Belief is only interesting if it determines action in the world. — jas0n

I assume that since you assert this, you believe it.

How would you say this particular belief determines action in the world?

How would you say this particular belief determines action in the world? — frank

I'd say it could/does inspire/constrain psychological research (eventually in actions which are not 'just talk', like this or that researcher getting a direct deposit or a chair being set up in a room.) It should be stressed though that talk/writing is a kind of measurable action (as opposed to immaterial thought), and that even influence of the speech acts of succeeding philosophers counts here. Of course public talk would be less interesting itself if we weren't animals using that talk to coordinate less talky things like work, war, and reproduction.

As I mentioned above, I compare the installation of this convention concerning 'belief' to Popper's suggested convention of understanding science in terms of falsifiability. It is a prescription for specialists, not a definition of the word used in the wild. I believe @Isaac is/was a psychological researcher. Perhaps he could provide some input on this.

I'd say it could/does inspire/constrain psychological research (eventually in actions which are not 'just talk', like this or that researcher getting a direct deposit or a chair being set up in a room.) — jas0n

But what about in your case? You believe it (we assume, since you asserted it). Does this mean anything other than that you'll utter a particular sentence at a certain time?

It should be stressed though that talk/writing is a kind of measurable action (as opposed to immaterial thought), — jas0n

Immaterial? If you think about P, is that not a concrete event in the world? If not, what is it?

. It is a prescription for specialists, not a definition of the word used in the wild. — jas0n

So it's a stipulation, not any sort of analysis?

...as to the residual character of propositions we have that full latitude of choice that attends the development of gratuitous fictions. — Quine, Ontological Remarks on the Propositional Calculus

:rofl:

At least you have some vague idea what the word means. That's an improvement over some around here.

But what about in your case? You believe it (we assume, since you asserted it). Does this mean anything other than that you'll utter a particular sentence at a certain time? — frank

I understand the gist. It's roughly equivalent to checking whether Popper's falsification theory of science can itself be falsified. Even though your question misses the point, I'll still answer it.

My belief in the value of the convention of approaching belief in terms of tendencies toward various public actions will itself plausibly be 'cashed out' publicly not only in further speech acts but also in which books, friendships, and careers I pursue or fail to pursue.

Immaterial? If you think about P, is that not a concrete event in the world? If not, what is it? — frank

How many angels fit inside an intention? What is the square root of coveting your neighbor's ass?

So it's a stipulation, not any sort of analysis? — frank

I'd call it a tentative articulation of an otherwise fertile but useless ambiguity. In other words, it's both. Examine the analogous theory of computability. Everyone had a rough idea of what an algorithm was, but that rough idea was too vague to do anything with. So Turing, Church and Post suggested concrete/detailed articulations of this vague concept that turned about to be equivalent.

The alternative to something like belief-as-tendency-to-act might be a sloppy folk psychology that never gets anywhere, a tour through the quicksand of grammar mistaken for necessity.

Behavioralist-dispositionalists regard beliefs as dispositions to act in certain ways in certain circumstances (see Braithwaite 1932–1933). Eliminativists regard talk of “beliefs” as designating convenient fictions that we ascribe to people in folk psychology (see Churchland 1981 and the entry on eliminative materialism). Primitivists think of beliefs as basic mental states which do not admit of analysis.

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ethics-belief/#NatBel


IMO, 'regard' as used above implies too much commitment, though qualifications must finally come to an end if one tries to communicate. The 'primitivists' may be right in some sense, but 'not admitting of analysis' does not exactly recommend a primitivist approach if one wants to figure something out and not just fetishize human ignorance. If your objection to behaviorism is simply an objection to pretending that tendency-to-act is an exhaustive description of the meaning of belief as opposed to a convention, then I concur.

My belief in the value of the convention of approaching belief in terms of tendencies toward various public actions will itself plausibly be 'cashed out' publicly not only in further speech acts but also in which books, friendships, and careers I pursue or fail to pursue. — jas0n

So you're saying you don't really know what actions are determined by your belief, but you're sure some will be. Why are you so sure?

Just exploring the issue, that's all.

Immaterial? If you think about P, is that not a concrete event in the world? If not, what is it?
— frank

How many angels fit inside an intention? What is the square root of coveting your neighbor's ass? — jas0n

So thinking is immaterial? Or there's no such thing as thinking?

So thinking is immaterial? Or there's no such thing as thinking? — frank

You tell me. I think you are trying to frame the fireman for your own act of arson here. Check out my thread on Popper's swamp. IMO, no one knows exactly what 'material' or 'immaterial' is supposed to mean. I think the issue is best approached in terms of basic statements, those which might be said to support or falsify a theory. Some thinkers have tended to speak in terms of sense-data. Popper evades such implicit quicksand by explicitly accepting the swamp at the bottom of theorizing. Ambiguity seems to be a fact of life, and we can adopt conventions to ameliorate its negative aspects.

Didn't mean to come across as hostile. Sorry.

Didn't mean to come across as hostile. Sorry. — frank

Ah, thanks for clarifying. I was starting to think you were trolling me.

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. — jas0n

Reality doesn't care about aligning its truth to what you may or may not find interesting. I find it interesting that you believe that though.

A brutal dictator that is only interested in hearing what they want to hear from their subjects and not what their subjects actually believe and cannot act on because its not what the dictator wants to hear or see, then you can understand the difference between the thought (belief) police and the action police. If there can be a distinction between the way people act and what they believe, then I find that distinction very interesting.

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. — Banno

It seems there are two basic kinds of intentions or propositional attitudes in belief, one that is meant to reflect the world (our coherent inner model of it anyway) and one that is meant to influence the world, or rather influence others, in some way. The latter can be outright deception or to express group solidarity, neither of which are good.

I believe Isaac is/was a psychological researcher. Perhaps he could provide some input on this. — jas0n

I'd be happy to, but I'm not very clear on what you're asking. Perhaps you could clarify, if it's still relevant?

I'd be happy to, but I'm not very clear on what you're asking. Perhaps you could clarify, if it's still relevant? — Isaac

What do you make of the convention of treating belief as 'that upon which a man is prepared to act' ? Or, in other words, of understanding 'belief' as a tendency to act in this or that uncontroversially observable way? I suggested that this wasn't a lexicographer's definition but the specification of a term of art, a convention that sharpens/operationalizes an otherwise too-foggy concept.

To me that response misses the issue entirely. It's too emotional for such a dry topic.

Indeed, that is the direction of fit, found in various works.

Searle uses it in his Phil of mind and social philosophy, some of which quiet cogent and interesting. He has an approach to intentionality that it distinct from that of the German phenomenologists.

@Jas0n's notion of belief touches not that, but of course Searle's has been worked out in greater depth.

I see. I have a lot of sympathy for the methodological behaviourist approach and most of my earlier work was from that perspective. The reason, at the time, was what seemed like a lighter reliance on theory. I felt that too much of psychological testing was about shoring up these grotesque theories rather than the more simple matter of making better guesses about behaviour, so in that respect I agree.

Such an approach runs into problems, however, when looking at the constraints the physical system (mind-body-environment) places on intention, especially over time. It's as if the contents of a box were analysed purely in terms of what it did when you opened the lid, like a spring (the contents) might fly out after the lid is removed (the behaviour). But if the box was damp, the spring might have rusted, we'd lack an explanatory framework for the new 'behaviour' of the spring because we bracketed out the interaction between it and the box.

I now prefer a slightly more cognitive approach, but I'm still extremely leery of allowing theoretical constructs to gain too much concreteness, so don't really fit well in that field either. Fortunately for me, I'm now old enough to no longer need to.

I now prefer a slightly more cognitive approach, but I'm still extremely leery of allowing theoretical constructs to gain too much concreteness, so don't really fit well in that field either. Fortunately for me, I'm now old enough to no longer need to. — Isaac

Interesting perspective. What are your thoughts on phenomenological approaches?

Thanks for the detailed response!

If nothing else, the behaviorist motive seems laudable, if even some compromise turns out to be necessary.

What are your thoughts on phenomenological approaches? — Tom Storm

To be honest, I don't think I ever saw how it was a sufficiently unified approach to be collected under a single banner. I read Giorgi when I was at university and found a lot in there of interest, but didn't see it as ending up with anything much different to the behemothic theories of human minds to which I was so opposed. As an approach to therapy I understand it has had some great success (clinical psychology is not my field, so I can't really comment, but I've certainly heard good things about it). As an approach to social or cognitive psychology, however, it doesn't seem to offer much new and in fact re-enforces much of what I see as being wrong with the mainstream approaches in those fields.

I think all psychology suffers from the problem any form of anti-realism suffers from, in that you cannot get outside of a way-of-thinking to think about a way-of-thinking. So if one wants to do some work on the question of how we think, one needs not only to compartmentalise, but to do so within a model which allows for the fact that such compartmentalising has itself taken place within a framework which pre-existed it.

That, to me, is the advantage of methodological behaviourism. It compartmentalises the metal processing by 'black boxing' it in a manner which, whilst still reliant on some mental framework (here cause and effect), minimises that reliance to something about which there is little genuine doubt.

Re-introducing descriptions of those mental processes, therefore, should, as I said above, be an act of necessity, not one of foundation. One should avoid, at all costs, seeing any kind of foundational view of psychological systems as anything other than a story. A pragmatic narrative on which to hang the various results. And yes, that too is just a narrative. It's narratives all the way down - as the expression goes.

A very considered answer, thank you.

One should avoid, at all costs, seeing any kind of foundational view of psychological systems as anything other than a story. A pragmatic narrative on which to hang the various results. And yes, that too is just a narrative. It's narratives all the way down - as the expression goes. — Isaac

Nicely put.

It seems to me that spoken and written words (as opposed to postulated thoughts) make good data. One could test, for instance, the relationship between answers on a survey and actual behavior (such as verbal beliefs and actions manifesting such belief.) — jas0n

This is done quite frequently, with mixed results. The problem is in interpreting the statement. Statements are vague and it's not always clear what the speaker means by them, so any result contrasting their behaviour with the researcher's interpretation of the statement, is always going to be problematic if used to claim a relation between their behaviour and their interpretation of the statement. If you can track down a copy (though it's very old now and probably massively out of date) I suggest reading through 'The Problem of a Logical Theory of Belief Statements' by Nicholas Rescher.

Essentially, belief statements as either speech acts or acts of agreement are only tangentially connected to beliefs as 'tendencies to act as if X'.

More often, for example, they act like badges signifying membership of social groups - like a password one must utter to enter a building - and such belief statements are exchanged to ascertain groupings in uncertain environments. Take, for example, any divisive topic and look at the clichés exchanged. The semantic content of the statements doesn't matter and is rarely even considered. What matters are keywords which signify the group, the narrative, to which one adheres.

In other cases, they act as comforters, re-enforcing narratives which are important. For example, the belief statements one might use to reassure oneself, or those one might use to clarify in the face of uncertainty.

Finally, there's Rescher's problem that people do not always understand the logic of the statements they assert such that a person can assert the premises of a valid argument but assert the opposite of its conclusion. We cannot understand both assertions in terms of a belief - a tendency to act as if X - because one often cannot act as if two contradictory states of affairs are both the case.

A very considered answer, thank you. — Tom Storm

No problem, glad you found it of interest.

Essentially, belief statements as either speech acts or acts of agreement are only tangentially connected to beliefs as 'tendencies to act as if X'.

More often, for example, they act like badges signifying membership of social groups - like a password one must utter to enter a building - and such belief statements are exchanged to ascertain groupings in uncertain environments. Take, for example, any divisive topic and look at the clichés exchanged. The semantic content of the statements doesn't matter and is rarely even considered. What matters are keywords which signify the group, the narrative, to which one adheres. — Isaac

That seems like an accurate description. Tribes and flags and badges. We're clever in some ways, but apparently quite simple in others.

Statements are vague and it's not always clear what the speaker means by them, so any result contrasting their behaviour with the researcher's interpretation of the statement, is always going to be problematic if used to claim a relation between their behaviour and their interpretation of the statement. — Isaac

Spitballing, I'd think you'd almost need a survey with a finite number of options for choosing between or rating statements simple enough to neutralize the interpretation problem. But maybe that would be too constraining.

Finally, there's Rescher's problem that people do not always understand the logic of the statements they assert such that a person can assert the premise of a valid argument but assert the opposite of its conclusion. We cannot understand both assertions in terms of a belief - a tendency to act as if X - because one cannot act as if two contradictory states of affairs are both the case. — Isaac

Good point ! I like Rescher's style, very clear and focused (if memory does not betray.)

I'd think you'd almost need a survey with a finite number of options for choosing between or rating statements simple enough to neutralize the interpretation problem. But maybe that would be too constraining. — jas0n

Yeah, that's how it's generally done, but nonetheless, I'm not sure one could ever devise statements of such clarity and circumstances wherein people felt no narrative pressure to ascribe to any given one, to elimiante the problem. That's not to say it's not a very useful approach. One just needs to be aware of the limitations.

Yeah, that's how it's generally done, but nonetheless, I'm not sure one could ever devise statements of such clarity and circumstances wherein people felt no narrative pressure to ascribe to any given one, to elimiante the problem. That's not to say it's not a very useful approach. One just needs to be aware of the limitations. — Isaac

Understood, which brings us back to temptation of behaviorism. Or maybe to deep learning models that aren't about understanding but simply manipulation (to mention another black box.)

All delusions are beliefs. That, to me, is the nub of the issue.

(16 months have passed since the previous post)

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. — Banno

Could you maybe say more about the way your thinking has changed?

I myself would not want to define beliefs in terms of relations between individuals and propositions. In your OP you shy away from calling this a proper definition, but because it is the primary characteristic of belief on offer, and because it is proposed as "a basic structure or grammar for belief," it effectively functions as a definition. Apart from the idiosyncrasies of modern logic, I don't know why the relation model should take precedence. I am also wondering why a definition of belief must be circular in some incoherent way.

As a jumping off point, Aquinas offers an Aristotelian definition of "to believe": to think with assent.* "To think" is the genus and "with assent" is the specific difference. He proceeds to clarify the exact meaning of each part of the definition, but because he is ultimately concerned with a narrower concept of 'belief' the clarification is not really important for this thread.

I agree with Aquinas: to believe is to think with assent. Namely, one is both thinking about some proposition and also assenting to it. A belief, then, is an adherence to some proposition that we have thought about and have assented to, and that we continue to assent to.

I largely agree with your OP. I agree that a belief is a propositional attitude, does not imply truth, involves affirmation, makes sense of error, is dynamic, and explains but does not determine actions. But I wouldn't want to use the relation idea as a definition or a quasi-definition of belief. I think it is a way to characterize belief, but that it does not capture the essence of belief, and therefore it will lead us astray if we come to depend on it in a tight spot. There are different ways to criticize it, but I would want to say that it doesn't provide us with much insight into what a belief is. We have relations with all sorts of things, and therefore to call belief a relation does not provide any useful way to distinguish this relation from other relations. Specifically:

1. "John believes that the sky is blue"
2. Believes (John, "The sky is blue")

I'm not sure what (2) adds to (1). I am not sure how it provides any additional information or insight into the reality of belief. If someone says, "What's a belief?" and I respond, "It's a relation between an agent and a proposition," then I haven't done much work to narrow down what we are talking about due to the fact that we have many relations to propositions which are not belief (e.g. doubt, ignorance, curiosity, guesses, proof, etc.). This obviously gets into your thread about Kit Fine and necessary properties vs. essential properties. For Aristotle a relation would be a necessary property of a belief, but if it does touch on the essence it surely doesn't get to the heart of the matter.

But anyway, maybe I am quibbling or barking up the wrong tree. I know you didn't offer the OP as a precise definition. I guess my main point is that if we are going to talk about belief in itself then we will have to talk about its definition. Perhaps the OP was meant to respond to certain misconceptions and that is why it was phrased in this way? Yet you mentioned Searle and trying to account for the intentionality of belief, and I think "assent" does something to capture this.


* Summa Theologiae, II.II.Q2.A1

Goodness, a resurrection from five years ago. This thread was an analytic response to the vast amount of rubbish written about belief on these fora. As such the OP is a summary of what I take as the standard understanding of belief found in recent literature.

It did little to head off the generally feeble treatment belief receives hereabouts.

For the most part my view hasn't changed, although the Searle stuff is more recent. It was provoked by Making the social world, p.27:

Each intentional state divides into two components: the type of state it is and its content, typically a propositional content. We can represent the distinction between intentional type and propositional content with the notation "(p)." For example, I can believe that it is raining, fear that it is raining, or desire that it be raining. In each of these cases I have the same propositional content, p, that it is raining, but I have them in different intentional types, that is, different psychological modes: belief, fear, desire, and so on, represented by the 'S'. Many intentional states come in whole propositions, and for that reason those that do are often described by philosophers as "propositional attitudes." This is a bad terminology because it suggests that my intentional state is an attitude to a proposition. In general, beliefs, desires, and so on are not attitudes to propositions. If I believe that Washington was the first president, my attitude is to Washington and not to the proposition. Very few of our intentional states are directed at propositions. Most are directed at objects and states of affairs in the world independent of any proposition. Sometimes an intentional state might be directed at a proposition. If, for example, I believe that Bernoulli's principle is trivial, then the object of my belief is a proposition, namely, Bernoulli's principle. In the sentence "John believes that Washington was the first president," it looks like the proposition that Washington was the first president is the object of the belief. But that is a grammatical illusion. The proposition is the content of the belief, not the object of the belief. In this case, the object of the belief is Washington. It is impossible to exaggerate the damage done to philosophy and cognitive science by the mistaken view that "believe" and other intentional verbs name relations between believers and propositions. — Searle, my bolding

This struck me not as something novel, but as a clarification. In particular it relates to a conversation with @Sam26 and @creativesoul as to whether beliefs can all be expressed in words, or somethign like that. I had not expressed this clearly enough.

Stipulating definitions is treacherous, as I've shown elsewhere, and this thread should be read as analysing belief rather than providing a definition. If I were to choose the aspect of belief that is, as it were, most central, it would be that beliefs explain actions. Given that, while "to think with assent" has its merits, it is insufficient in that sometimes we act without thinking - that is, not all our beliefs are explicit. You believe, arguably, that I am not writing this while floating in space in the orbit of Jupiter, yet until now that belief had not been explicated.

Anyway, let's see where that leaves us. Welcome, it is pleasing to hear from someone with a bit of background in the topic.