in formal representations of beliefs, the Stanford article on that topic is quite good.

As per all philosophical considerations, it takes for granted that beliefs are propositional attitudes. — Banno

Your use of "attitudes" and "use" is found wanting. What kind of attitudes, if not attitudes of certainty? Used for what if not representing things that aren't words?

I have found that defining meaning as the relationship between cause and effect very useful. Meaning is everywhere causes leave effects. Words are the effects of one's intent to communicate ideas that are not just other words. Some idea and the intent to communicate them is what causes words to appear on this page, and it is now the reader's job to get at the cause of the words - the idea the writer intends to communicate. Sometimes the reader may require re-phrasing or ask questions to better understand the idea.

There's a way of thinking that supposes, given that we talk about this being red and that being red, that there must be a thing which is named by "red". Of course, there isn't. The red in the sunset has nothing in common with the red in the sports car; apart from the name.

The temptation is to reify the red into existence. But all we actually have is a way of talking that has proved useful. — Banno

Words are just colored shapes on a background of a contrasting color, or particular sounds in the air. Given that we can talk about words and how they are shaped and how they sound, like we can talk about apples and the way the are colored and shaped and how they taste and smell, and compare them to other words, even from different languages, seems to show that we are talking about something when we use words like, "red", "black letters on white paper", and the way "where" sounds like "wear", as opposed to just "using" them (again, used for what if not to refer to something that isn't a word).

I don't see the difference in the meaning. Why would you say the cat is on the mat if you weren't implying that it was true that the cat is on the mat? — Harry Hindu

I don't know how to respond to that. Try this: What is the subject of "the cat is on the mat"? I would say it is the cat. But what is the subject fo "Harry believes the cat is on the mat"? It's about Harry. They are quite different.

"Attitudes" doesn't really fit, or leaves one wanting to know: what kind of attitude, if not the attitude that the proposition, or idea, is true? — Harry Hindu

Exactly; the attitude of taking the proposition to be true.

Beliefs are better described as predictions. — Harry Hindu

I don't see any benefit in that. I can see no clear way in which "We believe that Augustus was a Roman Emperor" is just a prediction. However treating belief as a propositional attitude has spawned very many further developments. Again it seems worth pointing out that it is, for better or worse, orthodoxy.

What kind of attitudes, if not attitudes of certainty? — Harry Hindu

Not certainty, but truth.

Words are just colored shapes on a background of a contrasting color, or particular sounds in the air. — Harry Hindu

And yet we do things with them. There's no point in going over the problems with your referential theory of meaning again.

- He claims that both beliefs [5] and state of affairs [6] can be put in the form of a proposition, but if the possibility of putting in propositional form a belief is enough to claim that belief have propositional content, then it should be also enough to claim that state of affairs have propositional content. And since propositions are sentences that can be true or false [7], then also state of affairs can be true or false as much as beliefs can be, thanks to their propositional content.



[5] that every belief has propositional content does not imply that every belief has indeed been put in propositional form.

[6] It should be clear from the preceding discussion that while it is not the case that every proposition has been stated, every possible state of affairs can be put in the form of a proposition.

[7] Statements are combinations of nouns and verbs and such like; Some statements are either true or false, and we can call these propositions. So, "The present King of France is bald" is a statement, but not a proposition. Since there is no present King of France, he can be neither bald nor hirsute. "The present king of France is bald" is not the sort of sentence that can be true or false. — neomac

I agree on both points above. There seems to be some special pleading going on, at a bare minimum. Inconsistent terminological use, certainly. That's unacceptable.

Interesting though...

I've noticed something now that I do not remember noticing during the overwhelming amount of seemingly incongruent argumentation offered by Banno during the debate. I had a very hard time making much sense of any of it towards the end.

has arrived at incoherence by virtue of self-contradiction. If all belief has propositional content by virtue of being an attitude towards some proposition or other, and "The present King of France is bald" is not a proposition, then it would not even be possible to believe that the present King of France was bald, because "the present King of France is bald" has just been disqualified. That contradicts the way things are. We all know that it would take very little effort, given the right candidate, to convince someone that the statement is true. It is not impossible to believe that the present King of France is bald. The statement is not truth-apt, but can be wholeheartedly believed nonetheless.

:meh:

If "The present King of France is bald" is not a proposition, and yet it can be believed nonetheless, then it cannot be the case that either all belief has propositional content or all belief is an attitude towards some proposition or other.

:death:

My position is that some belief do indeed have propositional content, but not all. This was explained thoroughly enough in the first three posts of yours truly during the debate this thread is supposed to be about.

To the best of my knowledge, current convention denies that language less creatures can even have belief, to remain consistent with holding that all belief has propositional content(an attitude towards a proposition). Current convention generally holds that truth is a language construct as well. So, appealing to convention doesn't work for me, given convention is wrong about that.

@creativesoul

If "The present King of France is bald" is not a proposition, and yet it can be believed nonetheless, then it cannot be the case that either all belief has propositional content or all belief is an attitude towards some proposition or other. — creativesoul

Indeed this is what I already remarked in my previous comment:

You mean your pointless challenge: " If there are beliefs that cannot be presented in propositional form, give us an example".
What about this example: X believes that the present King of France is bald. Did I win anything? — neomac

Maybe he could try to claim that either X doesn't really believe that, which is intuitively preposterous and justifiably so. Or he could try to claim that, in this case, the propositional content of the belief that the present King of France is bald can not be rendered with "'the present King of France is bald' is true" but with "'the present King of France is bald' is a proposition" . However this line of reasoning looks an ad hoc move, at least until it doesn't get properly integrated with the rest of his account (good luck with that!). Besides the metalinguistic sentence "p is a proposition" is not a proposition according to W.'s Tractatus. And we are more and more far from understanding how such an account could ever explain what a belief is about and explain the related behavior not only for non-linguistic creature but also for irrational/ignorant linguistic creature.

Try this: What is the subject of "the cat is on the mat"? I would say it is the cat. But what is the subject fo "Harry believes the cat is on the mat"? It's about Harry. They are quite different. — Banno

In the first, the naive realist believes that they can talk about how things are independent of some belief or observation. The first statement could be caused by an illusion, hallucination or a lie.

For the indirect realist, both are the same because you can only talk about your ideas or observations, and your ideas or observations would be about the way things are. So words can be about the way things are, but not without some observation, which is what some proposition is about, not about the way things are independent of some observation. We can only ever speak about our knowledge and hope that our knowledge is accurate.

Language was developed in such a way that it implies that we see the world as it is. When we speak of colors and sounds, we imply that those colors and sounds exist independent of our observations and that we see colors and hear sounds that are actually there. But science has shown that indirect realism is the case where colors only exist in the mind and are representations of wavelengths of EM energy, and sounds are representations of vibrating air molecules. As a result of modern scientific knowledge, it is understood that our words can only be about the way things are indirectly - meaning that our words refer to our ideas and our ideas refer to states-of-affairs. Our words only accurately refer to state-of-affairs when our ideas do the same.

Given that color is a component of the perception and not of the perceived, what is the subject of the statement, "The apple is red."?

Exactly; the attitude of taking the proposition to be true. — Banno

Having the attitude that some proposition is true doesn't make the proposition true. What makes some proposition true or not, and how would you know?

I don't see any benefit in that. I can see no clear way in which "We believe that Augustus was a Roman Emperor" is just a prediction. However treating belief as a propositional attitude has spawned very many further developments. Again it seems worth pointing out that it is, for better or worse, orthodoxy. — Banno

You predict both future and past state-of-affairs based on observations of current conditions. You can predict past events based on the effects they have left, like a criminal investigator investigating the evidence at the crime scene to predict the identity of the criminal and their motive. While the crime happened in the past, the knowledge of who did it is in the future and is only proved once the evidence is properly interpreted. Your continued reference to orthodoxy and popularity is a logical fallacy and not useful.

Not certainty, but truth. — Banno

We can know that we can be certain about some proposition, but not that some proposition is true. What does it mean for some proposition to be true?

And yet we do things with them. There's no point in going over the problems with your referential theory of meaning again. — Banno

What do we do with them, Banno? Use them to accomplish what goal? Intent precedes use and use is dependent upon intent. What is the intent of using words? Your "going over the problems of referential theory" were debunked and you abandoned the conversation, like you are doing now. There's no point in going over the problems of meaning is use again when you make the same arguments and keep appealing to popularity.

Meaning is use is not specific enough as words can be used for representation.

To the best of my knowledge, current convention denies that language less creatures can even have belief, to remain consistent with holding that all belief has propositional content(an attitude towards a proposition). — creativesoul

A Man Without Words is a story about a deaf man that grew up without language and only discovered language after becoming an adult.

Idelfonso obviously held beliefs before learning a language, or else how did he find food? He had to have beliefs about where food could be found that were not propositions, or else he would have starved, just like cats that learn and then hold beliefs that the sound of a can opener precedes the smell and taste of tuna.

What are language-less creatures' beliefs composed of? The same thing that words are composed of - shapes, colors, sounds, tastes, smells and the feelings that go along with them.

Does qualia meet the conditions for knowledge? If it doesn't then it can't be an answer to a question; what is philosophy without questions?

What is it like to be a bat?

Or he could try to claim that indeed the content of the proposition can not be rendered with "the proposition X is true" — neomac

Poorly articulated, sorry, I meant: or he could try to claim that, in this case, the propositional content of the belief that the present King of France is bald can not be rendered with "'the present King of France is bald' is true" but with "'the present King of France is bald' is a proposition"