Posted by alexandra_k on January 17, 2005, at 18:52:30
In reply to Re: Folk Psychology and the Nature of Belief., posted by smokeymadison on January 17, 2005, at 18:39:15
> What are delusions, if not beliefs?
Here are some other options that have been considered:
(1) Empty speech acts (meaningless ravings).
(2) 'Imaginings misidentified as beliefs' (Gregory Currie).
(3) Expressions of experience (it is controversial whether this would count as a belief. Depends on how one wants to interpret / whether one wants to agree with some Wittgenstinean stuff about beliefs having to be capable of being false. Because expressions of experience are not capable of being false (if genuine) they might not count as beliefs).The second one is the one that I am thinking of... What is an 'imagining'? Sounds like a 'fantasy' to me...
Someone or other wrote that delusional subjects have become enmeshed in their own solipsistic world. They are using words with different meanings from the standard ones. They have become enmeshed in their own world. But it is still left what this 'solipsistic enmeshment' amounts to. Maybe this means that we cannot attribute a content (so delusional utterances are empty or meaningless speech acts).
But I am interested in the 'imaginings misidentified as beliefs' line. I had thought I heard a knock down criticism of it in Australia, but I am not so sure....
For it to be true that you believe that p then p needs to play a certain functional role. With respect to how p was caused, how p interacts with other mental states and the effect p has on your behaviour. Whether p is a belief or an imagining would seem to be determined by the functional role that p is playing.
Currie reckons that
delusional subjects believe that p is false.
He reckons it is true to say
delusional subjects believe that they believe that p (but really they are just imagining it).Now the problem is how we specify the functional role of believing that you believe something as opposed to just believing something. He thinks that the difference is that they do not believe that p because it does not play the right functional role. They believe that they believe it, though and that plays the appropriate functional role - that is why they say they believe it!
poster:alexandra_k
thread:443284
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/write/20041210/msgs/443343.html