That's an interesting contrast. It looks to me like Moliere is construing a belief as an ephemeral mental state, whereas @Srap Tasmaner is construing belief as a continual behavioural disposition. It strikes me that these ideas are not in direct conflict. This is because it could be the case that a continual behavioural disposition comes equipped with the ability to recreate the state of mind and action to exhibit what is believed as a transitory state. — fdrake

I think I misread @Moliere actually, am I right in thinking that your account places less stress on beliefs being mental states, and more on the process of recreating a competence? It doesn't matter so much if beliefs are "mental furniture", it just matters that some process recreates them. If someone has the capacity to recreate a competence, or a tendency to behave/process as if a given thing is true, then they can be said to believe it. Does that sound about right?

I've just never found this compelling. I always immediately think of cases where people are as confident as they can imagine being, what they would naturally describe as "certain," and they're wrong, or cases where someone nurses unwarranted doubts about knowing what they do indeed know. — Srap Tasmaner

I would say that in the former kinds of cases, they don't know, but merely believe that they know. Remember that saying certainty is necessary for knowledge does not entail it is sufficient, and that feeling certain does not equate to justifiably being certain.

In the latter kinds of cases I would say the information is there, but access to it is not, and I would not count such a condition as knowing. To count as knowing, I would say it is necessary to have the appropriate information; in other words to know that you know.

The question I would ask you is whether you can think of any examples where someone could be said to know something without feeling certain, as well as justifiably being certain, about it. Also I want to remind you that I acknowledge that any knowledge is relative to contexts, so I am not wanting to bring the possibility of radical skepticism to bear on the issue, because that would be to demand of all knowledge that it somehow be absolute, independent of all context, which I think is obviously absurd.

You see no problem in allowing deception to be truth? — Metaphysician Undercover

It wasn't a rhetorical question.

I do not like to be taken advantage of. For me, that's where the problem is, if we allow deception to reign as truth, it provides the means for others to take advantage of me. — Metaphysician Undercover

How so?

I find this exchange baffling and I wonder if you'd each indulge me in explaining a couple of the presuppositions you're working from.

You seem to be working from the principle that there's a right answer to the question of 'how the mind works' in this regard - I gather that from the fact that you're critiquing each others' models, not just curating them.

You seem to be working with a presumption that how your mind works is not radically different from how my mind works or each other's minds work - I'm getting this, again from the fact that you're critiquing rather than curating, so each of you is capable of making a wrong statement about how minds work.

Then you seem to be working toward this shared notion of how minds work by thinking about it, not by examining some quantity of actual minds, removing variables, examining differences etc.

I can't seem to reconcile the two sides.

Surely if two of you (assuming even one of you is right) can be wrong about how minds work as a result of their introspection of their own mind, then introspection delivers both wrong as well as right impressions of how your own mind works, about two thirds of the time, at least? (the only other options being 'everyone's mind works differently', or 'there's no right answer to how the mind works')

So if introspection delivers both correct and incorrect answers as to how the mind works, what motivates the methodology here? By what means do you propose the results of introspection are tested to see which are right and which are wrong? More introspection? That's just going to deliver about the same proportions of right and wrong answers.

I guess what I'm missing, fascinating though your personal accounts are, is what you're each looking for in the others' accounts to say "that doesn't sound right". All you seem to have is three conflicting accounts (which together tell us nothing other than that introspection is not a reliable means of determining how minds work, at least 2 out of 3 times it's wrong), and no means of choosing between them.

I sense a disturbance in the Force. — Luke Skywalker

I want a definition of truth but for that I must already posses a definition of truth!

I wonder if you'd each indulge me in explaining a couple of the presuppositions you're working from. — Isaac

Oh, and one last thing. About the status of 'the mind' in the world. Real entity or not?

Because each of you seem quite strongly realist about worldly objects, no enacted constructions for you guys, if you want to know what colour the house is, you just look. Anyone saying it's blue is wrong because it's white, etc.

So am I right in assuming that for you, 'the mind' is not a real entity? After all, none of you are proposing we 'just look' to find out how it works (unless you think your sample of three is statistically significant, or, as ruled out before, you think everyone's mind works differently and there's no right or wrong answer)

So if introspection delivers both correct and incorrect answers as to how the mind works, what motivates the methodology here? By what means do you propose the results of introspection are tested to see which are right and which are wrong? More introspection? That's just going to deliver about the same proportions of right and wrong answers. — Isaac

I think going into this would derail the thread. If you want an answer to it, I'd gesture towards that analysing concepts and comparing intuitions doesn't need you to do experiments. If you genuinely are confused by it, you seemed to understand the methodology behind some Dennett vs Chalmers arguments people've had on the forum. It's the same thing, only we're worse at it.

If you want more of a theoretical gloss on it, I think discussions like this are useful from the perspective of building a bridge between manifest and scientific images. Will quote at length from SEP below, from the article on Sellars. tl;dr for the quote, it's still worthwhile examining concepts and intuitions because doing so also influences how folk metaphysics places constraints on experiments you'd do later - the metaphysical imagination suffusing folk and non-folk theories alike.

I think going into this would derail the thread. — fdrake

Then we'll leave it there. Thanks anyway for the reply.

Then we'll leave it there. Thanks anyway for the reply. — Isaac

No worries, if you feel like making a thread about it, it would be a good discussion. Isaac vs the very idea of analysing concepts in philosophy!

I think I misread Moliere actually, am I right in thinking that your account places less stress on beliefs being mental states, and more on the process of recreating a competence? It doesn't matter so much if beliefs are "mental furniture", it just matters that some process recreates them. If someone has the capacity to recreate a competence, or a tendency to behave/process as if a given thing is true, then they can be said to believe it. Does that sound about right? — fdrake

At bottom I've said belief is a habit -- so it could be a mental habit, it could be a physical habit -- so yes I think that sounds right. Though I don't know if I'd say competence as much as pattern or habit. We have cues and scripts which we've memorized through repetition, so they take on a kind of form (seem like we have a cabinet we put our knowledge into and pull it out), but the form isn't like a storage device where the model sits and we can pull it out at some other time. The script can be rewritten when we're not looking, and even improvised when we are looking.

I think primarily I'm pushing against the metaphysics of memory as a model which we update. In an institution I think you can get something like that. But for our beliefs that aren't put through an institutional system of scrutiny? Those just don't have that same stability, in my experience. "Today is Tuesday" is already a belief I've let go of several times yesterday, and now let go of entirely. I didn't put that belief in my modular closet or a book or a paper or something.

I'd say most of our beliefs fall into that class. The beliefs that appear like correspondence are the sorts we find in academies and such -- but that process of knowledge is too high a standard for our everyday. It would be impossible to function like that.

I find this exchange baffling and I wonder if you'd each indulge me in explaining a couple of the presuppositions you're working from.

You seem to be working from the principle that there's a right answer to the question of 'how the mind works' in this regard - I gather that from the fact that you're critiquing each others' models, not just curating them.

You seem to be working with a presumption that how your mind works is not radically different from how my mind works or each other's minds work - I'm getting this, again from the fact that you're critiquing rather than curating, so each of you is capable of making a wrong statement about how minds work.

Then you seem to be working toward this shared notion of how minds work by thinking about it, not by examining some quantity of actual minds, removing variables, examining differences etc.

I can't seem to reconcile the two sides.

Surely if two of you (assuming even one of you is right) can be wrong about how minds work as a result of their introspection of their own mind, then introspection delivers both wrong as well as right impressions of how your own mind works, about two thirds of the time, at least? (the only other options being 'everyone's mind works differently', or 'there's no right answer to how the mind works')

So if introspection delivers both correct and incorrect answers as to how the mind works, what motivates the methodology here? By what means do you propose the results of introspection are tested to see which are right and which are wrong? More introspection? That's just going to deliver about the same proportions of right and wrong answers.

I guess what I'm missing, fascinating though your personal accounts are, is what you're each looking for in the others' accounts to say "that doesn't sound right". All you seem to have is three conflicting accounts (which together tell us nothing other than that introspection is not a reliable means of determining how minds work, at least 2 out of 3 times it's wrong), and no means of choosing between them. — Isaac

:D

I'd say that all methodologies give both right and wrong answers -- what makes them methodologies is that they resolve disputes, not that they deliver right or wrong answer.

Here we're at an interesting intersection because of how little we share, in terms of a background of beliefs. There's no methodology in place. It's anarchy. Even our basic beliefs about how minds work can be at odds with one another. (in fact, one might say that if we fail here, it's due to a difference in conceptual schemes about conceptual schemes, thereby undermining Davidson. the anti-realist's best move is quietism, because then Davidson has nothing to point to to say we have a shared scheme -- nothing to radically interpret back to himself)

I agree with @fdrake that we're not necessarily at odds -- but by stating our positions and starting to pick at them, that's how one begins to build a network of background beliefs from which one can then create methodologies. So obviously, yes, I have an opinion here, but I'm attempting to maneuver in such a way that leaves it open to be added to or changed or taken away as seen fit by those so interested. And my main point of contention here is with the notion of a model that we update within our memory -- so it's more how we're picturing memory here than how The Mind works, if that makes sense.

Thanks. I know people are concerned about this derailing the thread, so I'll be brief, but wanted to at least respond.

The question I really wanted answered (which I maintain is pertinent to the question about truth, but if not could hopefully be answered very briefly to assist my following your process here) was... What kind of entity do you see the mind being such that it is

a) real

...but...

b) possessed of properties which are determinable by agreement among introspecting parties.


If I looked at my duck pond and said "ducks are white", we have two approaches to critiquing the claim.

We could take a radically relativist approach and say, "yeah, ducks are white, for you, that's part of what the word 'duck' means in your language game and if it functions, then OK"

Or we could say "ducks are part of the world and they're either white or not, we'd have to check"

The latter I take to be the realist case you seem to espouse.

Yet such a check cannot then consist of one looking at one's own duck pond and saying "nah, ducks are black". That's just exactly the same type of claim we just rejected as ignoring the shared world of ducks.

Replace duck pond with mind. You get the picture.

@Srap Tasmaner has Pat's house as white. Let's say it seems green to me, and it seems grey to you. No amount of agreement between us regarding what colour Pat's house seems to us to be is capable (under a hard realist assumption) of yielding facts about what colour Pat's house actually is. It's immune to our agreement about the colour it seems to us to be.

Yet you're treating the mind as both real, but unlike Pat's house, with properties that are discernible (or at least investigable) by agreement between parties as to the way it merely seems to them to be.

I'm just wondering what kind of entity this is, for you. What sort of thing it is you're speculating about the function of.

b) possessed of properties which are determinable by agreement among introspecting parties. — Isaac

I think you're construing the discussion as introspecting about the nature of mental states, whereas (if I'm following), when it relies on introspection about mental states or behaviours, it's relies on them as observations in a context. It isn't as if we're doing the whole Cartesian thing of solipsistically examining the preconditions of our thoughts, it's that we've got a partially shared but conflicted mutual understanding of an issue. Is this the kind of issue which even is amenable to direct answer by experiment? I doubt it, in the same manner that "cognition" and "aroused state" have observable analogues but there's a whole, underdetermined, theory linking physiological and behavioural observations to those constructs. If you wanted to critique an experiment into cognition or aroused states, one way of showing a flaw in it would be a tenuous relationship of the theorised construct to the observations; and that's a matter of relevance and interpretation as well as observation.

Would you be similarly baffled by people talking about a society and saying it works partly through norms of conduct? "But the norms are observable", "Yes, and you need to tell me what kind of entity they are before any of this makes any sense whatsoever!"

It wasn't a rhetorical question. — Isaac

It wasn't a rhetorical answer either.

How so? — Isaac

But I do not believe that you don't already grasp the answer to this question yourself, so I can't help but think that you are being dishonest here. Anyway, I'll answer it for you, and you can tell me if it's consistent with what you believe.

Through deception a person can make me think that they are helping me to achieve my goals, and get me to do things I wouldn't otherwise do. Then it will turn out that the person had no real intention of helping me achieve any of my goals, and those things I have done for that person will prove to have been a waste of time and money, and this is actually detrimental to achieving my own goals, counterproductive. That's how deception provides the means for one to take advantage of me.

Surely if two of you (assuming even one of you is right) can be wrong about how minds work as a result of their introspection of their own mind, then introspection delivers both wrong as well as right impressions of how your own mind works, about two thirds of the time, at least? — Isaac

You should acknowledge that this is extremely faulty logic. Two out of three people being wrong once, out of an unspecified number of judgements, does not produce the conclusion of being wrong two thirds of the time. The number of judgements could be millions, with only two instances of them being wrong.

In other words, you completely misrepresent introspection, as producing a one time judgement, when in reality it is an ongoing process with multitudes of judgements.

So if introspection delivers both correct and incorrect answers as to how the mind works, what motivates the methodology here? By what means do you propose the results of introspection are tested to see which are right and which are wrong? More introspection? That's just going to deliver about the same proportions of right and wrong answers. — Isaac

The methodology can be described as faith in logic. We take simple principles of logic, and apply them with faith in them, without the need to test the conclusions. We have faith in the logic so we accept the conclusions without testing. These are simple principles like the law of non-contradiction. Through introspection a person can determine whether one holds contradictory beliefs, such as when one applies one principle in some situations, and a contradicting principle in other situations. Introspection is the only way that we reveal these internal contradictions to ourselves. Then we proceed with faith in the law of non-contradiction, to rectify the internal contradiction, which can be called an instance of self-deception.

I think going into this would derail the thread. — fdrake

Not necessarily, introspection is very important to truth as honesty, which is what I've been arguing. Introspection is the means by which we determine consistency and inconsistency within our own beliefs. We must continuously apply principles of logic to the beliefs which we have developed over the years, to compare old beliefs with new beliefs, and rid ourselves of inconsistency.

This is also the means by which we determine potential deception from others. We have to compare what the person has said in the past, with what the person is saying now. However, unless we search for written material, we only have our own minds (memory), as the means to access what the person has said in the past. So the process whereby we apply logic to determine inconsistency in others is simply a form of introspection, except we must necessarily distinguish the beliefs of another from one's own beliefs.

Jesus said "I am Son of man". Others said "he is Son of God". To claim "I am Son of God" was blasphemy, a punishable offence. The Jews wanted Pilate to judge Jesus as guilty of that offence, and apply punishment. Jesus said I am here to witness the truth. Pilate said what is truth. Then Pilate said he found no basis for a charge against Jesus, expressing his honest opinion, and turned Jesus over to the Jews, washing his hands of the matter. The Jews afflicted punishment.

I'm just wondering what kind of entity this is, for you. What sort of thing it is you're speculating about the function of. — Isaac

I'm going to be real and say I have no idea what kind of entity the mind is. Is it even an entity at all? We have brains, sure. But the mind isn't something I feel confident in saying I know what the entity is. The mind is not exactly like ducks, as in your example. There's no method attached to resolving disputes about it, whereas with ducks you have "go take a look" -- and indeed if you saw black ducks you'd be justified in responding "the ducks are black", or in re-interpreting your partner as meaning the ducks are black. That is, the method could break down, depending upon the parties involved.

For now I'm just expressing discomfort, at least, with the notion of a modular memory akin to a hard drive or a book case -- which I believe is leading to support the notion of the correspondence theory of truth, something I've been arguing against.

Would you feel the same, or naw?

It's that last bit that's the most important to my general approach.

(as for whether I'm a realist or anti-realist, I find myself flipping back and forth on that all the time. I just try not to pre-figure the answer, given that's a normal point of dispute. i.e. it's thought-terminating, given there being no method for determining what one ought to believe there)

in the same manner that "cognition" and "aroused state" have observable analogues but there's a whole, underdetermined, theory linking physiological and behavioural observations to those constructs. If you wanted to critique an experiment into cognition or aroused states, one way of showing a flaw in it would be a tenuous relationship of the theorised construct to the observations — fdrake

I understand that, but why would mere observations even need to cohere? There's no less a gap between, say, my experience of time passing and the actual time passing. The former we might discuss as you are here, the latter we measure with a clock. But there's be no purpose to trying to resolve the difference between a day that I thought dragged on a bit and a day that you thought went by in a flash. You and I can experience different, observational accounts of how quickly time seemed to pass. talking about then would be nothing more than curation ("Oh, that's interesting"), there's be no purpose, nor logic behind reconciling the two accounts, the actual amount of time that passed was measured by the clock and that's our only shared account.

So whilst I completely agree about the gap between phenomena and recorded mental events, I can't see that it explains the analysis of phenomena as if it were amenable to rational argument. Is there a reason your lived experience ought to cohere rationally with Srap's and Moliere's? Is it a puzzle to be resolved if it doesn't?

Would you be similarly baffled by people talking about a society and saying it works partly through norms of conduct? — fdrake

Yes.

If I were to wonder about how a car worked, my first port of call would be Wikipedia. I wouldn't speculate about how I thought a car might work and then compare notes with others similarly speculating. A car (and its workings) are just not that kind of thing.

Likewise with society. A little more complicated, but if I really was wondering if society worked partly through norms of conduct, I'd hop straight onto Wikipedia and look up what people who'd had a chance to really dig into societies have found. Again, like the car, I believe 'societies' are just that kind of entity. The sort that there are facts of the matter about and those facts amenable to investigation.

So with something like...

I have some hesitations about calling some items of knowledge purely mental, and some items of knowledge purely behavioural. EG, I can't seem to find the thought of where my e key is when I'm typing, but when I'm programming recreating enough of the state of a script to 'put it in mind' seems to happen when debugging or adding something. — fdrake

Seems to me, like the car, like 'societies', to be best answered by hopping on to Wikipedia and seeing if anyone has checked. I mean, it's quite a simple experiment, we have markers of behavioural preparation, markers of conceptual imaging, we even (with a little trial and error) could probably find the 'e key' neuron (see https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grandmother_cell)! Then we'd know if you do or don't use your mental map of where the e key is every time, or not.

If we're talking about your experience of what it feels like to seek the e key, then that's not amenable to hopping on to Wikipedia. But then it's not amenable to gradual correction by rational enquiry either.

explaining a couple of the presuppositions — Isaac

Ooooo....you sneaky devil, you. I see what you did right there. Everyone has his own presuppositions, and your chosen field of expertise aims to reduce them all to something by which they are all explained.

Even if you’re right, and all presuppositions can be explained, we’re still left with the “horse....water” conundrum. Which is fine, we’re already in one anyway, presented by reason itself.

Same as it ever was.....

Through deception a person can make me think that they are helping me to achieve my goals, and get me to do things I wouldn't otherwise do. Then it will turn out that the person had no real intention of helping me achieve any of my goals, and those things I have done for that person will prove to have been a waste of time and money, and this is actually detrimental to achieving my own goals, counterproductive. That's how deception provides the means for one to take advantage of me. — Metaphysician Undercover

Uh huh. The question was why associating the meaning of the word 'truth' with a pragmatic concept of utility caused this increase in deception. What difference does the meaning of the word make. Are people more able to deceive you because they can use the word 'truth' to describe their most pragmatic models. If we banned them from using the word that way, would they somehow be shackled in their deception?

Through introspection a person can determine whether one holds contradictory beliefs — Metaphysician Undercover

How?

I'm going to be real and say I have no idea what kind of entity the mind is. — Moliere

...seems at odds with...

The mind is not exactly like ducks — Moliere

Is it that you are a little sure of what kind of entity the mind is? Something in the ballpark of the sort of thing unlike ducks, but perhaps no more specific than that?

'm just expressing discomfort, at least, with the notion of a modular memory akin to a hard drive or a book case -- which I believe is leading to support the notion of the correspondence theory of truth, something I've been arguing against.

Would you feel the same, or naw? — Moliere

I would, but I'm more interested in why you feel that discomfort. Is it, like @fdrake, that it's not how it feels to you? If so, then why would you be uncomfortable with other people describing it that way. Is there something pushing you to think that we ought not have differences in how we feel our mind works (or our brain, if you want a more concrete entity). If we're talking about how the memory actually, works, then we'd need a textbook summarising the hundreds of experiments which have sought to discover just that. If, on the other hand, we're talking about how it seems to us our memories work, then would we expect any coherence? Is there some reason we'd be uncomfortable with completely inconsistent models?

Is it that you are a little sure of what kind of entity the mind is? Something in the ballpark of the sort of thing unlike ducks, but perhaps no more specific than that? — Isaac

I'm saying I don't even know if the mind is an entity. Whether the mind is a real thing or not isn't determined by myself.

I would, but I'm more interested in why you feel that discomfort. Is it, like fdrake, that it's not how it feels to you? If so, then why would you be uncomfortable with other people describing it that way. Is there something pushing you to think that we ought not have differences in how we feel our mind works (or our brain, if you want a more concrete entity). If we're talking about how the memory actually, works, then we'd need a textbook summarising the hundreds of experiments which have sought to discover just that. If, on the other hand, we're talking about how it seems to us our memories work, then would we expect any coherence? Is there some reason we'd be uncomfortable with completely inconsistent models? — Isaac

I'd say that the reason for the discomfort isn't so thorough or rationalistic as what you're proposing. I've read some books -- indeed, I've even browsed Wikipedia on my time on the internets :D -- and gone through some classes. I've talked with some people who I respect and follow their lead.

I trust others. It's not a belief derived from rationalistic impulses to prove myself the one who knew about the mind.

Hence the importance of my approach. If you agree with me, then that's enough. After all, you know more about the studies on memory, right? So in our little discussion group, if others see that as relevant, then we could move forward with that belief regardless of its truth-value.

Though, now thinking -- I should be explicit @Isaac and say I'm fine with, in the end, the mind being inconsistent too. So, yes, it's quite possible for @Srap Tasmaner 's impressions to be true at the same time as mine, even though I'm expressing discomfort at that particular notion. But I don't mean to preclude that ahead of time.

Ooooo....you sneaky devil, you. — Mww

Aren't I just.

Everyone has his own presuppositions, and your chosen field of expertise aims to reduce them all to something by which they are all explained.

Even if you’re right, and all presuppositions can be explained, we’re still left with the “horse....water” conundrum. — Mww

There's more to an explanation than a kind of sub-level of more foundational grounds.

I agree with your complaint about reducing presuppositions, and would rebuke any colleagues in my field to no less a degree than you are here.

But, as I say, more foundational grounds doesn't exhaust the sort of thing an 'explanation' might be.

"It just feels that way" is such an answer, for example.

In the latter kinds of cases I would say the information is there, but access to it is not, and I would not count such a condition as knowing. To count as knowing, I would say it is necessary to have the appropriate information; in other words to know that you know. — Janus

"Where's Tim?" "Dunno. Wait --- he said he was going over to Josh's."

Did I switch from knowing Tim was going to Josh's, maybe for a few hours, to not knowing for a moment or two, and then to knowing it again? I don't think so.

Knowledge you have no access to whatsoever sounds sketchy, I agree, but according to the movies there's hypnosis and therapy. Not the most important case. Knowledge you have imperfect access to is so common, the examples pile up easily. Keeping a grocery list in your head, you might easily recall all but one of the items you intended to buy, and you have to really think to get the last. Again, I can't see describing that as knowing, then not knowing, and then knowing again. You know the whole time, but have trouble remembering, simple as that. And we do, a great deal of the time, readily recall what we know, as needed.

For real arguments against the requirement that to know you must also know you know, see Williamson, Knowledge and Its Limits (which I've only just started reading).

Because each of you seem quite strongly realist about worldly objects, no enacted constructions for you guys, if you want to know what colour the house is, you just look. Anyone saying it's blue is wrong because it's white, etc. — Isaac

Okay, now, that's an appalling mischaracterization of what's going on here.

I'm responsible for this current round of the discussion going in the direction it has, and from the beginning I left open the possibility that the explanation for "Pat's house is white" counting as true is just that this is what people by and large say, that there is an implicit convention, no more. "Just look" was offered, by @Banno if memory serves, as another thing people do that has bearing on the question. It hasn't been accepted as some official argument settler, certainly not by me. I have in fact tried to bring the discussion right up to the point where there is such direct disagreement over a purported fact, and I have been reluctant to describe this simplistically as one person saying something true and the other false. I have tried to be scrupulous about this, while still pushing the conversation toward such questions being unavoidable. (If you've given 1000 4-year-olds the wug test, how many of them answered "wugs"? Don't know? Why not? Oh yeah -- the only way to know is to actually go and look at the data.)

I have also described the process of model building as beginning with collecting some data, going and checking the layout of Pat's neighborhood, but only because I don't know how else model building might be done. I have noted that the procedures I described do not guarantee fidelity in the model, and that this could matter when it is put to use. I tried to lay this all out in just enough detail that anyone could find something to criticize. I've been trying not to hide my assumptions, but point them out, even where I can find no option but to rely on them. We are capable of collecting data aren't we? Or should we quit bothering since it's all enactively constructed anyway...

@Srap Tasmaner has Pat's house as white. Let's say it seems green to me, and it seems grey to you. No amount of agreement between us regarding what colour Pat's house seems to us to be is capable (under a hard realist assumption) of yielding facts about what colour Pat's house actually is. It's immune to our agreement about the colour it seems to us to be. — Isaac

Gee, this sounds rather like the scenario I was asking for input about. And you seem to be providing some sort of account here, of roughly the sort I asked for. And you know all this how exactly? Have you done research to determine whether this is so? Did you check wikipedia? Or did you sit in your armchair and reason your way to these conclusions?

There's more to an explanation than a kind of sub-level of more foundational grounds. — Isaac

Usually, conventionally, yes, but does not remain that case, in which an explanation serves as a proof? Granted, a highly restricted explanatory domain, to be sure, but can’t it be said that proofs are explanations given from the most foundational ground relative to that which is explained?

more foundational grounds doesn't exhaust the sort of thing an 'explanation' might be. "It just feels that way" is such an answer, for example. — Isaac

.....to which I would argue that “it just feels that way”, while indeed a foundational ground and may be an answer, it is difficult to suppose as an explanation. Here I would agree that there is more to an explanation than this kind of foundational ground.

We can leave it here, if you like. You’ve got a lot of answering to do otherwise, so...thanks for taking the time.

Did I switch from knowing Tim was going to Josh's, maybe for a few hours, to not knowing for a moment or two, and then to knowing it again? I don't think so. — Srap Tasmaner

This is interesting, and getting closer to our disagreement. I think I could go along with this and your grocery list example with the understanding that the "objects" (the list, the propositions, the beliefs) can change when we're not authoring them, and we are free from following them when they are cued (but generally it's habit which forces us to continue using the script -- it's just easier than to continually scrutinize every belief I might have).

Yes, I'd say I think that we still know that Tim was going to Josh, and we know our list. Our immediate expressions or experiences of ourselves aren't the arbiter of our habits. Perhaps, depending upon how we want to construe belief, we could say that we stopped believing Tim was going to Josh's because we couldn't remember, but upon remembering (recalling the script, the line, due to whatever it is that made us believe that) we do believe that -- while we knew it the entire time (there has to be some way we have a memory, after all -- I don't want to deny memory, only modify the picture we're using a bit).

I think that with our respective metaphors, the thing I'd modify in using yours is that there are Gremlins in our library of knowledge which rewrite our scripts from time to time when we're not looking, or burn them, or whatever it is that makes them change. Also, I'd say there's some kind of veil involved -- we don't always immediately know what we know, we aren't transparent to ourselves. We have to figure it out along the way (and re-figure it out along the way). And, for some of us, the Gremlins do more than rewrite or blot out scripts -- some of them rebuild the entire house that is our metaphor for our mind.

***

Another way to think of this -- I have a handful of books that I've read more than once. They are the sort of books which retain their value regardless of my current circumstances. When I read them it's as if there's more or something else there than was there the first time about, though the strings certainly haven't changed. It's like every reading is itself a writing, is how I've explained that before. Though perhaps we could say that the words simply faded and I'm putting the words back into my box of propositions I call "the world" or "the book", a copy of the book. (going back to Galileo's metaphor for the mind here :D )

I'm not sure if this is all making sense or not -- it seems to me that the one thing I'd find difficult to let go of, in our conversation, is that our memories, our beliefs, morph or dissipate. And that our environments change so much that we really do have to be able to let go of beliefs, even if there are a handful of beliefs we repeat to ourselves and keep.


So, at least, we agree with these sorts of phenomena. Our general pictures we're using wouldn't count against one another here, I don't think. Let's see if what I've laid out above helps or hurts chances of understanding between ourselves.

if you want to know what colour the house is, you just look. Anyone saying it's blue is wrong because it's white, etc. — Isaac


Okay, now, that's an appalling mischaracterization of what's going on here. — Srap Tasmaner

I trust others. It's not a belief derived from rationalistic impulses to prove myself the one who knew about the mind. — Moliere

I see. So you might say "that's not how memory works" and some of that discomfort is because what's being proposed doesn't cohere with what you've learned from the people you trust. That makes sense (if I've understood it right?)

you know more about the studies on memory, right? — Moliere

I'm not an expert on memory, so don't trust me over your other trusted sources. Like most academics I know my specialism and any matters which touch it and then I'm probably about 30 years behind in anything else! But yes, as far as my understanding goes, memories are not stored like data files, they're more like rehearsals for some behaviour that might be required later. We might experience 'searching' for where I put my keys, but in the brain it's more like rehearsing doing so again. There's not a 'fact' of where I put my keys encoded somewhere which we retrieve.

I'm fine with, in the end, the mind being inconsistent too. So, yes, it's quite possible for Srap Tasmaner 's impressions to be true at the same time as mine, even though I'm expressing discomfort at that particular notion. — Moliere

That's very similar to the way I feel about it. I can't see any reason why our folk understandings of how our minds work would be consistent, I can even think of a reason why they ought to be.

if you want to know what colour the house is, you just look. Anyone saying it's blue is wrong because it's white, etc. — Isaac


Okay, now, that's an appalling mischaracterization of what's going on here. — Srap Tasmaner

You said...

what justifies your choice is that you know what color Pat's house is; it's the same with including "Pat's house is white" in your linguistic model. If you're not sure, when it comes time to paint or to pick your predicate, you can go and look, or ask someone you believe knows. — Srap Tasmaner

...and also...

those that have seen it know it to be grey; I possess slightly less knowledge of Pat's house than some do, but I can readily extend my acquaintance with the shared model by being informed or seeing the back door for myself. — Srap Tasmaner

None of which is to contradict the fact that my representation is a mischaracterisation (only you can know that), but it is to contradict the idea that it's 'appalling'. I've almost directly quoted you with the 'just look' aspect and you've at the very least been pointing in the direction of knowledge being obtainable via our empirical investigations.

Moving on though...

I have also described the process of model building as beginning with collecting some data, going and checking the layout of Pat's neighborhood, but only because I don't know how else model building might be done. — Srap Tasmaner

You were given just such an option with...

Our models are projective, anticipatory. Models change our interactions with our world and thus are thus reciprocally changed by the world they modify. — Joshs

...that models are anticipatory, not recollective. That models predict and enact those predictions, not collect and curate passive data. You've rejected that approach. You're not obliged to follow it, of course, but you can't play the card of "I don't know where this might go, just laying out some questions" at the same time as dismissing some of those answers out of the box.

If you want to build a model of the way model-building works (with regards to the role of language) but you want to do so only from a particular set of presuppositions, then I think it's not an unreasonable question for someone to ask "why those ones?" - which is all I'm doing here.

So whilst I completely agree about the gap between phenomena and recorded mental events, I can't see that it explains the analysis of phenomena as if it were amenable to rational argument. Is there a reason your lived experience ought to cohere rationally with Srap's and Moliere's? — Isaac

Assuming you are still baffled and this isn't a rhetorical gesture. A common reference point would probably be the idea that perceptions are cognitive endeavours, are linguistically mediated in a delayed fashion, and are definitely theory ladened. So's the more general (though perhaps physiologically derivative) category of interpretation. Being able to puzzle out commitments and background assumptions is what, I believe, this kind of discussion is particularly good at. Please forgive me if I'm wrong, but I believe you are promoting a discussion of the same character by trying to tease out the other discussants background assumptions while holding what they (we) believe as an object of (noncommital) scrutiny. By the looks of it, it's the same device.

If it's genuine bafflement, and not a rhetorical strategy, I don't think I can help you understand the discussion more than that.

I see. So you might say "that's not how memory works" and some of that discomfort is because what's being proposed doesn't cohere with what you've learned from the people you trust. That makes sense (if I've understood it right?) — Isaac

Bingo!

I mean, sure, introspection is a part of my thinking (in the sense that we probably can't help but to introspect when thinking about the mind), but I agree that introspection is notoriously faulty in determining the truth about ourselves, and especially faulty in determining any general feature about the mind rather than some specific feature of my mind. And, yes, the discomfort is one of not-cohering with what I've gleaned about how the mind works so far. But I don't have a deep rational argument for these things as much as I'm sharing impressions and looking for where we disagree with the eventual hope of building conceptual bridges.

After all, since we're not experts, what even is the level of description? It's big-picture, it's folk, and it's impressionistic even as we think on and reference properly scientific descriptions -- even if you are a cognitive scientist, the audience (including myself, I'm a chemist) of our conversation makes it so that this isn't a scientific conversation since we all have such a wide array of backgrounds, and we're not united in some institution trying to generate knowledge. That's just the sort of conceptual muck that philosophy is perfectly suited for untangling (or, at least, demonstrating an inability to untangle).

I'm not an expert on memory, so don't trust me over your other trusted sources. Like most academics I know my specialism and any matters which touch it and then I'm probably about 30 years behind in anything else! But yes, as far as my understanding goes, memories are not stored like data files, they're more like rehearsals for some behaviour that might be required later. We might experience 'searching' for where I put my keys, but in the brain it's more like rehearsing doing so again. There's not a 'fact' of where I put my keys encoded somewhere which we retrieve. — Isaac

Cool.

To get us back on track to truth --

While belief falls into that quagmire, I think small-t truth escapes it, where big-T truth doesn't -- and I've been attempting, at least, to reduce substantive theories of truth to big-T stories about truth: a kind of Fictionalism about substantive theories of truth, while maintaining the truth-aptness of utterances.

Given that we're in the wild-wild west of concepts, small-t truth and some charity might be the only thing holding our conversation together, especially when it comes to something as amorphous and difficult to describe as the mind, in general.