Since it’s unacceptable to have an infinite number of “I believe”s in front of the clause “I understand” in a proposition, it doesn’t look like I actually can understand anything.
Similar arguments hold for other people asserting those claims. Similar arguments also hold for verbs other than “to understand,” even the verb “to believe” itself.
One interesting similar argument involves an arbitrary proposition p. For me to assert p seems to imply that I believe p, in the given context. So we get
p
No, I believe p.
No, I believe I believe p.
And so on…
Thus, it doesn’t look like I actually can assert a proposition. It looks that in this sense, propositions don’t actually exist.
I believed believe p that I believe p that I believe p seems like an exercise in obsessive compulsion. After the second term the validating power is decreased monumentally. I can doubt my belief of believing in p, but the third term becomes redundant to the point of meaningless.
James: the only absolute validation of a proposition is an identity , which the 2nd tier proposition establishes. Abstracting meaning further begs the very law as of identity , in other words the use of language can not overcome the logical assertion being masem
The proposition I believe p is sufficiently self descriptive to establish the two propositions 1i believe p and 2 if I believe p then I know that p is p . A third tier is obsessive and unnecessarily reductive ad absurdum .
And finally p exists regardless of the absurd reduction because the existence of the proposition isuffixiently descriptive within it's own irrreduced form.
I’m not so sure that you can apply it to “I believe”.
One would think that if you believe that you believe, then there should be no question about it. But I found that such is often not the case because belief comes in degrees and conditionals and has testable requisites. What that means is that one must examine whether they actually believe. And to do that requires observation of other questions concerning the requests for actual belief.
In short, even when I say, “I believe”, I must question whether I really do.
Yes generally that’s true. Here , though p is assumed rto meann the same or similarr things, By virtue of classification , so the conclusions above wirhsramd Your argument.
OP you gotta work with conditional statements. That’s how you know shit.
Like, I know that if I define a triangle as a object with three sides, then I know that since this object in front of me has 3 sides that it is a triangle.
It’s all about conditions. There’s no truth, or knowledge without conditions. That’s just how shit is.
That to tack on an extra “I believe” to a statement makes it a truism (assuming you do believe the statement).
That statements about what you believe express your state of mind.
You can satisfy 1) without having to apply 2) over and over. Here, I’ll show you:
“I believe I understand grade 1 arithmetic.” ← This is a true statement and it expresses my state of mind (I do believe that I understand grade 1 arithmetic). Just because tacking on an extra “I believe” to make it “I believe that I believe that I understand grade 1 arithmetic.” results in a truism doesn’t mean that the previous statement (with only one “I believe”) was false or failed to express my state of mind.
If I understand arithmetic and I know that I understand it, then I can reflect on that knowledge and thereby know that I know that I understand it. But you see, this comes about by an act of reflection–that is, by introspecting and acknowledging my state of mind. And of course, that introspective acknowledgement can itself be reflected upon. This is how I get that seemingly infinite series of “I believe”. But this isn’t a logical infinite regress, it isn’t logically necessary to tack on an infinite series of “I believe” to a statement expressing your mental state in order to make that statement true–indeed, it would make it false–for you can only recursively reflect on your own mental states a limited number of times–a very limited number–I’d say 3 times max–before it you lose sight of what it is your supposed to be believing in the first place.
And I’m pretty sure that I do understand grade 1 arithmetic, so I don’t even know if the first “I believe” is necessary. “I understand arithmetic” seems to suffice.