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C00002 00002	dennet[s83,jmc]		Notes on "True Believers"
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dennet[s83,jmc]		Notes on "True Believers"

1. The beliefs of corporate bodies like the United States Government
cannot necessarily be identified with the beliefs of individuals.
They provide and interesting and somewhat shadowy domain.

2. Whether a belief is a sentence may not be a well posed question.
Since we ascribe beliefs, we can use whatever formalism seems
convenient.  In particular, linguists can use a formalism in which
beliefs are sentences if it pleases them and is convenient.
Of course, they risk not being able to accomodate all situations
in which belief is ordinarily ascribed.

3. The idea that people believe consequences of their beliefs except
when there is contrary evidence is grist for the mill of circumscription,
and I like it. p. 60.

4. I'm dubious about the lightning example on p. 61.  It seems to
be more of a co-incidence.  Thus the electrician, already knowing
about lightning rods, found it a convenient explanation to tell
a layman.  It's not much better than attributing desire to the
lectern.

5. The Martians of p. 66 need to have super powers of observation
as well as super intelligence.

6. p.72. "... for each predictively attributable belief, there
will be a functionally salient internal state of the machinery,
decomposable into functional parts in just abut the same way the
sentence expressing the belief is decomposable into parts -
that is, words or terms".  A single belief shouldn't determine
a state.  A state will involve a whole set of beliefs and other
things as well.