You ask two different questions, right? The necessary and sufficient conditions for my belief (that some proposition is true) are precisely the same as the necessary and sufficient conditions for my "knowing." For me, "I know the earth is round" is the same as "I believe the earth is round."

The necessary and sufficient conditions "to say that S believes something" may be different. I'm a skeptic (in the Socratic sense). S may not be. I may require a different kind of justification before I say I believe something than would S.

In this example, what would be some examples of the necessary and sufficient conditions--humor me--of Bryan's believing?

Nice question! (your more general one) I associate with some people who are talk a lot about 'belief' but they don't really look at just what constitutes a belief.

Necessary to a belief... perhaps a data transform function. An input data space and an output data space (might be the same space).

E.g., Bryan believes Bob is in the house. Input data space might be the existence of Bob and the existence of the house, and people can be in houses (this isn't exhaustive). Output data space, Bob is in the house.

The transform might be the set of heuristics (not necessarily logically or even consciously applied) Bryan uses to infer that Bob is in the house. E.g., he watched Bob enter the front door. Or he saw someone that looked like Bob in the window.

For Bryan to believe Bob is in the house, Bryan must at least (1) be able to conceive of and/or perceive the input and output spaces, (2) have the ability to apply the transform, and (3) apply the transform on some input data to arrive at data in the output space (in this case, the output space is pretty limited).

Just one way of looking at belief.

Sufficient I can't think of right off. The above could be applied to, say, the transforms performed by Bryan's retinas to begin to create the perception of an image, but I wouldn't associate that with belief. (Though belief might exert some influence at that level, dunno.)

Nice try, your question above would not be labeled belief. There is physical evidence. It can be presented in simple form with discussion if said evidence is "true". It then would be labeled as knowledge of. I think your just swinging the pendulum here. Maybe we should start at a new point again.

You seem to be answering the question, what are the necessary and sufficient causes for someone's believing something. But I don't think that was the question being asked. The question being asked was what truth-conditions are necessary and sufficient for ascribing to some person A, the belief that p. That is a very different question from the one you are trying answer. It is logical-linguistic question.

You seem to be answering the question, what are the necessary and sufficient causes for someone's believing something. But I don't think that was the question being asked. The question being asked was what truth-conditions are necessary and sufficient for ascribing to some person A, the belief that p. That is a very different question from the one you are trying answer. It is logical-linguistic question.

When you ask what are the necessary and sufficient conditions for belief, I understand you as asking, what are the necessary and sufficient conditions for ascribing belief to someone. E.g. that A believes that Quito is the capital of Ecuador.

As I said in an earlier post, following Peirce, I think that a sufficient condition is that A accepts the proposition that Quito is the capital of Ecuador is true (what the evidence for A's acceptance of the proposition is, is another question). And, I am inclined to think that it is a necessary condition too of A's believing that Quito is the capital of Ecuador that A accepts the proposition too. I might add that neither truth nor justification are necessary or sufficient conditions for A believes that p.

That gets us nowhere. We don't have grounds for ascription.

As for the other one you mentioned, it is possible to believe in something that one also believes will not stand up to the rigors of argumentation.

This seems the right path because there are no public criteria for "believes". It would have to be entirely mental content.

That gets us nowhere. We don't have grounds for ascription.

As for the other one you mentioned, it is possible to believe in something that one also believes will not stand up to the rigors of argumentation.

This seems the right path because there are no public criteria for "believes". It would have to be entirely mental content.

Public criteria does not mean "the grounds for ascription" nor is it only a constraint on the grounds for ascription.

Public criteria means that the criteria which must be satisfied to have a belief must be public. To believe at all is to distinguish one's beliefs from others. This is a public issue.

Further, we're not talking about "believing in" such as "I believe in the Communist party" or "I believe in God."

We're talking about belief-that contexts, where "believe that" is given a propositional variable.

"I believe in God" might be translated to "I believe that God exists." This can certainly be put in a syllogism.

Is there any possible public criteria other than admittance? That is certainly neither necessary or sufficient. I can lie or I can withhold and still believe.

Why must one separate one's own beliefs from others in order to believe in the first place?

Is it impossible to believe in isolation.

Perhaps a belief is only possible with a context particular to a certain individual. Explain this: I find myself alone in a forest with no one else being aware of my position and think "I believe that if I head north, I will reach a highway." What is the public criteria for this belief?

And as to your normative principle, using your prior example, what is the difference between believing from some chemical injection and believing from a lie. Is it impossible to believe it is raining if said belief is dependent formed from a lie? Do I misunderstand?

Good!

This is exactly why I posted this thread. I'm trying to sort out whether or not "believing" is just a matter of assent.

So perhaps,

X believes P iff X would sincerely assent to P

By the conventional meaning of what it means to believe. It's labeled and defined in our dictionaries, more or less accurately. To believe is to understand one's own beliefs contradistinguished against others beliefs.

It's important not to get into "chicken-or-the-egg" type thinking. Don't think of "first place" in the sense of "the horse came in first place." Think of first place in the sense of "first the door must be closed before it can be opened."

It's a semantic issue, not a temporal one.

You've likely already distinguished your beliefs from others. You've become a more or less mastered language user, and you understand how the first-person pronoun works along with a range of verbs. You've already grasped the criteria, before entering the forest, for assigning belief to yourself.

Having your beliefs injected might strike others as an inappropriate way to acquire beliefs. Believing from a lie isn't in appropriate because you still had the capacity to determine the truth for yourself. Believing through injection circumvents one's own capacities. Really, it would be acquiring a belief in a nonvolitional way. It's not something you do but rather something that is done to you.

Having beliefs injected would be like getting punched in the face or being forced to believe under coercion. No one really would accept that in being tortured a person literally and truly believes that the torturer is a fabulous and smart person.

Plus, if you find out that you believed based on a lie, you'd likely get angry for being fooled. If you find out that you believed based on some science experiment, you'd probably get angry for being invaded or alienated. And you're probably firmly suppose that you never truly believed it. Whereas with a lie, you have to suppose that you believed it or else you would be denying that you were lied to, which is a strong relation between yourself and the lying person. The lying person will likely admit under duress that he or she lied to you.

It seems to me that we can have good grounds for ascribing the belief that (say) Quito is the capital of Ecuador to someone. For instance, we ask him whether he believes that Quito is the capital, and he says, yes (and we have no reason to think he is lying); and we know he has been taking a class in the geography of South America; that he is generally knowledgeable about facts of that sort; and that he intends to visit Quito soon. Wouldn't that persuade you that he believes that Quito is the capital of Ecuador. It certainly would persuade me.

An entirely different issue, however, is whether what he believes is true. And, I think that is the question you were addressing when you were talking about "argumentation". It might, of course, be (although it isn't) that Quito is not the capital of Ecuador. But, of course, that doesn't mean that someone does not believe it is the capital of Ecuador. A person may have false beliefs as all of us are aware.

Merely assenting to the statement that Quito is the capital of Ecuador is not sufficient, there must also be unspoken willingness to assent.

If, as nerdfiles posited, "X believes P iff X would sincerely assent to P", I still think we have gone nowhere because I don't see what that clears up.

Did you even bother to read the first post?

I don't understand your point. I am supposing that the assent is sincere. Why would you think it was not unless you had some reason to think so. If you ask someone for the time and he replies, are you inclined not to believe him?

But you cannot know the Earth is round unless it is true that the Earth is round, but you can believe the Earth is round, and it be false that the Earth is round. Furthermore, you can believe that the Earth is round, and have no justification for that belief, but you cannot know the Earth is round and have no justification. Therefore, it is not true that believing and knowing are the same.

Well, I read it and tried to understand it, sir. I don't know if I "even bothered" to read it. If I hadn't "even bothered" to read it, then it would be presumptuous of me to attempt to participate in the discussion.

On the other hand, since I did read it, and, in my attempt to participate, have given an answer that you deem faulty or uninformed or unenlightened or unintelligent, then I would think the courteous thing for you to do would be to give a reply, rather than a sarcastic dismissal.

Apparently I misunderstood the central question, as apparently many others have, which can't possibly be your fault, right? But before I get any further involved, are you hue-man under a new name?

The definition I gave is straight-forward. Your answer, on the face of it, either blindly or willfully ignored my definition, or perhaps you made the wrong inference.

If something is defined in terms of something else, that "something else" cannot just be the same thing as the something it was used to define.

If I say "Cats are four-legged creatures" you cannot say that whenever you say "There's a four-legged creature" you mean just the same as "Cat", for dogs, cows, and a various multitude of animals count as four legged creatures.

You gave absolutely no evidence to counter my definition. You simply asserted an opposing one. Granted, the burden of proof may be on me to supply why my definition is correct, but it seems like oblivious to not question my proof but rather to simply toss out another definition.

I see no reason to respect your latter assertions when you obviously ignored mine. Really, you were the first to be sarcastic.

If I say "A cat is a four-legged creature" and you say "A cat is a cat", I've got no reason to take you as being anything but sarcasm and mocking.

You are hue-man, aren't you? You should be asking yourself, "What does it mean when someone has such a huge superiority complex that he doesn't think he has to be courteous to his fellow enquirers?" And you were the one calling someone a child, back there...