I phrased badly: that should have been “likelihood-of-democrats-winning-next-election” corresponds to your mental model of the democrats, not the democrats themselves. The democrats will either win or they won’t, but if you don’t know which you’ll say “I think/believe the democrats will win the next election”. Since the democrats actually did win the 2008 election, your mental model does correspond to the real world, so it doesn’t matter whether you’re referring to your mental model or the real world. Since you have less confidence in your mental model of future democratic performance, it makes sense to use different phrases for each (“I believe the democrats will win the next election” feels different than “The democrats won the last election”).
Well, I certainly agree that it makes sense to use different phrases to indicate different levels of confidence in an assertion, and I agree that the distinction between “X” and “I believe X” is often used this way.
I phrased badly: that should have been “likelihood-of-democrats-winning-next-election” corresponds to your mental model of the democrats, not the democrats themselves. The democrats will either win or they won’t, but if you don’t know which you’ll say “I think/believe the democrats will win the next election”. Since the democrats actually did win the 2008 election, your mental model does correspond to the real world, so it doesn’t matter whether you’re referring to your mental model or the real world. Since you have less confidence in your mental model of future democratic performance, it makes sense to use different phrases for each (“I believe the democrats will win the next election” feels different than “The democrats won the last election”).
Well, I certainly agree that it makes sense to use different phrases to indicate different levels of confidence in an assertion, and I agree that the distinction between “X” and “I believe X” is often used this way.