Online research in philosophy

The Difference between Belief and Knowledge. The assumption that knowledge can be defined in terms of belief is considered to be mistaken. Since Gettier problems are shown to be misconstrued, the question cannot arise whether his conditions for knowledge are sufficient for claiming ``knowledge is justified true belief''. Ayers' conditions for knowledge in addition with a specific stipulation proof to be instructive for elaborating the differences between knowledge and belief.

Knowing as having the right to be sure, by A. J. Ayer.--Knowledge and belief, by N. Malcolm.--Is justified true belief knowledge? By E. L. Gettier.--The foundation of empirical statements, by R. M. Chisholm.--Knowledge, truth, and evidence, by K. Lehrer.--A causal theory of knowing, by A. I. Goldman.--The explication of 'X knows that p', by B. Skyrms.--An analysis of factual knowledge, by P. Unger.--Why I know so much more than you do, by W. W. Rozeboom.--Does knowing imply believing? By J. Harrison.--Knowledge, by examples, by C. Radford.--The logic of knowing, by R. M. Chisholm.--Bibliography (p. 221-224).

It is argued that de dicto and de re beliefs are attitudes towards syntactically structured entities (sentences) in the head. In order to identify the content of a de dicto or de re belief, we must be able to match causal relations of belief states to natural language inferences. Such match-ups provide sufficient empirical justification for regarding those causal relations as syntactic transformations, that is, inferences. But only syntactically structured entities are capable of enjoying such inferential relations. Hence, de dicto and de re beliefs must be syntactically structured. Given that beliefs are also brain states, it follows that they are sentences in the brain. The argument presented here is shown to be an improvement over similar arguments advanced by Harman and Fodor.

Hintikka's second generation epistemic logic introduces a syntactic device allowing to express independence relations between certain logical constants. De re knowledge attributions can be reformulated in terms of quantifier independence, but the reformulation does not extend to non-factive attitudes like belief. There, formulae with independent quantifiers serve to express a new type of attitude, intermediate between de dicto and de re, called ‘de objecto’: in each possible world compatible with the agent's belief, there is an individual with the specified property – in each world the same individual, which or who need not exist actually. The philosophical benefits of our analysis of propositional attitudes include a refined account of the behaviour of proper names as well as of indefinite and definite descriptions in attitude reports. Some remarks about perception and about the hallucination argument are also presented.

We show how some model-theoretical devices (local reasoning, modes of presentation, an additional accessibility relation) can be combined in first-order modal logic to formalize the consequence relation that includes de dicto and de re contradictory beliefs. Instead of special ``sense objects'', appearances of objects in an agent's belief are introduced and presented as ordered pairs consisting of an object and an individual constant. A non-classical identity relation is applied. A relation S on the set of possible worlds is introduced, which models possible distortions in an agent's picture of a (real) world. The application of such models in deontic logic is illustrated by a characteristic example. , , , , , , , ,.

A belief ascription such as “Oedipus believes that his mother is the queen of Thebes” can be understood in two ways, one in which it seems true, and another in which it seems false. It can seem true because the woman who was, in fact, Oedipus’ mother was believed by him to be the queen of Thebes. It can seem false because Oedipus himself would have sincerely denied that Jocasta could be correctly characterized as “Oedipus’s mother.” Belief ascriptions thus seem to admit of two interpretations, and this has suggested to many that belief predicates such as “________ believes that his mother is the queen of Thebes” are ambiguous between a de dicto and a de re reading.1 However, the impression of ambiguity is a function of the narrow ranges of examples that philosophers focus on. When we consider our ascriptional practices as a whole, the suggestion that belief predicates are ambiguous is neither plausible nor needed to explain the de dicto/de re distinction. The following will argue that understanding paradigmatic de dicto and de re ascriptions in terms of disavowals from a more basic sort of ascription is preferable to positing a simple ambiguity in which each of the two sorts of ascription are conceptually primitive.

I show how a de se belief ascription such as "Privatus believes that he himself is rich" may be dealt with by means of a scope distinction over and above that one separating de dicto and de re ascriptions. The idea is, roughly, that 'Privatus...himself' forms in this statement a unity, a single "spread" sign that is at the same time in a de re and de dicto position. If so, H-N. Castañeda's contention that the "quasi-indicator" 'he himself' ('she herself', 'it itself') belongs to a "unique, irreducible logical category" of singular terms is, at best, misleading. Further, my account is superior to the well-known theories of R. Chisholm and D. Lewis, according to which de se ascriptions state that the believer "directly attributes properties to himself or herself". 1. Introduction 2. Chisholm and Lewis on de se belief ascriptions 3. Fregean and Sellarsian theories of belief ascriptions 4. Geach on the reflexive pronoun 5. Admiring and self-admiring 6. A solution to the problem de se belief ascriptions 7. Belief de se 8. Conclusion.

Many philosophers have suggested that belief predicates are ambiguous between a de dicto and a de re reading. However, the impression of ambiguity is a function of the narrow ranges of examples that philosophers focus on. When we consider our ascriptional practices as a whole, the suggestion that belief predicates are ambiguous is neither plausible nor needed to explain the de dicto/de re distinction. This paper will argue that understanding paradigmatic de dicto and de re ascriptions in terms of disavowals from a more basic sort of ascription is preferable to positing an ambiguity in which each of the two sorts of ascription are conceptually primitive.

Abstract Stephen P. Stich rejects the de dicto?de re belief state and ascription distinction. He proposes an analysis by which belief sentences imply univocal doxastic predicates expressing functionally similar states of belief subjects and counterfactual third person belief ascribers, concluding that the apparent opacity of de dicto belief sentences is better explained by the unsystematic contextually?sensitive similarity vaguenesses of belief ascriptions. But Stick's reduction appeals to contexts of background beliefs which themselves unavoidably exhibit ramified de dicto?de re ambiguity. The distinction is presupposed rather than eliminated by Stick's method, which effectively blocks the extensional reduction of belief state opacity.

Eaker argues that there is no genuine ambiguity to be found between de re and de dicto readings or interpretations of belief sentences. She considers two ways characterizing the distinction: 1. Psychological characterization (a) De re belief sentences attribute de re belief to subjects (b) De dicto belief sentences attribute de dicto belief to subjects 2. Truth-conditional characterization (a) The preservation of subjects’ “ways of thinking” of objects is not required for the truth of de re belief sentences (b) The preservation of subjects’ “ways of thinking” of objects is required for the truth of de dicto belief sentences And she suggests either way, the distinction is usually taken to be encoded in linguistic theory by means of the notion of scope: 3. Scope encoding (a) In de re belief sentences, expressions referring to objects of belief have wide scope (b) In de dicto belief sentences, expressions referring to objects of belief have narrow scope Eaker criticizes both characterizations of the ambiguity, as well as the claim that it can be understood as a scope ambiguity. First, Eaker’s presents the following argument against the psychological characterization: (i) even if the distinction between de re and de dicto belief can be drawn, this distinction does not map on to the putative distinction between de re and de dicto belief sentences: de re belief sentences can be used to report de dicto beliefs, e.g.