Philosophy Concordance - online philosophical quotations

Similarly in thinking and talking about the beliefs of people we needn’t suppose there are such entities as beliefs.

From this viewpoint, to situate beliefs within an individual, and to talk, as many semanticists do, about the individual’s 'belief box', is analogous to expressing that a tree is five meters high by saying that the tree has the five meters somewhere within its 'height box'.

The totality of our so-called knowledge or beliefs, from the most casual matters of geography and history to the profoundest laws of atomic physics or even of pure mathematics and logic, is a man-made fabric which impinges on experience only along the edges.

Given perceptions and actions, animals have the capacity to develop memories and prior intentions, as well as beliefs and desires and other forms of intentionality, such as expectation and fear, anger and aggression.

Davidson, for example, thought that only a being that has a language can have intentional states such as beliefs and desires.

Many species of animals have perceptions, perform actions and are capable of acquiring beliefs, desires and intentions, though they have no language.

This implies, at the very least, that the animals have beliefs, desires, intentions, and at least some form of memories, enough to enable them to recognize familiar objects and situations.

Specifically, because perceptions, intentions, beliefs, desires, and so on, are forms of intentionality, they carry within them the determination of conditions of success or failure.

Rather, to have beliefs and desires, for example, is already to have something that determines conditions of satisfaction, and that implies the capacity to recognize success and failure.

The aim of beliefs is to represent how things are, therefore beliefs can be said to be true or false.