> You've ascribed a belief to Jack that is true. I have not. Jack's belief is false.

Correct but I don’t get what is supposed to prove, since it’s not troubling at all for our common understanding of belief ascriptions nor my claims. Here is why:

• By our common understanding of belief ascriptions, “Jack believes that a clock is working” may be true or false, but “Jack believes that a broken clock is working” is attributing to Jack a false belief b/c it is attributing to him a contradictory belief (“a broken clock is working” is a contradiction!), which also implies that this belief would be always false in any context (while merely false beliefs are not always false in any context). The point is that we do not take “Jack believes that a broken clock is working” to be an accurate description of Jack’s merely false belief b/c a false belief should not be equated to a contradictory belief. While you, on the other side, seemed to claim that “Jack believes that a broken clock is working” is not attributing to Jack a contradictory belief, but then I don’t know what else would make apparent that Jack’s belief “a broken clock is working” is false, as you claim.
• To repeat the point I already made, I don’t take “Jack believes that a clock is working” as an accurate belief ascription of Jack’s belief in your example. What I would take to be an accurate belief ascription in your example is more something like “Jack believes that clock is working” since belief ascriptions need to be taken in the context. It’s true that “that clock is working” implies “a clock is working”, but what explains Jack’s behavior in the given context is not the belief that a clock is working instead it’s the belief that that clock is working. If I used the example “Jack believes that a clock is working” is just to contrast it with “Jack believes that a broken clock is working”, remark that while the former may report Jack’s merely false belief the latter would report a contradictory belief, and therefore conclude that the latter is inaccurate b/c false beliefs are not to be equated to contradictory beliefs.
• By our common understanding, belief ascriptions are not required to deal with beliefs’ truth-value or knowledge assessments. On the contrary, truth-value/knowledge assessments presuppose belief ascriptions, and our reports are designed to express this accordingly, with statements like “Jack believes mistakenly that clock is working” or “Jack believes that a clock that ex hypothesi CreativeSoul believes broken, is working”. Truth/knowledge assessments of a given belief are a distinct task wrt to belief ascription, and a task that presupposes belief ascription.

> Despite your objections, it is. Your rejection of the very idea that we can and often do believe that broken clocks are working is directly linked to what you conceive of being a belief.

Plainly wrong. Let me clarify once more my take. The idea that “Jack believes that a broken clock is working” is not an accurate belief ascription is a linguistic fact, part of our common practices as competent speakers, and this linguistic intuition or pre-philosophical understanding of belief ascriptions is acknowledged by all of us (you included, unless you are crazy!). The philosophical task is providing a theoretical analysis/explanation either to support our common practices (as I would do) or to question it (as you would do). So the reluctance to accept your peculiar revisionist approach is not directly linked to any theoretical claim nor to my specific theory of belief (since other theories, which I do not share, could still be supporting the common understanding of belief ascriptions).

> If you do not have a general understanding of what sorts of things beliefs are, then there could be no possible way for you to know what sorts of ascriptions are accurate, if being so requires being true.

If by “general understanding” you mean a philosophical understanding, then this plainly false, since we learn and practice belief ascriptions before any philosophical scrutiny of our practices. If by “general understanding” you mean the cognitive abilities involved in acquiring and applying successfully belief ascriptions, then this ability is shown by our practices themselves, they are linguistic facts. And, absolutely yes, we can know how to properly use the word “belief” in belief ascriptions without being capable of theorising about it, as much as we can speak a native language without being able to theorising about its linguistic rules.



> It is humanly impossible to knowingly believe a falsehood. When Jack is in the process of believing that a broken clock is working he is totally unaware of it. The proposition, assertion, claim, sentence, statement, thought, belief, and/or utterance - a broken clock is working - is always false. Broken clocks do not work. This is all just a matter of how we use the words everyday. We cannot knowingly believe that broken clocks are working, but we can and do believe that they are nonetheless.
Not one iteration I've offered here, despite the overall quantity of slightly different offerings, is ever even capable of being true. They all pass Leibniz's muster. They can all be interchanged and attributed to Jack without any unacceptable change in meaning. Jack's belief is false. As such, it is his belief that determines the truth value of any and all ascriptions thereof. Therefore, any and all ascriptions to Jack must be of false belief. That is to say, that any and all true attribution of belief to Jack at time t1 will be of some belief that it is humanly impossible to knowingly believe.

Despite your previous muddling claims [1] (to be patched with some additional but pointless terminological/formatting style acrobatics) and in addition to your failure to show how this argument rigorously follows from your definition of belief as “meaningful correlations drawn between directly and/or indirectly perceptible things” (as I did with my definition), it looks now evident that you are definitely embracing the catastrophic line of reasoning that I already spotted a while ago: equating false beliefs with contradictory beliefs (or if you prefer, equating occasionally false beliefs with always false beliefs), and confusing belief ascriptions with knowledge ascriptions. I was right all along. So here I rest my case.



> No. I did not say all that either.

You wrote: “No. Believing is not equivalent to belief. The former is an activity. Activities are not the sort of things that have truth conditions. Activities are not capable of being true or false. Whereas at the core, the latter are compositions of meaningful correlations manifesting in varying complexities drawn between directly and/or indirectly perceptible things by a creature capable of doing so.” And you also wrote: “You've ascribed a belief to Jack that is true. I have not. Jack's belief is false.”
So you said that believing is an activity and it doesn’t have truth conditions. Beliefs are somehow related to believing and are the sort of things that can be true or false. So what else is exactly bothering you? The expression “belief is the representational result of the activity ‘believing’”? Why? Is it because you do not take belief to be representational? Beliefs must be representational in the sense I’ve immediately clarified (‘representational b/c it can be true or false’) b/c belief are the sort of things that can be true or false according to what you wrote. Or is the problem the fact that you do not take belief to be the result of the believing activity? Then what else is the relation between belief and believing?


[1]

You also seem to want to say that I am somehow attributing a self-contradictory belief to Jack, but I've yet to see you explain how I have done so. Thus far it's been gratuitously asserted along with other charges as well. That said, granted, going by the standards you're working from and one absolute presupposition they rest upon, it would be contradictory to say that anyone believed that broken clock was working. However, if we acknowledge the fact that we can and do hold belief that we are unaware of holding at the time of holding it, it is not at all contradictory to believe that a broken clock is working. — creativesoul

Pls focus: “a broken clock is working” is a contradiction (!!!). — neomac

While believing that a broken clock is working is not.
It's the difference between understanding that believing a broken clock is working is not the same as believing "a broken clock is working".
The latter is how those who hold all belief as propositional attitude would render Jack's belief that a broken clock is working. Not all belief can be successfully rendered as such. — creativesoul

You've ascribed a belief to Jack that is true. I have not. Jack's belief is false. — creativesoul

Correct — neomac

Yes, it is correct! The practice I've used is not guilty of the same offense that you've been using wrt Jack's belief at time t1. Jack's belief is false. The belief you've ascribed to Jack is true.

...but I don’t get what is supposed to prove... — neomac

It proves that you've attributed a belief to Jack that Jack does not - dare I insist cannot - have at time t1. False beliefs are not true beliefs. You've admittedly attributed a belief to Jack that is true. Jack's belief is false. You've admitted that Jack's belief was false. What's stopping you from realizing that you've misattributed belief to Jack as a result of employing the standard practices?

Gettier did the same with Smith in both cases, and he was able to do so as a result of the inherent flaws in the conventional accounting practices.

...it’s not troubling at all for our common understanding of belief ascriptions nor my claims. Here is why:
By our common understanding of belief ascriptions, “Jack believes that a clock is working” may be true or false, but... — neomac

Jack's belief cannot be true for it is false. You've attributed a belief to Jack that could be rendered as true, in the exact same way that Gettier showed all while following the standard conventional practices. I've already hinted at how it could be rendered as true, by elaborating on the truth conditions of the belief, as you've written it. It is as a result of this that you ought outright reject that particular ascription to Jack. Jack's belief cannot be true!

“Jack believes that a broken clock is working” is attributing to Jack a false belief b/c it is attributing to him a contradictory belief... — neomac

No, it's not! It is not contradictory at all, not in least little bit, to believe that broken clocks are working while doing so. The reason why is simple:when believing such things we do not knowingly do so! We are unaware of the fact that we believe what a broken clock says when we do. We cannot knowingly do so. We cannot knowingly believe that...

that broken clock is working
that man in a sheep suit is a sheep
that barn facade is a barn
that sheet hanging from a limb is a sheep
a free and fair election was not free and fair

...and yet these sorts of beliefs can be had nonetheless! The issues arise as an inevitable consequence stemming from the historical practice of rendering beliefs as propositions and/or attitudes towards them, all of which amount to belief ascription that one would readily admit to having at the time! We cannot readily admit to having belief that we are unaware of having! Those sorts of beliefs break the mold, because the conventional practices do not keep in mind that we cannot knowingly believe a falsehood. They are also a death knell to the common understanding of belief ascriptons.

Jack draws correlations between a broken clock and the time of day while believing a broken clock is working. Jack does not believe "a broken clock is working". Jack believes a broken clock is working.

Jack draws correlations between a man in a sheep suit and his wondering how many sheep are in the field when he believes that a man in a sheep suit is a sheep, and thus concludes that there is at least one sheep in the field. Jack does not believe that "a man in a sheep suit is a sheep". He believes that a man in a sheep suit is a sheep.

Etc.

It is humanly impossible to knowingly believe a falsehood. When Jack is in the process of believing that a broken clock is working he is totally unaware of it. The proposition, assertion, claim, sentence, statement, thought, belief, and/or utterance - a broken clock is working - is always false. Broken clocks do not work. This is all just a matter of how we use the words everyday. We cannot knowingly believe that broken clocks are working, but we can and do believe that they are nonetheless.

Not one iteration I've offered here, despite the overall quantity of slightly different offerings, is ever even capable of being true. They all pass Leibniz's muster. They can all be interchanged and attributed to Jack without any unacceptable change in meaning. Jack's belief is false. As such, it is his belief that determines the truth value of any and all ascriptions thereof. Therefore, any and all ascriptions to Jack must be of false belief. That is to say, that any and all true attribution of belief to Jack at time t1 will be of some belief that it is humanly impossible to knowingly believe. — creativesoul

Despite your previous muddling claims [1] (to be patched with some additional but pointless terminological/formatting style acrobatics) and in addition to your failure to show how this argument rigorously follows from your definition of belief as “meaningful correlations drawn between directly and/or indirectly perceptible things” (as I did with my definition), it looks now evident that you are definitely embracing the catastrophic line of reasoning that I already spotted a while ago: equating false beliefs with contradictory beliefs (or if you prefer, equating occasionally false beliefs with always false beliefs), and confusing belief ascriptions with knowledge ascriptions. I was right all along. So here I rest my case. — neomac

Is that what counts as a valid objection on your view?

:yikes:

> You've admittedly attributed a belief to Jack that is true […] What’s stopping you from realizing that you've misattributed belief to Jack as a result of employing the standard practices?

Well, because I didn’t. Quoting myself: I don’t take “Jack believes that a clock is working” as an accurate belief ascription of Jack’s belief in your example. What I would take to be an accurate belief ascription in your example is more something like “Jack believes that clock is working” since belief ascriptions need to be taken in the context.
You are confusing my reasoning about the contrast between “Jack believes a clock is working” vs “Jack believes a broken clock is working” (to point out that attributing a false belief should not be equated to attributing a contradictory belief) with what I claim to be a more appropriate belief ascription in your thought experiment.

> Jack's belief cannot be true for it is false.

It’s false ex-hypothesi but it could have been true. So it can not be rendered with a contradiction b/c a contradiction could not have been true at all. This is the logic difference between a merely false belief and a contradictory belief. That's logic, dude.


> It is not contradictory at all, not in least little bit, to believe that broken clocks are working while doing so. so. The reason why is simple:when believing such things we do not knowingly do so! We are unaware of the fact that we believe what a broken clock says when we do. We cannot knowingly do so.

What did you just write?! That’s the craziest thing I’ve heard so far! Contradiction has to do with logic not with your awareness. The fact that one does not realize to have a contradictory belief doesn’t make it, not in least little bit, less contradictory. And the problem is not that we are not aware of a contradictory belief, the problem is that a false belief is not a contradictory belief! (Not to mention, again, the unaccounted knowledge ascriptions…)



> Jack draws correlations between a broken clock and the time of day while believing a broken clock is working. Jack does not believe "a broken clock is working". Jack believes a broken clock is working.

Seriously?! I don't get the structure of this argument at all, if it has one. For sure it is not a deduction. BTW what happened to the “meaningful correlations drawn between directly and/or indirectly perceptible things” in the case of “Jack does not believe ‘a broken clock is working’” and why are we talking “Jack does not believe ‘a broken clock is working’” instead of “Jack believes that a clock is working”?!



> Is that what counts as a valid objection on your view?

Worse, this is what counts as own goals made by you. But apparently you are not over yet.

I think that the underlying differences between our views are finally becoming apparent. A question for you...

Do you agree that it is humanly impossible to knowingly believe a falsehood?

Seriously?! I don't get the structure of this argument at all — neomac

That was not an argument. It was an explanation of Jack's belief in the terms I defined "belief" in earlier.

I'm beginning to seriously question your honesty here given the sheer amount of strawmen, red herrings, and other such non sequiturs that you've provided with your interpretations of my claims. There's a bit of irony in that too, given the subject matter is belief, and your objections are based upon what you deem to be unacceptable accounting of another's belief. Seems if you knew what you were talking about, you could at least get what I'm saying right. It is as easy as quoting and asking if you are unsure.

why are we talking “Jack does not believe ‘a broken clock is working’” instead of “Jack believes that a clock is working”?! — neomac

You presented "a broken clock is working" as a contradiction. Going on to then say that I am attributing a contradictory belief to Jack by saying Jack believes that a broken clock is working at time t1.

I did not say that Jack believed "a broken clock is working".

Evidently you do not see the difference between believing "a broken clock is working" and believing a broken clock is working. The former is belief about language use, and the latter is belief about broken clocks. The former has propositional content. The latter has broken clocks as content.

Full circle.

It’s false ex-hypothesi but it could have been true. So it can not be rendered with a contradiction b/c a contradiction could not have been true at all. This is the logic difference between a merely false belief and a contradictory belief. That's logic, dude. — neomac

It's false at the time. False belief cannot be true.

That's logic dude.

Might just drop this off here...

A belief is a propositional attitude.That is, it can be placed in a general form as a relation between someone and a proposition. So "John believes that the sky is blue" can be rendered as

Believes (John, "The sky is blue")

B(a,p)

There's ill will in some circles towards this sort of analysis. Think of this as setting up a basic structure or grammar for belief. A belief is a relation between an individual and a proposition. That there is much more to be said about belief is not in contention; this is just a place to start. This is set as a falsifiable proposition. If there are any examples of beliefs that cannot be stated as relations between individuals and propositions, this proposal would have to be revisited.

It has been suggested that animal and other non-linguistic beliefs are a falsification of this suggestion. The argument is that non-linguistic creatures can have beliefs and yet cannot express these beliefs as propositions, and that hence beliefs cannot be propositional attitudes. But that is a misreading of what is going on here. Any belief, including that of creatures that cannot speak, can be placed in the form of a propositional attitude by those who can speak. A cat, for example, can believe that its bowl is empty, but cannot put that belief in the form B(a,p).

Belief does not imply truth
One obvious consequence of a belief being a relation between an individual and a proposition is that the truth of the proposition is unrelated to the truth of the belief.

That is, folk can believe things that are untrue. Or not believe things that are true.

A corollary of this is that belief does not stand in opposition to falsehood, but to doubt. Truth goes with falsehood, belief with doubt. And at the extreme end of belief we find certainty. In certainty, doubt is inadmissible.

If belief does not imply truth, and if one holds to the Justified True Belief definition of knowledge, it follows that belief does not imply knowledge.

The individual who has the belief holds that the proposition is true.
This is, if you like, the significance of a belief statement. It follows from Moore's paradox, in which someone is assume to believe something that they hold not to be true. For example:

"I believe the world is flat, but the world is not flat".

While this is difficult to set out as a clear contradiction, there is something deeply unhappy about it. The conclusion is that one thinks that what one believes is indeed true.

Note that Moore's paradox is in the first person. "John believes the world is flat, but the world is not flat" is not paradoxical - John is just wrong. "John believes that the world is flat and John believes the world is not flat" - John is inconsistent.

The perforative paradox comes about only when expressed in the first person.

One might think it so trivial that it is not worth saying: to believe some proposition is to believe that proposition to be true.

That is, talk of belief requires talk of truth.

One might be tempted, perhaps by pragmatism or by Bayesian thoughts, to replace that with measures of probability. You might think yourself only 99.99% certain that the cat is on the mat, and suppose thereby that you have banished truth. But of course, one is also thereby 99.99% certain that "the cat is on the mat" is true.

Belief makes sense of error
Austin talked of words that gain their meaning - use - mostly by being contrasted with their opposite. His example was real.

"it's not a fake; it's real"
"it's not a mirage, it's real!"
It's not a mistake - it's real"

and so on.

Belief can be understood in a similar fashion, as gaining it's usefulness from the contrast between a true belief and a false belief. That is, an important aspect of belief is that sometimes we think that something is the case, and yet it is not.

We bring belief into the discourse in order to make sense of such errors.

Belief is dynamic
Beliefs change over time. It follows that a decent account of belief must be able to account for this dynamism.

Beliefs explain but do not determine actions
Beliefs are used to explain actions. Further, such explanations are causal and sufficient. So if we have appropriate desires and a beliefs we can explain an action.

So, given that John is hungry, and that John believes eating a sandwich will remove his hunger, we have a sufficient causal explanation for why John ate the sandwich.

One may act in ways that are contrary to one's beliefs. A dissident may comply in order to protect herself and her family.

So given that John is hungry, and has a sandwich at hand, it does not follow that John will eat the sandwich.

An individual's belief is inscrutable
One can act in ways contrary to one's beliefs. It's a result of the lack of symmetry between beliefs and actions mentioned above - Beliefs explain but do not determine actions. Thanks due to Hanover and @Cabbage Farmer.

Any belief can be made to account for any action, by adding suitable auxiliary beliefs. — Banno

Might just drop this off here...
A belief is a propositional attitude.That is, it can be placed in a general form as a relation between someone and a proposition. — Banno

I knew you would be lurking from time to time...

Does "a broken clock is working" qualify as a proposition?

I'm not interested in your clock. It's led you into a flytrap.

I've pointed to the exit.

If there are any examples of beliefs that cannot be stated as relations between individuals and propositions, this proposal would have to be revisited. — Banno

> Do you agree that it is humanly impossible to knowingly believe a falsehood?

It’s logically impossible if knowledge presupposes true belief.



> It was an explanation of Jack's belief in the terms I defined "belief" in earlier.

Seriously?! I don't get the structure of this explanation at all, if it has one. For sure it is not a deduction. BTW what happened to the “meaningful correlations drawn between directly and/or indirectly perceptible things” in the case of “Jack does not believe ‘a broken clock is working’” and why are we talking “Jack does not believe ‘a broken clock is working’” instead of “Jack believes that a clock is working”?!

> I'm beginning to seriously question your honesty here given the sheer amount of strawmen, red herrings, and other such non sequiturs that you've provided with your interpretations of my claims.

There there... whatever makes you feel better, my friend.

> There's a bit of irony in that too

Oh not really, this is a likely outcome if you confuse belief ascription with knowledge ascription as you do.



> You presented "a broken clock is working" as a contradiction. Going on to then say that I am attributing a contradictory belief to Jack by saying Jack believes that a broken clock is working at time t1. I did not say that Jack believed "a broken clock is working”. Evidently you do not see the difference between believing "a broken clock is working" and believing a broken clock is working. The former is belief about language use, and the latter is belief about broken clocks. The former has propositional content. The latter has broken clocks as content.

I see the quotation marks which is your preposterous made-up convention, but it doesn’t help you for 3 reasons:

• You wrote: “It is not contradictory at all, not in least little bit, to believe that broken clocks are working while doing so. so. The reason why is simple:when believing such things we do not knowingly do so! We are unaware of the fact that we believe what a broken clock says when we do. We cannot knowingly do so.” So the problem was - according to your claim - that we are not aware of the contradiction, so it is not a contradiction.
• Even if you want to talk about the referents of a belief (according to your questionable understanding of propositional attitudes), then Jack believes that a broken clock is working, is linking together “clock”,”broken”,”working” within the same content of Jack’s belief, which is an impossible state of affairs as much as a squarish circle, b/c the working broken clock has contradictory properties while the state of affairs believed by Jack was epistemically possible and didn’t have contradictory properties.
• Not to mention the fact that your made-up convention based on the quotation marks is still de-facto a linguistic representation, only with a contradictory function b/c it plays the vicarious role of the state of affairs but in this case it can not be true/false in any sense since state of affairs are not the kind of things that can be true or false, but at the same time it must be true or false, otherwise you could not claim that is more accurate than my belief ascription.

> It's false at the time. False belief cannot be true.

But it could have been true. And it’s this counterfactual what grounds the claim that a false belief can not be equated to a contradictory belief. So… again focus, especially if you want to talk about logic, dude.

False belief cannot be true.

But it could have been true — neomac

Well, here is one place that our respective positions diverge.

Do you agree that it is humanly impossible to knowingly believe a falsehood? — creativesoul

It’s logically impossible if knowledge presupposes true belief. — neomac

Do you agree that it is impossible to knowingly believe a falsehood? Where do you stand on that?

So the problem was - according to your claim - that we are not aware of the contradiction, so it is not a contradiction — neomac

If that was according to my claim, I would have said that. I did not say that.

Seems we get five or six or eight strikes in your game of baseball.

So… again focus, especially if you want to talk about logic, dude. — neomac

A certain smugness washes over me...

True belief cannot be false. If your logic says otherwise, it is mistaken. Here's how it is mistaken...

Your logic will not only permit, but your standards will demand that you impart a belief that could be true in place of a belief that could not be.

You will be changing the belief under our consideration in doing so. Gettier did the same thing to Smith's belief... both of them. The cottage industry followed suit.

Do you agree that it is impossible to knowingly believe a falsehood? Where do you stand on that? — creativesoul

Absolutely not. With just a little cleverness, one can construct a logical framework around the most heinous falsehood in order to make it appear as truth - as something that can be easily believed. It happens all the time everywhere.

Note that Moore's paradox is in the first person. "John believes the world is flat, but the world is not flat" is not paradoxical - John is just wrong. "John believes that the world is flat and John believes the world is not flat" - John is inconsistent.

The perforative paradox comes about only when expressed in the first person. — Banno

We cannot knowingly believe a falsehood. We cannot know that we're mistaken while being mistaken. That's why it becomes a problem when put into first person. Take it a bit farther and we understand that any and all true reports of another's false belief would be rendered as beliefs that it would be impossible for them to knowingly have.

Take it a bit farther and we understand that any and all true reports of another's false belief would be rendered as beliefs that it would be impossible for them to knowingly have. — creativesoul

Demonstrate that.

@creativesoul

> Do you agree that it is impossible to knowingly believe a falsehood? Where do you stand on that?

I take to be impossible that a rational individual believes something to be the case while knowing it is not, under the condition that both belief/knowledge ascriptions should be taken according to our common practices of belief/knowledge reports.

> If that was according to my claim, I would have said that. I did not say that.

Well I quoted you, so let’s the gods decide. BTW I also added 2 more objections for their holy judgment.

> Seems we get five or six or eight strikes in your game of baseball.

Absolutely no clue about what game you are watching, but sure buddy, do you want some pop-corn?

> Gettier did the same thing to Smith's belief... both of them.

Not interested in talking about whatever you think you have understood about Gettier's ideas.

> True belief cannot be false. If your logic says otherwise, it is mistaken.

But it could have been false (counterfactual), if it’s not an analytic truth. This is what my logic keeps saying. And if your logic says otherwise (as it is seems [1] and I was suspecting all along), it is so badly mistaken (one of the many own goals made by you).
You repeat, I repeat. Oh boy, isn’t that fun? (And I'm the one strawmanning you?! seriously?!)

Only the first remark (one out of five) seems to be worth exploring (or so I wish). That’s not an ideal ratio for interesting debates. So unless you are tired of our exchange, pls, don't waste posts just to tease me out of bitterness or make more apparent that you are being in denial, because there is no philosophical challenge in there. I'm here to play philosophy not facebook, dude.

[1]

False belief cannot be true.

But it could have been true — neomac


Well, here is one place that our respective positions diverge. — creativesoul

> A belief is a propositional attitude.That is, it can be placed in a general form as a relation between someone and a proposition.

> Any belief, including that of creatures that cannot speak, can be placed in the form of a propositional attitude by those who can speak. A cat, for example, can believe that its bowl is empty, but cannot put that belief in the form B(a,p).

This definition of propositional attitude is far from being compelling as it is. Indeed a propositional attitude can be rendered as a relation between someone and a proposition, but not all relations between individuals and propositions express a belief as a propositional attitude, why? Because a propositional attitude is, by common definition, an individual's attitude toward a proposition, not whatever relation one can draw between an individual and a proposition! If some guy G waves his hand at me, and I mistakenly believe that that guy is greeting me instead of someone else next to me, then G is in relation to the propositional content of my belief, yet this is not G's belief.
Besides if and in so far beliefs are propositional attitudes, they are a very specific kind of attitudes toward propositions. Therefore we can question the idea that cats have propositional attitudes even if they can be put in relation to propositions. Indeed they do not seem to be able of holding beliefs as specific attitudes toward specific propositions (with their linguistic nature and alethic status) in the appropriate sense b/c they do not understand propositions (not being linguistic creatures), even if they could be put in relation to a proposition by those who can speak and understand propositions.

One obvious consequence of a belief being a relation between an individual and a proposition is that the truth of the proposition is unrelated to the truth of the belief. — Banno

Another mistaken conventional practice that gave Gettier a foothold.

"The man" refers to Smith and Smith only in Smith's belief, whereas it refers to just any man in the proposition. Smith's prediction did not come true, for he did not get the job, but due to the sentiment in the quote above, any man with ten coins in his pocket could get the job and "the man with ten coins in his pocket will get the job" would become true as a result.

False belief cannot be true.

But it could have been true
— neomac — creativesoul

Let's see how this plays out...

At time t1 Jack believed that that particular clock was working. The clock was not working, so Jack's belief was false. You're saying Jack's belief at time t1 that that particular clock was working could have been true.

What would it have taken in order for Jack's belief that that particular clock was working to have been true at time t1?

Take it a bit farther and we understand that any and all true reports of another's false belief would be rendered as beliefs that it would be impossible for them to knowingly have.
— creativesoul

Demonstrate that. — Banno

I have been.

We cannot knowingly believe that...

that broken clock is working
that man in a sheep suit is a sheep
that barn facade is a barn
that sheet hanging from a limb is a sheep
a free and fair election was not free and fair — creativesoul

I'm here to play philosophy not facebook, dude. — neomac

I'm hoping to see you do some. I've no inclination to cut through all the misattribution of meaning that you've been imparting upon select quotes, saying I've said things that I haven't, claiming what I've said leads somewhere that it does not, etc., while doing your best to discredit any parts of my contributions here that pose serious problems for yours, or better yet ignoring them altogether.

It is my contention that you do not have a good grasp upon what constitutes belief, how belief emerges, and/or how it works and that is shown by the denial that we can and do sometimes believe that broken clocks are working.

Everyone I have asked in the last two weeks had no issue with understanding that we can and sometimes do. Your denial is based upon the fact that all this conflicts with your position on the matter.

"Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language" (PI § 109)

Even if you want to talk about the referents of a belief (according to your questionable understanding of propositional attitudes), then Jack believes that a broken clock is working, is linking together “clock”,”broken”,”working” within the same content of Jack’s belief — neomac

Here is yet another imaginary opponent you've made up for yourself. I've not talked about referents of a belief. I've no clue what you're trying to say here, which is a problem for you not I. You're attempting to talk about what I want to do, and stuff that is purportedly according to my understanding. You're not doing a very good job of it. You can always just ask me questions.

"Jack believes that a broken clock is working" is a statement about what Jack believes. The words are linked together because that's what we do with words. You seem either very confused or very dishonest about what I'm saying.

All you have demonstrated is you incapacity to parse simple sentences.

> What would it have taken in order for Jack's belief that that particular clock was working to have been true at time t1?

If that particular clock at time t1 had been working, Jack’s belief would have been true.



> I've no inclination to cut through all the misattribution of meaning that you've been imparting upon select quotes, saying I've said things that I haven't, claiming what I've said leads somewhere that it does not, etc., while doing your best to discredit any parts of my contributions here that pose serious problems for yours, or better yet ignoring them altogether.

Oh boy, it was a good laugh. Thank you!

> Everyone I have asked in the last two weeks had no issue with understanding that we can and sometimes do.

Seriously?! Besides the fact that I have no idea why we should trust your survey, whose results you do not seem to be able to replicate with your interlocutors here. I’m just repeating the same points made thousands times:

• A deviation from common practices of belief ascriptions are tolerated and perceived unproblematic for pragmatic reasons (shared assumptions in the given context), not for accuracy concerns.
• My claim, since the beginning, is that “At t1, Jack believes that broken clock is working” is not a more accurate belief ascription than “At t1, Jack believes that clock is working”, assumed that Jack was simply ignorant about the condition of the clock.

In conclusion, the “unproblematic understanding” argument is not decisive since it can be explained within our common practices, and the issue I have with your views started only and exclusively selectively precisely narrowly specifically with your belief ascription accuracy claims (e.g. that "At time t1, Jack believes that broken clock is working" is a belief ascription more accurate than "At time t1, Jack believes that clock is working" when Jack simply ignores that clock was broken or not-working at t1), especially given the catastrophic line of reasoning you provided so far to support it!



> I've not talked about referents of a belief.

That is why I used the conditional (“even if…”). In any case my objection was justifiably based on the answers you already provided. If a belief is a “meaningful correlations drawn between directly and/or indirectly perceptible things” in “Jack believes that/a broken clock is working” the belief “that/a broken clock is working” either is connecting words, then it’s a contradiction in terminis, or is taken to connect its referents witch include a clock instantiating contradictory properties (broken as in “not working” and “working”). Either way (at the level of the meaning or at the level of the referents) is a contradictory situation, which doesn’t correspond to the belief of Jack (in a simple case of ignorance). BTW you yourself claimed (have you ever read what you write?) that is always false [1] as any contradiction, but since we are not aware of it, then it’s not [2].

> Here is yet another imaginary opponent you've made up for yourself.

Looking forward to hearing more about my imaginary opponents. Oh and btw what is Jack telling you about them? He must be really really upset about them, isn't he?

> You can always just ask me questions.

Well that doesn't seem to be a good strategy either, given the backlog of unanswered questions I addressed to you [3]. Besides nobody is preventing you from trying to explain better what you failed to explain so far, especially if you keep claiming that others misunderstand your own quotations, b/c maybe the problem is not really that others are strawmanning you or being dishonest, but that - given the amount of posts you made - it is very hard for you to clarify your views. Did you think about that? It seems you did [4]. After all, if you are challenging the "conventional view", you should expect that your proposal is perceived as non-obvious.
BTW, since you expressly asked for more questions, here you go: if one believing that broken clock is working at t1, is not aware of believing it at t1 out of ignorance, what is s/he exactly aware of believing while believing that broken clock is working at time t1?



[1]

The proposition, assertion, claim, sentence, statement, thought, belief, and/or utterance - a broken clock is working - is always false. Broken clocks do not work. — creativesoul

[2]

it is not contradictory at all, not in least little bit, to believe that broken clocks are working while doing so. The reason why is simple:when believing such things we do not knowingly do so! We are unaware of the fact that we believe what a broken clock says when we do. We cannot knowingly do so. — creativesoul

[3]
Without going too far back:

if “Jack’s believes that a clock is working” is true, does this imply that “a clock is working” is true? — neomac

Seriously?! I don't get the structure of this explanation at all, if it has one. For sure it is not a deduction. BTW what happened to the “meaningful correlations drawn between directly and/or indirectly perceptible things” in the case of “Jack does not believe ‘a broken clock is working’” and why are we talking “Jack does not believe ‘a broken clock is working’” instead of “Jack believes that a clock is working”?! — neomac

[4]

However, we seem to be having difficulty focusing upon what I think is of importance. That's on me. — creativesoul