As near as I can tell, I typically believe I’m wearing socks when I am because I can see and feel I’m wearing shoes, and I’m almost always wearing socks if I’m wearing shoes, and rarely otherwise.
It’s hard to say, though. If I pay enough attention I can tell that I’m wearing socks as well (by feel, as you say)… I’m just not sure how often I pay that much attention. (My husband regularly expresses amazement that I’m not more irritated by holes, threadbare patches, etc. in my socks than I report being.)
That said, once I’ve drilled this far down the rabbit hole of exploring my beliefs with precision, I typically get distracted by the fact that the vast majority of the time I experience no beliefs whatsoever about my socks. It would be more precise to say that I reliably construct the belief I’m wearing socks when my attention is drawn to my feet if I’m wearing shoes at the time, based not so much on any direct evidence of my current sock-wearing as on habits conditioned by previous sock-wearing.
But we frequently use “believe” to refer to that sort of reliably-constructed-on-demand relationship to a proposition.
As for me, I mainly believe I’m wearing socks because I can feel socks on my feet. :-)
As near as I can tell, I typically believe I’m wearing socks when I am because I can see and feel I’m wearing shoes, and I’m almost always wearing socks if I’m wearing shoes, and rarely otherwise.
It’s hard to say, though. If I pay enough attention I can tell that I’m wearing socks as well (by feel, as you say)… I’m just not sure how often I pay that much attention. (My husband regularly expresses amazement that I’m not more irritated by holes, threadbare patches, etc. in my socks than I report being.)
That said, once I’ve drilled this far down the rabbit hole of exploring my beliefs with precision, I typically get distracted by the fact that the vast majority of the time I experience no beliefs whatsoever about my socks. It would be more precise to say that I reliably construct the belief I’m wearing socks when my attention is drawn to my feet if I’m wearing shoes at the time, based not so much on any direct evidence of my current sock-wearing as on habits conditioned by previous sock-wearing.
But we frequently use “believe” to refer to that sort of reliably-constructed-on-demand relationship to a proposition.