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Full Idea
A mouse can see and hear a piano being played, but believing is something else; it requires the concept of a piano, and understanding. Mice who hear pianos being played do not believe pianos are being played.
Gist of Idea
A mouse hearing a piano played does not believe it, because it lacks concepts and understanding
Source
Fred Dretske (Naturalizing the Mind [1997], §1.3)
Book Ref
Dretske,Fred: 'Naturalizing the Mind' [MIT 1997], p.9
A Reaction
Are we to say that when a mouse hears a piano it has no beliefs at all? Might not a belief involve images, so that a mouse calls up appropriate images from previous experiences, which are in a grey area on the edge of belief?
| 5801 | A mouse hearing a piano played does not believe it, because it lacks concepts and understanding [Dretske] |
| 5802 | Representations are in the head, but their content is not, as stories don't exist in their books [Dretske] |
| 5805 | Introspection does not involve looking inwards [Dretske] |
| 5803 | In a representational theory of mind, introspection is displaced perception [Dretske] |
| 5804 | A representational theory of the mind is an externalist theory of the mind [Dretske] |
| 5806 | Belief is the power of metarepresentation [Dretske] |
| 5807 | Introspection is the same as the experience one is introspecting [Dretske] |
| 5808 | Qualia are just the properties objects are represented as having [Dretske] |
| 5809 | Some activities are performed better without consciousness of them [Dretske] |
| 5800 | All mental facts are representation, which consists of informational functions [Dretske] |