Londoner replied:All belief consists entirely of mental correlations drawn between objects of physiological sensory perception and/or oneself. For a speaker to claim that s/he holds no belief is either to kid oneself, and/or have a gross misunderstanding of what counts as belief, for the very claim itself is nothing other than a statement of belief....
Some much needed clarity is on order. The objection above is ill-conceived. To be clearer, it has the wrong target. What you're referencing("mental correlations...") is an ontological claim about what all belief(and thought for that matter) consists in/of. It's not about whether or not thoughts actually match up and/or correspond to reality(to the object X). Those are claims about the truth of correlations drawn. Whether or not they are true doesn't matter to the focus of this conversation.I do not think so. First, 'mental correlations drawn between objects of physiological sensory perception and/or oneself' begs the question. How can I ever know if, or how, my psychological/mental idea of X does correlate with the object X'? It would only be possible if I could perceive the X without it involving my own mind, such that I could say; here is the X in itself, here is my mental idea of the X, here are the areas where the two are correlated. But we can't, we can never see the X from outside our own heads and make that comparison.
Londoner wrote:
Claims concerning the possibility and/or impossibility of satisfying the description of "certain" presuppose a criterion for what counts as being "certain"....To say 'I have no beliefs' would be understood as 'there is nothing about which I can be entirely certain'. That would not be a belief. It would not be a belief because it is analytic, it is saying that it is impossible to satisfy the description 'certain'.
Can you set that out here and now, prior to moving on?
While reminding others of certain situations that prove everyone forms and holds belief...
creativesoul wrote:
Londoner replied:...Think about a lost item... One does not search in places that they do not believe it could be. We're not over at our neighbor's house looking through the wife's top dresser drawer. We're not looking on top of our roof. We're not looking in places like that, but we are looking. We are looking in places where we do believe the item may be.
What I'm saying is true is true of all senses of the term. Moreover, you're missing to respond to the point/argument I made...I think this demonstrates how loose the meaning of 'belief' is. There is no suggestion of certainty.
You - the reader...
You've lost an item. Correct? You looked where you believed that it would/could be. Correct?
It cannot be the case that one has no beliefs if one has beliefs. Certainty doesn't matter yet. We all form and hold belief...
Correct?