Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
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From: daryl@oracorp.com (Daryl McCullough)
Subject: Re: Is Common Sense Explicit or Implicit?
Message-ID: <1994Sep20.135008.2340@oracorp.com>
Organization: Odyssey Research Associates, Inc.
Date: Tue, 20 Sep 1994 13:50:08 GMT
Lines: 38

pautler@ils.nwu.edu (David Pautler) writes:

>rickert@cs.niu.edu (Neil Rickert) wrote:
>
>> in my view, beliefs are tied to propositions,
>> and these in turn are tied to language.  Our linguistic species
>> evolved from ancestors which are not linguistic.  Yet, although they
>> are not linguistic, there is much in the behavior of apes to suggest
>> that their cognition is very like ours.  That suggests to me that
>> evolution does not need beliefs.
>
>As my officemate pointed out, you've made a good argument for why
>beliefs aren't grounded in language.  Many of the things we observe
>apes doing seem to require belief, and yet apes don't have a well-
>developed language.  Since apes have been observed making primitive
>tools, would you say tool-making doesn't require beliefs, either?

There are many times in the animal world where behavior is most
naturally described in terms of beliefs. For example: birds avoid
eating a certain butterfly because they believe (perhaps mistakenly)
that it is poisonous. A dog who was chasing a squirrel stands at the
bottom of a tree, barking because it believes (perhaps mistakenly)
that the squirrel is up the tree. Of course, learned people tend to
disparage such attributions of belief as anthropomorphism or
sentimentality. These simple creatures don't *really* have beliefs,
they simply behave *as* *if* they did. The *real* explanation, they
would say, is in terms of a combination of instincts, genetics, and
conditioning.

I tend to view things differently. For me, the beliefs of animals are
real, as real as our own, but beliefs can be coded and implemented in
different ways. Some beliefs are implemented in short-term memory,
some in long-term memory, some in instincts. I don't agree with Neil
that beliefs have to be tied to language.

Daryl McCullough
ORA Corp.
Ithaca, NY
