The problem of beliefs

A problem raised (for example in soas) is how basic states of affairs can be used to account for beliefs. Let us consider the state of affairs ``Kay's believing of the coffee cup's being on the table''. First imagine that the coffee cup is on the table. Then the state of affairs would simply be $\langle\langle Believes, Kay, \langle\langle Is-on-table, CoffeeCup \rangle\rangle \rangle\rangle$. But now, what happens, if Kay is mistaken, and the coffee cup is not on the table? As we stated that there are only states of affairs that obtain, what is Kay believing?

Obviously it is possible that the coffee cup is on the table, it just happens not to be the case, and therefore is not a state of affairs. But the belief is something existing, we can even give it a meaning. We can say that it may refer to a state of affairs, as we can create a picture in our mind of a part of the world, where ``The coffee cup's being on the table'' is a state of affairs.

At this point, with our commitment to obtaining, basic states of affairs, we have no way of accounting for the existence of ``Kay's believing of the coffee cup's being on the table'', even if it was true that the coffee cup is on the table. So either we change our mind, and permit, at least to a certain degree, non-obtaining states of affairs, or we create a new kind of ontological category, which can account for beliefs.

We are not willing to reject our view on states of affairs so soon, due to the reasons mentioned above. We will rather take the approach and try to investigate some other kind of entity, closely related to states of affairs.

There is another category of existence, or some fundamentally different kind of entity, which exists as abstract entity outside of space and time, and which ``refers'' to states of affairs. We call these entities ``infons''. They are closely related to special states of affairs, which we will call ``pictural''.