Abstract
Experiences are interpreted as conscious mental occurrences that are of phenomenal character. There is already a kind of (weak) intentionality involved with this phenomenal interpretation. A stricter conception of experiences distinguishes between purely phenomenal experiences and intentional experiences in a narrow sense. Wittgenstein’s account of psychological (experiential) verbs is taken over: Usually, expressing mental states verbally is not describing them. According to this, “I believe” can be seen as an expression of one’s own belief, but not as an expression of a belief about one’s belief. Hence, the utterance “I believe it is raining” shows that I believe that it is raining, although it is not said by these words that I believe that it is raining. Thinking thoughts such as “I believe it is raining, but it is not raining” (a variant of Moore’s paradox) is an absurdity between what is already said by silently uttering “It is not raining” and what is shown by silently uttering “I believe it is raining.” The paper agrees with a main result of Wittgenstein’s considerations of Moore’s paradox, namely the view that logical structure, deducibility, and consistency cannot be reduced solely to propositions—besides a logic of propositions, there is, for example, a logic of assertions and of imperatives, respectively.
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Notes
In his paper on Russell Moore (1944, 204) characterizes “implying” again: “That we imply it means only, I think, something which results from the fact that people, in general, do not make a positive assertion, unless they do not believe that the opposite is true: people, in general, would not assert positively ‘he has not gone out,’ if they believed that he had gone out. And it results from this general truth, that a hearer who hears me say ‘he has not gone out,’ will, in general, assume that I don’t believe that he has gone out, although I have neither asserted that I don’t, nor does it follow, from what I have asserted, that I don’t. Since people will, in general, assume this, I may be said to imply it by saying ‘he has not gone out,’ since the effect of my saying so will, in general, be to make people believe it, and since I know quite well that my saying it will have this effect.”
In this interpretation the following principle is presupposed:
Asserting (p and q) entails asserting (p) and asserting (q).
This does not hold for connections like disjunction and subjunction:
Asserting (p or q) and asserting (if p then q), respectively, does not entail either asserting (p) or asserting (q).
It is worth noticing that in certain circumstances for a conscious person the failing of a certain mental state is itself a mental state; at least it looks as immediate as the positive case: Usually I do not need inferences from other beliefs and from observation of my own words and behavior in order to express my failing to believe that it is raining.
Having called propositions of the form <p & I do not believe that p> Moorean propositions, and assertions of Moorean propositions Moorean assertions, and believings of Moorean propositions Moorean beliefs, Uriah Kriegel (2004, 100) states: “Moore’s paradox, as originally discussed by Moore and Wittgenstein, concerned Moorean assertions exclusively. More recently, philosophers have taken interest in the paradoxical nature of Moorean beliefs as well.” As Wittgenstein’s solution is also applicable to the soliloquy case, I think, Wittgenstein’s investigations of Moore’s paradox concern not only Kriegel’s Moorean assertions but also his so-called Moorean beliefs.
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Marek, J.C. Expressing and Describing Experiences. A Case of Showing Versus Saying. Acta Anal 26, 53–61 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12136-010-0119-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12136-010-0119-4