Beliefs are things which Believers have. What they are and whether they have any rhyme or reason to them, or whether can be given a propositional form, is an ideographic matter dependent on the Believer in question. No 'puzzles', logical or philosophical, can arise in connection with beliefs unless we believe they can- which is our problem, not a problem for Logic or Metaphysics.
Kripke, famously took a different view-
Suppose Pierre is a normal French speaker who lives in France
in which case I believe he leaps around on the banks of the Seine attempting to bite the hindlegs of frogs. This is actually a more reasonable belief to have than that Pierre, or any one else, has beliefs which can be stated as propositions- i.e. statements which are either true or false. If a Belief has this quality then it is always 'informative' because we know that if that Belief exists there are exactly two possible states of the world. One in which the belief is true and one in which it isn't. The problem is that beliefs, like preferences, are 'epistemic'- i.e. they change as the knowledge base changes. Leibniz's law (identity of indiscernibles) does not apply to them. Thus even if everything true about one belief is true about another belief, they are not the same belief. Thus, if two followers of Mahatma Gandhi- one Hindu, the other Christian- have exactly the same beliefs, they belong to different Faiths. In Sanskrit we would say, their 'Vigyan' is the same but their 'Matam' (dogma) is different. Modus tollens can't be applied in this case. I can't say 'Kumarappa has the same beliefs as Gandhi. Gandhi is Hindu. Kumarappa must be Hindu.' Why? It is a fact that Kumarappa was Christian. I have committed the 'masked man' or 'intensional' fallacy.
This is what Kripke proceeds to do in his notorious 'puzzle about belief'.
(Pierre) speaks not a word of English or of any other language except French. Of course he has heard of that famous distant city, London (which he of course calls 'Londres') though he himself has never left France. On the basis of what he has heard of London, he is inclined to think that it is pretty. So he says, in French, "Londres est jolie." On the basis of his sincere French utterance, we will conclude:
that he bites the legs off frogs. After all, sincere French utterances only emanate from the mouths of people who are masticating the legs of amphibians. Such at any rate is my firm and settled belief.
(4) Pierre believes that London is pretty.
Nonsense! French people are incapable of believing anything because they are too busy devouring the legs of frogs. Even if this were not the case, no belief has a propositional form. Believing London is pretty does not preclude believing it is ugly or fat or has a quality of fugitive umami like unto the more nimble type of frog.
I am supposing that Pierre satisfies all criteria for being a normal French speaker, in particular, that he satisfies whatever criteria we usually use to judge that a Frenchman (correctly) uses 'est jolie' to attribute pulchritude and uses 'Londres'-standardly-as a name of London.
Rubbish! Everyone knows- or should know- that 'normal French speakers' have no thoughts or beliefs though they may make French type noises from time to time in between biting the legs of frogs.
Later, Pierre, through fortunate or unfortunate vicissitudes, moves to England, in fact to London itself, though to an unattractive part of the city with fairly uneducated inhabitants. He, like most of his neighbors, rarely ever leaves this part of the city. None of his neighbors know any French, so he must learn English by 'direct method', without using any translation of English into French: by talking and mixing with the people he eventually begins to pick up English.
Impossible! No self-respecting Londoner would have anything to do with a dirty furriner who devours snails when no frogs are available. 'Wogs begin at Calais' is a sound English principle.
In particular, everyone speaks of the city, 'London', where they all live. Let us suppose for the moment- though we will see below that this is not crucial- that the local population are so uneducated that they know few of the facts that Pierre heard about London in France. Pierre learns from them everything they know about London, but there is little overlap with what he heard before. He learns, of course speaking English
in which case he must have given up his disgusting foreign diet. He is becoming almost human.
- to call the city he lives in 'London'. Pierre's surroundings are, as I said, unattractive, and he is unimpressed with most of the rest of what he happens to see. So he is inclined to assent to the English sentence: (5) London is not pretty. He has no inclination to assent to: (6) London is pretty. Of course he does not for a moment withdraw his assent from the French sentence, "Londres est jolie";
Only in the sense that nobody withdraws their assent from the sentence 'I am five years old' even after they turn six. It is simply the case that what was said then is no longer true.
he merely takes it for granted that the ugly city in which he is now stuck is distinct from the enchanting city he heard about in France.
Which is like what happened when the enchanting frog whose legs he tried to devour turned out to be Toulouse-Lautrec
But he has no inclination to change his mind for a moment about the city he stills calls 'Londres'. This, then, is the puzzle. If we consider Pierre's past background as a French speaker, his entire linguistic behavior, on the same basis as we would draw such a conclusion about many of his countrymen, supports the conclusion (4) above that he believes that London is pretty. On the other hand, after Pierre lived in London for some time, he did not differ from his neighbors-his French background aside-either in his knowledge of English or in his command of the relevant facts of local geography. His English vocabulary differs little from that of his neighbors. He, like them, rarely ventures from the dismal quarter of the city in which they all live. He, like them, knows that the city he lives in is called 'London' and knows a few other facts. Now Pierre's neighbors would surely be said to use 'London' as a name for London and to speak English. Since, as an English speaker, he does not differ at all from them, we should , say the same of him. But then, on the basis of his sincere assent to (5), we should conclude: (7) Pierre believes that London is not pretty. How can we describe this situation?
Easily. At one time he leapt about biting the legs off frogs by the banks of the Seine. At that time he thought London was pretty and had lots of lovely frogs. One day he accidentally bit the legs of Toulouse-Lautrec and was chased across the Channel by furious can-can dancers from the Moulin Rouge. Living in London, he gradually became almost human and stopped thinking London was pretty. Indeed, beauty of every sort had dimmed from his eyes. He became a Methodist and got a job with the Gas Board.
It seems undeniable that Pierre once believed that London is pretty-at least before he learned English. For at that time, he differed not at all from countless numbers of his countrymen, and we would have exactly the same grounds to say of him as of any of them that he believes that London is pretty: if any Frenchman who was both ignorant of English and never visited London believed that London is pretty, Pierre did. Nor does it have any plausibility to suppose, because of his later situation after he learns English, that Pierre should retroactively be judged never to have believed that London is pretty. To allow such ex post facto legislation would, as long as the future is uncertain, endanger our attributions of belief to all monolingual Frenchmen.
There is no 'ex post facto legislation' or 'withdrawing of assent'. As for our 'attributions of belief', they are dictated by our own stupidity or prejudice or inability to reason. Who gives a fuck if they are 'endangered'? Must the Secretary General of the United Nations intervene if my own fond beliefs about French people who accidentally bit the legs off Toulouse-Lautrec are threatened in some way?
We would be forced to say that Marie, a monolingual who firmly and sincerely asserts, "Londres est jolie," may or may not believe that London is pretty depending on the later vicissitudes of her career (if later she learns English and . . . , . . .).
No we wouldn't. What we would be forced to say is- 'Marie bit off the legs of Toulouse-Lautrec and then meanly shifted the blame onto Pierre.' Moreover, the person who would be doing the forcing would bear an uncanny resemblance to Asterix the Gaul.
No: Pierre, like Marie, believed that London is pretty when he was monolingual.
Kripke may believe so. I don't. This is because I firmly and sincerely believe French people leap around their beautiful land, biting the legs off frogs. True, sometimes they end up biting the legs off Toulouse-Lautrec, but that's probably the fault of Joan of Arc.
Should we say that Pierre, now that he lives in London and speaks English, no longer believes that London is pretty? Well, unquestionably Pierre once believed that London is pretty. So we would be forced to say that Pierre has changed his mind, has given up his previous belief. But has he really done so? Pierre is very set in his ways. He reiterates, with vigor, every assertion he has ever made in French. He says he has not changed his mind about anything, has not given up any belief. Can we say he is wrong about this?
We can say anything we like.
If we did not have the story of his living in London and his English utterances, on the basis of his normal command of French we would be forced to conclude that he still believes that London is pretty.
No. We would say 'Pierre had heard London was pretty. Then he moved to London and found it wasn't pretty at all. He got it into his head that 'Londres' wasn't London and that it must be pretty because people he knew had said so. Still, if we beat him sufficiently, he might come to acknowledge that Londres is just the French word for London in the same way that 'Sodom-on-the-Seine' is the English term for Paris.
And it does seem that this is correct. Pierre has neither changed his mind nor given up any belief he had in France. Similar difficulties beset any attempt to deny him his new belief.
On the basis of our beliefs. But we can change our beliefs so they are less stupid.
His French past aside, he is just like his friends in London. Anyone else, growing up in London with the same knowledge and beliefs that he expresses in England, we would undoubtedly judge to believe that London is not pretty. Can Pierre's French past nullify such a judgment? Can we say that Pierre, because of his French past, does not believe that (S)? Suppose an electric shock wiped out all his memories of the French language, what he learned in France, and his French past. He would then be exactly like his neighbors in London. He would have the same knowledge, beliefs, and linguistic capacities. We then presumably would be forced to say that Pierre believes that London is ugly if we say it of his neighbors. But surely no shock that destroys part of Pierre's memories and knowledge can give him a new belief.
That depends on the Believer. As a matter of fact, if I suffer amnesia as a result of a brain injury, I am likely to 'confabulate' new beliefs. What they are might be of interest to a depth psychologist or a neurologist. I imagine myself waking up in a hospital bed. The Doctor asks me my name. I can't remember it. I instinctively clutch at my genitals and discover I have a tiny todger. Who could I be? The answer is obvious. I am Donald Trump. Then I look in the mirror. Clearly Vivek Ramaswamy has dyed my skin to match his own complexion. Fuck you Vivek! Fuck you very much!
If Pierre believes (5) after the shock, he believed it before, despite his French language and background. If we would deny Pierre, in his bilingual stage, his belief that London is pretty and his belief that London is not pretty, we combine the difficulties of both previous options.
But by changing our beliefs we can overcome such difficulties. The fact is French isn't really a language. All human beings can speak English if you shout at them loudly enough. True, some sadistic school teachers try to pretend there is a language called French which has a grammar and a vocabulary all of its own. This is clearly a conspiracy funded by George Soros.
We still would be forced to judge that Pierre once believed that London is pretty but does no longer, in spite of Pierre's own sincere denial that he has lost any belief.
We are meant to believe that Pierre is as thick as shit. Why? Because Kripke makes an absurd stipulation. Two can play at that game. I can equally arbitrarily claim that the moment Toulouse-Lautrec's legs were bitten off by sweet little Jean-Marie La Pen, all Belief became dialethic because it were dyslexic and that was the closest it could come to being diabetic.
We also must worry whether Pierre would gain the belief that London is not pretty if he totally forgot his French past. The option does not seem very satisfactory. So now it seems that we must respect both Pierre's French utterances and their English counterparts.
Because Kripke says so? But it is my firm belief that Kripke could never say anything because he was the shadow of a cat which sought to emigrate to Uranus in 1984.
So we must say that Pierre has contradictory beliefs, that he believes that London is pretty and he believes that London is not pretty. But there seem to be insuperable difficulties with this alternative as well. We may suppose that Pierre, in spite of the unfortunate situation in which he now finds himself, is a leading philosopher and logician.
He is certainly stupid enough.
He would never let contradictory beliefs pass. And surely anyone, leading logician or no, is in principle in a position to notice and correct contradictory beliefs if he has them.
Kripke believes he knows his own beliefs. We don't. The shadow of a cat can't know its own beliefs.
Precisely for this reason, we regard individuals who contradict themselves as subject to greater censure than those who merely have false beliefs.
No we don't. I don't care if you contradict yourself. I care if you fart in my face.
But it is clear that Pierre, as long as he is unaware that the cities he calls 'London' and 'Londres' are one and the same, is in no position to see, by logic alone, that at least one of his beliefs must be false.
Logic tells him that his beliefs about a place he has never seen may be wrong. Indeed, he has no compelling reason to give a toss about the beauty or ugliness of a distant city.
He lacks information, not logical acumen.
He lacks a motive to gain information. But logical acumen can yield no information whatsoever.
He cannot be convicted of inconsistency: to do so is incorrect.
He can be convicted of rape or murder. He would do well to avoid both. Inconsistency, however, is no big deal.
We can shed more light on this if we change the case. Suppose that, in France, Pierre, instead of affirming "Londres est jolie," had affirmed, more cautiously, "Si New York est jolie, Londres est jolie aussi," so that he believed that if New York is pretty, so is London.
Kripke has an absurd belief about Pierre's beliefs. We are welcome to believe this is because Kripke is the shadow of a cat which sought to emigrate to Uranus.
Later Pierre moves to London, learns English as before, and says (in English) "London is not pretty." So he now believes, further, that London is not pretty.
He may do. He may not do. I am welcome to believe that by moving to London, the fellow has become partially human and thus affirms that 'London is not pretty (it's fucking gorgeous, mate!)' with the latter interjection being left unstated as is best practice amongst us chirpy Cockney sparrows.
Now from the two premises, both of which appear to
but may not be
be among his beliefs (a) If New York is pretty, London is, and (b) London is not pretty, Pierre should be able to deduce by modus tollens
he can't because what Kripke calls beliefs aren't necessarily 'propositions'. This is just begging the question.
that New York is not pretty.
I suppose, if a person can find beauty in New York, they might learn to find beauty in London. The reverse may not be the case. There is always going to be a problem where a proposition- or something taken as a proposition- contains an epistemic or impredicative term. What we find pretty changes as our knowledge base changes. Intensions have no well defined extensions. Leibniz's law of identity has no purchase. What we have here is a cascade of intensional fallacies masquerading as a puzzle about names and beliefs.
But no matter how great Pierre's logical acumen may be, he cannot in fact make any such deduction, as long as he supposes that 'Londres' and 'London' may name two different cities.
Who is to say they don't? A Parisian may find a beauty in London to which us Cockneys are blind. A rose may smell sweeter under some other name.
If he did draw such a conclusion, he would be guilty of a fallacy.
No. The intensional fallacy arises when it is wrongly assumed that there is an immediate identity between a subject's knowledge of an object with the object itself. This is still the case if we substitute the word 'belief' for knowledge or 'sincerely assert' for 'belief' or indulge in any other such linguistic sleight of hand.
Consider the following. Mum walks into the room as we are watching Batman on TV. She asks 'who is that masked man?' We reply 'that is millionaire playboy, Bruce Wayne, who fights crime in Gotham by night costumed as the Batman.' Unfortunately, this is the episode where Alfred the Butler has put on the Batman costume so as to throw the Joker off the scent. Anyway, what Mum really wants to know whether the masked man is George Clooney- for whom she has the hots- or Michael Keaton whom she finds a boner killer. In this case, the proper 'extension' for 'masked man' is the name of the film star appearing in the title role. But in other cases, a different extension is called for.
Does Pierre, or does he not, believe that London is pretty?
We don't know. We may have beliefs about Pierre or beliefs about Pierre's beliefs. But beliefs may not be propositions- i.e. they may not be either true or false. One might say 'I only want to talk about beliefs which are also propositions.' The trouble here is that there is no way of being sure that any given proposition corresponds to a belief or vice versa. Why? Because Beliefs don't present themselves nakedly to us. Things spoken or written may do so. But there is no way to be sure they represent a belief. True we can say we have beliefs about other people's beliefs which we believe meet some criteria of our own. But, in that case, we are already halfway to affirming that French people spend their time hopping about trying to bite the legs of frogs.
I know of no answer to this question that seems satisfactory.
I have supplied it. Beliefs and Preferences are epistemic but not propositional. They don't obey Leibniz's law. Modus tollens has no purchase on them. No information can be extracted from them such that we can be sure there are only two states of the world. It's like 'Chinatown', where Faye Dunaway's sister is also her daughter and may become her mother-in-law.
It is no answer to protest that, in some other terminology, one can state 'all the relevant facts'.
Because facts which are inaccessible, perhaps incompossible, aren't facts.
To reiterate, this is the puzzle: Does Pierre, or does he not, believe that London is pretty?
He may at some moment or for some consideration but not at other times. In either case, we can never be sure. Still, one may look at his 'revealed preference'. If he is an artist and relocated to London and spends a lot of time painting pretty pictures of its more scenic spots, we might say 'his behaviour reveals that he thinks London is beautiful.'
It is clear that our normal criteria for the attribution of belief lead, when applied to this question, to paradoxes and contradictions.
It is clear that if you commit the intensional fallacy, you have an algorithmic way of generating nonsense. Ex falso quodlibet.
As in the case of the logical paradoxes, the present puzzle presents us with a problem for customarily accepted principles and a challenge to formulate an acceptable set of principles that does not lead to paradox, is intuitively sound, and supports the inferences we usually make. Such a challenge cannot be met simply by a description of Pierre's situation that evades the question whether he believes that London is pretty. One aspect of the presentation may misleadingly suggest the applicability of FregeRussellian ideas that each speaker associates his own description or properties to each name. For as I just set up the case Pierre learned one set of facts about the so-called 'Londres' when he was in France, and another set of facts about 'London' in England. Thus it may appear that 'what's really going on' is that Pierre believes that the city satisfying one set of properties is pretty, while he believes that the city satisfying another set of properties is not pretty.
It is likely that 'Londres' is an evocation of an imaginary, highly picturesque, city depicted in French literature which does not coincide with the London accessible to its poorer immigrants.
As we just emphasized, the phrase 'what's really going on' is a danger signal in discussions of the present paradox. The conditions stated may-let us concede for the moment- describe 'what's really going on'. But they do not resolve the problem with which we began, that of the behavior of names in belief contexts: Does Pierre, or does he not, believe that London (not the city satisfying such-and-such description, but London) is pretty?
By Kripke's stipulation- no. Pierre finds the place ugly.
No answer has yet been given. Nevertheless, these considerations may appear to indicate that descriptions, or associated properties, are highly relevant somehow to an ultimate solution, since at this stage it appears that the entire puzzle arises from the fact that Pierre originally associated different identifying properties with 'London' and 'Londres'.
Pierre is welcome to wax poetical about the difference between the Londres of which he had heard and an English city with a similar name. In Londres, Queen Guinevere rides naked through the streets while Sherlock Holmes and Oliver Twist look on appreciatively. In London, the porcine Boris Johnson bicycles around the place sweating profusely.
Such a reaction may have some force even in the face of the now fairly well known arguments against 'identifying descriptions' as in any way 'defining', or even 'fixing the reference' of names.
They may do so well enough for some practical purpose. But that purpose is to reduce confusion rather than gas on about 'puzzles' which arise out of a simple, deeply silly, logical fallacy.
But in fact the special features of the case, as I set it out, are misleading. The puzzle can arise even if Pierre associates exactly the same identifying properties with both names.
No puzzle arises if I associate anything and everything which has a French sounding name with the practice of leaping into the air seeking to bite the hindlegs of frogs. Anyone can make absurd stipulations or hold crazy beliefs.
First, the considerations mentioned above in connection with 'Cicero' and 'Tully' establish this fact. For example, Pierre may well learn, in France, 'Platon' as the name of a major Greek philosopher, and later, in England, learns 'Plato' with the same identification. Then the same puzzle can arise: Pierre may have believed, when he was in France and was monolingual in French, that Plato was bald (he would have said, "Platon ttait chauve"), and later conjecture, in English, "Plato was not bald," thus indicating that he believes or suspects that Plato was not bald.
We are welcome to believe in incompossible entities. Indeed, that is what Kripke does when he believes beliefs are propositional or, less absurdly, it is what I do when I fondly picture the banks of the Seine populated entirely by leaping Pierres and Macrons who eagerly bite off the hindlegs of frogs though, tragically, sometimes it is Toulouse-Lautrec who is their victim. Much of recent French history can only be understood in this context.
He need only suppose that, in spite of the similarity of their names, the man he calls 'Platon' and the man he calls 'Plato' were two distinct major Greek philosophers.
He is welcome to say that English Platonism is different from French Platonism. Plato is a different Meinongian object from Platon who, in turn, is different from Aflatoon- who is something of a zany in Islamic literature.
The point is not, of course, that codesignative proper names are interchangeable in belief contexts salva veritate,
Nothing is interchangeable, save for some rough and ready purpose, in the context of beliefs or preferences or anything which is epistemic, impredicative (which is the case if consistency is a desiderata) or otherwise subjective. Where there is no truth, truth can't be saved.
or that they are interchangeable in simple contexts even salvas ignificatione.
They may be for some particular purpose in rough and ready fashion.
The point is that the absurdities that disquotation
The disquotational principle is a philosophical principle which holds that a rational speaker will accept "p" (a statement, not a proposition) if and only if they believe p. It is similar to a protocol bound juristic process where evidence you give must accord with what you sincerely believe is the case. The problem here is impredicativity. If there is such a principle or protocol in operation, it is in the speaker's interests to apply strategic considerations to what he or she will claim to believe. In other words, Leibniz's law and modus pollens are defeated in advance. The safer course would be to say you only believe in the official ideology and any other information you may possess is stuff you are agnostic about.
plus substitutivity would generate are exactly paralleled by absurdities generated by disquotation plus translation, or even 'disquotation alone' (or: disquotation plus homophonic translation).
No. There is the added problem of 'managing the news' such that you only have 'safe' beliefs and are agnostic about everything else. This is like 'taking the Fifth' or saying 'no comment' when interviewed by the police about an offense you have committed.
Still, for some rough and ready purpose, we are welcome to do a bit of 'disquotation' and 'substitutivity'. But there may be a miscarriage of justice or scope for the ex falso quodlibet explosion of nonsense which arises from cascading intensional fallacies.
Names are used to solve coordination and discoordination games. That is a matter of pragmatics, or economia- not logic or akreibia. Kripke's conclusion is foolish.
There is even less warrant at the present time, in the absence of a better understanding of the paradoxes of this paper,
there are none. A logical fallacy can't give rise to a paradox once the fallacy is named and shamed.
for the use of alleged failures of substitutivity in belief contexts
they may be useful for some specific, rough and ready, purpose.
to draw any significant theoretical conclusion about proper names.
Because such names solve coordination/discoordination problems. The relevant theory has to do with what may or may not be Schelling focal solutions at different times or for different people. This is a matter for Sociolinguistics.
Hard cases make bad 1aw.
That which is not justiciable can't be a 'hard case' nor can it contribute to 'bad law'. True, a particular Bench may draw the borders of justiciability in a foolish manner. But that is bad jurisprudence just as what Kripke et al. have been doing is bad logic. Names are sociolinguistic. Beliefs and Preferences are epistemic and don't obey Leibniz's law. True, you can seize upon an intensional fallacy and use it to algorithmically write a nonsensical paper but why bother? Why not say that the French proclivity for leaping around devouring the hindlegs of frogs has seriously endangered the survival of rare breeds of Toulouse-Lautrecs? The true puzzle is why anyone might believe otherwise.
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