Perhaps I'm being told that I can't really believe it's warm out, given the temperature?… I can't believe something I also acknowledge isn't true. — J
At the least some beliefs are about facts — Banno
It's part attitude, part emotion, part intent, part disposition, but not wholly any or all or some grouping of these. — Banno
the difficulty we have giving a satisfactory explanation of what's actually going on shouldn't blind us to the fact that it is our experience, it is something we do. — J
Maybe we should say that a simple claim like "There are bacteria on my left shoe" is capable of multiple interpretations, ranging from "I believe so" to "I damn well know it," depending on context. — J
Indeed, if you wanted to call the [a-ha!] experience by a different name that doesn't invoke "understanding" at all, that's fine. — J
"I believe there are bacteria on my left shoe" is simply the assertion, "There are bacteria on my left shoe." An assertion is no more certain than a belief, so degrees of certainty wouldn't be an issue. — J
But it seems equally odd to call such a belief a disposition. A disposition to do what? To confirm certain statements about shoe bacteria? — Banno
I can name two distinct experiences: (purporting to) understand X; and saying (to myself or others), "I understand X,"perhaps followed by some performance of this. — J
we should treat "understanding" as a cluster of concepts and (perhaps) events, and not try to generalize more than necessary about it. — J
But I could do all that to myself, in which case I am the one who gets to say whether I (believe I) understand. — J
You're right that we couldn't say someone had understood without the behavioral signs, but that doesn't mean they haven't; it just means we'd have no way of knowing; we couldn't say. — J
All intentions are driven by a feeling-about-something. All conscious experience is - in some form or another - a judgement-about-something as a means to navigate the world…. None of the above can be absent of emotional content. — I like sushi
we need to distinguish between beliefs held in the face of evidence and beliefs held without any concern for evidence — I like sushi
If you do not know why you did something what makes you think your justification for something you did means anything? — I like sushi
We can automatically react to something and try to understand why, but that is not the reason 'we' did it because 'we' didn't do it. This is not to say there is not an underlying process, just that it was not a conscious one and therefore not an act. — I like sushi
I do not want to get bogged down in arguments about free-will and what that means to different people at all. — I like sushi
Pretty much what I was getting at with "background belief," wouldn't you agree? The important thing is that a background belief really can't be said to cause anything. — J
Let's say someone tells a joke, and at first I don't "get it." Then all at once, I do. I have now understood the joke. Are you saying that until I continue in some fashion -- perhaps by making a witty reply -- I can't judge that I have understood the joke? Why would that be? — J
deontology doesn't have to overlook 'the human practices of mistakes, reconsideration, excuses", — Banno
The neuroscience is not yet up to the task, and may never be. — Banno
I'm not sure I follow your idea of "lowering" a belief from a disposition to an emotion, although treating them as dispositions may overcome one objection to treating them as emotions - that an emotion is an occasional thing, I am angry now, and will calm down later...whereas a belief endures even when not considered. — Banno
One still believes that the Earth is round, even when not giving it conscious consideration. — Banno
I'm thinking of what are often called background beliefs. It's a truism that I continue to believe in, say, the theory of evolution regardless of whether I happen to be thinking about it at the time. — J
Why would it follow that, because we don't judge a disposition prior to an act, said disposition could not affect whether the act took place or not? (And yes, I'm with you in believing we need to be very careful about invoking "cause" here.) — J
Would you say that dispositions, possibly including beliefs, can be distinguished from thoughts on the basis that they may affect our actions, our "going on," without having to be consciously entertained? And in that sense, are not "mental processes" at all? Something like this seems a plausible reading of Witt. — J
Nothing is purely emotional or purely rational. It is more or less about whether or not we are attending to something. — I like sushi
I’m interested in the idea of a blended state, where a belief is seen as consisting of both cognition and feelings. — Banno
On the other hand, he is thinking about "meaning-objects", so there ought to be a similarity of some kind [between the feeling examples and the toothache]. — Ludwig V
Now is it wrong in this sense [the sense of having tooth decay without the common accompaniments] to say that I have toothache but don't know it? — (p.23)
On the other hand it obviously makes use of the word "to know" in a new way. If you wish to examine how this expression is used it is helpful to ask yourself "what in this case is the process of getting to know like?" "What do we call 'getting to know' or, 'finding out'?"
But the new expression misleads us by calling up pictures and analogies which make it difficult for us to go through with our convention.
Thus, by the expression "unconscious toothache" you may […] be misled into thinking that a stupendous discovery has been made, a discovery which in a sense altogether bewilders our understanding…. [T]he scientist will tell you that it is a proved fact that there is such a thing, and he will say it like a man who is destroying a common prejudice. He will say: "Surely it's quite simple; there are other things which you don't know of, and there can also be toothache which you don't know of. It is just a new discovery".
The scientific method, as we know it, was not a model for Plato. Wittgenstein does not seem interested in Plato's own problems with analysis. There are the many times when the singular essence is sought for and not found. — Paine
But I wouldn't claim that the same is true of every philosopher since then. — Ludwig V
The point is that there is no way of comparing private sensations in a way that would allow us to classify a given sensation as either they same or different from another. — Ludwig V
. But the point of the example (language games) is to get us to see things in a different context and so differently. It's not really an exercise in logic at all. — Ludwig V
There is something [skeptics] are trying to express, but it is better expressed in another way. — Ludwig V
many people do follow the rules more often than not — Luke
Apologies if it is off the current topic and that it probably ignores the context of the preceding discussion. — Luke
Don't these remarks [about family resemblances] invite distracting arguments about whether they are factually correct? — Ludwig V
It seems to me that the limits to analysis being put forward by Wittgenstein are arguing for a particular set of facts over others. — Paine
The work does not solve the problem but shows how it is surrounded by other problems. — Paine
he was not assigning the problem of the good to being simply another case of craving generality. — Paine
Using the individual soul to measure the body politic is not done by Wittgenstein — Paine
I had the impression that his explanation of the temptattion is the only answer that I found in the text. I must have missed something. — Ludwig V
He doesn't seem to take into account that a description can be an explanation and can give us a new view of what we are already looking. — Ludwig V
I do think Wittgenstein is looking for a way to help the solipsist find an answer to a problem: — Paine