For any X, and any Y, you can fear X, X be identical with Y, but still, not fear Y. "To fear" is an intensional verb. Therefore, it does not preserve truth through identity. Nothing special about propositions or beliefs. But, of course, since it does not preserve truth through identity, the fact that you can fear X and not fear Y does not show that X and Y are not identical.

Sorry, you'll have to put that in a humdrum real life example.

And I don't think we have even got to the question of truth. We are on the question of meaning. Meaning precedes truth.

I may fear the postman, but not fear my father, but still, the postman may be my father. So truth is not preserved through identity in that case. So, although a belief may be identical with a proposition, I may fear the belief, yet not fear the proposition.

You are making my case for me. The whole point of the example is to show that it is absurd to think Joe is fearing a proposition. And that is why you can't simply assume that 'I believe that p' is the same as saying 'I believe the proposition that p'. For after all Joe and I do fear or believe the same thing: 'he will be fired'.

As to propositions. basically, I think it is something that can be expressed by the use of a sentence.

Huh? In my example Joe doesn't fear the belief that he will be fired. He fears that he will be fired. And he fears that because he believes it is possible that he will be fired.
Of course he will also fear the belief that he will be fired will turn out to be true. But that isn't quite the same as fearing the belief itself, is it? It is simply a rounabout way of saying that he fears being fired.

I do agree that one could fear the postman and not fear his father who happens to be his father, but that doesn't seem relevant here.

Edited comment:

I don't want to simply delete what I have written above. But I'm not sure I agree with what I've written above. Sorry, but I need a little more time to think this over.

Thanks for the example.

I may fear the postman, but not fear my father, but still, the postman may be my father. So truth is not preserved through identity in that case. So, although a belief may be identical with a proposition, I may fear the belief, yet not fear the proposition.

I don't think so. You are actually the begging the question at stake, here, just like I mentioned in the very first post I sent to you. Yes, the example shows it is absurd Joe can fear a proposition. But your argument is a non-sequiter.

You say,

(1) Joe cannot fear a proposition because of substituion failure.
(2) Substitution failures for cases of fearing the proposition that X are just like substitution failures for cases of believing the proposition that X.
(3) Therefore, Joe cannot believe a proposition that X.

I've had time to think over your example and I think it supports the position that I've taken.
I agree that one may fear the postman, but not fear his father and I agree that one may fear the belief, yet not fear the proposition.
I agree with the former because a father is not necessarily a postman. And I agree with the latter because a belief is not necessarily a proposition.
How can you even think it possible that one could fear a belief without fearing a proposition if you also think that a belief is necessarily a proposition?
And that is my point:
Believing that something is the case is not necessarily believing the proposition that something is the case.
One can believe that p without believing the proposition that p.
One can fear that p, but one cannot fear the proposition that p.

---------- Post added 03-29-2010 at 10:10 AM ----------

But I agree with you. What makes you believe I don't? But that does not mean that that p, and the proposition that p are not identical. Isn't that what you were claiming?

Just as the fact that I can fear the postman, but not fear my father, does not mean that the postman and my father are not identical.

I'm denying that believing is an attitude toward a proposition. That is why I provided the quote from Hacker above. To clarify what it is I am denying.

Believing is generally called a "cognitive attitude". And it is a cognitive attitude toward a proposition. A different cognitive attitude is, "knowing". And, a different attitude is "hoping", or "expecting", all attitudes toward propositions. Generally called, "propositional attitudes". I think you are thinking of a less technical sense of "attitude".

I don't believe so. This is directed at what you call 'a cognitive attitude' towards a proposition conceived as an abstract object.

Again I am not denying that people can believe the proposition that x.

I am saying that one should not confuse believing that x with believing the propostion that x.

Maybe this quote from P.M.S. Hacker'r article Of The Ontlogy of Belief (that I linked to earlier) will make clear what I am trying to say:

"Before commencing analysis, one misconception should be mentioned and put aside. It is commonly suggested that to believe that p is a propositional attitude. That is patently misconceived, if it means that believing is an attitude towards a proposition. For believing that p is not the same as believing the proposition that p. To be sure, one can believe propositions, as one can believe stories, rumours, declarations and statements. But since what I believe, when I believe that p, may be what you fear or suspect, and since to fear or suspect that p is not to fear or suspect the proposition that p, what I believe when I believe that p cannot be a proposition.

Only language users can believe stories, rumours, declarations, statements and propositions,[this is true] but both small children and higher animals can believe that things are thus and so [this is false], so what they believe cannot be propositions [this conclusion is false, and Kenneth and Myself have shown very good reason WHY too.]. To believe that p is to believe things to be so; to believe the proposition that p is to believe things to be as the proposition that p describes them as being." [That'st correct. But his argument above has the larger consequence of the author's not being able to account for What the heck it is that we believe in the first place! Isn't it obvious that propositions exist because we can talk about them, and reason about them, and ascribe the True and the False to them? So above all, the worst larger consequence of this kind of argument is that, if propositions don't exist, then he can't tell us WHAT it is that is capable of being True or False of the world at all! So it comes up short.]

But that's what this passage is actually denying below! Read it again. It is saying that propositional attitudes, (such as believing and knowing), if construed as "an attitude toward a proposition," then this relational analysis (which people like myself are advancing) between the person standing in the belief-relation to the proposition p believed, is false. So, therefore, propositions don't exist.

Why do you think the article is titled "The Ontology of Belief"? It is not merely titled "The Linguistics of Belief." So it is denying the existence of propositions as abstract entities, just as you have done before.



But this is just the exact same completely unwarranted assumption from which the author concludes that propositions don't exist. This is not the conlcusion--so the assumption is not supported at all (see below).
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But what this passage says is biased: It simply doesn't matter who wrote it. Notice the author just assumes the two red-faced claims are true without argument, and draws the conlcusion indicated in bold-faced.

The latter half of the passage which I split apart from the former half is quite incidental (and which happens to be correct except for my edit) and so has no bearing on the actual argument being advanced in the first half.

So here's the argument word for word:

(1)"Believing that p" does not mean the same thing as "believing the proposition that p." (unsupported assumption)

(2) And since to fear or suspect that p is not to fear or suspect the proposition that p, (this is trivially true as we have seen time and again).

(3) And since it is possible that what I believe, when I believe that p, can be what you fear or suspect, (why would anybody think this? It is inuitively false as Kenneth and myself have shown)

(4) Therefore, "what I believe when I believe that p cannot be a proposition."

(5) Therefore, Propositions don't exist.

Q. E. D.

So what do kenneth and I object to?

Premises (1) and (3) are unsupported, so you have no good reason for thinking (4) or (5) are true.

Both Kenneth and myself have been offering really good arguments to show why we think they are false. So there is simply no good reason for thinking that (1) "to believe that p" does not always mean "to believe the propostion that p." So far, you haven't told us why you think this is true.

Also, there is no reason to suppose (3) that what I believe even CAN be what you fear. This is also intuitively false, and Kenneth and myself have been offering arguments to show why. But you have yet to offer any reason for believing why you think (3) is plausible for everyone to believe.

So your conclusion in this argument is coming up drastically short of being the actual Truth of the matter.

I've read your post. I still don't think you understand the point that is being made here. It is as if you simply cannot conceive that to believe that p can be somthing other than believing the proposition that p.

I am denying that propositions are abstract objects. That is quite consistent with what I told you earlier regarding my conception of a proposition.

In any case, I am limited for time right now. Will try and give a fuller response later today. And I will continue to think about what you wrote. Thanks.

Today we tend to describe the world using numbers. Because of that we can bring beauty down to a set of numbers, life down to a four line equasion, etc. But is this the best way to describe the traits and patterns of the world? Inthe case of beauty, we can define bit with numbers, but we can't CREATE it. But with words, we can truly create beauty; we can describe the elements of life and we also can explore that which numbers cannot. Death, reality, and love. So what do you guys think?

So you can't just say propositions exist, deny propositions are abstract entities, but then not tell us what you think propositions actually are.

On the other hand, nobody has given any clear notion of what abstract objects are. It's all very well to say that they're causally inert objects without location in time or space, as a convention, but this isn't really informative, in fact, it reads like a euphemism for "non-existent".

Structured Propositions (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)"It is a truism that two speakers can say the same thing by uttering different sentences, whether in the same or different languages. For example, when a German speaker utters the sentence 'Schnee ist weiss' and an English speaker utters the sentence 'Snow is white', they have said the same thing by uttering the sentences they did. Proponents of propositions hold that, speaking strictly, when speakers say the same thing by means of different declarative sentences, there is some (non-linguistic) thing, a proposition, that each has said. This proposition is said to be expressed by both of the sentences uttered (taken in the contexts of utterance -- to accommodate contextually sensitive expressions) by the speakers, and can be thought of as the information content of the sentences (taken in those contexts)."

Propositions are thought to perform a number of other functions in addition to being the primary bearers of truth and falsity and the things expressed by declarative sentences. When a German and English speaker believe the same thing, say that the earth is round, the thing they both believe is not a sentence but a proposition. For the English speaker would express her belief by means of the sentence 'The earth is round' and the German speaker would express her belief by means of the different sentence 'Die Erde ist rund'. Thus when people believe, doubt and know things, it is propositions that they bear these cognitive relations to. Finally, it is the proposition a sentence expresses, and not the sentence itself, that possesses modal properties such as being necessary, possible or contingent.

To say that propositions are structured is to say something about the nature of propositions. Roughly, to say that propositions are structured is to say that they are complex entities, entities having parts or constituents, where the constituents are bound together in a certain way. "

Intuitively, given that a sentence expresses a structured proposition, the proposition will have parts or constituents that are the semantic values of words or subsentential complex linguistic expressions occurring in the sentence; and the proposition will have a structure similar to the structure of the sentence. For example, assuming that the semantic value of a name is its bearer and that the semantic value of a transitive verb is a relation, a structured proposition theorist will likely hold that the sentence

[INDENT](1) Jason loves Patty
[/INDENT]expresses a proposition consisting of Jason, the loving relation and Patty, bound together in some way into a unity. Letting 'j' stand for Jason, 'p' for Patty and 'L' for the loving relation, we can represent the proposition in question as follows:
[INDENT](1a) [j[L[p]]]
[/INDENT]Thus (1a)'s structure is very close to that of (1); and (1a) has as constituents the semantic values of the words occurring in (1). Indeed, in the case of (1) and (1a), all and only semantic values of words in the sentence are constituents of the proposition.