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    Animals cannot have beliefs. — Carmelics
    Statements
    321,452
    Perspectives
    108,905
    Topics
    42
    Home/Consciousness & Mind
    HistoryEditSee Inverse

    Animals cannot have beliefs.

    Consciousness & MindTruth & Knowledge
    ?Rate how convincing each reason is below to see the overall strength.
    1 reason for
    2 reasons against

    Reasons For

    1 perspective
    Reason for
    ?
    • 1.Having beliefs requires possessing the concept of belief.
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    • 2.Possessing the concept of belief requires language.
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    • 3.Animals do not have language.
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    Reasons Against

    2 perspectives
    Reason against 1 of 2
    ?
    • 1.Davidson's requirement that belief-possession demands linguistic competence conflates the *expression* of beliefs with their *existence* as functional states.
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    • 2.Behavioral and neurological evidence shows animals form internal representations that guide goal-directed action in ways functionally identical to belief.
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    • 3.If a state functions as a belief—guiding inference, being updated by evidence, influencing behavior—it is a belief, regardless of whether it is linguistically expressible.
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    Reason against 2 of 2
    ?
    • 1.Stich's 'subdoxastic states' and Dennett's intentional stance both demonstrate that attributing belief-like states to animals yields predictively successful explanatory frameworks.
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    • 2.The criterion that belief requires the *concept of belief* commits a category error: one need not meta-represent a mental state in order to instantiate it, just as one need not know anatomy to digest food.
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    Topics

    Consciousness & MindTruth & Knowledge

    Connections

    1 topic

    Philosophy of Language2 linked

    Related

    Animals do not have language.Behavioral and neurological evidence shows animals form internal representations...Davidson's requirement that belief-possession demands linguistic competence conf...Having beliefs requires possessing the concept of belief.
    +4 moreShow less
    If a state functions as a belief—guiding inference, being updated by evidence, i...Possessing the concept of belief requires language.Stich's 'subdoxastic states' and Dennett's intentional stance both demonstrate t...The criterion that belief requires the *concept of belief* commits a category er...

    Similar

    Having beliefs requires having the concept of belief.85%Having beliefs requires possessing the concept of belief.85%Knowledge requires belief.85%Non-linguistic creatures cannot have the concept of belief83%

    Source

    AI-extracted1/3 agreementValid
    SEP: cognition-animal
    View source passageHide passage
    However, for Davidson, attributing thought to animals is not merely an epistemological problem. It isn’t just that we don’t have a way of knowing what animals believe; for him, the very idea that animals can think is problematic. Davidson ties the ability to think to the possession of language. He considers that an individual who has beliefs has to be capable of being surprised, for surprise consists precisely of registering that reality isn’t how we believed it was. Surprise shows that one can
    Extraction notes

    Validity: Extracted via Max plan + API grounding/validity checks

    Details

    Type
    claim
    Perspectives
    3 (1 for, 2 against)
    Edits
    1 edit