What the heck is sameness, really?

[luckyme]

The concept of ‘sameness’ is puzzling for me. I’ve had a run or two at it on here in the past and I’m ready to tackle it again.

On two separate occasions you face the same cards and same multiway preflop action in a limit poker game. Both times an opponent bets out on the flop. Opponent 1 is the world’s best limit player, opponent 2 is a novice. Obviously they both believe ‘ I should bet now’, but is it meaningful to say they have the same belief?

Philosophy is at it’s weakest when it detaches from reality and becomes a formal word game. I don’t think there is evidence that we ‘have beliefs’. Most beliefs seem something we mainly produce in response to cognitive probes. Are beliefs like myriad one-line sticky notes dangling at various angles from the amygdala?

If we could follow the construction of the belief of both opponents we would never see a similar cognitive formation at any time as they reach the decision to raise. It’s merely our necessity to compress complexity into communicable forms that we fall into this ‘sameness’ trap. It’s like calling two animals the same because they are both dogs.

The fact that we sum up these two situations as “they both believe they should raise” should not condemn us to accepting that they have the same belief. Just as ‘they’re both dogs’ doesn’t nullify the fact that one has long brown hair and the other is hairless, neither should the totally different features behind our two opponents decision to raise be considered as their having the same belief.

I suppose one issue I’m raising is the ‘you can’t step into the same river twice’ or as Dennett commented once, you can’t take the ‘same’ golf putt twice.

Really, I’ve entangled two issues - the problem of blurred sameness and the issue of the nature of belief ( which seems something we construct rather than something we have in almost all cases).. Any useful comments that stay on target would be much appreciated. Chez gave me some help in the past but it obviously didn’t take. Sigh.

Thanks, luckyme

[bunny]

I think their beliefs are "the same" or at least similar but that how similar depends on how closely you choose to examine that belief. It seems to me that "Is it the same belief?" is an ambiguous question. If you mean "Are their mental states identical when they act in an outwardly identical way?" then I think the answer is no, but I dont think that's what people mean by belief.

I think there is a nested nature of beliefs - the novice believes he should raise and perhaps he also believes he should raise because the law of averages says he's lost the last fourteen times so he must win this time. The expert believes he should raise and he also believes he should raise because it is positive EV to do so given what he knows of the situation. They share one belief at a coarse scale but as you look closer the beliefs distinguish themselves.

This seems the same to me as saying my brother and I are both accountants, although on closer inspection we do completely different things in our jobs - so is it really "the same" profession or not? I would say it depends on what you mean by profession, not on what you mean by same.

[chezlaw]

I believe you can get nowhere with this unless you first tackle the problem of meaning.

What does it mean to say that that 'someone raised' or 'grass is green'. Once you've got that sorted then you may have some content for beliefs and then some basis for comparing similarities of belief.

I think we should have a long thread on what we mean by 'grass is green'. DS in particular will enjoy it.

chez

[ChrisV]

I think it's incorrect to call the idea that you should bet a belief. It's a decision derived from other beliefs. Often the difference between the expert and the novice is that the novice's underlying beliefs are very simplistic - e.g. that he thinks his opponent will fold - whereas the expert's are complex - e.g. that his opponent will fold a certain range of hands and that his possible range of hands is such and such.

I don't think a belief should be something that is derived from other beliefs in a direct way. Indirect is fine. For instance, I believe that AIDS is caused by the HIV retrovirus. I believe this essentially because of argument from authority. Even though I could, if challenged, set out a case for why my belief is reasonable, it's still the case that my belief is not really based on anything other than having read it in a book. It is not derived from other beliefs in the same way that a belief that I should bet is. I also don't think that, say, the scientist who discovered HIV could be said to believe that it causes AIDS in the same sense that I do.

[Philo]

Contemporary philosophical analyses of belief:

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/belief/

[SNOWBALL]

you might want to check out some dialectical materialist philosophy. A central tenet of that philosophy is that A does not equal A.

[Philo]

[ QUOTE ]
you might want to check out some dialectical materialist philosophy. A central tenet of that philosophy is that A does not equal A.

[/ QUOTE ]

From which it follows that the moon is made of green cheese.