I’ve written many essays I never published, and one of the reasons for not publishing them is that they get hung up on “proving a side lemma”, and one of the side lemmas I ran into was almost exactly this distinction, except I used different terminology.
“Believing that X” is a verbal construction that, in English, can (mostly) only take a sentence in place of X, and sentences (unlike noun phrases and tribes and other such entities) can always be analyzed according to a correspondence theory of truth.
So what you are referring to as “(unmarked) believing in” is what I called “believing that”.
((This links naturally into philosophy of language stuff across multiple western languages... English: I believe that he’s tall. Spanish: Creo que es alto. German: Ich glaube, dass er groß ist. Russian: Я верю, что он высокий. ))
In English, “Believing in Y” is a verbal construction with much much more linguistic flexibility, with lets it do what you are referring to as “(quoted) ‘believing in’”, I think?
With my version, I can say, in conversation, without having to invoke air quotes, or anything complicated: “I think it might be true that you believe in Thor, but I don’t think you believe that Thor casts shadows when he stands in the light of the sun.”
There is a subtly of English, because “I believe that Sherlock Holmes casts shadows when he stands in the light of the sun” is basically true for anyone who has (1) heard of Sherlock, (2) understands how sunlight works, and (3) is “believing” in a hypothetical/fictional of belief mode similar to the mode of believe we invoke when we do math, where we are still applying a correspondence theory of truth, but we are checking correspondence between ideas (rather than between an idea and our observationally grounded best guess about the operation and contents of the material world).
The way English marks “dropping out of (implicit) fictional mode” is with the word “actual”.
So you say “I don’t believe that Sherlock Holmes actually casts shadows when he stands in the light of the sun because I don’t believe that Sherlock Holmes actually exists in the material world.”
Sometimes, sloppily, this could be rendered “I don’t believe that Sherlock Holmes actually casts shadows when he stands in the light of the sun because I don’t actually believe in Sherlock Holmes.”
(This last sentence would go best with low brow vocal intonation, and maybe a swear word, depending on the audience because its trying to say, on a protocol level, please be real with me right now and yet also please don’t fall into powertalk. (There’s a whole other way of talking Venkat missed out on, which is how Philosophers (and drunk commissioned officers talk to each other.))
I’ve written many essays I never published, and one of the reasons for not publishing them is that they get hung up on “proving a side lemma”, and one of the side lemmas I ran into was almost exactly this distinction, except I used different terminology.
“Believing that X” is a verbal construction that, in English, can (mostly) only take a sentence in place of X, and sentences (unlike noun phrases and tribes and other such entities) can always be analyzed according to a correspondence theory of truth.
So what you are referring to as “(unmarked) believing in” is what I called “believing that”.
((This links naturally into philosophy of language stuff across multiple western languages...
English: I believe that he’s tall.
Spanish: Creo que es alto.
German: Ich glaube, dass er groß ist.
Russian: Я верю, что он высокий.
))
In English, “Believing in Y” is a verbal construction with much much more linguistic flexibility, with lets it do what you are referring to as “(quoted) ‘believing in’”, I think?
With my version, I can say, in conversation, without having to invoke air quotes, or anything complicated: “I think it might be true that you believe in Thor, but I don’t think you believe that Thor casts shadows when he stands in the light of the sun.”
There is a subtly of English, because “I believe that Sherlock Holmes casts shadows when he stands in the light of the sun” is basically true for anyone who has (1) heard of Sherlock, (2) understands how sunlight works, and (3) is “believing” in a hypothetical/fictional of belief mode similar to the mode of believe we invoke when we do math, where we are still applying a correspondence theory of truth, but we are checking correspondence between ideas (rather than between an idea and our observationally grounded best guess about the operation and contents of the material world).
The way English marks “dropping out of (implicit) fictional mode” is with the word “actual”.
So you say “I don’t believe that Sherlock Holmes actually casts shadows when he stands in the light of the sun because I don’t believe that Sherlock Holmes actually exists in the material world.”
Sometimes, sloppily, this could be rendered “I don’t believe that Sherlock Holmes actually casts shadows when he stands in the light of the sun because I don’t actually believe in Sherlock Holmes.”
(This last sentence would go best with low brow vocal intonation, and maybe a swear word, depending on the audience because its trying to say, on a protocol level, please be real with me right now and yet also please don’t fall into powertalk. (There’s a whole other way of talking Venkat missed out on, which is how Philosophers (and drunk commissioned officers talk to each other.))