Philosophy Discussion Forums | A Humans-Only Club for Open-Minded Discussion & Debate

[Consul]

Silent or nonsilent (honest) affirmative answers to questions of the form "Do you believe that p?"…

…or, asking yourself, "Do I believe that p"?

[Sy Borg]

What could possibly be evidence of unconscious beliefs?

How about prejudice?

Good point. Also other fears.

My understanding is that cognitive therapy aims to find unconscious beliefs that hold people back.

Plants, of course, don't believe anything. They feel (sensations, not emotions) at a basic level, which to a human perspective would be an unobserved automatic response. Since life is not automatic, though, there is some sensation of life there. However, since we routinely kill all manner of highly sentient creatures - including for sport - no matter what we find out about plants, how they feel ranks very low when it comes to concern about its welfare.

Note that size matters here. Uluru is a rock, yet it is more valued than individual people, let alone non-human animals. Same, to a lesser extent, with giant redwoods. Cutting down a tree that has lived for centuries is certainly a different ethical matter to pulling our weeds.

[Consul]

Plants, of course, don't believe anything. They feel (sensations, not emotions) at a basic level, which to a human perspective would be an unobserved automatic response.

It's one thing to say that plants can feel in the sense of being capable of tactile perception, and another thing to say that they are capable of subjective tactile sensations (sense-impressions), because the former doesn't entail the latter.

[Sy Borg]

Plants, of course, don't believe anything. They feel (sensations, not emotions) at a basic level, which to a human perspective would be an unobserved automatic response.

It's one thing to say that plants can feel in the sense of being capable of tactile perception, and another thing to say that they are capable of subjective tactile sensations (sense-impressions), because the former doesn't entail the latter.

I think you know what my response to this would be. We'd probably best not go there or we'll repeat our debate on the panpsychism thread.

[Terrapin Station]

What could possibly be evidence of unconscious beliefs?

How about prejudice?

Gee

What would count as evidence of a prejudiced belief that the person in question isn't aware of (so we're saying that Joe has the prejudiced belief that P, but Joe isn't aware of having the prejudiced belief that P)?

[Terrapin Station]

What could possibly be evidence of unconscious beliefs?

Silent or nonsilent (honest) affirmative answers to questions of the form "Do you believe that p?", and other, nonverbal forms of behavior.

Um, what? We're positing someone somehow answering "Do you believe that P" where they have nothing consciously in mind about whether they believe that P?

What would an example of that be?

[Terrapin Station]

Silent or nonsilent (honest) affirmative answers to questions of the form "Do you believe that p?"…

…or, asking yourself, "Do I believe that p"?

At which point, you think about it consciously, and you consciously either wind up believing or not believing that P.

So what's unconscious about that?

It seems like you're assuming that there had to already be a belief prior to thinking about it, but this is just the point: what would be the evidence that:

At time T2, one asks oneself "Do I believe that P"
At time T3, one says "Yes, I believe that P"
because at time T1, one already believed that P, one simply didn't have the belief that P present-to-consciousness?

On my view, there's no evidence, no good reason to claim the third line there. The belief that P or not-P obtains consciously, when one thinks about it. It "comes from" thinking about it. Thinking is dynamic. Brains are dynamic.

[Terrapin Station]

My understanding is that cognitive therapy aims to find unconscious beliefs that hold people back.

Sure, which on my view amounts to working with a fictional picture that we have no reason to assert. It might be handy instrumentally, but it's not literally the case. (Or at least there's no good reason to believe that it's literally the case.)

[Consul]

Silent or nonsilent (honest) affirmative answers to questions of the form "Do you believe that p?", and other, nonverbal forms of behavior.

Um, what? We're positing someone somehow answering "Do you believe that P" where they have nothing consciously in mind about whether they believe that P?
What would an example of that be?

You have conscious belief-thoughts of the form "I believe that p" in your mind, which are affirmative answers to the question "Do I believe that p?". Nonconscious beliefs are mental dispositions (dispositional mental states), and corresponding conscious belief-thoughts are manifestations of them and thus evidence for them. But, again, the point is that belief-thoughts are experiences, whereas the beliefs whose manifestations (expressions, indications) they are are nonexperiences.

[Terrapin Station]

Um, what? We're positing someone somehow answering "Do you believe that P" where they have nothing consciously in mind about whether they believe that P?
What would an example of that be?

You have conscious belief-thoughts of the form "I believe that p" in your mind, which are affirmative answers to the question "Do I believe that p?". Nonconscious beliefs are mental dispositions (dispositional mental states), and corresponding conscious belief-thoughts are manifestations of them and thus evidence for them. But, again, the point is that belief-thoughts are experiences, whereas the beliefs whose manifestations (expressions, indications) they are are nonexperiences.

A disposition to believe something isn't the same thing as believing something.

A disposition for a property to flood isn't the same thing as the property being flooded. We're not going to call the disposition to flood a "non-phenomenal flood" or a "non-actualized flood" or something like that. It's not a flood. We don't say that the flood is a "manifestation of the non-actualized flood"--that would be ontological nonsense. The disposition is just a tendency to flood under the right conditions.

Same thing for beliefs.

[Consul]

At which point, you think about it consciously, and you consciously either wind up believing or not believing that P.

So what's unconscious about that?

It seems like you're assuming that there had to already be a belief prior to thinking about it, but this is just the point: what would be the evidence that:

At time T2, one asks oneself "Do I believe that P"
At time T3, one says "Yes, I believe that P"
because at time T1, one already believed that P, one simply didn't have the belief that P present-to-consciousness?

On my view, there's no evidence, no good reason to claim the third line there. The belief that P or not-P obtains consciously, when one thinks about it. It "comes from" thinking about it. Thinking is dynamic. Brains are dynamic.

You may say that thinking about one's beliefs is a way of being conscious of them, so your belief-thoughts make you conscious of your beliefs. But, as opposed to your occurrent belief-thoughts, your dispositional beliefs are phenomenally nonconscious (nonexperiential) states, no matter whether you are cogitatively conscious of them through phenomenally conscious states or not. No belief is ever an experience, despite the fact that you instinctively (mis)interpret the belief-thoughts you experience as the beliefs themselves.

[h_k_s]

How about prejudice?

Good point. Also other fears.

My understanding is that cognitive therapy aims to find unconscious beliefs that hold people back.

Plants, of course, don't believe anything. They feel (sensations, not emotions) at a basic level, which to a human perspective would be an unobserved automatic response. Since life is not automatic, though, there is some sensation of life there. However, since we routinely kill all manner of highly sentient creatures - including for sport - no matter what we find out about plants, how they feel ranks very low when it comes to concern about its welfare.

Note that size matters here. Uluru is a rock, yet it is more valued than individual people, let alone non-human animals. Same, to a lesser extent, with giant redwoods. Cutting down a tree that has lived for centuries is certainly a different ethical matter to pulling our weeds.

Harvesting trees and plants is a right of the land owner under common, Federal/National, State/provincial, and local law.

[h_k_s]

In other words, if I have a belief (represented by, not literally) a la "My car is parked on Main Street," then how could that possibly serve as evidence that I have (or had) an unconscious belief (represented by--and I'm not going to keep typing this stupid, unnecessary parenthetical) "My car is parked on Main Street"?

I think you are confusing "belief" with "knowledge." Semantics maybe, but still a definitional issue.

[Terrapin Station]

At which point, you think about it consciously, and you consciously either wind up believing or not believing that P.

So what's unconscious about that?

It seems like you're assuming that there had to already be a belief prior to thinking about it, but this is just the point: what would be the evidence that:

At time T2, one asks oneself "Do I believe that P"
At time T3, one says "Yes, I believe that P"
because at time T1, one already believed that P, one simply didn't have the belief that P present-to-consciousness?

On my view, there's no evidence, no good reason to claim the third line there. The belief that P or not-P obtains consciously, when one thinks about it. It "comes from" thinking about it. Thinking is dynamic. Brains are dynamic.

You may say that thinking about one's beliefs is a way of being conscious of them, so your belief-thoughts make you conscious of your beliefs.

You could say that, but there needs to be a good reason to say it.

There needs to be a good reason to say that there are unconscious beliefs, just like conscious beliefs, where the only difference is whether we're aware of them or not.

In my view there's no good reason to say that.

Just like there's no good reason to say that there are non-actualized floods, just like actual floods, where the only difference is whether the flood is actualized. That's just nonsense. There are tendencies to flood, which is a fact about some properties, where would could call that a "flood disposition," but the tendencies to flood isn't anything like an actual flood.

No belief is ever an experience

And the argument for that is?

[h_k_s]

Do plants deserve a moral status as "animal"?

No, I don't think so. We use the terms "plant" and "animal" to distiguish them. Should we regard plants as equal to animals, in the living-things stakes? Yes, I would say so.

Plants are fodder for animals. That hardly suggests a notion of equality. Everything occupies a different level on the food chain.