[lit-ideas] Degrees of Belief
- From: Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sat, 7 Dec 2013 09:38:50 -0500 (EST)
And indeed, desire.
In a message dated 12/7/2013 7:19:23 A.M. Eastern Standard Time,
phil.enns@xxxxxxxxx writes:
It seems to me that beliefs about beliefs are just other beliefs, and
have no special powers to either legitimize or de-legitimize other
beliefs. I may believe that my beliefs have some special quality,
given either by God or Reason or Facts, but that doesn't change my
other beliefs in any way. Either they get the job done or they don't.
In "Method in Philosophical Psychology", Grice attempts to track two
issues: incorrigibility and privileged access -- he is trying to see how his
approach supersedes Witters's.
Grice comes up with a belief-indexing. Since his approach applies to belief
AND DESIRES, he uses a variable:
ψ
He also uses "√" for radix. I.e. the radix can be:
"The door is closed"
If you believe it, you write
ψ√p
if you DESIRE that the door be closed you write
ψ'√p
i.e. a different psychological attitude, with the same radix.
Now, as to P. Enns:
"It seems to me that beliefs about beliefs are just other beliefs, and
have no special powers to either legitimize or de-legitimize other
beliefs."
Not for Grice. Here his indexing is applied
He uses
ψ√p
for
U believes that p.
If U believes that he believes that p, Grice writes this as
ψ2√p
which is short for
ψ√ψ√p
Grice holds that, ceteris paribus, if U believes that p, he believes that
he believes that p
ψ√p ⊃ ψ2√p
Since now we can apply the same principle to the consequent of the above we
get that
ψ√p ⊃ ψn√p
where 'n' is any degree of belief.
While the subject-matter indicates 'degrees of BELIEF', and which only
applies to rational 'pirots', as Grice calls them (after Carnap, "Pirots
carulize elatically"), it also holds for desires:
If a pirots wants not to smoke, he also wants to want NOT to smoke, and
wants to want to want not to smoke.
Any 'missing link' or broken link in this chain results in 'akrasia', or
weakness. Weakness can be of the will, as in "I see the best things but
follow the worst" (after the Latin adage), but also of the belief, as in
perhaps
a variation of Pierre's puzzle introduced by Phatic: "I believe that it is
raining, but won't believe that I believe this".
And so on.
Cheers,
Speranza
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