I write something that you agree with. You change what I write. You disagree with and denounce the change, not what I wrote. Evidently, you cannot see. — creativesoul

All right sir, let’s talk about what I did and why I did it.

First of all, I already made my objections to your theoretical assumptions wrt a more common understanding of belief ascriptions (as others did). Those objections still hold, independently from the following additional remarks.
Secondly, this time I tried something different, namely I’m questioning the internal coherence of your theoretical approach on its own (de)merit. How?

Let’s recapitulate:

• Once you wrote: “Can Jack look at a broken clock? Surely. Can Jack believe what the clock says? Surely. Why then, can he not believe that a broken clock is working?”. What this line of reasoning shows to me is that the prospect of some propositional operation based on sheer co-reference, indifferent to any contextual pragmatic considerations, is enough for you to do your propositional math accordingly and grant legitimacy to the resulting belief ascription “Jack believes that a broken clock is working”.
• In a more recent comment you wrote: “there's nothing at all stopping us from admitting that it was once raining outside and we did not believe it, or that we once believed a broken clock was working”. This shows that you take the admission “that we once believed a broken clock was working” at least as plausible as the admission that “it was once raining outside and we did not believe it”.

Now to my argument: if we pretend that both these 2 points hold, then at the prospect of some propositional operation based on sheer co-reference that I spotted, I too did my propositional math accordingly in order to show you its dumb result.
Of course, you too disapprove of such a dumb propositional math, otherwise you would try to defend it. The problem however is: can you explain why your propositional math is acceptable while mine isn’t, based on your own assumptions? Again, if I can plausibly render “we did not believe that it was once raining outside” as “it was once raining outside and we did not believe it” based on sheer co-reference, why can’t we plausibly render “we once believed a broken clock was working” as “a broken clock was working and we once believed it” ? Or to put it into more formal terms: if one can render “I did/did not believed that p” as “p and I did/did not believe it” and vice versa, why can’t we do the same with your type of belief ascriptions?
If you can not provide an explanation on that case that is coherent with your own assumptions and doesn’t look ad-hoc, then your theoretical approach appears incoherent and your propositional math as dumb as mine. In other words, we have one more reason to question your theoretical approach along with what results out of it (your rendering of belief ascriptions).

Get it now?

If the limits of my language mean the limits of my world, it means I do not have freedom of thought. It means there are things I'm bound to believe simply because that's how my language structures my world.

If all that is true, what is a philosophical debate? What's actually happening with philosophy?

What is the content of a proposition? And is it propositional?
— bongo fury

What is the colour of a proposition? — Banno

How are propositions made? if they are made by writing or typing then they are the color of the ink or font you choose to write or type with. If they are spoken then they don't have color - they have volume, pitch, etc.

When thinking of a proposition, what is it that you're thinking of? What is your mind grasping when you think of "proposition"? Is it just the string of scribbles, "proposition", the sound of the spoken word, "proposition", or what the string of scribbles refers to? How do you know when you're thinking of a proposition and when you're not, or all we always thinking in propositions (ie propositions and thinking are one and the same)?

Really? What does a language that you don't know look like? And when describing what a language you know looks like, are you describing the language or your knowledge of the language? — Harry Hindu

If the limits of my language mean the limits of my world, it means I do not have freedom of thought. It means there are things I'm bound to believe simply because that's how my language structures my world.

If all that is true, what is a philosophical debate? What's actually happening with philosophy? — frank

I don't see how this answers my question. I entertained you with your silly question, so I'm waiting on you to return the favor.

When you say that your language limits your thoughts, are you saying that you don't have the freedom to learn new words and new ways of expressing yourself? Are you saying that pre-language babies are more free than you are?

Learning to ride a bike involves learning the structure of the bike and your body, how to pedal and stay balanced. Once you learn it, you no longer have to focus on balancing and pedaling. It can be done on auto-pilot.

The same is done with learning a language. Once we learn the language, we don't focus on the rules so much. It's automatic in the way we reference what is the case with scribbles and sounds to the point where we start to believe that we think only in words. We find that we only need to go back and reference the rules when something goes wrong in communicating.

To say that scribbles and sounds structure your world, are you saying that your world is made up of scribbles and sounds? Scribbles and sounds are visual and auditory experiences and there are many other types of visual and auditory experiences, not to mention olfactory, gustatory and tactile experiences. So if you only experience the visual of scribbles, or the auditory experience of spoken words, then I can definitely see why you would say that your world is limited.

If we say that Jack believes of that broken clock that it is working, what is the content of Jack's belief, and what is Jack's belief about? — creativesoul

As I said, this is the kind of de re belief ascription that we can use when we are not sure about a de dicto belief ascription (i.e. we don’t know what someone else’s beliefs are really about, see the case of the kid in the park). In the case of Jack, I would prefer that form of rendering, if e.g. I’m not sure whether Jack is holding contradictory beliefs or he simply ignores that that clock is not working. Certainly, if I knew that Jack ignores that clock is not working, I would prefer to say “Jack believes that clock is working” or “Jack mistakenly believes that clock is working” instead of “Jack believes of that broken clock that is working”, or worse, “Jack believes that broken clock is working”.
Now imagine another case: Jack and everybody else believes that clock is working, except me who hacked the clock to show whatever time I wanted it to show. If I decided to confess this to everybody, would I still say “you all guys believe of that broken clock that is working”? Nope, because given everybody else’s default understanding of the situation (the shared assumptions), people would reply “what?! That clock?!” being unsure that I’m referring to the same clock or what exactly I’m claiming about that clock, etc. (i.e. what shared assumption they need to revise). So what I would prefer to say, is “you all guys believe that clock is working, but you are wrong”.
Now imagine another case: I and Jim hacked the clock, so we both know that is not working, but Jim doesn’t know if Jack was told about the hack, what could I say to assure him? I could say indifferently “Jack believes that broken clock is working” or “Jack believes of that broken clock that is working” sure that - given our shared assumptions about the clock and Jack’s rationality - Jim wouldn’t possibly interpret my belief ascription as de dicto. Unless, of course, Jim has a philosophical attitude and will start questioning me about it!

What's your view regarding Russell's clock, Gettier's cases, and Moore's paradox? — creativesoul

Not sure about it, also because knowledge is a wider issue. What I can say now is that, concerning belief ascription practices, I'm strongly against a "propositional calculus" kind of approach.

No, I’m talking about images. Images are visual entities like strings of letters written on a paper, yet we can take images and strings to represent something (again intentionality is a presupposition here for understanding images and textual strings as representational). If we were to describe with sentences what images can represent, we would notice that there can be many descriptions that could correspond to the same image (this is particularly evident in the case of so called “ambiguous images” - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ambiguous_image), yet they do not share the same proposition. And so on with the other remarks I made. Don’t forget that my brainstorming was about the propositional nature of images. — neomac

If you are agreeing with me that strings of scribbles is an image then there could be many descriptions that could correspond to the same image of strings of scribbles, meaning that words (as an image of strings of scribbles) would be subject to the same ambiguity that you are ascribing to images that are not scribbles.

You mentioned before that there are rules that we use that removed the ambiguity of what some scribble means and that we don't have rules for interpreting images that are not scribbles. I asked you what rules would we need to remove the ambiguity of images that are not scribbles?

Great job denouncing shit that I've not said. — creativesoul

Yeah, I've been having the same problem with neomac with us continually talking past each other. Their posts are mostly highbrow word salad.

I don't see how this answers my question. I entertained you with your silly question, so I'm waiting on you to return the favor.

When you say that your language limits your thoughts, are you saying that you don't have the freedom to learn new words and new ways of expressing yourself? Are you saying that pre-language babies are more free than you are? — Harry Hindu

First of all, I'm neutral on the question. I'm just exploring the implications.

I'm starting with the assumption that my beliefs are limited by the limits of my language.

Why some fucker would assert that is a different topic. Maybe we could start a thread:

Why do some fuckers believe the limits of their languages are the limits of their worlds?

@Harry Hindu

> If you are agreeing with me that strings of scribbles is an image then there could be many descriptions that could correspond to the same image of strings of scribbles, meaning that words (as an image of strings of scribbles) would be subject to the same ambiguity that you are ascribing to images that are not scribbles.

Yep, this is correct if we take strings of characters, independently from any pre-defined linguistic codification. The difference is that with words (notice that the term “word” is already framing its referent, like an image, as a linguistic entity!) we readily have different codified systems of linguistic rules that help us identify the propositional content of declarative sentences and solve ambiguities internal to that practice.

> I asked you what rules would we need to remove the ambiguity of images that are not scribbles?

You can have all kinds of sets of rules (e.g. the codification of traffic signs). Concerning the problem at hand, one thing that really matters is to understand if/what systems of visual codifications disambiguate an image always wrt a specific proposition: think about the codified images of a deck of cards. Does e.g. the following card have a propositional content that card game rules can help us identify? What would this be?

I haven't thought about those specifics. Off the top of my head I'd say that Jack's belief is about a clock and it's condition of working, which begs the question as to whether the clock and its condition of working together form the content of the belief. What else could Jack's belief be about? — Janus

A broken clock.

Get it now? — neomac

I got it then. You agreed with what I wrote, changed that, and then denounced the change. If you wish to see how they could be rendered similarly...


It was raining outside and I did not believe it. The clock was broken, and I did not believe it.

What's your view regarding Russell's clock, Gettier's cases, and Moore's paradox?
— creativesoul

Not sure about it, also because knowledge is a wider issue. — neomac

We're not discussing knowledge. What's your view wrt belief? Do you agree that in the Russell and Gettier cases that the belief was properly accounted for?

You agreed with what I wrote — creativesoul

Agreed? In what sense? Where? Can you quote where I agree with you? I also said, let's pretend etc.

changed that, and then denounced the change — creativesoul

And this is just one part of the reasoning, where is the rest?

If you wish to see how they could be rendered similarly...


It was raining outside and I did not believe it. The clock was broken, and I did not believe it. — creativesoul

No sir. the problem I have is with "Jack believed that a broken clock was working" since your are insisting on it.
You came up with this rendering based on the propositional calculus suggested here: “Can Jack look at a broken clock? Surely. Can Jack believe what the clock says? Surely. Why then, can he not believe that a broken clock is working?”.
So I proposed you the following propositional calculus: if one can render “I did/did not believed that p” as “p and I did/did not believe it” and vice versa. And asked you: why can’t we do the same with p="a broken clock was working" [1]?
So I'm challenging you to explain why your propositional calculus is correct, and mine is wrong based on your own assumptions. This is the problem you should address, hopefully in a non ad-hoc way.


[1] I re-edited because the value of p that I had in mind was "a broken clock was working" but by copy-and-pasting I made a mistake.

If someone says "the limits of my language mean the limits of my world" is this assertion self contradictory?

What is the pov of the assertion? I'm asking you because you're mentally flexible. You could probably see it better than me.

Do you agree that in the Russell and Gettier cases that the belief was properly accounted for? — creativesoul

I don't see them as presupposing a specific account of belief as such, in their treatment of JTB. They are reasoning about the idea that JTB (formulated in some way) provides all necessary and sufficient conditions to have a case of knowledge.

Why do some fuckers believe the limits of their languages are the limits of their worlds? — frank

Why would anyone make an attempt to explain this to you when you already nailed you flag to the mast? You've misunderstood the remark, which is from the Tractatus. You are "unavailable for learning", as they say about the kinder child who is having a tantrum.

Anyway, how's this thread going? Working it all out, in an amiable atmosphere of mutual understanding, I see.

As I said, I'm neutral on the issue. I'd discuss it with Harry if he's interested.

I'm presently working in a team situation. My partner, who uses the word "fuck" pretty continuously, calls all the patients "fuckers", including an infant burn victim we had the fun of stabilizing. Fucker!

But yes, I don't expect to learn anything from you.

Ah, so you are just missing the courtesies of context. Fair enough. Take care of the kid.

A broken clock. — creativesoul

From Jack's point of view he doesn't believe anything about a broken clock, obviously, since he thinks the clock is not broken. Of course we can say that he believes of a broken clock that it is working. But so what; people entertain mistaken beliefs all the time?

Anyway, how's this thread going? — Banno

:smile:

From Jack's point of view he doesn't believe anything about a broken clock, obviously, since he thinks the clock is not broken. Of course we can say that he believes of a broken clock that it is working. But so what; people entertain mistaken beliefs all the time? — Janus

Which clock does he think is not broken?

The broken one. Clearly, he does believe something about a broken clock. He believes that the broken clock is working.

I'm not sure what possesses you to see this as problematic.

...the problem I have is with "Jack believed that a broken clock was working" since your are insisting on it. — neomac

Indeed. That is at issue. I'm waiting for a valid objection.

You came up with this rendering based on the propositional calculus suggested here: “Can Jack look at a broken clock? Surely. Can Jack believe what the clock says? Surely. Why then, can he not believe that a broken clock is working?”.
So I proposed you the following propositional calculus: if one can render “I did/did not believed that p” as “p and I did/did not believe it” and vice versa. And asked you: why can’t we do the same with p="Jack believed that a broken clock was working"?
So I'm challenging you to explain why your propositional calculus is correct, and mine is wrong based on your own assumptions. This is the problem you should address, hopefully in a non ad-hoc way.

Rather than propose something I've not, would it not just be easier to answer the question following from the simple understanding set out with common language use? I've no issue at all accounting for Jack's belief.

Do you not find it odd that Jack would agree, if and when he figured out that the clock was broken? He would have no issue saying that he had believed that a broken clock was working. So, what's your problem with it?

Mary's room is based upon the dubious presupposition that we can learn anything about seeing red without seeing red.
— creativesoul

In other words, qualia is ineffable. Why else can't Mary learn everything about red without seeing red? — Agent Smith

No. Not in other words 'qualia is ineffable'.

What qualia?

:worry:

I'm not sure what possesses you to see this as problematic. — creativesoul

I am not saying it is problematic; you are. You were claiming that it had some problematic implication for the idea that beliefs can be expressed in propositional form.

As I said, this is the kind of de re belief ascription that we can use when we are not sure about a de dicto belief ascription (i.e. we don’t know what someone else’s beliefs are really about, see the case of the kid in the park). In the case of Jack, I would prefer that form of rendering, if e.g. I’m not sure whether Jack is holding contradictory beliefs or he simply ignores that that clock is not working. Certainly, if I knew that Jack ignores that clock is not working, I would prefer to say “Jack believes that clock is working” or “Jack mistakenly believes that clock is working” instead of “Jack believes of that broken clock that is working”, or worse, “Jack believes that broken clock is working”. — neomac

Jack cannot believe both simultaneously, that the clock is broken, and that a broken clock is working. There is no possibility of misunderstanding what is meant by "Jack believes a broken clock is working" unless one has already bewitched their own thinking skills by virtue of arriving at a gross misunderstanding of what belief is as a result of working from a misconception thereof.

All belief as propositional attitude is one such misconception.

Interesting thing here to me is that on the one hand you're railing against propositional calculus(as you call it), and yet again on the other your unknowingly objecting based upon the fact that Jack would not assent to his own belief if it were put into propositional form and he was asked if he believed the statement. At least, not while he still believed it.

No. Not in other words 'qualia is ineffable'.

What qualia?

:worry: — creativesoul

Never mind. G'day. :smile:

You're either forgetful or dishonest. You have been levying charges against the claim. That's not something one does unless the claim is problematic, or they are not arguing in good faith.

As far as the charges I'm levying against convention...

The belief under our consideration is problematic for the conventional rendering of belief as a propositional attitude. It is not problematic for rendering it in propositional form.

You have been levying charges against the claim. — creativesoul

What claim do you think I've been objecting to?