Francois Tremblay

No problem.


I don't like the word "belief", but I'll assume you mean a proposition.


There is no logical error in your example, but that was not equivalent to your previous example. Your previous example was purported to show how one's misinterpretation (in the case in question, someone suffering from delirium tremens) could invalidate the idea of "true belief" alone. Maybe I'm missing something, but you seem to have changed tracks here.

If that is still what you are trying to show, your example fails because you have omitted to indicate the context in which P3 was made. While Smith's proposition that "there are rats under the porch" might very well be true, it is invalid because it does not follow the context, and therefore it is unreasonable from the context of that one perception to label it as true.

It would be akin to an atheist justifying his atheism on the basis of "feeling in his heart" that he is correct : the truth of his proposition does not make the method any more valid (in fact, we know his proposition is true because we have used the correct method ourselves : it is purely an exterior determinism).

[ January 29, 2002: Message edited by: Franc28 ]</p>

Adrian Selby

One problem I can foresee with this reply Franc is that you are adding to the definition of truth that a belief about X is true if and only if X, where that belief is not the result of delirium tremens. How many other ways might we have to qualify what constitutes a valid belief to start with? Are all valid beliefs simply beliefs that are not believed while suffering from DT?, regardless of whether they are also subsequently purporting to be true beliefs?

Perhaps your re-qualification adds to P2, namely a belief is true if and only if the thing believed is true and the belief is not held while suffering from DT.

Well, at the very least, my worry with this kind of qualification is that by definition, while suffering DT one cannot have a true belief. After all, one might think one sees all kinds of things while suffering DT, in fact, not just rats, but everything that can be perceived as one goes about one's normal life. But if you're saying the context determines whether the belief can be true, the sufferer can have no true beliefs while suffering.

Adrian

Bill Snedden

Doesn't this sort of render these types of Gettier objections sort of "pseudo-problems?"

Russell's analysis of the relationship between existential quantifiers and the value of propositions containing them would seem to me to indicate that the separation of the quantifiers from the actual individual (or particular, or "complex name" as you indicate) renders any quantification of truth value for that proposition moot.

In other words, it seems to me that one cannot separate "Jones" from "a man with ten coins in his pocket named Jones" without compromising one's ability to describe accurately the contents of a belief that "A man with ten coins in his pocket will get the job".

To return to the problem ManM posed, it doesn't seem to accurately reflect the contents of Smith's belief to suggest that he believed that "a man with ten coins in his pocket will get the job." He obviously had a specific man in mind. It would appear to be the separation of the existential quantifier ("man with ten coins in his pocket") from the particular ("Jones") that generates the apparent problem. Recognizing that the conjunction is a necessary component of the belief would seem to render the Gettier objection moot.

Or am I just whacked?

Regards,

Bill Snedden

James Still

<strong>...it doesn't seem to accurately reflect the contents of Smith's belief to suggest that he believed that "a man with ten coins in his pocket will get the job." He obviously had a specific man in mind. It would appear to be the separation of the existential quantifier ("man with ten coins in his pocket") from the particular ("Jones") that generates the apparent problem. Recognizing that the conjunction is a necessary component of the belief would seem to render the Gettier objection moot.</strong>

I remember when I studied epistemology in college that Gettier problems were always a bit fishy. My professor (as all good professors do) tried to portray them in the best light and insisted that they were genuine dilemmas for knowledge seekers. But Russell's existential quantifiers in my opinion do anticipate Gettier. Take a look at the classic problem Gettier posed in his 1963 paper:

Based on this evidence the teacher forms the belief that "a student in my class drives a Ferrari." As it turns out Mr. Nogot ("no got", get it? was lying but Havit does happen to own a Ferrari. Therefore the belief was true but it was not a justified true belief -- it was not gained in the manner that Plato insisted belief formation must occur for there to be knowledge.

If memory servers, Gettier was a colleague of Plantinga and he presented his problems to the latter during a coffee break one day. Gettier was going before the tenure board soon and worried that he hadn't published enough to secure tenure so he was looking for something interesting he could publish. Plantinga found them intriguing and urged him to publish his problems. Did Gettier unwittingly help Plantinga form his own thoughts on warrant or properly basic beliefs? Any historians of philosophy in this forum?

Francois Tremblay

I think you missed the part where I talked about misinterpretation. My point was that naive realism is incompatible with truth. delirium tremens is only one context where misinterpretation can be more frequent. The bent stick example is another.

You are looking for an "easy way" to find knowledge, but there is no such way, except to follow reason in all its prescriptions.

Clutch

Bill, you are not just whacked, but neither does this solve the problem. Insofar as Smith believes that a man named Jones with ten coins in his pocket will get the job, he believes something false -- but justified (tho I know some people here are denying this last bit). But if he validly infers from this belief the further belief merely that a man with ten coins in his pocket will get the job, he now believes something true. Presumably, if you know that valid inference is truth-preserving, you're justified in believing anything you validly infer from anything you're justified in believing, so... badda boom.

And again, the point of the theory of descriptions is that expressions of the form "the F" are not object-dependent, as the jargon has it. The object you have "in mind" does not figure in the truth-conditions of the relevant proposition; at the bottom level of semantic representation, all you have are a bunch of propositional functions -- no individuals at all.

Or so says my Magic 8-Ball...

Adrian Selby

Sorry Franc I'm not sure what you're getting at.

I took you to be pointing out the difference between the set of P+C's on the one hand and the DT-rats example, and saying that the one was not identical to the other because the context (The man has DT's) is not present in the abstract premises and conclusions.

If this is wrong, let me know, but with this interpretation, I'm saying that if the Tarskian truth definition inherent in the set of premises and conclusions is valid, isn't the need for context going to complicate a possible definition of what truth is. Perhaps the conclusion is that there is no easy definition of truth to be had.

I'm not personally looking for a naive realist view of knowledge, but I would be interested to find out how you'd qualify a definition of what truth is that avoids the problems of truth being defined as justified true belief.

Perhaps it should read, a belief is true if and only if that to which the belief refers is true, or is a fact, and that the context in which the belief is held is taken into account.

I'm sure you can see my difficulties here.

Adrian

Francois Tremblay

My point is that you must realize that your abstract method is not realistic. While you can from a transcendent point of view declare that "X is true therefore anyone who says X is true, is right", that is not how it works in the real world. We do not know a priori that X is true.

In the real world we must use reason and rational methods to arrive at a proposition with higher degrees of possibility. To say that "truth is correspondance to reality" is only an implication of the objectivity of reality, not a statement of method.

And in short, there is a point to which you can abstract something so much that it becomes useless.

[ January 30, 2002: Message edited by: Franc28 ]</p>

Adrian Selby

""X is true therefore anyone who says X is true, is right", that is not how it works in the real world. We do not know a priori that X is true."

That's not the way the truth definition is being couched. A belief about X is true if and only if X is true.

Nobody knows X is true a priori, but if it were, then a belief about it will be true. Nobody is saying anything definitive about X, only about the status of beliefs.

Your quote above is putting the definition 'in reverse'

Adrian

Francois Tremblay

That's a rather vague rebuttal which does not seem any different from the argument you presented before. Once again, I don't see how you could propose, without a transcendent viewpoint, to confirm that "X is true" by simple-minded arithmetic.

[ January 31, 2002: Message edited by: Franc28 ]</p>