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Mere Belief as a Modification

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Mind, Values, and Metaphysics

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Abstract

The chapter uses the method of linguistic phenomenology to explain how belief in the sense of mere opinion can be understood as botched knowing. The distinction between attributive and nonattributive terms plays a central role in this explanation of belief. Several kinds of nonattributive terms are distinguished, modifying, restrictive and restorative terms, each being of use in the explanation of epistemic notions. And several forms of modification are distinguished: semantic, conceptual and ontological modification.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The term ‘judgement’ itself may stand for the act of judgement, the judgement product, the judgement candidate or the faculty of judgement; cf. van der Schaar (2007).

  2. 2.

    These different meanings of the term ‘belief’ are given an account of in van der Schaar (2009). Unquestioned faith is perhaps not a case of belief that, but of belief in. Propositional truth and falsity do not seem to be applicable to the content of unquestioned faith.

  3. 3.

    ‘[P]ositive and negative conviction are ranged alongside each other on an equal footing’ Reinach (1911, p. 333). The original has: ‘Positive und negative Überzeugung stehen,…, einander gleichgeordnet gegenüber Cf. Mulligan (1987).’

  4. 4.

    The Dutch language has two question-words related to the two meanings of ‘cause’: (1) cause as reason, which may be asked for by a ‘waarom’ question, the ‘Why’ question mentioned above (‘Waarom geloof je dat?’); and (2) a metaphysical cause, which has the notion of effect as a counterpart. A cause in this sense may be asked for by a ‘waardoor’ question (‘Waardoor heb je die overtuiging?’, ‘What is the cause of your conviction?’).

  5. 5.

    ‘A thing becomes intelligible first when it is analysed into its constituent concepts.’ Moore (1899, p. 182).

  6. 6.

    In the paper I argue against Barbara Partee’s (2010) thesis that fake guns are a special case of guns, which means that on her account modifying or privative terms behave rather like relative terms.

  7. 7.

    I prefer this terminology to the less apt ‘redundant terms’: these terms are not redundant at all when used in the right context.

  8. 8.

    Markus Stepanians and Arianna Betti have already pointed to the Bolzano side of the topic, cf. Stepanians (1998, p. 28) and Betti (2006, p. 59).

  9. 9.

    Twardowski (1894, § 4, p. 12 ff.) uses the distinction between the modifying and the attributive sense of the term ‘presented’ to explain the distinction between the content and the object of an act. There is a distinction between presented object as object, where ‘presented’ is used in its attributive sense, because we say about the object that we have a presentation of it, and presented object as content, where ‘presented’ is taken in its modifying sense, because the term modifies the meaning of the term ‘object’. If ‘painted’ is used as modifying term in ‘painted landscape’, the landscape is a painted one, that is, not a true landscape (‘sie ist keine wahrhafte Landschaft,’ Twardowski 1894, p. 13). ‘Painted’ can also be used attributively: We can talk of a landscape near Amsterdam that was painted by Rembrandt.

  10. 10.

    Weidemann translates the example as follows: ‘Von etwas Nichtseiendem kann aber nicht deshalb, weil es ein vermeintliches (Seiendes) ist, wahrheitsgemäss ausgesagt werden, es sei ein Seiendes. Denn die (blosse) Meinung, (es sei), hat man von ihm ja nicht etwa deshalb, weil es (seiend) wäre, sondern gerade deshalb, weil es nicht(seiend) ist.’ Weidemann (1994, p. 24, 25).

  11. 11.

    Pascal Engel, Truth, Acumen, 2002, p. 128.

  12. 12.

    Cf. van der Schaar (2011a) and Adler (2002, p. 275): ‘From the first-person point of view, one treats one’s belief as factive, which is the central property of knowledge.’

  13. 13.

    I have given a full account of assertion in van der Schaar (2011b).

  14. 14.

    ‘Bloss (die Blösse) weist hier, wie überhaupt, auf einen Mangel hin; aber nicht immer ist ein Mangel durch eine Ergänzung zu beheben. So setzen wir ja der Wahrnehmung die “blosse” Einbildung gegenüber. Das Unterscheidende liegt in einem Vorzug auf Seiten der Wahrnehmung, aber nicht in einem Plus.’ Husserl (1901, V, § 28, p. 463).

  15. 15.

    ‘[D]ass blosses Urteilen eine intentionale Modifikation von erkennendem Urteilen ist.’ (Husserl 1939, § 5, p. 15). Stepanians (1998, Chap. 10) gives an extensive account of Husserl’s idea of modification in the fourth and fifth Logical Investigation.

  16. 16.

    As Augustine (1988) writes in the Confessiones, III. vii. 12: ‘I did not know [at that time] that evil was only the privation of good’.

  17. 17.

    ‘[W]hen we consider God’s decree and God’s nature, we can no more assert of that man that he is deprived of sight than we can assert it of a stone … privation is simply to deny of a thing something that we judge pertains to its nature,’ Ep. 21 to Willem van Blyenbergh (Spinoza 1992). In the Cogitata Metaphysica (1982, Part II, Chap. 7), Spinoza says that evil and sin are nothing in things, but only in the human mind as it compares things with one another.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute for Philosophy, Leiden University, Leiden, Netherlands

    Maria van der Schaar

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  1. Maria van der Schaar
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Correspondence to Maria van der Schaar .

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  1. Institute for Cognitive Sciences, Bron Cedex, France

    Anne Reboul

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van der Schaar, M. (2014). Mere Belief as a Modification. In: Reboul, A. (eds) Mind, Values, and Metaphysics. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-05146-8_11

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