Divesting belief of language

Irena Dajic

The next meeting of the Sign-Language-Reality seminar in the academic year 2024/25 will take place:

Thursday, the 20th of March 2025, 17.00, Central European Time

Irena Dajic

(Medical University of Vienna)

will deliver a talk:

Divesting belief of language

Abstract:

Language or linguistic ability has long been regarded as constitutive of belief, leading
debates about the nature of doxastic phenomena to focus heavily on their language related
properties. Although more contemporary views rarely endorse such a close link between
the two, discussions about belief remain strongly influenced by linguistically motivated
considerations. Despite their intuitive appeal, retaining some of these inherited
assumptions runs the risk not only of conflating distinguishing features of belief with those
of language-mediated thought, but also of imposing unwarranted cognitive complexity
requirements on doxastic states. This paper addresses the question of whether it is possible
to coherently tackle the subject of belief while avoiding these pitfalls. By way of an
affirmative answer, I propose an alternative perspective that takes belief's relationship to
truth as an uncontroversial starting point, drawing on pragmatist theories to develop a
more substantial account of that relationship and motivate a way of conceptualizing belief
that sidesteps some of the relevant issues. In what follows, I discuss several implications of
this view, one of which is the reversal of belief's position relative to language, such that
instead of language being constitutive of belief, belief itself emerges as foundational for
language based thought.

The seminar will be held online, to join the meeting, please use the information below:

Join Zoom Meeting
https://uw-edu-pl.zoom.us/j/92716044372?pwd=0l7PETAOwqQDBKTMCnheYQN7ag7zx1.1

Meeting ID: 927 1604 4372
Passcode: 697648

The meeting opens at 4:45 pm, the talk starts at 5 pm.