Belief_r and Symbol_0r Explained

Belief_r holds roughly when a person would say they have the belief. A person believes (_r) in symbols not the things the symbols are about. The symbols the person thinks (believes_r) in have symbolic relations to the objects he would be said to have beliefs about. There may be objects which the person thinks are symbols but are not. Someone may have given him the name of a fictitious person , and he may have as much evidence of this person as he does of many other people he has beliefs about. He can have a Belief_r about this person. But the Symbol_0r relation will fail and the Belief(not belief_r) will fail. There is not generally any way to know that Symbol_0r relations hold for sure, though we can be confident in many cases. From our belief_r we cannot infer that the symbol in the belief_r stands for anything. But the symbol (It will not really be a symbol, but will appear to the person as one) will exist.; also we could have symbols that stand for a different object(at least for other people) than the person thinks they do) . The symbols I am primarily talking about are spoken, written, printed or thought words, but could also be images. People express beliefs mostly in words, spoken, written or printed. The belief_r relation (belief_r(S,now,’denounces’,’Cicero’,’Cataline’) ’holds when the persons S puts the symbols relation indicated. He says ‘denounces’(‘Cicero’,’Cataline’) now. That’s the effect of belief_r.(if he expresses it) If also Symbol_0r(S,now,’Cicero’,Cicero, now), Symbol_1r(S,now,’denounces’,denounces) and Symbol_0r(S,now,’Cataline’,Cataline) hold. S will believe denounces(Cicero,Cataline) . S will himself not ordinarily assert these Symbol_0r or Symbol_1r relations. They are part of the context. Another person may also know more than S. We could also (you may be getting tired of this) have Tully = Cicero. But ‘Tully’ ~= ‘Cicero’, so we may have belief_r(S,now,’~denounced’,’Tully’,’Cataline’), and S would say ‘not denounces’(‘Tully’,’Cataline’) now. S will feel as he is talking about Tully and Cataline. But he is actually only causing relations between words which have symbolic_0r relations to Tully and Cataline. Another person may realize Cicero = Tully. But it does not follow that S would say ‘denounced’(‘Tully’,’Cataline’) because ‘Cicero’ ~= ‘Tully’ and those are what occur in S’s belief_r not Cicero or Tully.

My ‘belief_r’ is close to a psychological state or 1^st person statement, while ‘belief’ is more like the 3^rd person statement. But there can be 3^rd person statements of ‘belief_r’. And a person, who realizes my definition of ‘belief’, and that he is fallible, can realize that be may ‘believe’ something without having the ‘belief_r’, i.e. he may acknowledge the possibility of

($x)($y) belief_r(I,now,~=,a,b)

IN OTHER SYMBOLS

(Ex)(Ey) belief_r(I,now,~=,a,b)

but a and b name the same thing, though he would have no particular examples, so that I believe o(a) = o(b) now, would follow.

Here o(x) is the object the name x stand for (which also really depends on a person and time also, and can be expressed with symbol_0r).

Beliefs (not belief_r) are about the objects via the belief_r’s and symbolic relations. Mostly a person, when they are using symbols, don’t think of them as symbols, but are thinking via the symbolic relations of the objects the symbols are related to. But you think “on”(“cat”,”mat”) i.e. in these English words. Also, usually, the individual words, not sentences, are what have the symbolic relations. So we can combine words in many ways, we have never seen before, and understand them. We are familiar with the words (symbols) and the ways they may be combined.

More explanation

Someone has an experience of believing when a sort of psychological relation holds between what I will call sub-experiences. Those sub-experiences may be symbols. They are symbols if there is a practice of using them in relation to objects in the world. There could be such sub-experiences to which no object corresponds - such sub-experiences are not symbols, but there is no way to distinguish them subjectively. Some sub-experiences may be symbols of relations between objects rather than of objects. The sub-experiences need not be anything mysterious - they can just be the sounds or images of words for example. And to get really particular, we would have to distinguish particular utterances of words from the word itself. A spoken word is a class of sufficiently similar utterances for example. If the psychological relation between sub-experiences holds and the sub-experiences are symbols, then we have a belief which will be true if the symbolized relation holds between the symbolized objects. A proposition exists if the symbols exist even if the psychological experience of belief does not. We can accept as symbols for practical purposes, sound waves or physical printed or written words. What counts is a relation, which could be more than merely psychological (but which would always have a psychological component in the case of belief relation, but not necessarily in the case of propositional relation) and an objects which also stands as symbols with other relations or objects in regular practices. The belief relation is belief_r and the symbolic relations are the symbol_0r's.

Even More Explanation

I think we need to start with belief and understand what I say there first. Someone has an experience of believing when a sort of psychological relation holds between what I will call subexperiences. Those sub-experiences may be symbols. They are symbols if there is a practice of using them in relation to objects in the world. There could be such sub-experiences to which no object corresponds – such sub-experiences are not symbols, but there is no way to distinguish them subjectively. Some sub-experiences may be the symbols of relations between objects; others of objects. The sub-experiences need not be anything mysterious - they can just be the sounds or images of words for example. And to get really particular, we would have to distinguish particular utterances of words from the word itself. A spoken word is a class of sufficiently similar utterances for example.

(see

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/types-tokens/

for more explanation )

If the psychological relation between sub-experiences holds and the sub-experiences are symbols, then we have a belief which will be true if the symbolized relation holds between the symbolized facts. A proposition exists if the symbols exist even if the psychological experience of belief does not. We can accept as symbols for practical purposes, sound waves or physical printed or written words. What counts is a relation, which could be more than merely psychological (but which would always have a psychological component) and an objects which also stands as symbols with other relations or objects in regular practices.

The relation is belief_r and the symbolic relations are the symbol_0r's [for objects], symbol_1r’s [for ordinary verbs], or symbol_2r’s [for propositional attitude verbs].