JTB: the myth of propositions and the Gettier problem

[Consul]

By the way, even if "knowledge" is simply defined as "true belief" (as done by Crispin Sartwell), the question of justification doesn't disappear. For if to know that p is to truly believe that p, then people don't know that they know that p, and aren't justified in claiming to know that p unless they have evidence for p.

[Consul]

As I said, everyday talk about feelings, thoughts, beliefs, desires, hopes and wishes is unproblematic. And it can be serious in the sense that we can use the words involved seriously. My point is that philosophers - and sometimes psychologists - can misunderstand such talk. Hence questions such as 'how does the mind relate to the body?', 'what is knowledge?' and 'what does it mean to believe something?' The everyday explanation of the ways we use the words involved is not even considered. That's not 'scientific'.

So what exactly is your ontological position in the philosophy of mind? ("-ism" labels are helpful!)

Is cognitive psychology/science unscientific by being the sophisticated version of "folk psychology" (with its propositional attitudes and its causal explanations of action/behavior in terms of them)?

[Consul]

David Lewis argues that…

QUOTE>
"Folk psychology has evolved through thousands of years of close observation of one another. It is not the last word in psychology, but we should be confident that so far as it goes—and it does go far—it is largely right."

(Lewis, David. "Reduction of Mind." 1994. Reprinted in Papers in Metaphysics and Epistemology, 291-324. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999. p. 298)

"Think of common-sense psychology as a term-introducing scientific theory, though one invented long before there was any such institution as professional science. Collect all the platitudes you can think of regarding the causal relations of mental states, sensory stimuli, and motor responses. Perhaps we can think of them as having the form:

When someone is in so-and-so combination of mental states and receives sensory stimuli of so-and-so kind, he tends with so-and-so probability to be caused thereby to go into so-and-so mental states and produce so-and-so motor responses.

Add also all the platitudes to the effect that one mental state falls under another – 'toothache is a kind of pain', and the like. Perhaps there are platitudes of other forms as well. Include only platitudes which are common knowledge among us – everyone knows them, everyone knows that everyone else knows them, and so on. For the meanings of our words are common knowledge, and I am going to claim that names of mental states derive their meaning from these platitudes."

(Lewis, David. "Psychophysical and Theoretical Identifications." 1966. Reprinted in Papers in Metaphysics and Epistemology, 248-261. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999. pp. 257-8)
<QUOTE

[Consul]

David Lewis argues that…

QUOTE>
"Folk psychology has evolved through thousands of years of close observation of one another. It is not the last word in psychology, but we should be confident that so far as it goes—and it does go far—it is largely right."

(Lewis, David. "Reduction of Mind." 1994. Reprinted in Papers in Metaphysics and Epistemology, 291-324. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999. p. 298)
…
<QUOTE

Some would reply that folk psychology has instrumental value as a useful explanatory tool, but its usefulness doesn't depend on the existence of its theoretical posits such as beliefs and desires. The mental items postulated by folk psychology aren't real items, and ascriptions of propositional attitudes to ourselves and other animals are justified merely as cases of "as-if-ism". Propositional attitudes are useful fictions.

"Fictionalism about a region of discourse can provisionally be characterized as the view that claims made within that discourse are not best seen as aiming at literal truth but are better regarded as a sort of ‘fiction’."

Fictionalism: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/fictionalism/

[Consul]

"Fictionalism about a region of discourse can provisionally be characterized as the view that claims made within that discourse are not best seen as aiming at literal truth but are better regarded as a sort of ‘fiction’."

Fictionalism: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/fictionalism/

Note that to say that fictional discourse doesn't aim at literal truth is not to say that the words or concepts used therein aren't used literally!
For example, when Sherlock Holmes is said to be a detective, he is said to be a detective in the literal sense of the term.

[Consul]

"Fictionalism about a region of discourse can provisionally be characterized as the view that claims made within that discourse are not best seen as aiming at literal truth but are better regarded as a sort of ‘fiction’."

Fictionalism: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/fictionalism/

However, the ontological question is whether fictional objects are nonexistent objects or some kind of existent objects. I think fictional objects or persons are simply nonexistent ones that aren't part of (any) reality: fictionalism about Xs = antirealism/nihilism about Xs. Uttering sentences such as "There are fictional superheroes" is free from any ontological commitment to superheroes.

[Peter Holmes]

As I said, everyday talk about feelings, thoughts, beliefs, desires, hopes and wishes is unproblematic. And it can be serious in the sense that we can use the words involved seriously. My point is that philosophers - and sometimes psychologists - can misunderstand such talk. Hence questions such as 'how does the mind relate to the body?', 'what is knowledge?' and 'what does it mean to believe something?' The everyday explanation of the ways we use the words involved is not even considered. That's not 'scientific'.

So what exactly is your ontological position in the philosophy of mind? ("-ism" labels are helpful!)

Is cognitive psychology/science unscientific by being the sophisticated version of "folk psychology" (with its propositional attitudes and its causal explanations of action/behavior in terms of them)?

Thanks for this - and your other posts. Just a couple of responses for now.

What we misleadingly call an abstract noun - because words are real things, so 'abstract noun' is a misattribution - is not the name of a thing of some kind that, therefore, may or may not exist, and that, if it does exist, we can describe.

So it's a mistake to ask whether what we call the mind exists. Or, to be more cautious: pending evidence for the existence of any so-called abstract or non-physical thing, belief that it exists is irrational. If asked to ism-ise: I'm a (methodological) physicalist, materialist or naturalist.

So my postition is that, when use 'mentalist' words - to talk about our selves or our minds - words such as think, feel, believe, judge, decide, and so on - we're joining in the language games we've learned from the cradle. So when we 'share a thought', we know and can explain what that means.

I think the nightmare of a private place, necessarliy cut off from my own and everyone else's body and the world - the 'mind' - is a hangover from religious dualism. The mind is just the soul secularised.

The expression 'folk psychology' strikes me as patronising, though it may not be intended to imply condescension. You homely folks talk about having ideas - but we psychologists investigate what's really going on.

[Consul]

So what exactly is your ontological position in the philosophy of mind? ("-ism" labels are helpful!)
Is cognitive psychology/science unscientific by being the sophisticated version of "folk psychology" (with its propositional attitudes and its causal explanations of action/behavior in terms of them)?

What we misleadingly call an abstract noun - because words are real things, so 'abstract noun' is a misattribution - is not the name of a thing of some kind that, therefore, may or may not exist, and that, if it does exist, we can describe.

So it's a mistake to ask whether what we call the mind exists. Or, to be more cautious: pending evidence for the existence of any so-called abstract or non-physical thing, belief that it exists is irrational. If asked to ism-ise: I'm a (methodological) physicalist, materialist or naturalist.

So my postition is that, when use 'mentalist' words - to talk about our selves or our minds - words such as think, feel, believe, judge, decide, and so on - we're joining in the language games we've learned from the cradle. So when we 'share a thought', we know and can explain what that means.

I think the nightmare of a private place, necessarliy cut off from my own and everyone else's body and the world - the 'mind' - is a hangover from religious dualism. The mind is just the soul secularised.

The expression 'folk psychology' strikes me as patronising, though it may not be intended to imply condescension. You homely folks talk about having ideas - but we psychologists investigate what's really going on.

In psychology and the philosophy of mind the term "folk psychology" isn't used pejoratively. (An alternative term is "commonsense psychology".)

Types of linguistically abstract nouns are ontologically (platonistically) abstract items, whereas tokens of them are ontologically concrete, i.e. mental or physical, items.

Anyway, linguistically speaking, "mind" is not an abstract noun like "music" but a concrete count noun like "ball".

It does make sense to ask if minds exist. Of course, this question cannot be answered meaningfully unless it is clear what the noun "mind" means in our philosophical context:

Minds can be mental (spiritual) substances as postulated by mentalist substance monism and substance dualism; but minds can as well be nonsubstantial complexes of mental occurrents (facts/states/events/processes) and mental attributes (properties/activities/abilities). In this second sense—which is the one in which I use "mind"—, having a mind means being the subject or substrate of such a mental complex.

This second definition is neutral with regard to the ontological question of the mind-body/brain relationship, because it doesn't anticipate any particular answer to it.

[Consul]

Knowledge is always knowledge to a particular person, at a particular time. It requires (a) that the person have a particular belief at a particular time, (b) that the person considers that belief justified at that particular time, and (c) that the person judges the belief to be true at that particular time.

Of course, my knowledge isn't your knowledge; but in order for a belief to be knowledge it must be justified and true, and not just be deemed justified and true by the believer. Otherwise there wouldn't be any epistemic objectivity. A belief isn't knowledge just because the believer believes it to be knowledge. Knowledge is one thing, and knowledge-belief is another.

Re "important information," you seem to not be understanding that it could always turn out to be the case at some later time that we have information that we would have deemed to be "important information" for assigning T to some P at some earlier time. So if we hinge the definition of knowledge on this, we can never be sure that we have knowledge at present . . . which should obviously be a problem from employment of the concept of knowledge.

All putative knowledge of logically or ontologically non-necessary, contingent facts is fallible and defeasible by new information or evidence. Karl Popper calls all scientific knowledge (apart from logical or mathematical knowledge) Vermutungswissen/conjectural knowledge.

[Consul]

QUOTE>
"§12. "I know" seems to describe a state of affairs which guarantees what is known, guarantees it as a fact. One always forgets the expression "I thought I knew"."

"§13. For it is not as though the proposition "It is so" could be inferred from someone else's utterance: "I know it is so". Nor from the utterance together with its not being a lie. – But can't I infer "It is so" from my own utterance "I know etc."? Yes; and also "There is a hand there" follows from the proposition "He knows that there's a hand there". But from his utterance "I know . . ." it does not follow that he does know it."

"§505. It is always by favour of Nature that one knows something."

(Wittgenstein, Ludwig. On Certainty. Edited by G. E. M. Anscombe and G. H. von Wright. Translated by Denis Paul and G. E. M. Anscombe. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1969.)
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[Terrapin Station]

Of course, my knowledge isn't your knowledge; but in order for a belief to be knowledge it must be justified and true, and not just be deemed justified and true by the believer. Otherwise there wouldn't be any epistemic objectivity.

As indeed there is no epistemic objectivity. That's a category errors. Neither beliefs, justifications nor truth value judgments are objective.

A belief isn't knowledge just because the believer believes it to be knowledge.

It's knowledge because they have the belief, they consider the belief justified, and they judge it to be true.

[Terrapin Station]

Oops "error" should be singular above.

[Peter Holmes]

Of course, my knowledge isn't your knowledge; but in order for a belief to be knowledge it must be justified and true, and not just be deemed justified and true by the believer. Otherwise there wouldn't be any epistemic objectivity.

As indeed there is no epistemic objectivity. That's a category errors. Neither beliefs, justifications nor truth value judgments are objective.

A belief isn't knowledge just because the believer believes it to be knowledge.

It's knowledge because they have the belief, they consider the belief justified, and they judge it to be true.

So, did people know that the earth is flat? Or did they just believe it?

The problem with a location-criterion for objectivity and subjectivity is that the claim that there is no epistemic objectivity detonates itself. How can that be known?

[Terrapin Station]

So, did people know that the earth is flat? Or did they just believe it?

Yes, they knew that the Earth was flat. Which means that they believed it, they felt it was a justified belief, and they judged it to be true.

Again, it's important to not conflate knowledge (and truth) with facts in the states of affairs sense.

The problem with a location-criterion for objectivity and subjectivity is that the claim that there is no epistemic objectivity detonates itself. How can that be known?

It's known via being a belief that one feels is justified and that one judges to be true. That's how anything is known.

It's also a fact, where that has nothing to do with knowledge, in that beliefs do not occur independently of minds.

[Peter Holmes]

If subjectivity refers to what goes on inside brains, and objectivity to what goes on outside brains, then the distinction itself evaporates. In reality, there are no such distinctions.