So, I think we were here...

Belief requires the internal, the external, and a creature capable of connecting the two.

I want to peruse the thread in it's entirety again and list all the agreements thus far, and see what we have to work with.

Belief requires the internal, the external, and a creature capable of connecting the two. — creativesoul

I disagree; belief requires the dissipation of the distinction between internal and external.

The move I was considering next was to draw some sort of closure by re-assessing each of the items in the ongrowing OP in turn.

Hmmm...

In what way does belief require such dissipation?

I mean, what is the term "require" doing?

Just in terms of making a coherent grammar around "belief".

But I want to build up to that.

Ok. Here's where I'm at...

The internal/external dichotomy - if applied in such a way that everything is one or the other - cannot properly take account of belief, for it is existentially dependent(it requires) both. To put belief in strict terms of being internal sacrifices the ability to take account of the parts of belief that are not. The same holds good for "external".

Is that close to what you mean with regard to our grammar(how we talk about belief)? Is that agreeable enough?

No, Creative; I think your picture of belief is far removed from my own. It seems you consider belief as a thing, a lump, a quantum, a substance. I think it more of a place holder, an amorphous region; an inferred nothing.

A thing... Not the rest.

Do we agree that belief is foundational? That is not to say linear. The web description is better, I think. But it begins simply and grows in complexity, right?

What is Jack's belief that his bowl is empty if not the connections he draws between what it looks and smells like when full, what it looks and smells like when not, and his own hunger pangs?

I think it more of a place holder, an amorphous region; an inferred nothing. — Banno

Yeah, I think these all will do a good job of describing some beliefs.

I've abandoned the attempts to draw a distinction between 'linguistic' beliefs and non-linguistic beliefs in terms of the content. There's good reason for this. Jack can have beliefs about the bowl without knowing what "bowl" means. I struggled with how to come to acceptable terms with that for quite a while. So, the content of Jack's belief can be existentially dependent upon language. Jack need only to be able to perceive(detect, smell, taste, hear, see, etc.) the bowl in order for it to become meaningful to him.

Amorphous... indeed.

I think that thought, belief, truth, and meaning are inextricably entwined.

The move I was considering next was to draw some sort of closure by re-assessing each of the items in the ongrowing OP in turn. — Banno

I'l wait for this...

:smile:

But they are not the same thing.

Thinking that belief and truth are the same - or that one can replace the other - leads to all sorts of rubbish.

Didn't say that my friend. Not at all. I agree that those four things are distinct from one another.

Didn't mean to imply you did. Just drawing attention to some other thoughts.

It's the reason belief is important.

Or better, that belief and truth are different is important. Without a difference between belief and truth, we can't be wrong; if we can't be wrong, we can't fix our mistakes; without being able to fix our mistakes, we can't make things better.

Hence, Trump.

That's only a matter of time. There's soooo much at stake. Mueller will do it right. I suspect that there will be many many currently unknown people in quite a bit trouble, along with the twit himself.

All invention and innovation as well as all new ideas begin with a belief. Belief is the gateway to innovation. Beliefs should then be subjected to investigation, to see if they pan out. There is nothing wrong with belief, unless you stop there and never investigate. If I believe the keys are in the kitchen and I investigate, then I am doing it correctly. If it pans out I am done. If it does no pan out I start with a new belief that learns from my mistake. Maybe it is in the laundry!

If you get all your information from reading, you will be reading only the final reports, which are organized to make the original belief look rationally and/or scientifically neat and tidy. But if you create your own ideas, you realize that belief is the starting point. The stronger the belief, the further one will go to make the belief a reality, so it is neat and tidy.

From the OP:

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. — Banno

Having the idea of belief allows us to seperate what we think is true from what is indeed true. It allows us to be wrong.

There are versions of relativism, post modernism and pragmatism that attempt to replace truth with belief alone. The aim is often some honourable form of equity or freedom. But the result is often an inability to discuss error in a helpful way.

There are many examples, from Brexit and false news to climate change to dribble-down economics. If we forget that there are sometimes facts, we loose the ability to fix error.

There are versions of relativism, post modernism and pragmatism that attempt to replace truth with belief alone. The aim is often some honourable form of equity... — Banno

Indeed! Here in the States, the aim is to 'validate' all people's thought, belief, and feelings as a first step in helping them deal with whatever it is(events in someone's life) that they are dealing with. 'Perception is reality' they like to say, simply because it's effects/affects are real. Then there's the all too common 'his truth'. 'her truth', 'your truth', and 'my truth'...

Sigh...

Inherently inadequate methodology(linguistic framework).

A belief is a propositional attitude. — Banno

A belief is simply taking a proposition seriously. Lose of belief results in laughter.

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). — Banno

I think what we call belief is really a relation between different propositions, whether or not they agree, and actual beliefs are our internal models of the world. Our models of the world are not entirely conscious, and that being the case, it can't be said that we always know what we believe.

Agrees (proposition a, proposition p)

If I offer a cat an empty bowl it will not mistakenly try to eat from it. I can't lie to the cat and tell it there is food when there is not, but I can trick the cat nevertheless. I can offer a cat an empty bowl, listen to its MEOWS of protest, and wait for the timer to go off in the electronic cat bowl that opens a compartment in the bottom which reveals a delicious feline feast. The cat's internal model of the world, perhaps just that specific bowl, is revised in some way. With enough experience with the electric bowl, the cat could reliably predict mealtime or 'believe' the bowl has food even though it's not immediately apparent.

Critters compete, cooperate, and freeload just like people do, they just don't do it with conceptual propositions as we do.

We should probably use agree instead of believe because it is more honest.

A belief is a relation between an individual and a proposition. — Banno

Searle has me re-thinking this. Rather then a relation, B(a,p), it's better to think in terms of "p" as the content of the belief. That brings out the intentionality of the belief. That is, B(a,p) hides the problems of substitution salva veritate.

it's better to think in terms of "p" as the content of the belief. — Banno

That’s what a proposition is.

Years later, we've all gone around the circle and ended up right were we started! What form does a proposition take as the content of a belief?

What form does a proposition take as the content of a belief? — Harry Hindu

What do you mean by "what form"?

The SEP has a lot of good information. One good article about belief and propositions is the one on truth bearers.

I'm trying to understand and ask how you know that propositions are the content of beliefs in that you and Banno seem to suggest that beliefs are like boxes with contents that are propositions. In using visual terms to describe beliefs and their contents it seems to me that beliefs and their contents have a visual form, as opposed to an audible, tactile or olfactory form.

The same thing goes in describing that beliefs and propositions are bearers of truth, as if one is carrying another. But we all know beliefs can be false, so it seems to me that we can believe in false things and beliefs are not necessarily bearers of truth.

I think you're wondering if some ontology is being smuggled in with the concept of a proposition. There isn't.

I will say, I've been surprised since I've been here how many posters have the same misconception about what analytical philosophers mean by "proposition."

Look it up if you're interested. It's not really an issue for debate.

beliefs are not necessarily bearers of truth. — Harry Hindu

That's the prevailing philosophical view, yes.

I naturally haven't read the whole thread, but I'd like to interject this theme:

"In particular, he [Nicholas St. John Green] often urged the importance of applying Bain's definition of belief, as "that upon which a man is prepared to act." From this definition, pragmatism is scarce more than a corollary; so that I am disposed to think of him as the grandfather of pragmatism."

I take such a 'definition' to be best understood as a convention suggested for adoption. A similar idea seems to be expressed in 'put your money where your mouth is.'

I think you're wondering if some ontology is being smuggled in with the concept of a proposition. There isn't.

I will say, I've been surprised since I've been here how many posters have the same misconception about what analytical philosophers mean by "proposition." — frank

Unless the analytical philosophers define a proposition as a string of scribbles in it's fundamental state, then I don't know what else they could be getting at, as any proposition in a language that you don't know is a string of scribbles.

What is it like for you to believe that the sun will rise tomorrow? How do you know that you believe it? Is your belief simply the sound of you talking to yourself in your mind saying, "I believe the sun will rise tomorrow".? That is what I'm trying to ask. Beliefs have some kind of ontology for you to be able to talk about them and for others to agree that you have them.

What is it like for you to believe that the sun will rise tomorrow? How do you know that you believe it? Is your belief simply the sound of you talking to yourself in your mind saying, "I believe the sun will rise tomorrow".? — Harry Hindu

I like this gap that you insert between the believer and the belief. Belief is only interesting if it determines action in the world. If I claim to believe I can fly and nevertheless carefully avoid high ledges, then maybe I'm wrong about myself or have an uninteresting conception of belief.