Aim of Belief

OXFORD

THE AIM OF BELIEF

E D I T E D B Y

T I M O T H Y C H A N

The Aim of Belief

The Aim of Belief

E D I T E D B Y

Timothy Chan

UNIVERSITY PRESS

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Jonathan E. Adler (1949-2012), a valued contributor not only to this book but also to the philosophical debates it documents, sadly passed away before seeing its publication. We dedicate this book to his memory.

Acknowledgements

This book has been made possible by the Centre for the Study of Mind in Nature (CSMN), University of Oslo, which is funded by the Research Council of Norway. Most of my editorial work was carried out while a postdoctoral research fellow under the Rational Agency project at CSMN, under the direction of Olav Gjelsvik and Jennifer Hornsby, who provided invaluable advice and support throughout. Earlier versions of many of the contributions were presented at the CSMN conference 'The Aim of Belief', held in Oslo in June 2009, and to all the participants this book owes no small credit. I am grateful to Herman Cappelen, Christel Fricke, Anders Nes, and Timothy Williamson for extremely helpful advice, and to Kjell Schmidt for highly efficient editorial assis- tance. I am also thankful to two anonymous readers for Oxford University Press, for their detailed comments on earlier drafts that substantively improved the book, and to Peter Momtchiloff, philosophy commissioning editor of Oxford University Press, for supporting the project. Finally, I am most grateful to the authors of each chapter for their generous contributions, and for their patience through the editorial process.

Contents

List of Contributors1. Introduction: Aiming at Truth

Timothy Chan2. Belief-Truth Norms

Paul Harwich3. In Defence of Normativism about the Aim of Belief

Pascal Engel4. There Are No Norms of Belief

David Papineau5. Against Belief Normativity Kathrin

Gluer and Asa Wikforss

6. Belief, Truth, and BlindspotsKrister Bykvist and Anandi Hattiangadi

7. The Right Thing to Believe Ralph Wedgwood

8. Non-Evidential Reasons to Believe Jonathan Adler and Michael Hicks

9. Leaps of KnowledgeAndrew Reisner

10. Nothing but the Truth: On the Norms and Aims of BeliefDaniel Whiting

11. Truth as the Aim of Epistemic Justification Asbjorn Steglich-Petersen

Index

List of ContributorsJONATHAN ADLER Lately Professor, Brooklyn College and the Graduate School, City University of New York

KRISTER BYKVIST Professor, Stockholm University

TIMOTHY CHAN Researcher, Centre for the Study of Mind in Nature, University of Oslo PASCAL

ENGEL Professor, University of Geneva KATHRIN GLUER Professor, Stockholm University

ANANDI HATTIANGADI Professor, Stockholm University and Pro Futura Fellow, Swedish Collegium of Advanced Studies

MICHAEL HICKS Visiting Assistant Professor, University of California, Santa Cruz

PAUL HORWICH Professor, New York University

DAVID PAPINEAU Professor, King's College London

ANDREW REISNER Associate Professor, McGill University

ASBJ0RN STEGLICH-PETERSEN Associate Professor, Aarhus University

RALPH WEDGWOOD Professor, University of Southern California

DANIEL WHITING Senior Lecturer, University of Southampton

ASA WIKFORSS Professor, Stockholm University

1 Introduction: Aiming at TruthTimothy Chan

I. Overview of the main questionsIt is not a contingent fact that I cannot bring it about, just like that, that I believe something . . . Why is this? One

reason is connected with the characteristic of beliefs that they aim at the truth. (Williams 1973: 148)

So wrote Bernard Williams in 'Deciding to Believe', coining the dictum 'beliefs aim at truth'. Since then 'the aim of belief' has come to be the rubric for a family of philosophical issues concerning the nature of belief and its relationship to truth. This volume brings together ten new essays on these questions, questions that are not only central to philosophy of mind and epistemology, but also significant for philosophy of language, meta- ethics, and philosophy of action. In this introduction I first outline the major questions that are addressed by the authors, locating their contributions in the context of current debates. In the second section a synopsis of each of the chapters is provided.

What does it mean to say that beliefs aim at truth? Williams's explication in his article is brief, amounting to little more than two paragraphs (1973: 136-7). This is because belief aiming at truth is in Williams's paper an explanans, with the explanandum being the impossibility of believing at will. Before introducing aiming at truth as the first among several basic characteristics of belief, Williams warns 'it will be necessary to mention things which may seem problematic or completely platitudinous' (1973: 136). 'Beliefs aim at truth' proves to be both at the same time. Just about all authors can agree on its being a platitude, when understood in some sense or other, but that is as far as any universal agreement goes. There are important and fertile ongoing debates about how this idea is to be fleshed out, what explains it and what its implications are, including but going far beyond whether Williams is right to claim that it implies belief cannot be formed at will.1 We shall look at the most central among these in a moment.

Of course, these philosophical issues themselves long predate the label 'the aim of belief. Another crucial source of the literature on our current topics in the last half-century is Anscombe (1957), who introduced the idea (though not the actual phrase) of directions-of-fit. To paraphrase, generalizing from her example, if a belief and what it purports to represent do not agree, then the mistake is in the belief (1957: 56). By contrast, if what one desires is not realized, it does not follow that the desire is mistaken. After Searle (1979, 1983), the distinction is known as belief and desire having respectively 'mind-to-world' and 'world-to-mind' directions of fit, meaning that the mind is to

1 For example, recent aricles that are devoted entirely to addressing what 'beliefs aim at truth' means include Engel (2005, 2007), Owens (2003), Shah (2003), Shah and Velleman (2005), Steglich-Petersen (2006, 2009), Vahid (2006), Velleman (2000), Wedgwood (2002), Whiting (2012), Zalabardo (2010), not to mention the many more that do so in part.

For a comprehensive critical review of the literature on directions of fit, see Humberstone (1992). See also Zangwill (1998).

fit the world for belief, and vice versa for desire.2 To say that belief is to fit the world seems to express essentially the same idea as saying that belief aims at truth—for a belief to succeed in representing the world as it is, amounts to just the same thing as for the belief to be true. Having the mind-to-world direction of fit is what distinguishes belief from many other types of propositional attitudes. It is an essential characteristic of belief, just as aiming at truth is supposed to be.

Both 'having a mind-to-world direction of fit' and 'aiming at truth', while insightful and suggestive, require unpacking and more precise formulation. Anscombe spells out her original distinction in terms of the observation that a false belief is, whereas an unfulfilled desire is not, ipso facto mistaken. The other side of the coin is that true beliefs are correct. As Gibbard writes,

For belief, correctness is truth. Correct belief is true belief. My belief that snow is white is correct just in case the

belief is true, just in case snow is white. (Gibbard 2005: 338)

The distinction between being correct and being mistaken in this context requires hardly less explication. This pair of terms, however, has (prima facie) a very significant characteristic, as Gibbard immediately continues to observe,

Correctness, now, seems normative. More precisely, as we should put it, the concept of correctness seems

to be a normative concept. (Gibbard 2005: 338, my italics)

Starting with these two claims, pithily stated by Gibbard, that truth provides a fundamental standard of correctness for belief, and that correctness is normative, some philosophers argue that there is an irreducibly normative dimension in understanding the nature and contents of belief. 2

Opponents of these normative accounts of the aim of belief question whether the putative norm can be spelt out in a plausible way, and argue that the nature of belief can be understood in purely descriptive terms, without invoking any irreducible norms. The division between these two approaches constitutes the primary (though by no means the only) fault line in the debates about the aim of belief. The contours of the debate between them are reviewed and reflected across a majority of chapters of this volume, by some of their leading exponents. It is thus appropriate that we begin with the question at issue between them.

1. Is truth the constitutive norm of belief?

Just as almost everyone can agree that belief aims at truth, in some sense of 'aim', it is uncontroversial that in some way true beliefs in general have some positive normative significance compared to false beliefs. As Lynch observes, alongside aiming at truth, another prominent 'platitude' about belief is

Norm of Belief: It is prima facie correct to believe that p if and only if the proposition that p is true.

2 Apart from these ideas based on the notion of correctness, another important source of the current debate about whether 'belief aims at truth' should be understood in normative terms is Kripke (1982), who influentially and controversially argued that linguistic meaning is normative. (See Boghossian 1989.) As Gluer and Wikforss observe (2009a, 2009b, Chapter 5), over the decades, the locus of the debate about Kripkes (Wittgenstein's) thesis of the normativity of meaning has shifted to questions about the normativity of thoughts,, both about the contents of thought, and modes or types of thought (i.e. what distinguishes different types of propositional attitudes such as belief and desire).

(Lynch 2009: 10)

A number of disagreements arise, however, over how to understand the meaning and significance of the thesis. Perhaps the most important among these is the question whether the thesis identifies a constitutive property of belief, due to its very nature, or merely an extrinsic one, due at least in part to factors external to the nature of belief. For someone who accepts the former, it is natural to understand 'a belief is correct iff it is true' as what explains 'belief aims at truth, or indeed to treat the two as making the same claim in different terms. For example, Wedgwood defends

a normative interpretation of [the claim that belief aims at truth]. According to this interpretation, the claim

expresses a normative principle about belief: in effect, it is the claim that belief is subject to a truth-norm. (this

volume, Chapter 7: 123; see also Wedgwood 2002)

Let us use 'normativism' to stand for the view that belief, by its very nature or essence, possesses the normative property of having truth as its correctness condition.3Correspondingly we can also call Wedgwood's 'normative interpretation' of the thesis that belief aims at truth a normativist account of the aim of belief. Apart from Wedgwood, recent exponents of normativism (of various species) include Boghossian (2003), Brandom (1994), Engel (2005, 2007), Humberstone (1992), Millar (2004), Shah (2003), Shah and Velleman (2005), and Zangwill (1998, 2005), among others. In this volume, normativism is defended by Engel, Wedgwood, and Adler and Hicks in Chapters 3, 7, and 8,4 and challenged by Horwich, Papineau, Gluer and Wikforss, and Bykvist and Hattiangadi in Chapters 2, 4, 5, and 6.

The debate between the normativists and their opponents turns on a range of further questions about how the normativist thesis is to be articulated. Central among these questions are the following.

1A. What's the logical form of the truth-norm?

The idea that truth constitutes the correctness condition of a belief can be naturally and

schematically expressed as the following conjunction:

(1a) It is correct to believe that p if it is true thatp; and

(1b) It is correct to believe that p only if it is true that p

Statement (1a) states that truth is a sufficient condition for a belief's being correct; (1b) that it is a necessary condition. Prima facie (1a) may seem too strong. Out of the uncountably many true

3 It is worth noting that normativism, as characterized here, ascribes to belief the essential normative property of having truth as its correctness condition, and that is saying something stronger than the claim that belief necessarily has this correctness condition. For not all necessary properties are essential properties. Gibbard (2005), from which we have earlier quoted, is a case in point. Gibbard holds that it 'analytically' (and thus necessarily) follows from a proposition being true that it ought to be believed, a fact which he finds profoundly puzzling as an apparent counterexample to the is-ought divide. He rejects explanations (attributed to Boghossian and Shah) according to which this is due to the concept of belief itself being normative, and develops an account which draws upon factors other than the nature of belief. In doing so, he eschews commitment to (what we are calling) normativism, even though he accepts that beliefs are necessarily correct-if-true.

4 Henceforth, essays in this volume will be referred to simply by their chapter numbers.

propositions, a vast number concern subject matters that are of no interest, either practical or theoretical, to anyone. (For instance, is the sum of the numbers on the number plates of all vehicles in London at this moment divisible by six?) It is not at all obvious that believing the truth on these matters, as opposed to not forming any opinion, is the correct thing to do. For one thing, life is short, and our cognitive resources are scarce (Bykvist and Hattiangadi 2007; Heal 1988). There are several ways the normativist may respond to this difficulty, some of which we discuss further below. One strategy is to do without (1a) altogether, and articulate the normativist thesis as simply making the claim (1b), which is to say that all false beliefs are incorrect. Proposals of this type, taking a conditional as opposed to biconditional form, are to be found in, for example, Boghossian (2003), Humberstone (1992) and Williamson (1996, 2000: 241f).6 Opponents of these proposals argue that (1b) alone is too weak to capture the normativist thesis. Bykvist and Hattiangadi (2007: 280), for example, contend that (1b) places no requirement on a believer at all. This debate, concerning whether (1a) is something the normativist is (or should be) committed to, is the first question about the logical form of the truth norm for belief as understood by the normativists.

A second question of logical form concerns the issue of scope. (1a) can be read in two ways, as either

(ian) (It is correct to believe thatp) if (it is true thatp); or (iaw) It is correct (to believe thatp if it is true thatp)

Similarly, (lb) can be read as either (ibn) and (ibw), obtained by substituting 'only if' for 'if' in (1a n) and (1aw). The first is called the narrow scope reading since 'correct' has narrow scope relative to the conditional, and the second is called 'wide scope' since 'correct' has wide scope relative to the conditional. The two readings are not equivalent (Broome 1999). Notably, the consequent 'It is correct to believe that p' in (ian) is detachable, in the sense that it can be validly inferred from (ian) together with 'It is true that p'. By contrast, from (iaw) and 'It is true that p, it is not valid to infer (or 'detach') 'It is correct to believe that p'. Some of the issues just outlined with respect to conditional vs. biconditional forms also bear on the question of narrow vs. wide scopes. In a partial parallel to the former battle line, on relative scope we have Humberstone and Williamson (though not Boghossian) being in favour of the non-detachable form of (lb), and Bykvist and Hattiangadi (2007: 284) again arguing that a truth norm of this form is too weak. These two questions about logical form, moreover, interact to generate more possibilities to be considered. These issues are pursued further in Chapters 2, 3, and 6 of this volume.

1B. What is the normative force of the truth-norm?

Statements (1a) and (lb) are formulated with 'it is correct' as a place-holder for the appropriate normative operator. What that operator should be is another dimension along which both normativists and their critics differ. The most popular approach is to understand 'it is correct to believe that p' as making a deontic claim, to be spelt out as 'One ought to believe that p' (Boghossian 2003; Bykvist and Hattiangadi 2007, Chapter 6; Gluer and Wikforss 2009a, Chapter 5). On this view correctness implies obligation. Whiting (2010) by contrast proposes that correctness should instead be understood as the weaker notion of permissibility. Reading (1a) as 'One may believe that p ', Whiting argues, avoids many of the objections without rendering it trivial, a verdict shared by

Papineau in his contribution (Chapter 4, §3), even though Papineau does not think the thesis is ultimately defensible. This proposal is criticized by Bykvist and Hattiangadi (Chapter 6, §4) and Engel (Chapter 3, §3). A third possibility, defended by Wedgwood (2002, Chapter 7), is to understand correctness as a basic normative concept in its own right, distinct from and irreducible to either deontic or axiological ones. Wedgwood grants that there is a correctness-related sense of 'ought', which he explicates in Chapter 7 here, but emphasizes that it is derivative from correctness, not the other way round. Axiological interpretations themselves, which understand correctness as an evaluative claim, and (1a) and (1b) as attaching value to true beliefs, constitute a fourth possibility which is assessed by Engel (Chapter 3, §§1, 4) and Bykvist and Hattiangadi (Chapter 6, §5). Finally, in Chapter 2 (§§1-2) Horwich puts forward the novel proposal that the set of correct beliefs is to be understood as the set that we ought to want our beliefs to be in. True beliefs are correct, according to Horwich, because we ought to want our beliefs to be true.

IC. WHAT IS A CONSTITUTIVE NORM?

A question prior to whether truth is the constitutive norm of belief is, of course: What is a constitutive norm? In the literature, chess and other competitive games are the primary examples with which the notion of constitutive norm is introduced. They are activities with explicitly defined rules, which set a normative standard both for judging moves within the game, and for defining what a move is in the first place (Dummett 1959; Searle 1969; Williamson 1996, 2000). The model is then usually applied to speech acts, in particular assertion, on the hypothesis that it has a constitutive rule or constitutive norm. Two issues are relevant for our purposes. First, there are doubts about whether (putative) constitutive rules or norms can play the roles that the authors cited want them to play (Gluer and Pagin 1999; Chapter 3, §2). Second, even if they can, questions remain about whether the model could be extended to belief, as opposed to assertion (Chapters 5, 10).

ID. HOW CAN THE TRUTH-NORM GUIDE BELIEF?

If there is a constitutive norm of belief, can it make any difference to how our beliefs are actually formed and maintained? Engel (Chapter 3) emphasizes that this question is one of psychology, which is logically distinct from the metaphysical question whether the norm exists. While not denying that there is a distinction between these questions, most authors nevertheless accept that the postulation of a constitutive norm is justified only if it can be psychologically efficacious in guiding the formation of our belief. Gluer and Wikforss (2009a, Chapter 5) argue that this constraint could not be satisfied on any intuitively acceptable notion of rule-guidance. Addressing the same issues, Shah and Velleman (2005) argue that the way we carry out our doxastic deliberation manifests guidance by the constitutive norm of truth. In this volume, Engel (Chapter 3, §5) attempts to answer Gluer and Wikforss by drawing on aspects of Shah and Velleman's account, while Horwich (Chapter 2, §8) suggests that our commitment to the truth-norm is manifested in our practice of evidence-gathering.

2. What is the source of the norms that govern belief?

What explains normative facts about beliefs, such as the conditions under which it is correct or incorrect to hold a belief? In particular, why is it generally correct to hold a belief if it is true and generally incorrect to hold a belief if it is false? Further, why are true beliefs generally correct and false beliefs generally incorrect? The normativist has a straightforward answer: these normative

properties of belief are constitutive of belief, and are thus explained by the very nature of belief. The anti-normativist, on the other hand, holds that normative properties are extrinsic properties of belief. They are thus committed to there being some other, independent source(s) of these properties, including the crucial role played by truth. What can these be? Papineau (Chapter 4) undertakes to provide the answer, arguing that when true beliefs are valuable (which they usually but not always are), that is always due to their personal, moral, and (possibly) aesthetic values. Horwich (Chapter 2, §6) also reflects on the complex relationship between the moral and instrumental values of true beliefs.

3. Is being the aim of belief a substantive property of truth ?

So far the questions we discussed concern the nature of belief. On the other side of the equation, we may also ask whether being the aim of belief tells us anything about the nature of truth. If the normativist understanding of the aim of belief is incorrect, then a distinct question will be whether being a (or the) fundamental norm of belief tells us anything about the nature of truth. Lynch (2009), for example, suggests that being the norm of belief and being the end of inquiry are central among the 'truisms' that define our concept of truth. An adequate theory of truth must explain (or explain away) these truisms. He then argues that the deflationist theory of truth, according to which truth has no underlying nature, fails in this task. Similarly, Wright (1992) argues that deflationist accounts of truth fail to account for its distinctive normative force. In his contribution (Chapter 2, §7), Horwich explains why the deflationist should reject both the claim that being the norm of belief is constitutive of the concept of truth, and that explaining this fact requires a substantive theory of truth. Bykvist and Hattiangadi (Chapter 6, §2) go even further and offer a deflationatist view of what the normativist takes to be the truth-norm for belief. On their view, insofar as it is true to say that 'a belief is correct if and only if it is true, the notion of correctness which is in play should be understood in terms of the concept of truth.

4. Does aiming at truth imply that belief cannot be formed at will?

Williams, as we have seen, first asserted that belief aims at truth as part of the explanation for the impossibility of believing at will. Not surprisingly, the assumption that belief aims at truth forms the backdrop of much of the subsequent debate between doxastic voluntarists (those who hold that we can sometimes believe at will) and doxastic involuntarists (those who agree with Williams in holding that we cannot).5 In his contribution (Chapter 9) Reisner argues that, contrary to Williams and most doxastic involuntarists, belief's aiming at truth does not entail the impossibility of forming a belief voluntarily. Indeed, he argues for the stronger claim that in some special circumstances the ability to form belief at will would facilitate the fulfilment of the aim of arriving at true beliefs. Adler and Hicks respond to some of Reisner's arguments in Chapter 8.

The debate about doxastic voluntarism is also relevant to the questions we are addressing in this volume in a different way, which goes in the opposite direction. Rather than taking belief aiming at truth as a datum which constrains our ability (or inability) to believe at will, the current point takes doxastic involuntarism itself as a datum, which constrains the account one can give of belief's aiming at truth. In particular, Alston (1988) influentially argues that the deontological conception of justification (which understands epistemic justification in terms of an epistemic species of ought) is

5 See, for example, Hieronymi (2006), Setiya (2008), and Winters (1979).

untenable because, first, ought implies can; and, second, we cannot form or discard beliefs in the way required by the deontologist. The deontological conception of justification is a distinct thesis from normativism about the aim of belief, but, as we have seen, normativism is commonly construed in terms of an epistemic ought as well. Thus, making the plausible assumption that ought implies can, the same considerations which support doxastic involuntarism can be deployed to make the case against normativism. This is indeed an important part of the strategy of Bykvist and Hattiangadi (2007, Chapter 6). They argue that normativism violates the ought-implies-can and closely related principles such as ought-implies-can-do-otherwise.

5. In what ways do partial beliefs aim at truth ?

The literature on the aims and norms of belieflargely focuses on full or outright belief, whereby one either believes a proposition or does not believe it. How, if at all, can the account one gives of the relationship between full belief and truth be extended to apply to partial (or degrees of) belief? There are two broad types of answers, which we may dub 'unifying' and 'dividing' approaches, and both of them feature in this volume. The unifying approach, represented here by Horwich (Chapter 2) and Wedgwood (Chapter 7), seeks to generalize whatever account one gives of full belief in order to cover partial belief. For example, Horwich, who understands the truth-norm governing belief in terms of the desirability of having true beliefs, proposes extending the norm in terms of the comparative desirability of having a comparatively high degree of belief in p whenp is true. Moreover, he argues that our commitment to the truth-norm for belief is manifested in the first instance as a commitment to the latter, degree-based norm, through our practice of evidence gathering, rather than the categorical norm for full belief.8 According to the dividing approach, followed by Adler and Hicks (Chapter 8), full belief is a distinct type of propositional attitude in its own right, not to be conflated as the limiting case on a continuous spectrum of degrees of belief. In their defence of evidentialism, Adler and Hicks draw on characteristics of outright or full belief that, as they highlight, are not shared by partial belief. On this view, it should not be expected that the account one gives of the relation between truth and full belief can be straightforwardly generalized to cover partial belief.6

6. Are all reasons to believe based on truth?

If belief essentially aims at truth, does it follow that all (normative) reasons for belief are evidence for its truth? Evidentialism answers this question in the affirmative. As Adler and Hicks write, 'Evidentialism, following Clifford (1999), is the thesis that the only considerations relevant to whether one ought or ought not to believe are epistemic' (Chapter 8: 140). They defend conceptual evidentialism, which differs from Clifford in holding that 'this constraint of belief's ethics to its epistemics is derived from the concept of belief' (Chapter 8: 140). Their position is challenged by Papineau (Chapter 4) and Reisner (Chapter 9) in this volume. Papineau maintains that the ethics of belief cannot be derived from the concept of belief, and is based on personal, moral, and possibly aesthetic reasons, which sometimes override epistemic ones. Reisner (2007, 2009) also holds that evidentialism is not a conceptual truth, and indeed not a truth at all. In his contribution here, however, he aims at an internal criticism of evidentialism, arguing that even granting the assumption that belief aims at truth and knowledge, evidentialism does not follow. An important element of his

6 See further Adler (2002).

argument seeks to establish that there are non-evidential reasons that are nevertheless epistemic, in the sense of aiming at truth or knowledge. If true, this thesis would open up an interesting new possibility in the conceptual space of reasons for belief.

7. Are there two different kinds of reasons governing beliefand itsformation ?

The answer to Question (6) obviously depends in part on what reasons are. In the recent literature on the rationality of propositional attitudes, a popular analytic strategy is to distinguish between two fundamentally distinct kinds of reason pertaining to the same attitude. Putting the point in highly general terms so as not to prejudge questions about how the various distinctions on offer are mutually related, we can say that one kind of reason relates directly to the propositional content of the attitude, whereas a second kind relates directly to either the psychological state or processes that bring about or sustain it. Thus, for example, Parfit (2001) draws a distinction between object-given and state-given reasons, while Piller (2001) distinguishes between content-related and attitude-related reasons, and Hieronymi (2005) argues for a dichotomy between constitutive and extrinsic reasons. In this literature, belief is the most common attitude using which the distinctions are introduced or illustrated, with alethic (that is, truth-based) reasons for belief often taken to be the clearest instance of the first kind of reason in each distinction respectively. A normativist who maintains that all reasons to believe are alethic can naturally appeal to a distinction between different kinds of reasons pertaining to belief in order to defuse objections to his thesis. In this volume, Adler and Hicks (Chapter 8) distinguish between reasons to believe and reasons for believing, and argue that many putative instances of non-evidential reasons to believe are in fact no such thing, but are rather reasons for believing.

8. Is truth the aim of epistemic justification?

The relationship between epistemic reasons and truth is also examined by several of the contributors. Just as it is platitudinous that truth is a fundamental standard by which we evaluate beliefs, it seems no less platitudinous that epistemic justification also provides one such standard. As Steglich-Petersen writes, 'the mere fact that truth isn't the only relevant consideration when evaluating beliefs raises the question of how to understand the relationship between the two kinds of evaluation' (Chapter 11: 205). These do not seem to be two completely distinct standards, and a natural and very popular account of the apparently essential connection between the two is to understand epistemic justification as a matter of means-end instrumental evaluation of belief with truth as the ultimate end. A crucial problem arises for this view concerning the case of justified false beliefs, which, it has been forcefully argued (Fumerton 2001; Maitzen 1995), could not exist if the instrumentalist conception of epistemic justification were correct. The usual inference from this conditional is that, since there obviously are justified false beliefs, the instrumentalist account of justification cannot be correct. Steglich-Petersen, on the other hand, defends the instrumentalist conception by making the case for the impossibility of justified false beliefs. In other words, the proposal is that justification is factive.

9. Does belief aim at knowledge rather than truth?

A question which we have not directly addressed so far is whether the aim of belief is knowledge or truth. Most authors on the aim of belief, including most contributors to this volume, have either

followed Williams in taking truth to be the aim or constitutive norm (if they exist) of belief, or proceeded on an assumption of neutrality between truth and knowledge. This is understandable, since most of the questions about the existence and nature of the aim of belief or the constitutive norm of belief can be discussed independently of whether they take the form of truth or knowledge. Given that knowledge entails truth, if belief aims at knowledge, it also aims at truth. And any considerations that count against truth being the constitutive norm of belief that are based on showing that it is too strong—and most that have been put forward are of this form—a fortiori also count against knowledge.

Nevertheless, the question 'truth or knowledge?' is clearly an important one in its own right, not least because the answers have very different implications for the nature of belief and, as we have just discussed, epistemic justification. In recent years, parallel to and as a consequence of the debate, originating in Williamson (1996), about whether knowledge is the constitutive norm of assertion, the idea that belief aims at knowledge rather than truth has been argued for in the literature.7 In this volume the issue is taken up by Engel (Chapter 3, §6), Horwich (Chapter 2, §5), and Whiting (Chapter 10). Whiting's chapter offers a critical assessment of existing arguments in favour of knowledge as the fundamental aim of belief, and presents new ones in favour of truth. It is one of the first full article-length systematic examinations of the merits of the truth-aim and knowledge-aim theses against each other.

7 See Whiting (Chapter 10) for a detailed review of works arguing for and against the knowledge norm.

INTRODUCTION: AIMING AT TRUTH 11

II. Synopsis of chapters1. Belief- Truth Norms (Paul Horwich)

The contributions by Horwich and Engel each provides a survey of the terrains we are traversing from two strikingly different perspectives. Horwich begins by asking how we are to understand the commonplace that true beliefs are correct and false beliefs incorrect. He argues that the fundamental norm connecting belief and truth is one which says that we ought to want our beliefs to be true. The correctness of true beliefs follows as a result. He addresses the question why this norm holds, and argues that its normative force is that of a moral norm. Horwich then investigates questions about the explanatory priority between the truth norm and the knowledge norm on the one hand, and the instrumental value of truth on the other. He argues against the idea that our commitment to the truth norm is constitutive of either our concept of truth or our concept of belief. Finally, Horwich argues that our commitment to a truth norm for belief is manifested in our practice of evidence gathering.

2. In Defense ofNormativism about the Aim of Belief (Pascal Engel)

In his contribution Engel reviews and sets out to answer the main objections which have been addressed to the normativist account of the aim for belief. These objections are that the norm fails to motivate, or motivates too much, that it is trivial and that it is unfathomable and does not provide any regulation or actual guidance for our belief. His main strategy is to distinguish between the tasks of specifying what the correctness conditions of a mental state are, and giving an account of how a norm regulates a mental state. If we respect this distinction, Engel argues, it becomes possible to envisage a separate account of the regulation of belief by a norm of truth, through the psychological feature of the transparency of belief.

3. There Are No Norms ofBelief(David Papineau)

Papineau argues that there is no distinctive species of normativity attaching to the adoption of belief. He accepts that true beliefs are often (though not always) valuable, and false beliefs often (though not always) wrong. But he argues that such normativity arises due purely to moral, personal, or aesthetic reasons, rather than any sui generis doxastic reason. Papineau then addresses objections to his view based on the idea that believing is governed by a constitutive norm, which distinguishes it from other propositional attitudes such as desires. He suggests that the underlying idea here, that belief aims at truth, is best spelt out in terms of the biological function of belief, which is a purely descriptive notion. Moreover, even granting (for the sake of argument) that we humans have a practice of always valuing the truth, or even that we cannot help but respect the norm of matching our beliefs to our current evidence, no universal prescriptive conclusion concerning the formation of true belief follows. For these facts at most show that as a matter of descriptive fact true beliefs are valued by us, but not that they are valuable, normatively speaking.

4. Against Belief Normativity (Kathrin Gluer and Asa Wikforss)

Like Papineau, Gluer and Wikforss argue against the thesis that belief, as a type of propositional attitude, is essentially normative. They critically examine two lines of argument for the thesis,

relying on the connections between belief with respectively truth and rationality. The common source of their failures, Gluer and Wikforss argue, is that the rules or norms of the type proposed by the normativist are incapable of guiding belief formation, on any intuitively acceptable notion of rule-guidance. It is central to any such notion of rule-guidance that being guided by a rule is not the same as merely acting or being in accord with it. Gluer and Wikforss argue that putative essential norms of belief are incapable of guiding belief formation in a way consistent with this observation. The reasons are that, first, in order for belief formation to be guided by the relevant norm one already had to form a belief on the subject matter in question. Second, these norms are never able to provide me with a reason to believe anything other than what I have come to believe anyway. In the paper they spell out their arguments for these conclusions, apply them to normativist views in the literature, and answer possible replies the normativist can make.

5. Belief, Truth, and Blindspots (Krister Bykvist and Anandi Hattiangadi)

Bykvist and Hattiangadi take as their key question how we are to understand the statement, 'Your belief that p is correct if and only if it is true'. According to the normativist, the statement is true, has substantive normative import and plays a fundamental role in explaining essential characteristics of belief. Bykvist and Hattiangadi argue that these three claims cannot be true at the same time. The statement is true only if it is read in a deflationary way, where it either does not have any normative import, or fails to mark out belief from other kinds of propositional attitudes. If it is read as telling us something significant about what we ought to believe, then it is subject to the counterexamples of blindspot propositions. These are propositions that are possibly true, but could not be truly believable (i.e. necessarily, if they are believed, then they are false), for example 'There are no believers' and the Moore-paradoxical 'It is raining and I don't believe that it is raining'. Supposing the generally accepted principle that ought implies can, Bykvist and Hattiangadi have argued (2007) that the existence of blindspot propositions show that, contrary to the normativist, it could not be that all truths ought to be believed. In their current paper, they respond to normativists' attempts to defuse this objection. In the course of doing so, they carefully consider and reject three ways of spelling out the normativist's claim using normative concepts other than ought. These are permission (you may believe that p if and only if p is true), doxastic value (true beliefs are ranked higher than false ones evaluatively) and goodness (true beliefs are better than false ones). All three proposals fail to salvage the normativist's case, according to Bykvist and Hattiangadi, because they all fail to vindicate one or other of the three key claims made by the normativist.

6. What is The Right Thing to Believe? (Ralph Wedgwood)

In his chapter Wedgwood defends and further develops his normative interpretation of the idea that truth is the aim of belief. The idea should, he proposes, be spelt out as the thesis that truth is the most fundamental norm ofbelief, one which not only figures in an account of the very nature of belief, but plays an important role in explaining all other such norms. This gives rise to the normative principle that a belief is correct if and only if the proposition believed is true. Wedgwood takes correct rather than ought to be the fundamental normative concept here, and argues (among other things) that this provides the resources for answering Bykvist and Hattiangadi's blindspot objection to normativism. More specifically, he distinguishes between ex ante and ex post normative judgements about belief which an agent may hold, where the latter but not the former

entails that the agent actually holds the belief. Wedgwood then shows that the notion of ought most naturally defined in terms of these more fundamental notions of correctness allows the normativist to meet the challenge posed by Bykvist and Hattiangadi's blindspot argument.

7 Non-Evidential Reasons to Believe (Jonathan Adler and Michael Hicks)

Adler and Hicks offer a wide-ranging defence of conceptual evidentialism against a large number of recent criticisms. Conceptual evidentialism states that one ought only to believe what one's evidence establishes, and that this demand follows from the very nature of belief. Two main anti-evidentialist strategies are to argue that sometimes pragmatic considerations justify a risky doxastic strategy which allows one to form beliefs beyond what one's evidence justifies, and to argue that evidential considerations underdetermine belief. Adler and Hicks show how the conceptual evidentialist can handle the supposed counterexamples and defuse the objections. Important among the strategies they adopt in doing so are: (i) to emphasize the need for beliefs to be detachable from their evidential base; (ii) to distinguish between reasons to believe and reason for believing; and (iii) to distinguish between all-out beliefs from commitments, which are voluntary undertakings, as well as partial beliefs.

8. Leaps of Knowledge (Andrew Reisner)

Reisner is prominent among the critics of evidentialism whom Adler and Hicks respond to in their paper. In his contribution, Reisner assesses whether considerations based on the aim of belief lend any support to either evidentialism or doxastic involuntarism, the widely accepted view that agents can never choose what they believe. He argues for a negative answer in both cases—that is to say, one can consistently accept that the aim of belief is either truth or knowledge (and that this aim plays a central role in setting the norms of belief), and yet reject both evidentialism and doxastic involuntarism. Based on a detailed analysis of several number games with single or multiple fixed points, Reisner argues that there can be epistemic reasons for belief, based on the aim of truth or knowledge, that are non-evidential. Evidentialism therefore does not follow from the aim of belief being truth or knowledge. In some circumstances where non-evidential epistemic reasons play a decisive role, moreover, a restricted form of doxastic voluntarism (which enables the agent to make a 'leap of knowledge') would be conducive to the fulfilment of the aim of truth or knowledge.

9. Nothing but the Truth: On the Norms and Aims of Belief (Daniel Whiting)

Most discussions of the standard of correctness and the aim of belief have been prem- ised on the assumption that truth is the best candidate. In recent years, however, an increasing number of prominent philosophers have suggested that it is knowledge which provides the fundamental standard of correctness and the constitutive aim for believing. In his contribution, Whiting reviews and examines in detail the considerations which have been put forward in support of this view, based on lottery beliefs, Moorean beliefs, our practice of criticism and defence ofbelief, and the value of knowledge. He argues that those considerations do not give us reason to give up the truth view in favour of the knowledge view. Moreover, Whiting contends that reflection on those considerations actually gives us some reason to reject the knowledge view. Thus, he concludes, we can continue to take the apparent platitude that belief aims at truth at face value.

10. Truth as the Aim of Epistemic Justification (Asbjorn Steglich-Petersen)

Steglich-Petersen defends the thesis that truth is the aim of epistemic justification against an influential and prima facie persuasive line of attack. The objection starts with the premise that a belief can be justified, that is, successful vis-a-vis the aim of justification, but false, that is, unsuccessful vis-a-vis the aim of truth. So, the objection concludes, the aim or criterion of success for epistemic justification cannot be truth. Steglich-Petersen seeks to defuse this objection by attacking the premise. He argues that it is not possible for a belief to be at once justified and false, on the notion of justification relevant to the debate. The relevant notion of justification requires that it must be possible for a justifying fact or consideration to act as an adequate epistemic reason for which someone believes a proposition. Based on this constraint on justification, Steglich-Petersen argues that a number of common intuitive considerations cited to support the possibility of justified false beliefs in fact fail to do so. He concludes by sketching and defending a positive account of justification, according to which the norm of justification never recommends anything that is not recommended by a truth norm.8

References

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8 I am grateful to two anonymous readers for OUP as well as my colleagues Nicholas Allot and Eline Busck Gundersen for helpful comments on earlier drafts of this chapter.

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2

Belief-Truth Norms

Paul Horwich

True beliefs are correct and false beliefs incorrect. This is surely one of the normative principles relating belief and truth to which we are committed—but it isn't the only one. For there are certain attitudes it obliges us to have; so there must be a further belief-truth norm—couched this time in terms of 'ought' or 'should'—that specifies those implications. Perhaps:

('OUGHT') We ought to want our beliefs to be true (andtherefore not-want to have any false ones).9

My aims in this chapter are: (a) to confirm that this candidate for the directly instructive belief-truth norm is preferable to certain tempting alternatives; (b) to argue for its being conceptually more basic than (but equivalent to) the norm of correctness; (c) to show that it's also prior to the desirability of knowledge; (d) to address the question of why it holds; (e) to suggest that it not be construed as a pragmatic principle; (f) to propose instead that it be given a moral interpretation; (g) to resist the idea that it helps constitute either our concept of truth or our concept of belief; (h) to examine its place in epistemology—specifically, its relationship to norms of justification; and (i) to answer the surprisingly difficult question of how respect for it is manifested in epistemic behaviour.

i. Alternative formulationsWhy bring desires into the picture, as 'OUGHT' does? Why 'ought to want'? Isn't our obligation simply to have beliefs only if they are true? No—our obligations vis-a-vis belief i tself are specified by norms of epistemic justification. If our evidence points unequivocally in a certain direction, then that's what we should believe—and if the proposition is false, cest la vie. We can be blamed for not trying to ensure the truth of what we believe, but not for being unsuccessful.

A second possible misgiving: it might be thought that, although our 'OUGHT'- principle is right as far as it goes, it neglects an important further component of the phenomenon. For it fails to mention the converse desideratum: that if x is true we believe it. It doesn't capture that we should be searching out the truth, that we should want to expand the range of our true beliefs.

9 The intended logical form of this principle is:(x) OW (Bx ^ Tx) - and therefore (x) OW-(Bx &-Tx)

Regarding the English wording, note that it isn't merely that we ought not positively desire false belief—we ought to be actively averse to it. An oddity of English is that 'not want' can perfectly well be used to convey this aversion. Still I insert a hyphen to signal that this is the sense intended, rather than the 'not positively desire' sense.

And this further idea—let's call it 'con-OUGHT'—is certainly not entirely wrong. There certainly are facts of various kinds that we rightly wish to discover—It is often desirable to pursue the truth.

But, on the other hand, reality includes countless trivialities that aren't worth finding out about. And even the facts that are worth identifying aren't absolutely worth identifying; they vary from person to person (and time to time) as a function of interests and circumstances. So 'con-OUGHT' is an overstatement at best.10

In order to accommodate the grain of truth in it, one might start by observing that for each person (and time) there are matters on which he should (at that time) wish to have opinions. And one might then reason that, in the presence of our original 'OUGHT'norm, this will entail that he should want the truths regarding such matters to be amongst those opinions of his.—These truths should indeed be pursued. Thus one might conclude that the correct instances of 'con-OUGHT' can be explained, in part, on the basis of 'OUGHT' itself; so no supplement to that initial suggestion is needed.

But this already-weakened construal of 'con-OUGHT'—both restricted and explanatorily derivative—is also weaker in a further respect. For the variable interests relative to which someone should wish for true belief are not usually themselves normatively required. So we have no absolute norm here—not even one that is limited to topics of importance.3

A third natural concern about 'OUGHT', which might well prompt the search for an alternative, is that we commonly have beliefs that we hope are not true, and reasonably so. Suppose we are investigating the pace of global warming and reach the conclusion that it's proceeding more quickly than previously thought. Since we're perfectly entitled to want there to be no global warming, we're also entitled to want our conclusion to be false—an apparent counterexample to my proposal.11

10 I have myself endorsed 'con-OUGHT (in Horwich (2010b)—see footnote 23 below). I hoped to remove the sense of that principle's implausibility by allowing that the desires that it dictates—to believe whatever is true—will in the case of most propositions be extremely weak and therefore easily overwhelmed by the costs of belief acquisition and retention. But this strategy, which has struck many philosophers as contrived, has now come to strike me in that way too. I am grateful to Tim Maudlin, Jim Pryor, John Burgess, and Harold Hodes, for prodding me into this belated recognition.

11 The present problem cannot be dissolved by simply observing thatS ought to want that (ifhe believes FGW, then FGW is true)' can be reconciled with S ought to want that FGW is false' by supposing S ought to want not to believe FGW' (or 'S ought to regret believing FGW'). For the difficulty remains that, in conflict with 'OUGHT', S ought to want that his belief in FGW is false.

Christian Piller's (2009) response to the problem is to reject 'OUGHT' and to maintain instead that our fundamental obligation in this area is to wish to believe whatever is true. He appreciates that the same objection threatens his proposal too. For insofar as the conditional we are supposed to wish for—'If x is true, then I believe x'—is construed truth-functionally (making it equivalent to 'If I don't believe x, then x is not true'), then we should want that if we don't believe there's no global warming then there is global warmingl His solution is to construe the conditional as a counterfactual—"If x were true then I would believe it"—for which contraposition does not hold. But if we should want that if there

global warming we would believethere isn't, then we should be averse to its negation—to the prospect that in the closest possible world in which there isn't fast global warming we nonetheless think there is. But surely we should not be averse to this. After all the closest 'no fast global warming' world might well be the actual world!

In addition, Piller's view—like its cousin 'con-OUGHT'—must confront the above-discussed objection that one isn't really obliged to pursue every truth no matter how trivial it is. On this point his strategy is to suppose (concessively) that the norm applying to any given person, S, be restricted to the propositions in which S is 'interested. But, as already noted in the text, insofar as S's interests will not usually be normatively required it's hard to see how the concerns with truth dictated by those interests could be normatively required either. So, although one might be able to motivate a claim about the truths that ought, relative to S s interests, to be pursued by him, it couldn't be inferred that he absolutely ought to pursue those truths.

A further reservation about the 'OUGHT' norm was put to me by Anandi Hattiangadi (extending a point from her paper with Krister Bykvist; Bykvist and Hattiangadi 2007). Assuming that it's impossible for anyone to have infinitely many desires—one for each content of the form, 'If I believe that p, then it is true thatp'—she reasons that we can't be

However this impression should evaporate once it is made explicit that 'OUGHT' does not aim to specify an all-things-considered obligation for us to want our beliefs to be true, but merely states one of the normative pressures on our belief-oriented desires—a peculiarly epistemological pressure. Therefore it studiously ignores the desirability or undesirability of the facts that would have to exist for our beliefs to be true; and so its dictates can be overridden (but not extinguished) when such considerations are taken into account. Thus 'OUGHT' is to be understood as saying that we ought to have some desire—independently of how we feel about the prospect of k being F, or of k being not-F—that if we have a beliefone way or the other on this matter then it be the true one . . . etc. In the present example, this particular doxas- tically-oriented vector of desirability that the belief be true is outweighed by the undesirability (deriving from our other interests and values) of fast global warming, that is, of the belief's being true. Therefore, all things considered, we should not want it. But the belief-truth 'OUGHT'-norm is not thereby falsified; it remains valid pro tem, purporting to specify just one of the factors that bear on our overall appraisals.

In this respect it is just like many other norms. Consider, for example, the general moral requirement to desire (to a substantial degree) that people be free of harm. On a given occasion, we might have excellent reason to want (to a high degree) that someone be harmed. So some 'calculation' is needed to determine a resultant desire and action. But neither of the conflicting sentiments is on that account invalidated.5

2. 'ought'AND'correct'I am attracted to the idea (which I got from A. C. Ewing via Allan Gibbard 12) that the basic normative concept is the subjective, instructing, explicitly obligation-implying OUGHT—the notion that appears in immediately regulative principles which one can be criticized for violating.13 And from this point of view the normative concepts, COR- RECT and INCORRECT, are to be explained in terms of OUGHT, and the norm that applies these correctness notions to true and false beliefs respectively is to be inferred from the ' O UGHT' principle.

Here's a suggestion for how this idea might be implemented. We might suppose that the general relationship between the concepts OUGHT and CORRECT—providing an implicit definition of the latter in terms of the former—is given by the assumption (roughly speaking) that we ought to want that what we do be correct.

More specifically—for the case of belief— the defining assumption would be:

The set of correct beliefs = the setwe oughtto want ourbeliefsto be inside andnot-wantthem to be outside

under an obligation to have them all. To this objection I think there are two decent responses. One is to concede that 'OUGHT' is something of an idealization; that it holds, strictly speaking, only for improved versions of ourselves in which we don't suffer from the above cognitive limitation. And another (see Wedgwood 2002) is to introduce a slight modification of the norm—to have it be that only for a proposition that someone entertains is he obliged to have the desire that it be true if he believes it.

12 See Gibbard (2012:14-15), where he cites Ewing (1939).13 This position can be motivated by the view (admittedly controversial) that normative concepts are

distinguished by their peculiarly intimate relationship to motivation—a relationship that is most directly exemplified by a concept of OUGHT whose constituting role is, very roughly speaking, our inclination to do what we believe we ought to do. This concept must of course be distinguished from the 'objective' one we deploy in saying, for example, 'S ought to have sold those shares, when we mean merely that S would have benefitted from having sold them, but not suggesting that he had any reason to think so. For more detail, see 'The Motive Power of Evaluative Concepts', Horwich (2010 a: ch. 9).

Therefore, given the 'OUGHT'norm, which implies

The set of true beliefs = the set we ought to want our beliefs to be inside and not-wantthem to be outside

we can deduce that the correct beliefs are the true ones, i.e. we can infer 'CORRECT'.14

In this treatment of the issue I am parting company with Gibbard. His view is that 'The belief that p is correct' follows analytically from 'The belief that p is true'. This suggests to him—since he recognizes both the non-normativity of TRUE and the Humean gulf between normative and non-normative concepts—that CORRECT cannot really be a normative concept either. And so he proposes an analysis of it that accommodates this conclusion—a correct belief is, roughly, 'what one ought to believe when in possession of all the facts' (or, putting it even more crudely, 'what one ought to believe if all the truths were amongst what one ought to believe').15 But my own sense— applying modus tollens to Gibbard's argument—is that since attributions of correctness are typically normative, the correctness of a belief is not an analytic implication of its truth, and so his non-normative analysis of 'correct belief' is unmotivated.16

3. How much should we care?The 'OUGHT' norm speaks of obligations to want, or not-want, beliefs to have this or that truth-value. But, as it stands, it doesn't say anything about the strengths of the positive and negative desires that are called for.

Pretty obviously it's legitimate for us to care more about the truth of some of our beliefs than about the truth of others. And pretty obviously it's legitimate for these different levels of concern to vary from one person to another. Still one might expect there to be some objective normative constraints on the magnitudes of these desires, and, if so, it would be nice to have a formulation that makes them explicit.

Perhaps something along the following lines is a tiny step in the right direction:

(i) The degree ofS's desire that Sbelieves x ^ xis true [= D(S,x,T)] shouldbe greater than zero

(ii) The degree of S's desire that S believes x andx isfalse should equal -D(S,x,T).

4. Degrees of beliefA further important complication is that our practice of assessing belief in relation to truth covers not merely full belief—all-or-nothing belief—but also 'belief' in a broader sense of the term, which includes various levels of conviction—for example being absolutely certain, or fairly sure, or

14 I am grateful to Christine Tappolet for alerting me to the fact that the issue here is an instance of a general meta-normative problem. How do 'axiological' or 'evaluative' concepts (of which GOOD is the paradigm and CORRECT another example) relate to 'deontic' concepts (of which OUGHT is the paradigm)? See the illu- minating treatment of this problem that she provides in Tappolet (2011).

15 For Gibbard's much more subtle formulation, see Gibbard (2005)—reprinted with revisions in Gibbard (2012).

16 We can allow that there may be ause of 'correct', deployed only in applications of the word to beliefs, statements, and the like, in which it means nothing more than 'true' and so is non-normative. But in other contexts 'correct' clearly does express a normative concept, and that concept too is very often applied to beliefs, etc.

finding something somewhat implausible, etc. This does not amount to the militant Bayesian view that levels, or degrees, of belief are the fundamental thing and that ordinary belief is a mere construction from them (e.g. a high degree of belief). Nor is it to endorse the psychological reality of hyper-exact degrees of belief corresponding to each real number from 0 to 1 (although, as we'll see, it can be a good idea to adopt that perspective as a convenient idealization). All that's being supposed is that we do have degrees of belief, that these (like full belief) are appraised in light of the truth or falsity of their propositional contents, and that a condition of our having achieved a decent understanding of the truth-norms for full belief is that it cohere with a decent understanding of the truth-norms for these various degrees.

And that extended understanding does not seem terribly hard to reach. Surely, we should be pretty keen that whenever we are completely certain of a proposition's truth, it be true; but our concern should be somewhat less for the cases in which we are only fairly sure of the proposition's truth; and even less when we're just slightly inclined to believe it. And continuing in the same vein, we should be a little averse, if we regard a proposition's truth as somewhat unlikely, to its in fact being true; we should be more averse if we think its truth is very unlikely; and yet more averse if we have completely ruled it out.

Thus a natural extension of 'OUGHT' to degrees of belief would go roughly as follows:

('OUGHT*') S should want, comparatively strongly, that x be true ifhe has a comparativelyhigh degree of belief in x, and should not-want, comparatively strongly, for x to be true if hehas a comparatively low degree of belief in x.17

Finally, we might wonder whether our other belief-truth norm—the one concerning correctness—can also be enriched to cover degrees of belief. And I don't see why not. It's not uncommon to speak of 'degrees of correctness'—and in these terms we might well suppose that, given two degrees of belief in a true proposition, the higher degree of belief is more correct (and less incorrect) than the lower one.18

5. KnowledgeLet us now spend a minute on the relationship between the value of true belief and the value of knowledge.

A possible perspective on this matter is that what's fundamental here is the following norm of

17 Putting this more formally: let D*(S,p,y) = d' mean'S desires to degree d that ifhe believes proposition to degree x, then be true'. In that case the extended 'OUGHT*' norm puts S under an obligation to constrain his desires as follows:

yi > y2 ^ D*(S,p, y) > D*(S,p,y2)D*(S,p, &) = 0 D*(S, p, V2 + e) =

-D*(S,p, V2 - e) (where 0 < e <18More specifically, assuming that S s degree of belief in proposition isy (anumber between 0 and 1), we might

take the measure of the belief's correctness to be y itself if is true, and to be 1-y if is false. And the measure of a belief's incorrectness might be defined as 1 minus its measure of correctness.

Perhaps certain degrees of belief can also be assessed by reference to the objective chances of their propositional contents being true. Perhaps, for example, S's degree of belief of one half that a given coin will land heads on the next toss might be regarded as in some sense 'perfect' if the objective chance of its landing heads on that occasion is a half. However, this dimension of assessment should not be confused with, and is not in competition with, our truth-oriented assessment. Moreover, it's worth bearing in mind how difficult it is, in most cases, to assign objective chances to possible facts. (Are they not usually dependent on the unknowable initial conditions of the universe?).

knowledge:

S ought to want that (he believes x ^ he knows x) andS ought not-want that (he believes x ^ he does not know x)

and that the desirability of true belief (as articulated by 'OUGHT') should be explained in terms of this principle. The idea would be that knowledge is the ultimate good in this area, and true belief gets its value merely as a means to that end. But this view must confront a variety of difficulties.

For one thing, it's plausible that the desirability of true beliefs is somehow related to the rational expectation of obtaining practical benefits from their use in deliberation (see Section 6). But such expectations will be no less rational in connection with true beliefs that aren't justified and so wouldn't qualify as cases of knowledge.

In the second place, consider the just-discussed greater desirability of those degrees of belief that are closer to the truth. The vast majority of these partial beliefs be at a level not high enough to count as knowledge. So it would seem that, here too, our belief-truth 'OUGHT'-norm covers a more general phenomenon than could issue from the desirability of knowledge.

And thirdly, it's worth mentioning that the above-assumed 'norm of knowledge' may well be mistaken. For it would imply that

S ought to want that (he believes x ^ his believing x is justified)

And there is no evident reason to accept this conclusion. Certainly, S's believings should satisfy certain general constraints, such as non-contradiction and induction. Hence he should want it to be the case that they satisfy them. But it would be gratuitous to require him to have the additional desire (de dicto) that his beliefs be justified. (See footnote 16 for further discussion).

Moreover, is it at all clear what the actual knowledge norms are? No doubt there are personal contexts in which we should recognize that certain items of knowledge would be valuable. No doubt we should (given those circumstances) pursue knowledge regarding those things. And it may well be that these vague ideas are somehow related to our belief-truth norms. But a natural conjecture about the relationship is that the desirability of knowledge (when it is desirable) stems from the desirability of true belief (when some belief is desirable), and that this extension to our 'O UGHT'-norm—which is the restricted and relative 'con-OUGHT'-principle discussed in Section 2—derives, as we saw there, from 'OUGHT' itself.19

6. Why should we want our beliefs to be true?A tempting answer is that it's because we can see that 'truth pays'—that true beliefs tend to help us, through their role in deliberation, to achieve our goals.20

But this answer is open to a couple of telling objections. First, it often happens that a person's true belief leads him to a decision that turns out badly, and he would have been better off with a false one (e.g. the man who dies from an operation that he correctly thought had a 99 per cent chance of

19 Richard Foley (2012: chapter 10) offers a nice argument for the initially surprising view that although the value of knowledge stems entirely from the value of true belief, knowing that p is more valuable than merely having the true belief.

20This explanation is suggested by the following line of thought. Whenever someone believes that if he performs action A then some state of affairs G will result, and wants G to obtain, then he will tend to perform A. And if his belief is true then G will in fact result—so his desire will be satisfied. Therefore we should all want our directly action-guiding beliefs to be true. Moreover, their truth will be proba- bilified by the truth of whichever beliefs we deploy as premises in their derivation. So we should also want those beliefs to be true. And just about any belief might be deployed in that way. See Horwich (1998: 44-6).

success). And second, there are certain kinds of belief that appear to have no potential for practical import. So the simple generalization, 'truth pays', isn't exactly right as it stands.21

In searching for something more accurate, a promising initial move is to concede that true beliefs are sometimes harmful, but to insist nonetheless on the tendency for the truth of pragmatically relevant beliefs to be beneficial. Arguably, our appreciation of this tendency is enough to explain why we ought to want our beliefs to be true—in which case the first objection won't call for any revision of 'OUGHT'.

It will still remain problematic, however, that there are various kinds of belief that we can be pretty sure will have no instrumental/pragmatic significance whatsoever. Think of certain views in metaphysics (e.g. that there's a plurality of concrete possible worlds), in esoteric areas of set theory (e.g. that every category has an appropriate Yoneda embedding), or in normative domains (e.g. that lying is wrong). Surely there can be no pragmatic explanation of why we should want our beliefs in these domains to be true.22

Assuming this to be so, we must conclude that the kind of desirability at issue in our general 'OUGHT norm isn't instrumental desirability. And this leaves us with three related questions. What then is the flavour of 'ought' that is invoked there? What alternative explanation can be found for the truth of that norm? And does our acceptance of it really have nothing to do with instrumental/pragmatic value?

Here's a very quick sketch of some answers. Respect for truth is commonly recognized as a virtue. And this suggests that we regard the non-pragmatic value of truth as moral—that is, that it's from a moral point of view that a person ought to want each of his beliefs to be true (including those whose truth could never promote the satisfaction of his desires). This construal is further supported by the fact that the relationship between our endorsement of the norm and the frequent pragmatic value of true belief looks to parallel the causal relationship between, on the one hand, our commitment to the paradigmatically moral value of being concerned for the welfare of others and, on the other hand, the self-centred benefit of getting help when needed. It is because so many true beliefs tend to promote our goals, and because so many beliefs are acquired via testimony, that our society, simplifying for the sake of effectiveness, inculcates a general concern for pure truth.

Thus, it's plausible that our attachment to 'OUGHT' is causally explained by the instrumental utility of most true beliefs. But let me emphasize that this explanatory conjecture does not purport to explain the fact that truth for its own sake is morally valuable, but merely our acknowledgement of it. The normative fact itself may well be epistemologically and explanatorily fundamental. But at least one can understand what has brought about our belief in its existence. We can explain our

21 We must beware against over-reacting to these complications, as I think Robert Brandom (2009) does in 'Why truth is not important in philosophy'. It is admittedly no easy matter to find the correctly qualified characterization of the phenomenon. But we should not, on that account, either deny its existence or under- estimate its importance. I dare say that it's only because of the very common practical advantages of true belief that we are even capable of belief!

22This is not to imply that a person's normative (e.g. ethical) beliefs are behaviourally inconsequen- tial. For many such beliefs have an immediate influence on motivation. However, they don't enter into means-ends deliberation in the way that others do. So we aren't going to derive instrumental benefits from their being true. It might be protested that insofar as someone's goal is to do what's right, then his concern for true beliefs about what's right may be rationalized as a means to that goal. This would be the view of those meta-ethicists who think that our OUGHT-beliefs can motivate us only when combined with a desire to do what we ought to do. But, as indicated above, I am taking the contrary ('internalist') view that our convictions about what we ourselves ought to do are intrinsically motivating. A moral person has normative convictions that correlate with the desire for the welfare of others, the desire to honour agreements, etc. She neither needs, nor typically has, the additional desire to do what she ought to do.

commitment to 'OUGHT', but not why it's true.

7. Are the belief-truth norms concept-constituting?It is reasonable to think, or so I'll now argue, that our respect for 'OUGHT and 'CORRECT plays no role in constituting either our concept of truth or our concept of belief. Let me take up these two issues in turn.

First, pace Michael Dummett and Huw Price,'7 it's pretty obvious that those norms are nothing more than generalizations of proposition-specific normative theses such as:

One ought to want that if one believes that ants bite then ants do bite; and one ought not-want that if one believes that ants bite, then ants don't biteThe belief that ants bite is correct if and only if ants bite and incorrect if and only if ants don't bite.

Truth comes into the picture only as a device of generalization, and it performs this function, here as elsewhere, insofar as ' is true' is taken to be equivalent to 'p'. Thus we have a conception of truth, fixed by that assumed equivalence, that is entirely independent of the belief-truth norms.23

Turning to our concept of belief, I would argue that it too is independent of our commitment to those principles. This is somewhat harder to show than it was in the case of truth. For the concept of truth is relatively simple. So a compelling positive account of it was relatively easy to provide; and it was easy to see that this account involves no normative notions. But although there are fairly plausible approximate definitions of 'believing' in terms of certain parts of its psychological role—specifically, its distinctive causal relationships to observation, deliberation, and utterance—one would be hard pressed to demonstrate that an entirely norm-free account along these lines is right. Still, I would suggest that the naturalness of such a story (supported by the prospect of similarly functionalist stories for other psychological notions) should give it the status of front-runner or default position. And so our question should be whether there is anything to be said against it, to the effect that it misses some normative ingredient of our concept of belief. But the answer appears to be no.

Certainly the mere fact that we are committed to a given belief-truth norm does not make our commitment part of that concept. Only an unreasonably extreme holism about concept constitution (namely, that every one of a person's beliefs involving a given concept is essential to its identity) would sanction such an inference—and that general view would deprive the present issue of any interest whatsoever.

Nor is it reasonable for us to maintain that belief is constitutively normative on the grounds that we can think of no other way of explaining why the belief-truth norms hold. For, in the first place, it is highly plausible that some of our most basic (i.e. inexpli- cable) norms evaluate phenomena characterized by means of entirely non-normative concepts. (e.g. 'Killing human beings is prima facie wrong'). A belief-truth norm could perfectly well fall into this category. And, in the second place, an alleged explanation of why true beliefs are correct that treated this principle as deriving

23Similarly, All propositions of the form are true' provides a compact and logically respectable formulation of 'Dogs bark ^ dogs bark, and pigs fly ^ pigs fly, . . . and so on'. The equivalence schema con- verts these instances into, '<dogs bark ^ dogs bark> is true, etc.—containing singular terms (e.g. '<dogs bark ^ dogs bark>' over which the restricted universal quantifier can range. For details see 'What is Truth?' Horwich (2010a: ch. 1).

from an explicit definition of 'belief' in terms of 'correct if true' would imply that the principle is mere tautology, incapable of any normative force whatsoever. Such an alleged explanation would fail to recognize the phenomenon it purported to explain.

Nor should we be moved, it seems to me, by the fact—emphasized by Nishi Shah and David Velleman—that the only way to establish that a belief is normatively correct is by establishing its truth.24—or, more perspicuously, that the question of whether it would be correct to believe thatp can be settled only by settling the question of whether p. All that can be inferred from this fact is that there is no substantive property, F-ness, of beliefs such that

Believing that p is correct ^ Believing that p has F-ness andBelieving that p has F-ness ^p

and whose detection would settle the correctness of believing that p. But this is just to say that there is no decent theory that reduces truth to F-ness. Thus it is deflationism about truth that explains the fact that in order to establish the correctness of believing that p one must establish that p. The alleged normative constitution of our concept of belief isn't doing any explanatory work here, and so isn't supported.

What could reasonably persuade us of that conclusion is something rather different: namely, evidence that our only way to tell that someone's token propositional attitude qualifies as a belief is to first establish (or assume) that it is correct if and only if true. But it's doubtful that there is any such evidence. On the contrary, what really happens (as we've seen) is that having already decided that S believes thatp, and having already determined that the proposition believed is true, we are then in a position to evaluate that belief as a good one. And this order of things is incompatible with the order needed to support the thesis of normative constitution—an order which allows that one might first determine that a given proposition is true, second evaluate someone's attitude towards it as correct, and only then proceed to the conclusion that this attitude is a belief. Not only is this sequence of steps not found, it's hard to see how it could be. It's hard to see what our basis might be for thinking that S's attitude towards a true proposition is correct (or incorrect) if not some supposition about what the attitude is.20

8. Manifesting a commitment to the belief-truth norms

I'd like to conclude these reflections with some attention to the question of how our respect for the belief-truth norms exerts an influence on, and is therefore revealed in, the epistemic procedures that control our believing and disbelieving.

At first sight there is something rather paradoxical here. For it can seem that what each of us is instructed to do by the 'OUGHT' norm is, first, to establish whether or not a given proposition is true, and then—applying the norm—to believe or disbelieve that proposition as the case may be. But of course that is absurd!

However this puzzle disappears once we remember that 'OUGHT does not tell us what we should

24See Shah (2003), and their joint paper, Shah and Velleman (2005). For discussions of similar views see Peter Railton (1997); and Paul Boghossian (2003).

A more systematic case for the view that neither truth, nor meaning, nor belief, is constitutively normative is offered in 'Norms of Language' (Horwich 1998: ch. 8) and 'Norms of Truth and Meaning' (Horwich 2005: ch. 5).

and should not believe; it tells us, rather, what we should and should not wish for regarding the relationship between our beliefs and the truth. We should want that x is true if we believe it, and we should be averse to x's being untrue if we believe it. Thus we are obliged to strive for a certain match between our beliefs and the truth. And there's no reason at all to expect our respect for this obligation to be expressed in the above-mentioned impossible way.

Right. But this still leaves the question of how it is expressed. A popular and initially attractive answer is that we express it by conforming to our familiar norms of justification—by obeying the principles of non-contradiction, modus ponens, induction, etc. For why else would we bother with justification—with conforming our beliefs to such 'laws of reason'—except for the sake of the desire that they be true? On the face of it, our imposition of those doxastic constraints is explained in part by that desire, and therefore displays its existence.

But this tempting idea doesn't stand up to scrutiny. For a start, it seems wrong on reflection to tie a concern for truth to our norms of justification (or indeed to any particular collection of such norms). For imagine a community whose members deploy very different norms from ours. We may well think that their beliefs will rarely be true. Still, they are as convinced by their norms as we are by ours. They are convinced that theirs are the ones that specify the best route to the truth. So how can we deny that their concern for truth is any less than ours is?

Still, it may be thought that someone's concern for truth is revealed merely by there being some norms of justification that he respects. For the following explanation appears to hold no matter which particular constraint on belief is substituted for C:

S believes that imposing C promotes truthS wants his belief to be trueTherefore, S imposes C

But I would suggest that this explanation is defective, in that its desire-for-truth premise is redundant. For the first premise alone suffices to reach the conclusion. In other words: if S thinks that constraint C is truth-promoting, then we can already see why he imposes that constraint, without needing to assume, in addition, that he wants his beliefs to be true.

To get a sense of why this is plausible, let us focus on a simple case. Consider the constraint: to believe that nature is uniform. And suppose S believes that conformity with this constraint is truth-promoting. He must in that case believe the truth of the proposition that nature is uniform. So he believes that nature is uniform. Thus he imposes the constraint at issue. QED. And this follows, regardless of his feelings about truth, simply from his taking that constraint to be truth-promoting. The somewhat more general line of thought suggested here is that a positive doxastic constraint specifies and requires a certain kind or set of beliefs. Therefore, to regard it as 'truth promoting' (in the relevant respect) is to think that those beliefs are true. But that dictates simply having the specified beliefs—which amounts to implicitly imposing the constraint on oneself. Thus it's a reasonable conjecture that our commitment to our familiar collection of doxastic constraints is neither explained by, nor a manifestation of, our respect for the value of truth.

What then in our belief-forming activity does manifest that respect? The answer, it seems to me, is our disposition to gather further evidence as a way of improving our existing collection of beliefs. Suppose the opportunity arises to acquire relevant information—relevant in the sense that if the information turns out one way it would be rational to substantially increase our confidence in a

given hypothesis of ours, and if the other way then it would be rational to decrease it. In that case, we are inclined to acquire the information. But why? In what sense do we expect our new degree of belief—whichever one we end up with—to be 'better' than the present one? Surely, there need be no increase in rationality. For although the new belief would be perfectly rational (given the new evidence), our present belief is already perfectly rational. So why do anything?

The answer, I suggest, lies in the value we attach to true belief. We endorse the extended norm, 'OUGHT*', which attributes comparative undesirability to relatively great discrepancies between degrees of belief and truth-values. And we think that our new evidence should be expected to reduce such unwanted discrepancies. So that is why we bother to acquire it. Thus a commitment to 'OUGHT*' explains, and is revealed by, our interest in acquiring new evidence.

Here's a Bayesian proof that vindicates this line of thought.25 Suppose, idealizing, that our degrees of confidence may be represented by numbers between zero and one, that these beliefs are rational, and, in particular, that they satisfy the probability calculus. Let P(H) be our present degree of belief in the truth of a certain hypothesis, H. And suppose H entails something, E, whose truth-value we don't know but are in a position to find out.

If we do investigate and discover that E is true, then the new rational degree of belief to have in H—namely P(H|E)—will, by Bayes' Theorem, be equal to

P(H ).P(E|H)

P(E

which, since H entails E, amounts to

P(H)P(E)

And if, on the other hand, what we find is that E is false, then of course our new rational belief, P(H|-E), would be zero.

Now let us compare the expected epistemic value of our gathering that evidence with the expected value of our not bothering to do so. The belief-truth 'OUGHT*'-norm tells us (see Section 4) that we should prefer to have degrees of belief that are as 'accurate' as possible—that is, that diverge as little as possible from 1 when their contents are true, and from 0 when their contents are false. So we can assess the expected inaccuracy of each of these courses of action, we can thereby determine which of them will leave us with the least

expected inaccuracy, and we can infer that this is what should be done.26Well, the expected inaccuracy in our degree of belief, if we do nothing, is equal to:

TheprobabilitythatHistrue x the differencebetweenP(H) and 1+

Theprobabilitythat H is not true x the differencebetweenP(H) and0

25 What follows is a simplified version of the argument in Horwich (1982:127-9).26 Or we could work equivalently with the norm that associates a belief's measure of incorrectness with its

inaccuracy (see footnote 12). Our calculation of which course of action minimizes expected inaccuracy will then determine which one maximizes correctness and hence which one should be carried out.

P(H) 1 P(E) J

P(H) P(H)

P(E)

+

P(H)

P(E)P(E)x 1 - 1 -

P(E)

P(H)

P(E)

P(H)

P(E).P(H) P(H)1 - 1 -

that is

P(H)[1 -P(H)] + [1 -P(H)]P(H)

And the expected inaccuracy associated with gathering the evidence is equal to:

(The probability of finding that E is true) x (The expected inaccuracy of what, in that case, our degree of belief in H would be)

+(The probability of finding that E is false) x (The expected inaccuracy of what, in that case, our

degree of belief in H would be)

that is,

P(E) x{P(H|E) [1 - P(H|E)] + [1 - P(H|E)] [P(H|E) - 0]}

+

P(-E) x{P(H|-E) [1 - P(H|-E)] + [1 - P(H|-E)] [P(H|-E) - 0]}that is,

P(-E) x {0.(1 - 0) + (1 - 0).(0 - 0)}

that is,

But P(H)/P(E) must be larger than P(H). So this expected inaccuracy must be smaller than the one associated with not bothering to get the new information. Therefore, insofar as 'OUGHT*' and 'CORRECT*' are endorsed—insofar as we appreciate that we should want the inaccuracy of our degrees of belief to be as small as possible, and therefore maximize expected correctness—the further data will be acquired. Thus our practice of evidence gathering manifests our respect for the value of truth.27

References

Boghossian, Paul (2003), 'The Normativity of Content', Philosophical Issues, 13 (1), 33-45. Brandom, Robert (2009), Reason in Philosophy: Animating Ideas (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press).Bykvist, Krister and Hattiangadi, Anandi (2007), 'Does Thought Imply Ought?' Analysis, 67 (4),

277-85.

27 The present paper is a sequel to 'The Value of Truth' which was first published in Nous 40:2, 2006, and reprinted with substantial revisions as chapter 4 of Horwich (2010a). My thanks to Timothy Chan and the University of Oslo for arranging the June 2009 meetings ('The Aim of Belief') that were the occasion for me to write something new on this topic; to David Velleman and Nishi Shah for valuable discussions of their distinctive view of the matter; and to Dora Achourioti, Ralf Bader, Daniel Greco, Bertold Lampe and an anonymous referee for their insightful comments on earlier drafts. I am also most grateful for the tough and stimulating questions I received from those in the audiences at presentations of this material in Oslo and in subsequent workshops at Princeton University (April 2011), Vienna's Forum for Analytic Philosophy (March 2012), York University (March 2012), the University ofZurich (June 2012), and the New York Institute ofPhilosophy (February 2013).

Dummett, Michael (1959), 'Truth', Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 59,141-62; Reprinted inhis Truth and Other Enigmas (London: Duckworth 1978), 1-24.

Ewing, Alfred C. (1939), 'A Suggested Non-Naturalistic Analysis of Good', Mind, 48,1-22.Foley, R. (2012), When is TrueBeliefKnowledge (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press). Gibbard, Alan ( 2005 ), 'Truth and Correct Belief', Philosophical Issues, 15 ( 1 ), 338-50 ; reprinted in his (2012).Gibbard, Alan (2012), Meaningand Normativity (Oxford: Oxford University Press).Greco, Daniel (2013), 'Paul Horwich's "Belief-Truth Norms"', Unpublished presentation to the

New York Institute of Philosophy.Horwich, Paul (1982), Probability and Evidence (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Horwich, Paul (1998), Meaning (Oxford: Clarendon Press).Horwich, Paul (2005), Reflections on Meaning (Oxford: Oxford University Press).Horwich, Paul (2010a), Truth-Meaning-Reality (Oxford: Oxford University Press).Horwich, Paul (2010b), 'The Value ofTruth', Nous, 40,347-60.Piller, Christian (2009), 'Desiring the Truth and Nothing But the Truth,, Nous, 43 (2), 193-213. Price, Huw (1988), 'Three Norms of Assertibility, or How the MOA Became Extinct', Nous, 32,

241-54 .Railton, Peter (1997), 'On the Hypothetical and non-Hypothetical in Reasoning About Belief and Action',

in C. Cullity and B. Gaut (eds), Ethics and Practical Reason (Oxford: Oxford University Press) 53-79.Shah, Nishi (2003), 'How Truth Governs Belief', Philosophical Review, 112,447-82.Shah , Nishi and Velleman , J. David ( 2005 ), 'Doxastic Deliberation', Philosophical Review, 114 ,

497-534 .Tappolet, Christine (2011), 'The normativity of evaluative concepts' in A. Reboul (ed.), Philosophical

Papers Dedicated to Kevin Mulligan (Geneve: URL <http://www.philosophie. ch/kevin/festschrift/>).Wedgwood, Ralph (2002), 'The Aim ofBelief', Philosophical Perspectives, 16,267-97.

3

In Defence of Normativism about the Aim of Belief

Pascal Engel

i. IntroductionEver since it was introduced in the philosophical literature by Michael Dummett (1959) and Bernard Williams (1970), the idea that belief aims at truth in a constitutive or essential way has been considered alternatively as a platitude, as a deep fact, as a mere metaphor, or as an obvious falsity. A platitude, because the attitude of belief is naturally assessed with respect to the criterion of truth: it seems to be a fatal objection to a belief to point out that it is false. A deep fact, because the claim that belief aims at truth seems to tell us something about the essence of belief and perhaps about the goal of knowledge and inquiry. A mere metaphor, because there is no reason to think that beliefs as mental states 'aim at' or are 'directed' towards truth as missiles towards their target or that believers themselves always have the conscious aim of forming only true beliefs. But it also seems to be an obvious falsity because a number of our beliefs are irrational or false and seem not to be regulated by a norm of truth. Such is the fate of 'platitudes' in philosophy: just as platitudes about truth (Wright 1992) need to be interpreted, platitudes about belief have to be interpreted too.

It seems indeed to be a platitude that belief is subject to a standard of correctness, well spelled out by Alan Gibbard:

For belief, correctness is truth. Correct belief is true belief. My belief that snow is white is correct just in case the belief is true, just in case snow is white. Correctness, now, seems normative. . . . The correct belief, ifall this is right, seems to be the one [a subject] ought, in this sense, to have. (Gibbard 2005: 338-9)

Correctness, Gibbard adds, seems to be clearly a normative notion, involving an evaluative dimension or a standard against which beliefs are assessed. And this standard seems obviously to be truth. A number of writers28 hold the view that there is a norm of truth for belief, which can be formulated, prima facie, as a biconditional expressing a standard of correctness for belief, correctness as truth:

(CT) For any P, a belief that P is correct if and only if P is true

The notion of correctness is normative in the following general sense: it is not simply a regularity or a descriptive property of beliefs as intentional mental states that their contents are either true or false.

28 Mayo (1964); Engel (2000); Velleman (2000); Boghossian (2003); Shah (2003); Shah and Velleman (2005); Wedgewood (2002); Gibbard (2003, 2005); Whiting (2010).

The term 'correctness' here is meant to characterize normativity in the broad sense that beliefs are evaluated along various dimensions. They can be rational or not, justified or not, good or bad reasons can be given for them. According to (CT) the basic dimension of evaluation of the correctness of belief is truth. It's not simply, as it is often said, that beliefs have a 'mind-to-world direction of fit'. When our beliefs are false, they do not simply lack the property of being true or of being fitted in the proper way to the world: they are incorrect and in need of correction. A correctness condition depends indeed upon a descriptive feature, which figures on the right-hand side of (CT). But (CT) itself should not be confused with another familiar pair of biconditionals which concerns belief and truth: a belief that P is true if and only if P is the case, and false if and only if P is not the case. These define what we may call the satisfaction condition of a belief or (to use a phrase of Rosen's 2001) its correct- making feature (for instance what makes the performance of a certain song correct are a certain series of sounds with certain properties). These do not make the same claim as (CT), which defines the correctness condition of a belief.

(ST) For anyP,abeliefthatPistrue ifandonlyifP

(CT) not only tells us when a belief is true or false: it tells us that it is right to believe what is true, and that to fail at having true belief is in some sense wrong. Indeed there is nothing wrong with false beliefs, as the condition of satisfaction predicts. But there is something wrong in an instance of believing when it has a false content, since the condition of correctness is violated. It is a matter of dispute, however, whether this intuition is enough to show that (CT) expresses a normative property or signals the fact that the concept of belief is constitutively normative. I do not here deal with this issue, and simply assume that this prima facie normative dimension of belief is genuine and that correctness is normative in a sense which is distinct from belief's mere possessing of a certain descriptive feature such as being a propositional attitude with contents which are true or false, or having a certain function. 'Normative' here is meant in the broad sense (lato sensu) that a given entity has features which cannot simply be characterized descriptively, but which involve a dimension of evaluation and of appraisal. The issue I am concerned with is: how are we to analyse this dimension?29 The notion of correctness is in itself meant to be neutral between various interpretations. According to what we can call the normativist view stricto sensu (Wedgwood 2002; 2007; Shah 2003; Shah and Velleman 2005; Engel 2005a, 2008a), the word 'correct' in (NT) means 'normatively correct' in the strict sense. And the proper modality of this strict sense of 'normative' is deontic and involves an ought:

(NT) It is the norm of belief that one ought to believe that P ifand only if P is true.

According to this normative (stricto sensu) account, not only is it a norm, but it is also the most fundamental, or perhaps the essential norm for belief, and not merely one among others. The norm of belief is, for normativists, constitutive in the sense in which it is said that there is a constitutive norm of assertion.3 On some versions of the normative view, the norm flows from the very nature or the concept of belief:

I take it to be a conceptual truth that beliefs are correct when true and incorrect when false: false beliefs are necessarily faulty or mistaken. What's more, I don't think that the fault in false beliefs can

29 The writers who claim that there is nothing more in the correctness condition for belief than the direction of fit actually deny that the notion of correctness is genuinely normative. Others accept that it is prima facie normative, but claim that the normativity in question is akin to that of biological function, which is descriptive rather than prescriptive (Papineau 1999, this volume). For convincing criticisms of this

consist in their tendency to misdirect our behaviour, and even some false beliefs can direct us well enough. False beliefs are faulty in themselves, antecedently to and independently of any untoward practical consequences. (Velleman 2000: 277-8; see also Boghossian 2008, Shah 2003.)4

But such claims raise at least three kinds of concerns. In the first place we might wonder whether belief is governed by a constitutive norm of correctness at all. There are, after all, plenty of ways in which we can assess beliefs, besides their truth or falsity, and in a number of cases it can be beneficial to disregard or to ignore their alethic or rational dimensions (Papineau 1999, this volume). Why suppose that there is only one standard of evaluation? Why should we adopt the absolutist view that there is only one constitutive norm of belief rather than the relativist view that there is no particular privileged criterion for assessing belief which enjoys a privileged status? On this view there might be as many 'norms' for beliefs as there are dimensions of evaluation, depending upon our particular interests in particular context, none of which enjoy

deflationary conception of the correctness condition on belief according to which (CT) only amounts to the direction of fit of belief, see Velleman (2000). For the distinction between correctness conditions and satisfaction conditions, see in particular Mulligan (2007). There are arguably correctness conditions for other epistemic attitudes than belief, for example:

x conjectures correctly that p iff it is probable that px has a correct interrogative attitude towardsp it is questionable whetherpx doubts correctly whetherp iff it is doubtful whetherpx is correctly certain thatp if is certain thatp

3 Williamson (2000, ch. 11). There are indeed strong parallels between the discussions on the norm for belief and the discussions about the norm of assertion, which I touch on briefly below in Section 3. (See Engel 2008a; Whiting, this volume.)

4 Compare:

Normativity is essential and constitutive of the very concept of belief. It is part of the conceptof belief that beliefs are correct if and only if they are true_______Unless one has grasped thattruth bears this normative relation to belief, one will not have grasped the meaning of

any central status (Zalabardo 2010). Let us, for the moment, put aside this challenge, which is never far from the objections to normativism: if normativism cannot face these objections, relativism will be an option. In the second place, it is not clear how the normativity involved in (NT) is supposed to be part of the very concept of belief: is it an analytic truth, and if so, in what sense can it have the power of a norm? It's allegedly constitutive of the concept bachelor that it applies to unmarried person, but what difference does this allegedly analytic definition do to the behaviour of bachelors? Does it prescribe them to keep their unmarried status or to move to a married one? Not at all. As we shall see, this is one of the major objections to normativism. In the third place, the nature of the normative condition (NT) can be challenged. It can be interpreted, on the one hand, in the deontic way, which reads correctness, as in (NT), along with notions such as right, wrong, ought, obligatory,permitted, or forbidden, which suggests a categorical reading of the norm as an unconditional imperative or ought. It can be interpreted, on the other hand, as the achievement of a certain goal, or objective. Correctness is then understood in a teleological way, as the condition which is satisfied when belief 'aims at' that goal of truth:

(TT) A belief that p is correct if and only ifpbecauseonly true beliefs achieve the aim of belief.

For example, David Velleman has proposed to read the constitutive norm for belief in this teleological sense: 'To believe that p is to have the aim of regarding that proposition as true only if it in fact is true' (Velleman 2000) and other writers have defended this kind of reading (Noordhof 2001; Steglich-Petersen 2006).5 Although it does not entail it, the teleological reading is associated naturally with the idea that the goal of truth is not just any kind of goal, but that it is a valuable one, and actually that it stands for a value. This value can itself be understood as being instrumental to another value, or it can be a final one, or an intrinsic value. Let us call this the axiological reading of the aim of belief.

Since most of the objections concern the formulation of the correctness condition, let us focus on it. If one accepts the idea that there is a constitutive correctness condition for belief, what is its best formulation? The normative version (NT) and the teleological version (TT) can be understood as alternative ways of cashing out the metaphor 'beliefs aim at truth'. Both are meant to capture the notion of correctness, and its difference from the mere truth-directedness of belief (along with the direction of fit

'belief. Thus, because it is a conceptual matter that truth is a standard of correctness for belief, it is unnecessary to look for further facts to explain how truth is inescapably normative for belief. This inescapability is a conceptual necessity. (Shah 2003:468)

5 Later Velleman rejected this teleologist interpretation, and has espoused a non-teleological view (Shah and Velleman 2005). But his 2000 formulation of the teleological view has been influential (on the difference see Engel 2005a).

metaphor), and to capture what is specific in belief with respect to other kinds of states (e.g. imagining of guessing). Both are meant to capture what is normative in the correctness condition, how it is supposed to guide a believer. But they are not equivalent.

In the first place, although they can both be understood as ways of cashing out the notion of reason for belief, they refer to two interpretations of reason for believing. On the one hand the normative version says there is a norm for belief, which grounds our reasons for believing, and such that the reasons always derive from this norm. On the other hand the teleological version says there is a value

(intrinsic or instrumental) which grounds our reasons for believing, which derive from this value.In the second place, they presuppose different ontologies. On the one hand the normative account

rests upon an ontology of norms, whether or not one conceives these norms as stating normative facts (along cognitivist lines) or not (along expressivist lines). On the other hand the teleological account presupposes an ontology of values (good, evaluations), which can here too be understood cognitivistically or expressivistically.

In the third place, the two views rest upon two distinct conceptions of epistemic norms. Consider what is often taken as the evidential norm for belief: one ought to believe that P only on the basis of sufficient evidence. On the deontic formulation (NT), the epistemic norms are categorical and derive their normative status from another norm, the basic norm of truth. On the teleological formulation they are instrumental and hypothetical, getting their normative status from their ability to guide us to achieve our aims, and conditional upon our intention to reach these aims. This difference has an important consequence: if our reasons for beliefs and our adhesion to epistemic norms are explained through an aim—truth—we should be able to weigh this aim against other aims or values. The teleologist can understand the normative status of this aim in two possible ways. First, if the aim of truth is understood as the ultimate epistemic goal or as having an intrinsic value, it will follow that we typically do not balance this aim of truth against other aims, and that it is not open to being overridden, or at least that it is much harder to choose another aim. Second, an instrumentalist version of the teleological account would allow the possibility, at least in principle, of comparing the aim of having true beliefs with other aims (for instance practical ones). This is related to the following point.

In the fourth place, normative requirements upon beliefs are typically categorical, whereas aims are typically hypothetical. This seems to imply two different conceptions of epistemic rationality, a categorical one and an instrumental one (Kelly 2003; Steglich-Petersen, this volume). To this one might object that there can be conflicts between categorical norms. But when there are such conflicts these typically give rise to dilemmas (moral dilemmas being the primary example). But in such cases the asymmetry remains: in a dilemma one does not typically weigh aims against others.

The question naturally arises: which interpretation is more fundamental? Which one accounts better for epistemic reasons, ontology, and role of epistemic norms? Which one accounts better for guidance and the regulation of believing? If correctness

IN DEFENCE OF NORMATIVISM ABOUT THE AIM OF BELIEF 37

for belief is necessarily plural and relative to various standards of assessment or to different sorts of aims, the teleological account seems better, for there seems to be various kinds of goals that we can pursue. As suggested above, the teleologist can certainly hold the view that there is only one and unique epistemic goal, truth. Then the relativist just differs from the absolutist teleologist on the exclusive or unique character of the aim. But then the problem becomes more pressing for the teleologist: how is he to distinguish his view from the relativist one? For it seems clear that we do not always aim at truth in our beliefs, rather than at, say, comfort.30 The relativist is tempted to conclude that truth is neither a norm nor an ultimate goal of belief. The absolutist teleologist and the normativist reject this consequence. But it's more difficult for the teleologist to reject this consequence, if he allows that the truth aim can be balanced against other aims.

The normativist thesis is often discussed in relation to the thesis that there is an essential

30 This is a fact of our psychological life. It is consistent with normativism, since normativism is a claim about what we ought to believe, not about what we actually believe.

normativity of the mental, and it is often considered either to be a close ally to this thesis or an implication of it (Boghossian 2003; Gibbard 2003; Wedgwood 2007; Gluer and Wikforss 2009). Here I shall leave aside this issue, and shall deal only with the normativity which is attached to belief as an attitude, without attempting to draw any consequence about meaning or thought content. I shall also leave aside the onto- logical issue about norms. My main objective is to defend the normative interpretation of the aim of belief against the main criticisms which have been levelled against it: that the norm of truth is trivial, that it is impossible to apply, that it fails to regulate belief (Sections 2 and 3). I shall, in Section 4, confront the normative account with the view that the notion of an aim of belief is to be interpreted literally as a teleological goal, and shall, in Section 5, show that it offers a better analysis of the regulation of belief. I shall also argue (Section 6) that the norm of truth is not incompatible with the norm which, in my view, ultimately governs belief—the norm of knowledge.

2. The objection from normative impotenceThe normative account faces a number of difficulties. The focus on many criticisms consists in the contention that the norm of truth which is supposed to govern belief is actually unable to govern and to guide our actual believing, since it is either empty and does not regulate any belief at all, or it gives us absurd or impossible prescriptions. I consider the first horn of this purported dilemma in the present section, and the second in the next.

According to the triviality objection (NT) is not normative at all. Thus Fred Dretske says: Beliefs and judgments must either be true or false, yes, but there is nothing normative about truth and falsity. What makes a judgment false (true) is the fact that it fails (or succeeds) in corresponding to the facts, and failing (or succeeding) in corresponding to the facts is, as far as I can see, a straightforward factual matter. Nothing normative about it. (Dretske 2001: 247)

According to Dretske, (NT) is false and expresses no norm at all. It is only a very general descriptive principle about what belief is, which carries no weight on what believers are supposed to do or to think: how can a general descriptive principle about belief carry a normative force? Perhaps Dretske has in mind the kind of objection that I examine below, which says that a constitutive principle does not carry any normative force, hence cannot be a norm. More likely he simply asserts without argument that there cannot be any normative dimension in belief.

An objection which is related to that of triviality consists in accepting to call (NT) the expression of norm, but only in a shallow sense. Proponents of the objection accept the truth of (CT). They agree with the normativist that correctness is a normative notion. They deny, however, that there is a deontic norm involved here, as (NT) asserts. (CT), on this view, makes a normative claim, but only in a very shallow sense.

There is a sense of'norm' and of'normative' in which this notion designates a very general descriptive principle concerning our thought and our action, and not a specific rule governing certain behaviours (such as the rules of etiquette or of particular games). Thus one speaks in this sense of the 'norms of rationality, such as the laws of logic or the principles of decision theory. These high-profile norms tell us what it is to be logical or what the most general conditions of rational action are. But many object that one can talk of 'norms' in this sense only by courtesy, since the norms in question are impotent and lack exactly what is required of norms properly so-called: having motivating power. A genuine norm, according to this objection, has to actually motivate us to do or to believe something.

Thus Schroeder (2003) distinguishes two notions of norms:

1. norms as categorization or classification schemes dividing actions or events into distinct types (e.g. norms of etiquette dividing actions into those which are polite and those which are not) or as general principles of description (e.g. norms of rationality describing the beliefs or actions of ideal agents)

2. norms as force makers, that is as prescriptions or governance principles giving us aims to follow or guiding our actions (e.g. rules of etiquette or traffic rules)31.

In sense (1), one often speaks of the 'norms of rationality' (such as the laws of logic or the principles of decision theory) as 'normative'. But these norms in question are impotent and lack exactly what is required of norms in sense (2): having normative force and motivating power. According to the current challenge to normativism, (CT)

31 Schroeder makes these remarks in the course of an analysis of Davidson's account of the 'norms of rationality' and of his 'normative theory of mind' which he takes not to be normative at all. See also Gluer (2001); Engel (2008b).

has a similar status. It is only a general norm of rationality on belief, which does not give us any guidance when we figure out what to believe. In explaining (CT) in terms of (NT), the normativist takes there to be a constitutive deontic norm for beliefs of type (b). According to the present objection, this is to confuse the two types of norms. (CT) cannot state a deontic norm with genuine prescriptive force.

Peter Railton (2000) has suggested that there is a second requirement on genuine norms as well. He has emphasized that, for a principle to be a norm, it has to have not only a normative force, in the sense that it should have a certain force to move us to something or to think something, but also a normative freedom: the norm must be such that it can be violated, that is agents must have the choice whether to comply or not.

These requirements, according to the proponents of the present objection, are not satisfied by the 'norm' that a belief is correct if and only if it is true (CT). According to them, this correctness condition, which is supposed to express the constitutive norm for beliefs, lacks normative force. It is only a general rational requirement on belief, but it does not give us any guidance when we figure out what to believe.

This no-guidance objection, as we might call it, has been put forward forcefully by Kathrin Gluer and Asa Wikforss (2009, this volume). Understood as a general requirement on belief, (CT) and (NT) do not have any normative force. These norms tell us what a belief is, and when it is correct, but they do not tell us what we are supposed to do with beliefs. It is very important for Gluer and Wikforss that a genuine norm be prescriptive of a certain kind of behaviour or way of thinking in the deontic sense (Gluer and Wikforss 2009: 32, this volume: 81). But in so far as (NT) states a norm, it does so only in the sense of giving a constitutive condition on the correctness belief, namely truth. But, constitutive norms in this sense neither guide us nor prescribe anything to us. (NT) in its deontic sense has the requisite prescriptive appearance, but it is not prescriptive and does not guide us at all. They write,

If one takes seriously the idea that the 'rules' of rationality are essential to belief, there is good reason not to regard them as norms that one can be motivated to follow. The 'rules' of rationality, if constitutive of belief, cannot guide belief formation; this is a simple consequence of trying to conceive of these very rules as constitutive and as prescriptive at the same time. When it comes to the 'rules' of rationality, these ideas simply do not go together. The essential link between rationality and belief thus cannot be used to defend the idea that the 'rules' of rationality are rules in anything like these sense we are interested in: prescriptions capable of guiding an activity or a performance of any kind. (Gluer and Wikforss 2009: 47-8)

Much of this argument turns upon what one means by a norm 'guiding' and being 'prescriptive' of a certain kind of behaviour as opposed to a norm being 'constitutive'. According to Gluer and Wikforss, a norm, in order to be guiding—and in this sense to be a genuine norm—must tell a subject what to do in particular circumstances. It must have the form of an imperative: 'Do X when C (where C is the antecedent condition to be met). Now in some cases, it is not transparent to the subject whether or not C obtains. One can, however, still be guided by them, and we can call norms that are not transparent in this sense 'objective' (Boghossian 2003: 38). For instance, the imperative 'Buy low and sell high' is objective in this sense, since one can be guided by it in buying and selling, even though it may not be transparent to a subject whether the prevailing price is low or high. Now the norm of truth for belief (NT) is also objective, unlike for example the evidential norm (NE).

(NE) One ought to believe only upon the basis of sufficient evidence.

But there is something special about (NT), and according to Gluer and Wikforss this makes them problematic in a way that 'Buy low and sell high' is not. If the norm stated in (NT) were to be guiding, the subject would need to form a belief about whether the condition it puts on the ought is fulfilled, which in the case of (NT) amounts to having to form a belief as to whether p is true. But in order to know what to do, that is whether to believe that p, the subject needs to determine whether p, hence to form the belief that p, which is precisely what the norm is supposed to tell him to do! As soon as the question whether to believe that p according to the norm arises, it is too late to comply since the belief is already formed. Hence no guidance can be obtained from a norm which presupposes that one has already applied it when it is to be applied. In that respect the 'norm' for belief in (NT) is distinct from other norms such as 'Buy low sell high', which also needs the precondition that one has beliefs about the market in order to apply it. But while there is no problem with such preconditions with other norms, the very having of a true belief cannot be a precondition of applying a norm to the effect that one has this very belief (Gluer and Wikforss 2009: 44, this volume, §4).

Gluer and Wikforss' no-guidance objection has bite, but it can be resisted. It seems to me that it relies on three unjustified presuppositions: that constitutive norms like (NT) are necessarily prescriptions, that there is no real distinction between the form of a norm and the way it regulates its subject, and that the relationship between the prescriptive norm and the behaviour of a subject has to be internal.

In the first place, why should we assume that the truth norm in (NT) has to entail an imperative prescription about how to believe? Indeed this reading is strongly suggested by the formulation involving an ought which is normally understood as entailing a prescription. As we shall see in the next section the ought of (NT) raises specific problems. But let us consider for the moment only the general form of the no-guidance objection. It presupposes that the norm of truth for belief, and other epistemic norms, are 'directives' which enjoin us to perform a certain kind of action,32 typically a conditional imperative of the form 'Do X if C or an unconditional one of the form 'You ought to do X'. It seems clear from Gluer and Wikforss' discussion on (NT) that they consider guidance to be about 'doing the right thing' (2009: 44). Although this is a natural assumption to make, it is questionable whether it is mandatory. Why should epistemic norms result in actions that subjects have to perform, in the sense of what is often called an ought to do? Indeed Gluer and Wikforss do not mean, when they favour this reading, that beliefs and other doxastic attitudes are actions, and they do not subscribe to any form of doxastic voluntarism. But their talk of being 'motivated' by a norm which is supposed to 'guide our performances' (Gluer and Wikforss 2009: 31) suggests that they conceive the relation between a norm and its application along the lines of norms which entail prescriptions of actions. One can agree with the requirement that genuine norms must have normative force and normative freedom, and that a norm be in some sense motivating, in the sense that it guides belief formation, without granting that the kind of motivation which is proper to epistemic norms is that of directives or that beliefs subject to the norm of truth must be a kind of 'performance'. 33 One can also agree with the proponents of the no-guidance objection to (NT) that one must distinguish between constitutive norms, such as the norms of rationality and the norm of truth for belief and norms that are

32 For an analysis of directives, see Thomson (2008).33 Ernest Sosa (2009) argues that beliefs are kinds of performances, and that the normativity of belief is that of a

valuable performance. Gluer and Wikforss are not committed to this view, but their talk of performances and of oughts to do suggests that they take motivation by norm to be akin to the motivation of actions. In the view proposed here, that needn't be the case.

rules or directions for particular performances, without granting that constitutive norms do not guide and, to use Gluer and Wikforss's phrase, 'do not make a difference' to the subject who obeys them.

A complete answer to the no-guidance challenge would imply spelling out a full metaphysics and epistemology of norms and normative discourse, which I can only sketch here in broad outline. One must distinguish between three things: (a) the norm itself; (b) its expression; and (c) the way it regulates.34 In the first place, to talk about the norm itself is not to suggest that the norm is a kind of ineffable platonic entity. Although it is a plausible option, it need not be presupposed in advance. The metaphysical nature of the norm and the question whether one has to be a cognitivist or an expressivist about it, or whether norms are to be identified with values, are questions which are largely independent of the distinctions between (a), (b), and (c). The norm is what I have called above the correctness condition, the nature of which depends upon the kind of entity it governs. For the case of belief and other epistemic states, it is a constitutive norm. One must not confuse the correctness condition (CT) of the norm for belief with the correct-making feature—namely that a belief has to be true. Although a lot more needs to be said to spell out what constitutive norms are, 111 agree with Gluer and Wikforss that one must not conflate norms which define the nature or concept of a certain mental state (such as belief) or of a certain kind of competence (such as being rational) on the one hand and rules on the other. I deny, however, that constitutive norms are mere analytic principles which define the essence or the concept of a certain state or capacity. In the second place, the norm itself is distinct from its expression or its formulation through a certain sentence type. A norm can be formulated as an imperative conditional or not, as a categorical prescription or as a permission. If one subscribes to the teleological account of normativity, a norm has to be specified with reference to a certain kind of aim, instrumental or not. These issues are of course not independent of the kind of metaphysical story that one can give about the nature of the norm under (a), but one kind of metaphysical story about norms (say a Platonist and cognitivist one) is compatible with various formulations. In the third place, one must distinguish the norm from the way it regulates what it is about, which, following Railton (2003) and Shah (2003), one can call regulation by the norm—in the present case, of the way belief is regulated by the norm of truth. Regulation by a norm pertains to the epistemology of normativity (how do we have access to norms) and to its psychology (what kind of mental states are required for a subject to be guided by a norm).35In order to answer the question of how a norm regulates, one needs to say what kind of mental states a subject must have to follow the norm, and whether these mental states are accessible to the subject. There is no reason to suppose that all norms, constitutive or not, regulate or guide us in the same way. More importantly for the present argument, there is no reason to suppose that we can read off the kind of regulation or guidance which a norm gives from its nature and its expression. In other words, the norm and its form—whatever way one conceives of it—is one thing, its psychological realization in the mind of a subject is another.36

34I have already sketched these distinctions in Engel (2007,2008a).35 In discussions of rule-following, 'the epistemology of rule following' is often talked of. The present distinction

is meant to parallel the familiar one between meta-ethics on the one hand and moral epistemology and moral psychology on the other.

36Gluer and Wikforss (this volume) seem to grant this distinction. But if they grant it, why do they insist on the claim that norms like (NT) for belief provide no guidance and are not prescriptive of mental states at all? That such norms provide no guidance is to be expected, if one accepts the distinction that I propose. Gluer and Wikforss (this volume: footnote 13) also object to my talk of 'the regulation of the norm—norms regulate but are they themselves regulated?' But this talk is justified by the distinction between the norm and regulation by the norm. If one takes the norm itself to regulate one supposes that its conditions of application are, so to say, written into its form. But if one accepts that the psychological story about the norm is another thing than the nature of the norm, the distinction between the norm and its regulation appears to

To draw these distinctions, however, is one thing, and to give a proper response to the no-guidance argument is another. But the first step to answer that objection consists in accepting the distinction between the norm and the way it is realized in the psychology of believers. In a sense, I grant the objection from normative force: Simply stating a rational principle does not tell us how it is implemented. How could a norm like that in (NT), which looks so trivial and abstract, give us any guidance about how to form our beliefs or to maintain them? There is no reason that it could. Still, there must be some relation between the abstract principle and how it regulates. Although the normative truth is necessarily independent from the way it regulates, there has to be a connection between the two. But the norm does not, so to say, wear its conditions of regulation on its sleeves. The no-guidance objection, in large part, rests upon a confusion between the correctness condition (CT) and the psychological trait which imple- ments it in the behaviour of subjects. In every standard it is possible to distinguish correctness itself from the correct-making feature: the property the performance must manifest in order to count as correct. The correct-making feature need not be normative, but the claim of correctness does not predicate the correct making-feature. It is a higher-order claim to the effect that the performance possesses the feature that makes for correctness in acts of that kind. For example, to predicate correctness of an assertion is not to say that it is true. It is to say that it possesses the correct-making feature for assertions, whatever it may be. This feature happens to be truth. But it would be a mistake to identify correctness with truth, just as it would be a mistake to identify the standard with regulation by the standard.14

The no-guidance objection is also problematic in a third sense, because it presupposes that there must be a relationship of internal motivation between the prescription that is, according to Gluer and Wikforss, to be derived from (NT) and the kind of response that a subject can give to it has to be a form. The requirement that norms necessarily motivate—if one j udges that one ought to f one is thereby motivated to f— is what is otherwise known in moral psychology and meta-ethics as the internalism requirement (Smith 1995). It seems to be presupposed by the no-guidance objection. An externalist about motivation—who accepts that one might judge that one ought to f and nevertheless not be motivated to f, in such situations as akrasia for instance— would not accept it. Lewis Carroll's tale of Achilles and the Tortoise15 falls under this category. It is perfectly possible that someone recognizes the validity of a general principle, such as a principle of logic, but nevertheless fails—or refuses—to act upon it. So, for example, the Tortoise can perfectly understand that modus ponens is a basic rule— and in this sense a norm—of logical reasoning, and he can accept it as a true proposition and write it down in his notebook. But he is not moved at all by it, and does not infer accordingly: he accepts the general requirement, but does not grant it any guiding power (Blackburn 1995; Engel 2005b). The Tortoise actually takes the logical norm as impotent and would presumably agree with the distinction between the norm and its force. He seems to be expressing an excessively strong claim of normative freedom, which requires not only that we can choose to violate the norm, but also that we can refrain from following the norm, and have the appropriate freedom not to be guided by it. One might of course dispute the implicit parallel between moral motivation and

be more natural. (Steglich-Petersen, in his (2009) reply to Gluer and Wikforss, seems to agree on these distinctions.)In his response to Gluer and Wikforss (2009), Steglich-Petersen argues, along similar lines as those defended here that

one should not mistake the correctness condition in which the norm consists for the psychological state in which an agent must be in order to apply the norm. For a similar distinction see Engel (2007: 163-4).

epistemic motivation here and disagree over whether epistemic akrasia is a possibility. But given that internalism about moral motivation is a disputed doctrine, there is no reason to accept it without discussion in the epistemic case.

There is no reason either to suppose that constitutive norms such as (NT) for belief have to be prescriptive of the behaviour of agents and that they have to motivate them in an internalist sense. Contrary to what the proponents of the triviality objection like Dretske argue, a constitutive norm like (NT) is a norm, not only in the sense that it defines the condition under which belief is correct—truth—but also because any agent who possesses the concept of belief and who is disposed to use it in his inferences is committed to this norm.37 The fact that the constitutive norm for belief is not regulative or guiding in the prescriptive and directive sense does not mean it does not regulate the formation and maintenance of beliefs. Indeed pointing out this possibility is not enough to answer the no-guidance argument, and it now remains to be seen in what sense such a constitutive norm can be regulating. I shall try to specify this in Section 5, where I shall also try to give my own answer to the circularity argument, but for the moment, and for the sake of presenting the other arguments of the no-guidance objec- tors, I shall talk of 'guidance' in their sense. Let us now turn to one line of this argument to the effect that the form or the expression of the norm prevents it from giving us any guidance at all.

3. The unfathomable norm of truthA number of critics of the normative account concentrate on what I have called here the expression of the norm of truth for belief. They claim that the problem with this norm is not that it is empty or shallow but that it is impossible to satisfy, because any formulation of it leads to absurd prescriptions. In other words the norm postulated in (NT) is unfathomable. Let us reformulate that norm in order to make the ought more explicit:

(O)For anyP, one oughtto believe that P iff P

Following John Broome (1999), Krister Bykvist and Anandi Hattiangadi (2007) have pointed out that one can read (O) in different ways depending on the scope of the ought operator:

r. Narrow (O n) For any S, P: S oughtto (believe thatP) if and only if P is true. 2. Wide (Ow) For any S, P: S oughtto (believe thatP ifand only ifP is true).

Suppose we adopt the first reading (1), the one which takes narrow scope. It can be broken down into two conditionals

(On*)For any P, if P is true then S ought to believe that P.(On**) For anyP, S oughtto believe that P only if P is true.

But narrow scope * is unsatisfiable or useless. It leads to the absurd requirement that for any truth among an infinity of truths one has to believe it, or that for any trivial and useless truth, one ought to believe it (Sosa 2001; Boghossian 2003).

This thought leads one to prefer the (On**) formulation (Boghossian 2003):

(On**) ForanyP, S oughtto believe that P only if Pistrue; or, equivalently(On***)For any P, if S ought to believe that P, then P is true.

This seems more attractive because it just gives us the negative—and perfectly reasonable—

37 Jarvis (2012) holds that constitutive norms are teleological norms, which specifywhat a certain device, natural or artefact, is supposed to do, but that they do not guide, for they are not regulative or directive. I agree with him that constitutive norms are not directives or prescriptives. But I reject the idea that they are unable to regulate. See Section 4.

prescription not to believe any falsehood. But it is not clear that it works either, the critics object. Bykvist and Hattiangadi (2007) note that (On**) does not capture the thought that the truth is what you ought to believe, and so is not normative in any interesting sense—it does not imply that a subject is under any obligation under any circumstances whatsoever. The principle that for any P, S ought to believe that P only if P yields, when P is false, that it is not the case that S ought to believe that P. But that merely says that S lacks an obligation to believe that P. It does not say that S has an obligation to believe that not-P. Hence, whether P is true or false, (On**) does not tell S what to believe.

Part of the problem with such objections is that they are indifferent to whether the prescription applies to any belief that the agent might have, whether he considers it or not. If we take them to involve prescriptions about what a potential believer who asks herself whether to believe that P, (On**) seems correct. In such cases of doxastic deliberation (Shah and Velleman 2005) the point is that for any P, if S considers whether P, then S ought to (believe that P) if and only if P is true. Now Bykvist and Hattiangadi object that there are some 'blindspot' sentences that are not believable, such as:

It is raining and nobody believes that it is raining.There are no believers.

In such cases, they argue, the norm of truth for belief, when the subject considers whether P, cannot be applied. Thus if it is true that it is raining and that nobody believes that it is raining, then it follows that you do not believe that it is raining. If you do believe that it is raining and nobody believes that it is raining, it follows that the proposition is false. Hence one cannot satisfy (O), which tells us that we ought to believe it if and only if it is true. As Bykvist and Hattiangadi suggest, one could modify (O) so that it could apply only to believable contents. I agree with them that it would have the effect making the normative requirement on belief trivial:

If P is true and believable you ought to believe that P. A defender of the normative account can agree with Bykvist and Hattiangadi that the norm of truth (O), modified with the proviso that one considers the sentences in question, cannot be satisfied in the case of blindspot sentences. But he would disagree with their diagnosis: they consider the blindspot sentences to be such that if they are believed the fact that we cannot assess their truth or their falsity renders the norm of truth unsatisfiable. I understand the inapplicability of the norm of truth in a different way. The problem seems to me to be that the blindspot sentences not being believable, we do even know how the norm of truth could be applied. It is not clear that such sentences express a proposition which can be grasped by a subject and evaluated for its truth or falsity. For 'blindspot' beliefs the question of truth does not arise, and that it is certainly a requirement on P that P expresses a proposition which is truth-evaluable. If the truth of such sentences cannot be evaluated it is not clear that the norm of truth can be applied to them and that they are believable at all. So the problem here is not that the norm of truth is impossible to satisfy, but that in such cases we cannot tell whether it is satisfiable or not. To this Bykvist and Hattiangadi (this volume: footnote 9) object that propositions like those which a radical sceptic could utter like I have never and will never have any beliefs can be falsifiable. But it is not clear that such sentences are falsifiable. Isn't it after all a characteristic of many sceptical hypotheses that we cannot figure out how they could be true at all and what they mean? Whatever view one holds about the relationship between meaning and truth, the fact is that one cannot understand whether a belief can be subject or not to the norm that it is correct if and only if it

is true.38 I actually agree with a number of Bykvist and Hattiangadi's criticisms of the truth norm. But they presuppose, like the Gluer and Wikforss no-guidance objection that the form of the norm is a prescription to believe the true and only the true. But does the truth-norm entail such prescriptions? If it does the argument is effective. But, as I suggested above it is not clear that it does.

Some critics of the deontic version of the truth-norm (O) acknowledge that it would be too strong if it took the form of a prescription, and have suggested that it has to be reformulated with a weaker deontic modality, such as permissibility (Whiting 2010):

(P) For any P, one may believe that P iff P

It seems, however, that such a weak form of the truth-norm, although it respects normative freedom and accommodates the blindspot problem (we are only allowed to believe them), either loses the normative force which the norm of truth is supposed to carry, or comes down to the same as (O). For, as Bykvist and Hattiangadi note in their response (this volume) the negative form of (P), when P is false, says that one is not allowed to believe P, hence that it is forbidden to believe P, which is just as strong as the original version.

38 In a previous article where I mentioned the blindspot objection (Engel 2007), I have suggested that blindspot sentences cannot be understood. I agree with Bykvist and Hattiangadi (this volume: footnote 9) that this is wrong in the literal sense: these sentences can be understood. But whether they actually express truth evaluable propositions is more dubious.

Let us now turn to the formulation of (O) with a wide scope reading. It would be:

(O w)For any S, P: S ought to (believe that P if and only if P is true)

Bykvist and Hattiangadi observe here that two combinations satisfy the requirement: either (a) you believe that P and P is true, or (b) it is not the case that you believe that P and P is false. And two conditions do not satisfy it: either you believe that P and P is false, or it's not the case that you believe that P and P is true. (Ow) does not obviously encounter the same objections as (On). For, (Ow) cannot be broken down into the conditionals (On*) and (On**), since in those conditionals, the 'ought' took narrow scope. But it is a familiar point, again emphasized by Broome (1999), that such wide scope requirements do not detach. (Ow) does not capture the intuition that the truth is what one ought to believe, or that a false belief is faulty or defective. The reason is that what (Ow) enjoins are combinations: the combination of your believing that P with its being true that P and the combination of its being false that P and your not believing that P. Because the 'ought' takes wide scope, one cannot detach from (Ow) that you ought to believe that P, even when P is true. Now one of the lessons of Broome's analysis was that requirements like (Ow) are 'rational requirements', which cannot lend themselves to detachment, and are not normative in the sense in which they would lead to prescriptions: they are normative only as constitutive norms of the most general kind (Broome 2007). In so far as (O), in any of its forms, is a rational requirement, it does not give us any reason or specific motivation to think in a particular way. Actually Broome's notion of normativity here corresponds to the sense (r) of normativity of Section 2 above. It is not the motivating or force maker sense.

The arguments of the critics of the constitutive norm for belief are correct if what they purport to show is that the norm of truth for belief is unfathomable as a prescription, or a rule guiding or directing our belief formation. They do no such thing because the norm is a rationality requirement in Broome's sense, which is (r) above. It is not obvious that it is normative in the (2) sense of a force maker. In the face of these difficulties, the normativist is invited to claim that it holds only prima facie:

(O ) ForanyP, one ought, primafacie to believe that P iff Porto adda ceteris paribus clausein the style: unless P is trivial, unbelievable, etc.

Norms, after all, are subject to exceptions. But such formulations have the effect of triv- ializing the norm or depriving it of all normative power. If the norm of truth were: 'do not believe what is false (except if you want comfort, relief or if you find it useful to deceive yourself', the norm would be empty. So it's not a good way out for the normativist to accept the prima facie manoeuvre. But the proponents of the no-guidance argument are wrong when they conclude that (NT) is not normative at all or when they suggest that it is too normatively constraining: the fact that most of its formulations are hard to interpret does not mean that there is no story to be told about the way a rationality requirement can regulate our actual believing. For we need to distinguish, as we did above, the correctness condition of a belief, which is that it is correct if and only if it is true, from the way in which it is understood by a subject and from the psychological condition in which he is supposed to be in order to obey the norm. In other words, we must distinguish the norm itself as a rational or ideal principle, from the way it regulates. For all that they have shown the critics of the constitutive account are right that the correctness making feature or the truth in (O) does not wear its regulation conditions on its sleeves.

The same consideration can be adduced against a related objection to the truth norm: that if it

prescriptive at all, it prescribes too much and is too demanding: why, if the requirement (O) is understood as a prescription, should it apply in every circumstance to any believer? Aren't there cases—in particular those in which subjects are self-deceived, wishful thinkers or otherwise irrational in some way—where the norm is, by definition, not followed (Steglich-Petersen 2006)? Such objections, which we shall consider again below, rest upon a confusion: the fact that a constitutive norm is in place does not mean that one has to be motivated by it in every circumstance. Consider the discussions about the norm of assertion, which is often held to be the norm that one must assert that P only if one knows that P (Williamson 2000: ch.11). But if one were to assert only what one knows, one would make very few assertions, just as if one were to have only true belief, one would have rather few beliefs. The norm for assertion does not state that one ought to make only assertions about things that one knows, and the norm for belief does state that one ought to believe only things that are true.39 The norms respectively state that one violates the norm for assertion if one asserts something that one does not know, and that one violates the norm for belief if one believes things that are false. It does not entail that one never has a false belief, but only that one is supposed not to have one, if one is a believer.

It is essential, therefore to distinguish the correctness condition for belief from the features of the psychology of agents which need to be present for the norm to be followed. So Judith Jarvis Thomson is right to point out, in her analysis of normativity that such rules as (O) (or the norm that one ought to assert only what one knows)'impose no obligation of any kind________They don't tell you what you must or even whatyou ought to do' (Thomson 2008). Indeed they do not tell us. But that is what is to be expected from a norm. What the objections considered in this section show is that the correct-making features need not be so specific that they give us the conditions of guidance. But that does not mean that there is no account that one can give about the guidance or regulation conditions. Below we shall attempt to give one. But before that, we need to examine the alternative account of the constitutive norm, which rejects the very idea that the norm of truth for belief is a deontic norm, and takes it instead as a goal or telos for belief.

4. The teleological accountThe 'teleological' conception of the constitutive norm for belief accepts (CT) as a general constitutive principle for belief. But it explains it differently from the normativist. For the teleologist the principle that a belief is correct if and only if it is true is such because only true beliefs achieve the aim of belief. There is a natural reading of the teleological proposal which I want to put aside here. This is the familiar idea that truth is the ultimate epistemic value, and because of this we aim at attaining this goal as believers. But, as Hamid Vahid (2006) has correctly pointed out, it is one thing to say that beliefs, qua mental states, aim at truth, and another thing to say that we ought to aim at having many truth beliefs. The former is, on the teleological view, beliefs' internal aim, whereas the latter is our epistemic goal. The teleological conception is here only relevant to the 'internal' aim.

The teleological account says that a belief is correct iff it is true because only true beliefs achieve the aim involved in believing. If the aim in question is understood as a value—what I have called above the axiological reading—it is unclear that it can be a more satisfactory account of the aim of belief than the normative account (NT) for it faces similar problems. In particular if epistemic reasons for beliefs are reasons that obtain in virtue of the relevant beliefs having some property that is of value

39 For more on this, Engel (2008a) and Whiting (this volume).

or promotes something of value, then all beliefs supported by epistemic reasons must be valuable or value-promoting. But not all beliefs supported by epistemic reasons are valuable or value-promoting. In fact, some beliefs are just the opposite, despite being supported by epistemic reasons. In other words, if we formulate the aim of belief as

(AV) It is valuable to believe that P if and only if P. and

decompose it into two conditionals:(AV*) It is valuable that if P then one believes that P.(AV**) It is valuable that if one believes that P then P.

and respect the scope differences as in (O) above, we shall presumably encounter difficulties similar to those that we have encountered with the normative account (David 2001; Piller 2009).

This reaction, however, maybe too quick. For the objection that (NT) runs the risk of making the norm impotent or unfathomable seems to be precisely the one that the teleological account is meant to avoid. For this account seems much more plausible and much better suited to allow the constitutive aim to play a regulative role. For it provides a natural way to connect this aim to the actual psychological state of believers: when an agent deliberates about whether to believe that P, he does so with the aim of having a true belief, and only a true belief. As Velleman (2000) construes it principally, the aim is a conscious aim, which is explicitly under the consideration of the believer, and which he construes as an explicit intention to form a belief according to the aim. Indeed Velleman allows also for unconscious intentions aiming at truth, but that does not change the central feature that the aim of belief is intentionally directed to a goal.40 On the conscious version, regulation of belief is directly associated with the evidence that the believer has for the belief:

A person intentionally aims a belief at truth, by forming an act of judgement. He entertains a question ofthe form p or not p?' wanting to accept whichever disjunct is true; to that end he accepts one or the other proposition, as indicated by evidence or argument; and he continues to accept it so long as he receives no evidence or argument impugning its truth. The resulting cognition qualifies as a belief because of the intention with which it is formed and subse- quently maintained by the believer, and because of the way in which that intention regulates its formation and maintenance. (Velleman 2000: 252)

On the teleological account, the constitutive aim of belief regulates the formation of belief through the aim of truth in so far as the evidence that one has for the belief indicates how to reach the aim. For we generally form belief on the basis of our evidence, not truth, for what we have access to is the evidence for our belief. Indeed our evidence is evidence for truth, and the truth standard of correctness for belief is clearly associated to, and operates through, the norm of evidence (NE) that one ought not to believe on the basis of insufficient evidence. If we take the role of evidence as what regulates belief formation by associating belief to its internal aim, it becomes quite natural to understand how the aim of truth motivates our believing: what we take as good reasons or evidence for a belief offers us a motivation to hold this belief. So the teleological account offers, apparently, a better explanation of this internal relation between evidence than the normative account, which is

40 Velleman in his initial view, allowed unconscious intentions and cognitions directed at truth which could operate at a subpersonal level (2000: 253). He later renounced this claim and takes the aim of belief to be a norm of belief, tied to the conscious deliberation of a believer (Shah and Velleman 2005). Since Velleman takes the intentionalist version in 2000 as primary, and revises it with a conscious deliberation later, I take here the teleological view as officially 'intentionalist. A further discussion would be needed to deal with the non-intentionalist version, but the problems would be essentially similar for that version.

actually silent upon it. The teleological view, however, leads to at least two implausible consequences.

In the first place, the account fits only those beliefs which are consciously enter- tained and reflexive, and does not account for those which are not directed at truth, but at other aims, such as comforting the believer (for instance as a result of cognitive dissonance, wishful thinking, or self-deception). There is no reason to suppose that non-conscious beliefs are governed by a truth aim. In the second place, the teleological account represents believing as directed—consciously or not—towards a goal, truth. But we have seen that this idea, which goes along with the analysis of the norm of truth in terms of desire, misrepresents the regulation of belief. As a result of these ten- sions, the teleological account is caught into what Shah (2003: 461) calls the 'teleological dilemma': either the teleological account allows truth regulation to be present in the cases of irrational or unconscious beliefs which are not truth-directed, and this has the effect of weakening the standard of correctness for belief to such an extent that it is hard to understand how it can be a standard at all. Or it restricts unduly the scope of the correctness condition for belief so that it cannot apply to other contexts than those of intentional belief formation.41

The teleologist's account is here threatened by a second difficulty: if truth is an internal aim of our believing, in what sense is it guaranteed that it is our only aim? Beliefs, unlike actions, are not governed by a variety of reasons. In considering whether to take a certain course of action, say taking a walk, I can balance that aim against others (say going to the Museum or reading a book) and for a variety of reasons, or for no reasons at all. This is not true of beliefs, which are governed, normally, by only one kind of reason, namely those which are epistemic—truth and evidence (Millar 2004). Belief is not balanced against other aims in the way other mental states can be so balanced, for example guessing (Owens 2003): when I guess that P I can balance my aim of believing the truth with other aims (answering quickly in order to get the prize), but believing does not have this feature. So how can the truth aim be exclusive? The telelogist thus faces a second dilemma: either he accepts the idea that the aim of truth can justifiably be balanced against other aims or reasons (for instance prudential ones), and hence subscribes to a form of pragmatism about belief which denies exclusivity, or he must accept that the truth aim is the exclusive one. If he takes the first horn, he has to accept a principle about the rationality ofbelief similar to the one put forward by Richard Foley:

All things considered it can be rational for an individual to believe what is not epistemicallyrational for him to believe. (Foley 1993: 214)

In other words on this option, the teleologist needs to accept the idea that there is a form of commensurability of reasons to believe and reasons for wanting to believe, hence of distinct aims (Kelly 2003). In cases in which what is epistemically rational to believe clearly diverges from what it is practically advantageous to believe, there is simply no genuine question about what one should believe. Although we can ask what one should believe from the epistemic perspective, and we can ask

41 Indeed the implausibility of this restriction is made clear by the interpretation of the teleological view given by Noordhof (2001), who takes the norm of truth not only to be applicable to intentional belief formation but also argues that it allows a quasi voluntaristic conception of belief formation as a kind of action governed by a 'practical norm': 'One reason for thinking that the norm of truth is a practical norm is that both intending to judge that p and judging that p are actions. The norm of truth provides considerations for acting in these ways. Broadly conceived, practical norms are precisely those which provide considerations for action. A second reason is that agents act so as to satisfy their desires. An agent's desires are only satisfied as a result of the agent's action if the beliefs and judgements upon which the agent acts are true. Therefore it is part of practical reason that beliefs be true' (Noordhof 2001: 263). As I argued in Engel (2005a), this intentionalist conception of belief formation seems to me to be a reductio of teleological view, if interpreted in this sense.

what one should believe from the practical perspective, there is no third question: what one should believe, all things considered. In any case in which epistemic and practical considerations pull in opposite directions, there is simply nothing to be said about what one should believe all things considered. (See also Reisner 2008).

Certainly the teleologist need not deny the familiar asymmetries between practical and epistemic reasons. But if he takes seriously the idea that belief can be directed towards aims other than truth then he is denying the exclusivity of epistemic reasons. He admits that there can be weighing of the aims of belief. Hence there can be a deliberation to the effect that one has one aim or the other. But if there is such a deliberation, how can the aim of truth be exclusive? It is only exclusive relative to our decision to take the truth aim. Actually the idea that we could weigh the aim of belief against other aims does not make sense. I may decide to drop the attitude of belief and not to form a belief on a subject matter (for instance I may decide that my attitude is one of pragmatic acceptance rather than belief, in the sense of Cohen 1992). But that does not entail that I suspend the application of the norm of truth for belief.

The correctness norm is, on the face of it, a categorical one. It does not make sense to say that in some circumstances, the correctness of a belief is truth, and in others, depending on the aim, it is not truth, but, say, comfort. If you want to convince someone the he ought to believe P, you do not first convince him that he should have an aim which is best served by believing P (Kelly 2003). The teleological account implies a hypothetical and instrumental construal of the aim ofbelief, which does not seem to fit our actual belief regulation. But 'why not?', will ask a philosopher who is not convinced that there is a unique constitutive norm for belief. Why could we not accept that in some cases we might form other attitudes than belief—call them schmeliefs—governed by other aims, such as comfort or pleasantness?42 Indeed we can, but by hypothesis it would not be the attitude of belief. The argument here has to be parallel to the one which is given by Williams (1970) against the possibility of believing at will: someone who would decide to form a belief for reasons which fall short of being epistemic or truth-aimed could not at the same time consider the doxastic state at which he would thus arrive as a belief.43

Now if the teleologist takes the second horn of the dilemma, and is not a pragmatist about reasons, he has to reject Foley's principle of the commensurability of reasons to believe and reasons to desire to believe. Thus the teleologist can be as puritanical about belief as the normativist and accept that truth is the only possible aim of belief, and the unique standard of correctness. Since he does not deny that reasons to believe are evidential, that truth is the aim in deliberative contexts about what to believe, it is not clear why he does not accept to call the aim in question a norm. He does not detract from the normativist stance, contrary to what he says.44 So either the teleological account is implausible, or it is hard to distinguish from the normative account. Actually there is no reason to object to the idea that the two views are actually compatible, if the teleological account is understood in this constitutive sense. But they do differ on the way the norm regulates, which is not the same as how an aim regulates.

5. Regulation through transparencyOnce we agree that one has to distinguish the correctness-making feature of the norm of truth from its regulation, the normativist account is bound to answer what I have here called the regulation problem:

42This is the kind of question which Papineau (1999) and Zalabardo (2010) raise.43 This is indeed the gist of Shah's (2003) argument from the transparency ofbelief. See Section 5.44 In many respects this seems to me to be the view defended by Steglich-Petersen (2006).

how does the norm regulate our actual believing? How can it answer it? It is not enough to make a distinction between the objective and subjective norms (it is constitutive of belief that it is regulated by a subjective norm, which would tell us how to obey it, for the nature of this subjective norm is precisely what the objections from impotence and from the unfathomable norm amount to), between the correctness condition and the satisfaction condition, and between the correctness condition and its various forms of expression. I have said in Section 2 that a presupposition of the no-guidance argument was that constitutive norms, and in particular the norm of truth for belief, have the form of prescriptions and guide us in the way directives and what are called 'regulative' norms do. The picture which the critics of the truth norm seem to have in mind is that of a voice of conscience enjoin- ing us to form beliefs through imperatives and orders. But there is no reason to accept this presupposition. The view which I want to defend differs in three ways. First the nom or the correctness condition for belief is one thing, and regulation by the norm is another. The norm is an abstract requirement, which does not have necessarily a direct psychological translation in the mind of the subject who follows the norm. That does not mean that there is no relationship between the two, for there must indeed be some connection between the correctness condition, its form or expression, and the way it regulates the mind of the agent. Second the norm is constitutive, and not 'regulative' in the sense that it gives us direct injunctions and imperatives. A constitutive norm need not operate through explicit imperatives to be followed, of which an agent would be fully conscious. It is enough that the subject be conscious, or potentially conscious of—or perhaps can have a tacit knowledge of—the norm. I agree, however, with one of the requirements set by the teleologist: that there must be a psychological state which is at least potentially conscious. Third, the constitutive norm in the case of belief is an epistemic norm, not a practical one. There is no reason to expect that epistemic norms regulate the formation and maintenance of our beliefs in the way practical norms do. Practical norms operate through a typically conscious form of regulation, which is often, in the deontic accounts associated with categorical imperatives. The normativist agrees that the form of the norm is deontic, but he need not agree that the norms are regulated through explicit imperatives. Although this is not the place to develop this view, it may well be that the model of reasons which guide our actions and beliefs,45and to which our doxastic behaviour not simply obeys but answers, is more adapted to what happens in the epistemic case than talk of deontic imperatives. A normativist can keep the essential idea that the constitutive correctness condition for belief is of a deontic form of an ought, as in (O), without accepting that the norm regulates through an imperative or a prescription. But he has to tell a distinctive story about the way the norm (to take a vocabulary which I do not like because it suggests too much a parallel with the action case) motivates us or (to use the vocabulary that I prefer) regulates. Regulation by the norm, on the version of the normativist account which I would like to propose, takes place through a certain kind of psychological state, which is distinct from the norm itself, but closely associated nevertheless.

What one needs is a psychological state which can bridge the gap between the correctness condition and the actual way in which a belief is formed, and such that the correctness condition can explain the fact that beliefs are formed in that way. I here follow Shah's suggestion (Shah 2003; Shah and Velleman 2005): sometimes beliefs are formed through intentional processes of deliberation.

45 The model here is of course taken from the work of Scanlon (1998), and from more recent elaborations like Skorupski's (2011), but need not be committed to the 'buck passing' account of value. I leave aside here the important issues about the ontology or norms and values, and only appeal to the notion of reason when it comes to the epistemology of norm regulation.

Transparency is a phenomenon occurring in such processes, namely, the fact that whenever one asks oneself whether to believe that P, one must immediately recognize that this question is settled by, and only by, answering the seemingly different question whether P is true.46 Transparency is a mere psychological fact, limited to cases of 'doxastic deliberation. But its structure is interesting since it involves the possession of the concept of belief, and with it a potential awareness of the norm which regulates it. A subject who deliberates about whether to believe that P comes to see immediately that the question is settled through his awareness that P is the case. How could a normative truth about belief, to the effect that believing P is correct if and only ifP is true, explain transparency in doxastic deliberation? In asking oneself whether to believe that P, one is applying the concept of belief, and this concept thus comes to frame the deliberative question. Having the concept of belief requires understanding that it is governed by the norm (NT). If (NT) is a conceptual truth about belief, then it is a constitutive feature of the concept of belief that the correctness of believing P is settled by, and only by, settling the question whether P is true. So applying and fully understanding the concept of belief in forming a belief thus involves applying the correctness norm to one's own belief-formation. This in turn disposes one to be moved when forming a belief about P only by considerations taken to be relevant to the truth of P. The step is immediate and not inferential (Shah 2003). So we can say that the norm (NT) both governs (through the application of the concept of belief) doxastic deliberation and that this norm regulates through transparency. Transparency also accounts for the difference between reasons to believe and reasons for wanting to believe: one can want to believe that P without considering (indeed trying to bracket) whether P is true, but one cannot believe that P in the deliberative sense of considering whether P without asking oneself whether P is true.

Now Asbjorn Steglich-Petersen (2006: 507) has objected to this account that it leads to the implausible consequence that it necessarily motivates us, and that it cannot motivate us at all, since it would deprive us of any normative freedom.47 That objection is well taken. But this objection from unnecessarily strong motivation rests on the idea that there should be a motivation to follow the norm. But why must there be such motivation? The truth norm is not like other norms (such as social ones) in that we do not need motivation to follow it. I may need a motivation to follow, say, certain rules of etiquette (such as wearing a tie on the day of a thesis viva). But do I need to be motivated to follow the norm of truth for belief? The link between the norm and the concept of belief is so much more internal and constitutive. In this sense it is not clear that a constitutive norm allows us much 'normative freedom'. It does not follow, however, that it is not a norm and that it does not regulate our doxastic behaviour. And why should the consideration of the norm necessarily move us? We could recognize it, and fail to conform to the norm. What is necessary is not the motivation but the recognition of the norm in conscious deliberation about belief formation. What about non-conscious belief formation? Animals and children are not able to recognize the norm of truth. They certainly cannot be regulated by it in a conscious way. But they can certainly be weakly regulated by it. How?

46 The notion of transparency was introduced in the literature by Evans (1982) and taken up by Moran (2001). It designates, basically, the way in which we can access the contents of our beliefs, without ascending to a second-order belief. In the hands of Shah and Velleman (2005), transparency is associated with the process of determining what to believe through a process of doxastic deliberation. It is the latter which I favour here, although there are important connections between the two. For more on this, see Engel (2010 a).

47 'If transparency is produced by the norm of belief, this norm motivates one necessarily and inescapably to act in accordance with it. The transparency is immediate, and does not involve an intermediary question about whether to conform to the norm for belief; the norm is thus unlike norms such as the one governing promising. It is thus doubtful whether a consideration which necessitates motivation should be considered a normative consideration at all' (Steglich-Petersen 2006: 508).

Transparency is a fact about our reasons to believe that P: our realization that P is the best reason we can have for believing that P. Of course here 'that P' is elliptic for 'that P is true', and the transparency of belief is the direct counterpart, in the psychological mode, of what is often called the transparency of truth itself but which must not be confused with it: to say that P is true is just to say that P. Transparency in the psychological sense is the fact that there is a direct passage from whether one ought to believe that P (or in Evans's version, of whether one believes that P) to the first order one that P. There is a direct connection between the transparency of belief and the norm of truth: if our realization that it is a fact that P is our best reason to believe that P, it is because belief is the only attitude whose correctness condition is truth. The very fact that belief is in this sense 'transparent' seems to account for the way in which the norm of truth regulates belief: when, in the context of asking ourselves whether P is true, we determine the answer by thinking or asserting that P, we implicitly follow the norm. In doing so, we need not ascend to a second-order judgement 'Do I believe that P?' and even less ask ourselves, 'What are my best reasons to believe that P?' Our recognition of this standard of correctness for belief is often tacit, not explicit. There are indeed thinkers who are so unreflective that they might even not have this tacit recognition. Perhaps those who are in the grip of wishful thinking, or self-delusive subjects in the grip of Capgras's delusion, do not have this understanding of their own beliefs. But even deeply delusive believers have at least a partial understanding of this condition.

The fact that the norm of truth governs our believing that P in the kind of conscious reasoning in which we engage when we ask ourselves whether P is true constitutes the best way of understanding how this norm can regulate—or guide, or govern—our doxastic behaviour. Of course we cannot always reach truth for our beliefs: sometimes we have only strong evidence, or perhaps only a certain degree of subjective probability for a given belief. For instance on asking myself whether it will rain tomorrow, I may not come up with the answer 'Yes', or 'No', but only with a 'maybe'. But it does not show that the norm of truth does not operate here. For even if I cannot, in such cases, determine whether my belief that it will rain is true, I need to recognize that it would be correct only if it were true.

Now what about the troublesome cases where we do not deliberate explicitly and consciously about whether to believe that P, such as wishful thinking, self-deception, and other kinds of irrational beliefs? Should we say that transparency does not apply and that these are not regulated by the norm of truth? Certainly the wishful thinker, for instance someone who believes that he is going to pass his driver's licence by reading the Koran, does not care for the norm of truth and does not consider it. Neither does the man who is under the delusion that his wife has been replaced by an impostor, or that he is dead. Certainly there can be exceptions to the norm. But does it mean that these people do not have the concept of belief and that they are unable to recognize the norm? Hardly. Even though these people obviously do not reason consciously with and from their beliefs in accordance with norms of evidence, it is less clear that they have no understanding at all of what a proper belief should be. The wishful thinker is wrong when he believes that reading the Koran will help in his getting his driver's licence. But he is at least conscious of the fact that he needs a reason to believe that he will pass his exam, and even if he is wrong about the reason, he has some dim idea of what it might be. There are degrees here, obviously. The self-deceived wife may forget, or pass under silence for herself the evidence that she has that her husband cheats on her. But the very fact that she reasons to the contrary shows that she is aware of some evidence that her husband is unfaithful, and that attending to

evidence is relevant to her believing. So it is not clear that the norm of truth does not in such cases regulate thinking tacitly.

I would answer in the same way to the objection that children and animals can have beliefs which are not regulated by truth and which fail the transparency test. Indeed the transparency test is, first and foremost, a test for reflective creatures, and there are strong reasons to doubt that animal and children, and us in a number of moments or our mental lives, are such creatures. But the transparency feature is just the ideal case. It is enough for a creature that it is governed by a state which answers to certain norms (basically truth, evidence, and rational inference). Some cases of animal thought seem to answer to some norms (think for instance of the state of surprise which can occur in animals such as dogs or other mammals), and even when certain states like delusions do not satisfy certain norms there are reasons to admit that they satisfy enough of these to be called nevertheless belief (although I agree that this is a moot point). When a state in a creature does not at all satisfy any of the norms for belief (truth, evidence, and rational inference), then I would be prepared to agree that it is not a belief, but some other informational state perhaps.48

I come now, finally, to my answer to the circularity objection raised against the normative account by Gluer and Wikforss (Section 2 above). That objection was that (NT) cannot guide belief formation since it would need the antecedent consideration of whether P is the case in order to be able to apply the norm of truth for belief, and that no guidance can be obtained from this. If belief is regulated through transparency, then it is not the case that, in order to answer the deliberative question whether P, one must believe that one has a belief that P, in the second-order mode. No second-order belief to the effect that one satisfies the condition expressed by the norm is needed, and it is not necessary to self-ascribe to oneself the belief that P, and in order to be able to answer the question whether P. So, to use Dancy's (2000) terminology, there is no need for an enabling condition to the effect that one believes that the norm applies in order to follow the norm: its application is directly recognized in the transparency mode of answering the question whether one believes that P. (See also Steglich-Petersen 2009: 752.)Transparency precisely lets us avoid this kind of psychological ascent. So there is no need for a conscious episode to the effect that one has the conscious belief that P and ascribes it to oneself on the one hand, and then one contemplates the norm of truth 'Believe P if and only if P' on the other. There is no need to form the antecedent belief in the psychological process, for the relationship between the question of whether one believes that P and P is a direct and non-inferential one. The circularity objection presupposes that we are here making a kind of inference. But we are not. Now Gluer and Wikforss (2010) deny, in their reply to objections by Steglich-Petersen (2010), that the existence of a prior belief is essential to their objection. Their point, rather, is that the truth norm is not transparent, in the sense that the antecedent belief bears on the very content, truth, which the norm is supposed to enunciate. But if we take the norm of truth as being regulated through transparency, and if we respect the distinction between the correctness condition of a norm and the psychological state which it regulates, there does seem to be no such circularity. Indeed this is not to deny that there is a close connection between the two, which critics are apt, reasonably, to suspect as being viciously circular. But if one respects the levels, and I have

48 I would side with the view of delusive beliefs defended by, among others, Tim Bayne, which is called the doxastic account of delusive beliefs. Thus Tim Bayne says: 'Do delusion and self-deception involve depar- tures from the operating norms of belief formation? Self-deception—at least, everyday self-deception—need involve no departure from the operating norms of belief-formation' ('Delusion and self deception: mapping the terrain' in Bayne and Fernandez (2008)). For an account of the role of transparency in self-knowledge, see Huemer (2007), Engel (2010 a). States such as those that Tamar Gendler (2008) calls 'aliefs' are, on the present criterion, not belief.

tried to indicate how we could do so, the circularity, or the quasi-circularity, does not seem to be of the vicious type, but of a more virtuous form.

The transparency analysis of regulation is not without problems and it does not solve everything, however.49 It is not clear that we can directly access what we believe by considering the question whether P for all kinds of belief. For perceptual beliefs such as: 'Do I believe that it rains?' the answer is immediate and indeed, as Evans says 'our eyes are directed outwards' (Evans 1982: 225). But it is less clear with other examples such as 'Do I believe that there will be a third world war?' I do answer that question by considering whether there will be a third world war, but by attending to my other beliefs. In most cases I do attend to the truth of the belief considered, but also to the evidence that I have for it. As Baron Reed remarks there are a number of beliefs—particularly those that are nuanced responses to complex bodies of evidence—that a rational agent may be able to rationally self-ascribe only by failing to meet the transparency condition, for in such cases an agent is rationally required not to respond immediately to the reflective pressures she feels at the moment (Reed 2010: 170). For instance, if I ask myself what I believe on a certain subject—say what kind of political position to take on a given issue—and realize that I have actually changed my mind on this subject, I do not directly self-ascribe to me the belief in the transparent way, for I must in some sense, work out my belief through a complex pattern of other beliefs. And can the transparency feature help us when we consider belief for which we cannot give our assent of the basis of the evidence at our disposal, such as, for instance, the belief that my lottery ticket (out of a fair 1000 tickets lottery) will not win? I cannot ask myself whether I believe that my ticket will not win because I simply do not know that my ticket will not win. We come back again to a salient feature of belief regulation—that we do not attend to whether our beliefs are true, but to whether they are justified or amount to knowledge. At this point we have to come back, finally, to the relationship that the norm of truth for belief entertains with knowledge.

6. The norm of truth and the norm of knowledgeI have tried to defend the normativist account of the idea that there is a general aim of belief, by trying to propose of version of it which avoids both the no-guidance objections that a number of critics have raised against it, and by distinguishing it from the teleological reading. My main contention has been to suggest that by distinguishing between the levels of the norm, of its expression and the way it regulates we can avoid at least some of the main objections to normativism about belief. A lot more, indeed needs to be said, and without any doubt to avoid the raising of eyebrows of so subtle

49 For a perceptive analysis of some of these problems see in particular Zalabardo (2010). I cannot here deal with Zalabardo's criticism of regulation of belief though transparency, but shall do so elsewhere.

critics of a view which, I am afraid, has become excessively complex. I would like to address, although sketchily, a last concern.

The difficulty that many writers have expressed about the standard of correctness (NT) for belief is in a sense much simpler than the objections that I have considered in this article. As Wedgwood remarks (2002: 270), 'It seems implausible that this fundamental epistemic norm can explain the norms of rational belief, for after all, according to this principle, any belief in a true proposition is correct—even if the belief in question is grossly irrational; so how can this principle explain the norms of rational belief?' As we just saw, even in the case of self-deceptive or irrational belief the norm operates. But this is because it is regulated through the evidence that one has about one's beliefs, and this evidence can vary largely from thinker to thinker, and from circumstance to circumstance. We are back to the objection that the truth norm is in itself empty or silent about one's actual believing. In contrast the norm of evidence (NE), that one ought to believe only on the basis of sufficient evidence, seems much more effective. We can also understand it as the requirement that a belief be justified, or based on appropriate reasons. And if justified believing is knowledge, why not say that the fundamental epistemic norm is the norm of knowledge? (NT) fails to explain the sense in which it is defective to believe a proposition when one is not in a position to know that it is true. So why not simply accept that the constitutive norm for belief is rather:

(NK)It is the norm ofbeliefthat one oughtto believe that Pifandonly if oneknowsthat P?50

If the norm of belief is (NK), it becomes easy to understand why the transparency test does not works for our beliefs in propositions such as those about lotteries, which we do not know: I cannot ask myself whether I believe that my ticket will not win and simply answer by attending to my belief because I simply do not know that my ticket will not win. But the transparency feature also works when one asks oneself whether one knows: the question whether one believes that P is immediately answered by considering whether one knows that P; the lottery proposition is not transparent because one does not know whether one's ticket will not win.

The proposal has also the advantage of explaining why we can say that 'Belief aims at knowledge' in Williamson's sense:

Knowing sets the standard of appropriateness for belief. . . . Knowing is in that sense the bestkind of believing. Mere believing is a kind of botched knowing.In short, belief aims at knowledge (not just truth). (Williamson 2000: 47)

But if what I have said above about the relationship between the norm of belief and the aim of belief is correct, we do not need actually to say that knowledge is the aim of belief, or we can say this only in the derivative sense that the aim depends upon the norm.

Given that knowledge is factive and entails truth, it seems easy to derive the norm (NT) from (NK). It also can explain why the norm of evidence (NE) is in place, for evidence, as much as truth, leads to knowledge (even more so, when one holds, as Williamson, that evidence is knowledge, but one need not defend this strong version in order to accept (NK)).

But doesn't the proposal to make (NK) the fundamental norm for belief encounter the same kind of difficulties as (NT)? (NK) does not seem to help us if what we expect from it is regulation of our beliefs, since, just as we do not know when a belief a true, we do not know that we know it. At best we can only understand (NK) as requiring that we believe that we know, or are in a position to know.

50 This view has been suggested, in various forms, by Peacocke (1999: 34), Williamson (2000: 47), Engel (2005a), Smithies (2011).

And even if we suppose that we so believe, what amount of evidence is sufficient for knowledge? (NK) does not tell us any more than (NT). But if the distinction that I have proposed between the correct-making features of the norm and its regulation conditions is correct, we do not need more than (NK) as our fundamental epistemic norm. Ralph Wedgwood, when he considers the relationship between the norm (NT) and the norm (NK), actually seems to have in mind the objection that (NK) does not regulate belief:

My account of knowledge supports this account of the connection between 'aiming at the truth' and 'aiming to know'. As I have already argued, a rational thinker cannot pursue the aim of believing the truth and nothing but the truth, without using means that it is rational for her to regard as reliable means to that aim. But if these means result in her believing the truth precisely because they 'worked just as they were supposed to', then (according to my account of knowledge) the belief produced by these means counts as knowledge. So there is no way for a rational thinker to pursue the truth except in a way that, if it succeeds, will result in knowledge. If this is right, then we should disagree with those philosophers, such as Christopher Peacocke (1999: 34) and Timothy Williamson (2000: 208), who suggest that beliefhas knowledge as one of its ultimate aims. Knowledge is not an ultimate aim of belief. Belief's only ultimate aim is truth. Belief aims at knowledge only in the sense that every rational believer aims at the truth by using means that, if successful, will result in knowledge. (Wedgwood 2002: 289-90)

But if the preceding is correct, to say that belief aims at knowledge only in the sense that every rational believer aims at the truth by using means that, if successful, will result in knowledge just is the same thing as saying that the norm for belief is the norm of knowledge. The norm does not need to tell us when we know or why.51 References

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51 This article has undergone a number of modifications since its presentation in Olso in June 2009. I thank Timothy Chan for his invitation and his angelic patience, and most of all for his lucid and challenging criticisms, which have led to substantive revisions of the original paper, as well as two anonymous referees who have raised important points which I hope to have at least tried to answer, my commentator in Oslo, Douglas Edwards, Olav Gjelsvik and the participants to the conference for their remarks. Versions of this article have been read in Edinburgh in March 2009 and in Leuven in March 2010. I thank Duncan Prichard, Igor Douven, Filip Buekens, Chris Kelp, Kathrien Schaubroeck, Asbjorn Steglich-Pedersen, Kathrin Gluer, Asa Wikforss. and Davide Fassio for helpful discussions (I also learnt a lot from the latter's doctoral thesis, which bears on exactly the issue of this paper).

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4

There Are No Norms of Belief

David Papineau

i. IntroductionThis chapter will argue that there is no distinctive species of normativity attaching to the adoption of beliefs.

The reference to 'distinctive' is not redundant here. I do not of course wish to deny that there are some valid prescriptions that apply to the adoption of beliefs. However, I shall argue that these are always prescriptions of a kind that arise in connection with other human activities as well as belief-formation. More specifically, I shall maintain that all such prescriptions arise from considerations of moral value, or personal value, or possibly aesthetic value, and not from any distinct species of doxastic value.52

In what follows I shall focus on a subclass of belief-involving prescriptions, namely those which involve the pursuit of truth. This is not the only possible kind of belief-involving prescription. For example, it is usually valuable to acquire beliefs about significant subject matters rather than unimportant ones, and to avoid excessive costs in acquiring beliefs—and these values will generate their own prescriptions about belief acquisition. Moreover, from the point of view to be defended here, prescriptions relating to the pursuit of truth are not dominant to or incommensurable with such further prescriptions: all will together contribute to determining what ought to be believed, all things considered. Still, for present purposes it will be enough to consider prescriptions relating to truth. This is because my opponents are concerned specifically with this kind of dimension of belief-evaluation and not with such further pragmatic considerations as significance or cost-limitation. After all, those who hold that there is some distinctive kind of 'correctness' governing beliefs are thinking of correctness in the sense of truth and not in some more extended pragmatic sense. So it will be enough here if I can show that even prescriptions relating to truth do not involve any special kind of normativity.

2. The truth is often valuableThere are unquestionably many cases where it is valuable to have true beliefs, and to this extent we certainly ought to pursue the truth. But my view is that the truth is valuable in all such cases

52 Note that I view such prescriptions as arising when some end is valuable,, and not when the end is valued or adopted as a goal. (Here I diverge from Kelly's (2003) discussion of doxastic normativity.) I take no stand on whether something's being valuable for some agent means that it must have some motivational grip on that agent.

for moral, or personal, or aesthetic reasons, and not for any sui generis doxastic reason.For example, doctors have a moral duty to acquire true beliefs about how to cure dis- eases. But

this does not mean that there is some special category of doxastic normativity, any more than the moral propriety of driving carefully means that there is a special category of automotive normativity. Both cases are simply instances of moral norms.

Again, it can often be personally valuable53 to acquire true beliefs. It is personally valuable to me to have accurate information about the Tottenham Hotspur's fixture list this season. But this too implies no special category of doxastic normativity. It is simply a special case of something being valuable for me.

Sometimes accurate information can be personally valuable as an end and not just as a means. Many people devote their lives to finding out certain historical or scientific facts, for example, and success in such proj ects can be as intrinsically valuable to them as anything. But again this does not require us to posit any special kind of normativity beyond that arising from personal value.

It is possible to imagine cases where acquiring truths might be of aesthetic value. But these cases too will not require any kind of normativity that is specific to the adoption of beliefs.

3. The cogency of a truth normSome philosophers have argued on principled grounds against any sui generis norm prescribing true belief. They do not think that any such norm can be cogently formulated. This is not my view. I think that such a norm can be cogently formulated all right. This issue is whether it can be defended.

Bykvist and Hattiangadi (2007) have argued that the principle

(1) (You ought to believe p) if and only if (p)

contains only advice that is patently misguided.Thus they point out that the right-to-left implication—ifp, you ought to believe p— amounts to

the absurd advice that you ought to be omniscient. And they point out that the left-to-right implication carries no advice at all, since it amounts to

the thesis that: if not-p, then it is not the case that you ought to believe p. This tells us when a certain ought-claim does not hold, but nothing about when any ought-claims do hold.

These are telling points against taking (1) to be a norm of truth. But the moral is not that such a norm cannot be formulated, but that it needs to be formulated differently.

Daniel Whiting (2010) responds to Bykvist and Hattiangadi by suggesting that a better formulation would be

(2) (you may believe p) if andonly if (p).

Taken right-to-left, this now says that: if p, then you may believe p. This permits you to believe truths, but does not imply the absurd requirement that you should believe them all.

And taken left-to-right, this says: if not-p, then it is not the case that you may believe p—that is,

53 We can think of items as personallyvaluable if some but not all individuals have reason to pursue them. Outcomes that individuals will enjoy are the most obvious examples, but personal value need not always depend on enjoyment.

if not-p, then you ought not to believe p. Far from being empty, this contains the very substantial prescription that you ought not to fall into error.

Gluer and Wikforss (2009, 2010) have raised a different difficulty. They argue, against Boghossian (2003) and Steglich-Petersen (2010), that any norm which gives advice about believing p conditional on whether p or not-p cannot provide any real guidance to subjects.

Their point is that subjects will first need to take a view on whether p, in order to know whether they are in a situation to which the norm applies. But by then it will be too late for the norm to guide them, for they will already have settled their belief as to whether p.

This point is well-taken, but it does not follow that there is no sense in which a norm like (2) can provide guidance to believers. This norm cannot provide direct guidance, but it may well issue in derived prescriptions about effective means to the end of satisfying it. Thus someone who is concerned to satisfy (2) by avoiding error may have reason, with respect to specific subject matters, to conform to such prescriptions as: 'believe p only if you have considered relevant alternatives', or 'believe p only if your informants are experts', and so on. And here there is no difficulty of the kind Gluer and Wikforss are raising, since it is perfectly possible to ascertain whether one has considered relevant alternatives, or has consulted experts, without yet having settled the question of whether p.

In what follows I shall understand a norm of truth as offering guidance in this way, by issuing prescriptions about effective means to the end of satisfying (2).

4. An objectionIt will help to clarify the position that I am outlining here to consider an obvious objection. It is not always of moral, personal, or aesthetic value to avoid false belief. But, even so, it is always wrong to believe falsely. So there must be some further kind of normativity that attaches specifically to the adoption ofbeliefs (cf Kelly 2003).

The thought here is that, for any proposition p, something has gone wrong if you believe p when not-p is the case. But nothing need have gone wrong from a moral, personal, or aesthetic perspective. So the error here must be a distinctive species of doxastic error.

There are two possible ways of responding to this objection. First, I could insist that it is always of moral, personal, or aesthetic value to avoid false beliefs. Alternatively, I could deny that it is always wrong to believe falsely.

For the purposes of this paper I do not need to decide between these responses. Both avoid any distinctive kind of doxastic normativity. Still, for what it is worth, I prefer the second option to the first.

To see why, let us start with the idea that it might always be personally valuable to avoid false beliefs. Now, it is certainly valuable for me to have true beliefs rather than false ones on issues of practical concern to me. If my practical decisions are based on accurate information then my projects will succeed, whereas if I act on misinforma- tion they may fail. However, not all information is of practical relevance for me. It will never matter to any of my decisions if I have false beliefs about the names of the kings of ancient Assyria. So we have as yet been shown no reason to suppose it is personally valuable to avoid false beliefs about such impractical matters.

True, as I said earlier, knowledge is sometimes personally valuable as an end and not just as a means. For many historians, scientists, and others, information can be of intrinsic and not just practical value. Still, not everybody aims at truth in this disinterested way. And even the disinterested seekers of truth do not have all facts as their aim: none of them will regard it as intrinsically valuable to avoid false beliefs about the number of blades of grass on my lawn. So again it seems that there are cases where no personal value attaches to avoiding falsity.

Let us turn now to the idea that is always morally valuable to avoid false belief. The most plausible defence of this claim would appeal to the importance of testimony in social life. Human beings are constantly transmitting beliefs to others, and so arguably have a standing responsibility to ensure that they do not transmit falsehoods. After all, even if there are some facts that will never be of practical or intrinsic significance to anyone, it is hard to be sure of this with respect to any specific fact. So the only acceptable principle would seem to be that you should always avoid speaking falsely.

One difficulty with this testimony-based line of argument is that it seems defeasible. Suppose that you did know of some specific fact that it will never be of practical or instrinsic significance to anyone. This would then seem to undermine the putative moral requirement to avoid falsity. Just as with rule utilitarianism, considerations in favour of a good rule of thumb do not show that one should stick to this rule in cases where the considerations do not apply.

Moreover, this testimony-based line of argument only applies to those beliefs that are going to be transmitted by testimony. It has no grip on beliefs that subjects are certain to keep to themselves, either because they are committed to secrecy, or because they have no one to talk to (imagine someone irrevocably marooned on a desert island). Since these beliefs are not going to be transmitted, arguments involving testimony cannot imply any moral requirement to make sure they are not in error.

I take it that there is no question that the avoidance of error is always aesthetically valuable.So I conclude that it is not always of personal, moral, or aesthetic value to avoid false belief.

And since I deny any distinctive species of doxastic normativity, I therefore accept that there are cases where there is nothing at all wrong with believing falsely.

I have already cited the examples of the kings of Assyria and the blades of grass on my lawn. If nothing practical hinges on these matters for me, and I am going to keep my opinions to myself, I say that there is nothing wrong with my having false beliefs on these matters.

Sometimes there will also be a positive value to having false beliefs. Suppose some quite untreatable form of cancer is common in John's family and that he indeed has it. There is a simple enough test, but John doesn't take it, because he is confident that he doesn't have the cancer. (He feels great!) As a result, he avoids the distress and unhap- piness that would be occasioned by his learning the truth. Now, John hasn't bothered to check his belief, and as a result has persisted in a falsity. But, supposing this makes no practical difference to anybody (the cancer is untreatable, remember), I say that he has done nothing wrong at all. I recognize no doxastic offence that weighs against the advantage of his avoiding the truth.54

54 I am not here suggesting that John can simply decide to believe he is healthy (because he can see he will be better off with this belief) (cf Williams 1970). Even so, there seems nothing incoherent in his deliberately avoiding evidence that is likely to make him change his mind.

5. PracticesDo I really want to deny that is always 'incorrect' to believe falsely? Well, I of course recognize a sense in which this claim is true. But from my point of view this sense of 'incorrect belief' is simply a variant on 'false belief'. This terminological equivalence by itself cannot establish that it is always valuable to avoid falsity, or imply any valid prescriptions about ways of achieving this.

Still, the point might be pressed. 'Incorrect' is not the only apparently evaluative word in this area. We have a whole range of terms that seem designed specifically to evaluate whether beliefs have been acquired in such a way as to prevent falsity—'know, 'justified, 'rational', 'evidence', 'confirm, and so on. On the face of it, this kind of terminology seems to commit us to a normative attitude to the avoidance of false belief across the board, even where there is nothing of personal, moral, or aesthetic value in play. If you form a definite view about the number of blades of grass on my lawn without counting properly, or about your having cancer without taking the appropriate tests, we will still say that your belief is unjustified, even if we agree that from a personal, moral, or aesthetic perspective nothing has been lost and something may even have been gained.

If we take evaluations like these at face value, they would seem to provide a positive argument for a distinctive kind of doxastic normativity. You have not violated any personal, moral, or aesthetic prescription in forming your belief, yet you have done something wrong. So you must have transgressed some further kind of prescription.

However, I do not accept that we should always take epistemological evaluations at face value as committing us to substantial prescriptions about what ought to be done.

I am happy to agree that all human societies have a practice of making epistemological evaluations: we constantly assess whether or not others' beliefs are j ustified. But the social existence of a practice cannot in itself establish any normative facts. That people just happen to behave in certain ways cannot show it is right to do so.

Still, perhaps the issue is not that the practice exists, but that we engage in it. Even those sceptical about doxastic normativity, like myself, must surely admit that beliefs formed without evidence are unjustified? And doesn't this then commit us to definite prescriptions about how to form beliefs?

But it should not be taken for granted that 'evaluating' things by the standards of some practice always carries genuine prescriptive force. Such evaluations standardly presuppose the value of the aim of the practice. And even if this aim is generally valuable, there can be cases where it is not. In such cases, a positive evaluation by the standards of the practice will correspond to no genuine prescription.

As an analogy, consider the game of chess. When examining a game, we will evaluate possible moves as 'weak', 'good', 'brilliant, 'best, and so on. But such evaluations presuppose that it is valuable to win the game. Imagine a case where it is not. You have no personal stake in the result and do not care whether you win or lose. Moreover there is no moral virtue in your winning and indeed it would badly distress your opponent. Your 'best' move may be to move your queen (otherwise it will be pinned in two moves' time). But does it follow that you ought so to move your queen? I say not, if this is supposed to carry genuine prescriptive force. While there is an obvious sense in which this is your 'best' move, this sense does not automatically have normative

content.I say the same about epistemological evaluations. They presuppose that it is valuable to avoid

falsity. By and large, this presupposition holds good. But there are cases, of the kinds instanced above, where nothing of value will be lost by a false belief and something may even be gained. In such cases a belief may be 'unjustifed' in the sense that it has been acquired in some haphazard way. But it will not follow that it ought not to have been so acquired. The judgement that the belief is 'unjustified' carries no prescriptive force on its own, independently of some further value attaching to the aim of truth.55

6. The peculiarity of distinctive doxastic normsSo far I have explained the position that I want to defend but have said nothing about why it is preferable to the alternative.

I am inclined to argue that my position needs no particular defence. A view which explains all the phenomena without positing any distinctive kind of doxastic normativity is preferable to one that does not.

The status of any distinctive doxastic normativity would be extremely obscure. Why should we be moved by this kind of normativity, given that it is supposed to remain even in cases where we attach no other kind of value to the truth?

Moreover, how are distinctively doxastic prescriptions supposed to interact with others? Take the earlier case of John, who wilfully allows himself to believe without evidence that he does not have cancer. The avoidance of unnecessary distress gives him a positive personal reason for persisting in his belief without checking it. But for the defenders of doxastic normativity the danger that he is in error presumably gives him reason to take the test. What then should John do, all things considered?

Are we supposed somehow to measure the two considerations against each other to determine the right thing for him to do overall? But this looks odd. How bad does the doxastic sin have to be in order to outweigh the advantages of avoiding distress? Once we put to one side any moral, personal, or aesthetic reasons for avoiding error, there doesn't seem to be much room left for the idea that some doxastic transgressions are more heinous than others.

Perhaps then we shouldn't think of distinctive doxastic prescriptions as coming in degrees. There is simply the sin of false belief, and no sense in which some such sins are worse than others. However, this now seems in tension with the view that distinctively doxastic evaluations have genuine prescriptive force. If we can't even ask how bad it is for John to persist in his unjustified belief, along the way to considering whether or not this doxastic failing outweighs the non-doxastic considerations on the other side, then it starts to look doubtful that doxastic evaluations are really relevant to what we ought to do.

These difficulties about distinctive doxastic prescriptions surely argue in favour of a theory that avoids them.

7. Constitutive normsDefenders of distinctive doxastic norms recognize these difficulties, but maintain that they are

55 For an alternative view of the connection between practices and norms, see Millar (2004).

unavoidable. This is because they think that the very state of believing is constituted by distinctive doxastic norms.56 Subjects who are not governed by the relevant norms do not qualify as believers (cf Wedgwood 2002).

If this is right, then the very existence of believers implies that there are distinctive doxastic norms. Maybe these norms leave us with philosophical problems. But we cannot deny that they exist without denying beliefs.

From the perspective of my opponents (let me call their position 'doxasticism' henceforth), my account of belief-involving prescriptions starts too late. I take the existence of beliefs for granted, and then consider how various kinds of familiar value—personal, moral, aesthetic—might attach to the avoidance of false belief. But the doxasticists will object that there wouldn't be any beliefs to attach such values to in the first place, were it not for the prior doxastic norms which constitute beliefs. We can only value beliefs in personal, moral, and aesthetic ways if we are capable of forming beliefs—and this capability rests on a distinctive set of doxastic norms.

It will be useful to distinguish two different versions of the doxasticist claim that the state of believing is constituted by distinctive norms. According to the first version, the contents of beliefs are constituted by norms. According to the second, the very attitude of believing is constituted by norms.57

On the first version, you wouldn't be capable of believing that p, for any content p, unless you were governed by norms specifying appropriate conditions for adopting that specific belief.

On the second version, you wouldn't be capable of believing that p, or indeed believing anything—as opposed to desiring, hoping fearing, and so on—unless you were governed by norms regulating the generic attitude of belief.

The first content-constituting version of doxasticism is motivated by theories which account for the contents of beliefs in terms of norms specifying when you ought to form those beliefs. Theories of content in the verificationist tradition, like Dummett's explanation of content in terms of assertibility conditions, or Brandom's inferentialism, be cases in point. For theories like this, subjects can only possess the belief that p if they know which conditions comprise evidence that justifies the formation of the belief that p.

In a previous paper (Papineau 1999) I discussed this content-constituting version of doxasticism at length. My central point in that paper was that theories which explain content in terms of norms are not the only possible theories of content. There is also a range of 'naturalist' theories of content, including success-semantics, teleosemantics,58 and Fodor's asymmetric

56 True, there are also philosophers who posit distinctive doxastic norms without supposing that they are constitutive of belief, simply resting their case on the 'intuition' that such norms obtain. A number of epistemological 'internalists' would fit this bill. However intuition is a flimsy basis on which to rest such a contentious commitment.

57 This distinction between content-constituting and attitude-constituting norms is similar to Gluer and Wikforss' (2009) distinction between content-determined and content-engendered norms. They introduce their second category rather more abstractly than I do, however.

58 It might seem questionable to classify teleosemantics as a norm-free theory of content. Teleosemantics explains content in terms of the biological functions of cognitive states. Doesn't this appeal to what those states are 'designed' or 'supposed' to do, and therefore offer an account of the 'normativity' of belief? (cf McGinn 1989; Millikan 1993). However, this is not genuine normativity. See the next section.

Thanks to Kathrin Gluer for this point. Thanks for comments on earlier versions of this paper are due to the participants at the Aim of Belief conference at

the Centre for the Study of Mind in Nature in Oslo in June 2009, and also to Maria Alvarez, James Hill, Clayton Littlejohn, and the readers for Oxford University Press.

dependence theory, which explain content in causal or historical terms without invoking norms at any stage. From the point of view of such naturalist theories, the only normativity governing belief formation is of the familiar instrumental kind aimed at ordinary moral, personal, or aesthetic values. I further pointed out that theories that take the contents of beliefs to be constituted by norms face a range of difficulties that do not arise for naturalist theories, and that this argues against the content-constituting version of doxasticism. I shall not repeat my analysis of content-constituting doxasticism here, but will instead concentrate on the attitude-constituting version in what follows.

Now, the attitude-constituting version of doxasticism can itselfbe defended either as a corollary of the content-constituting version, or as independently motivated. To see it as a corollary of the first version, note that someone who explains content in terms of content-specific norms, as in neo-verificationist accounts of content, will take these norms to constitute both the content and the attitude. Norms specifying canonical evidence will specify the conditions under which you ought to believe some content. So the content-constituting approach will automatically imply norms of error-avoidance, simply as an upshot of the various specific norms which breathe different contents into different beliefs. These content-specific norms will simultaneously determine the content of beliefs and constrain believers to adopt them only when (there is evidence that) they are true.

However, this is not the only way to defend the attitude-constituting version of doxasticism. It can be motivated quite independently of considerations to do with content. Suppose that we take propositional contents for granted, as items to which we can adopt a range of different propositional attitudes—desiring, hoping, fearing, and so on, as well as belief. We might then ask what differentiates these various attitudes—and in particular what differentiates belief from the others. And to this question a natural answer is that belief has a distinctive 'direction of fit'. It 'aims at the truth' in the sense that it is governed by the normative requirement that its contents ought never to be false, whereas the other attitudes can properly be adopted even when their contents are false.

In what follows I shall assume that attitude-constituting doxasticism is motivated in the latter way, and not as a corollary of the content-constituting version. As I said, I do not wish to repeat my criticisms of content-constituting doxasticism. Instead I shall focus on those arguments for doxasticism that do not assume contents are normatively constituted.

8. Theaimof beliefIt is a familiar thought that the attitude of belief has a distinctive 'direction of fit'. It 'aims at the truth'. Beliefs ought to fit the way the world is. By contrast, desires ought to alter the world.

There are different ways of filling out the thought that belief 'aims at the truth'. The kind of doxasticism that is now at issue needs to understand it as the thesis that beliefs are governed by a norm of truth, and that the nature of belief is constituted by its being governed by this norm—in short, that it is essential to belief that it is governed by a norm of truth.

There is a lot to discuss in this thesis, but before proceeding I would like to make it clear that this is not the only way of filling out the thought that belief has a distinctive 'direction of fit'. From

my own perspective, I am happy to agree that belief 'aims at the truth' in a way other attitudes do not. But I would explain this in terms of biological design rather than norms.

From the point of view of biological design, beliefs have quite different functions from desires. The two kinds of state are specialized in quite different ways. Desires relate to results. Each desire type has the function of generating actions that will lead to some specific outcome, such as food, or fine wine, or watching Tottenham Hotspur play football. By contrast, beliefs have no results to call their own. Their function is not to produce specific results, but to help whichever desires are active to select those actions that will conduce to their satisfaction. To do this, beliefs need to carry information about the environment, information that is relevant to which actions will produce which results. So the function of beliefs is to fit the way the world is, where the function of desires is to change it.

Some readers might be wondering whether this kind of biological account is really an alternative to the view that the nature of belief depends on norms. After all, biological functions can be equated with activities that are 'designed' or 'supposed' to occur, and to this extent can be viewed as specifying 'norms' of functioning. However, while I have no great objection to this kind of terminology, it is not the kind of norm that is at issue in this paper. We are here concerned with norms that have prescriptive force—that indicate what ought to be done. Purely biological 'norms' have no such implications.

As I understand claims about biological functions, they are equivalent to claims about selectional histories. They report on the effects for which certain items were selected in the past. Now, it certainly does not follow, just because some item was selected for some effect in the past, that it is valuable that it should produce this effect. For example, certain human hormones have been selected to make us act aggres- sively in competitive situations. But this does not mean that we ought so to act. Talk in terms of biological 'norms' if you wish. But do not conflate them with genuinely prescriptive norms.

One last point about the biological approach to beliefs. It might seem implausible to suppose that all beliefs and desires can be understood in terms of biological function. Surely many beliefs and desires, indeed most, have no genetic basis whatsoever. There is nothing in my genes that determines me to have desires or beliefs about fine wine or Spurs football.

But it is a mistake to equate the biological with the genetic. The development of human beings and other organisms involves many elements apart from genes, and many of these elements have functions other than those for which genes have been selected. There is a range of ways in which this can occur: derived functionality, inter-generational selection of non-genetically inherited traits, and intra-generational selection of ontogenetic traits. All these processes can be considered cases of biological design, but none involves functions for which genes have been selected. Once this kind of non-genetic design is taken into account, it is not at all obvious that the biological approach is incapable of dealing with the full range of human beliefs and desires (see MacDonald and Papineau 2006).

There is obviously a lot more to say in filling out the biological story. But this is not the place. The point of these last remarks was not to develop a detailed positive account of the nature of belief, but simply to make it clear that there is an alternative to the idea that this nature is constituted by norms. Having pointed out that the doxasticist option is not the only possible

account of the nature of belief, let me turn to some more specific difficulties it faces.

9. GovernanceA first question relates to the idea that beliefs are governed by a norm of truth. What does this amount to? Does it just mean that it is true that belief is constitutively subject to a norm of truth—that believers are in this sense subject to a norm? Or does it mean that believers must be sensitive to the norm—that their practice is in some sense guided by it?

I think it is clear that the former reading is not enough for doxasticism. After all, even I am happy to allow that it may be true that believers ought always to pursue the truth, indeed that this may be necessarily true. For this is in itself perfectly consistent with the position I am defending in this paper. Maybe the reason you ought always to pursue the truth is that it is always morally valuable to do so, or alternatively that it is always personally valuable to do so. True, I offered various reasons in Section 4 for doubting that the truth is always morally or personally valuable. But, as I said there, these doubts are not essential to my position. My central thesis in this chapter is that the normativity of belief is not distinctive, not that it is not universal. This thesis is perfectly consistent with the claim that believers ought always to pursue the truth.

What if it is specified, not only that believers ought to pursue the truth, but that this norm is suigeneris, and does not derive from extrinsic considerations such as moral or personal value? Well, this claim is indeed incompatible with the position I am defending here. But the trouble now is that it is simply an assertion of what I deny. If doxasticists are to offer anything more than a blank restatement of their position, they need to give us some account of why this norm is built into the nature of belief.

The only option here seems to be to posit a more intimate connection between belief and a norm of truth than that this norm applies to believers. The idea would be that, in order to be a believer, you must be guided by a norm of truth. The norm must make a difference to your intellectual practice, and it is this difference that makes it the case that your attitude is one of belief.

We don't have to understand this as requiring that believers always conform to the relevant norm. By way of analogy, note that someone is still playing chess even if they cheat a bit. Similarly, we might allow that someone is still a believer even if they are occasionally indifferent to the demands of truth. Still, consistently with this we can require that they at least be sensitive to the norm, in the sense that they are aware of it and have some inclination to conform to it. Someone who doesn't know the rules of chess or blatantly ignores them just isn't playing chess.

10. Believers and schmelieversSo the idea is that, in order to be a believer, you must be sensitive to a sui generis norm of truth.

Let us distinguish three different components to this idea.First, there is the metaphysical claim that in reality there is a significant propositional attitude

that is constituted in part by sensitivity to the norm. Among the intellectual relations that people can bear to propositional contents, one requires inter alia that they are sensitive to the truth norm.

Second, there is the conceptual claim that our concept of belief refers to this relation. We would

not count someone as believing something unless they were sensitive to the truth norm.And, third, there is the factual claim that most of the people we count as believers actually are

believers in this sense—that is, in most cases where we classify someone as believing something, they actually have the metaphysical relational property constituted by sensitivity to the truth norm.

Now, as it happens I have various views about these claims. I don't see much to object to in the first metaphysical claim—after all, it just points out that one relational property that people could possess involves a certain norm-sensitivity, which is hard to deny (though we may wish to debate exactly how 'significant' this property is). By contrast, I am strongly disinclined to accept the second conceptual claim—it seems highly doubtful to me that our concept of belief implies any kind of sensitivity to any norms (though it may well make some assumptions about the cognitive design of beliefs). As to the third factual claim, I am agnostic—even if it isn't required by our concept of belief, it may still be true that believers generally display some norm-sensitivity.

But all this is beside the point. Suppose that I concede all three claims in full, for the sake of the argument. I say that, even so, no prescriptive facts of any kind will follow. If you look at the three claims, it seems clear that they imply nothing about what ought to be the case.

This is because they fail to take us beyond facts about our actual practice with the attitude of belief. If we grant these claims, then people whom we classify as believers are in fact sensitive to a norm of truth; moreover, we take this into account when we classify them as believers, withholding this classification from those who are not so sensitive to the norm. However, as I stressed in Section 5, the mere existence of a practice cannot deliver any normative facts on its own.

We must be careful not to be misled by talk of 'norms' in this context. This terminology can be read in two different ways, and we need to avoid running them together. On the one hand, talk of 'norms' is often used to describe social facts. In this sense, to say that a 'norm' exists in some society is simply to say that this society engages in a certain practice, that its members constrain each other to observe some regularity of thought or behaviour. On the other hand, talk of 'norms' can be understood as implying that a certain practice is valuable. In this sense, to say that a 'norm' exists is to assert that some practice ought to be observed and encouraged.

In line with this, let us distinguish a 'descriptive' from a 'prescriptive' sense of 'norm'. Clearly the one does not imply the other. I might think that some practice is valuable and so ought to be upheld, while recognizing that a given society—perhaps my own— does not in fact uphold it. Conversely, I might recognize that a given society—perhaps my own—does in fact uphold some practice, while denying that this practice is valuable and ought to be followed.

In particular, then, I might recognize that certain societies—including my own— have a practice of upholding a certain norm of truth, and yet deny that that this practice is always valuable and that the relevant norm ought invariably to be upheld.

This is my position. I am happy to agree, at least for the sake of the current argument, that human societies, including our own, have an established practice of pursuing the truth. But I do not accept that this means this practice is always valuable.

Of course, as I have conceded throughout, there are plenty of circumstances in which it is indeed valuable to achieve truth for extrinsic reasons. These are the many cases where there are

moral, personal, or aesthetic reasons for having true beliefs. So, to the extent that we are dealing with cases of this kind, the pursuit of truth is indeed valuable.

But this value does not somehow derive solely from the existence of the practice itself, but from the further circumstance that the end it is directed to—the pursuit of truth is in many cases of moral, personal, or aesthetic value.

Correspondingly, I say that there is nothing valuable about the truth-pursuing practice in those cases where there is no moral, personal, or aesthetic reason to believe truly. For example, there is nothing valuable about upholding the requirements of truth in the earlier examples of the person who forms a belief about the number of blades of grass on the lawn without counting properly, or about having cancer without taking the appropriate tests. This would be like saying that you 'ought' to make the best move in chess even when nothing of value would flow from this.

To drive the point home, let us consider a community which does not, as a matter of descriptive fact, uphold some general norm of truth. The members of this community form cognitive states whose cognitive function is to track the truth, and these states are prompted by perception and guide action in just the way that normal beliefs do. But in this society there is no blanket social requirement that such states should be true, and no sensitivity on the part of thinkers to any such general principle.

We might say that this is a community of 'schmelievers' rather than believers. They have a different practice from us.

Are they violating any prescriptive norms? Well, there are the prescriptions which derive from the many moral, personal, or aesthetic reasons for achieving truth. Schmelievers are indeed in danger of violating these prescriptions by forming false judgements. But this does not show that there are any further suigeneris prescriptions that they violate. In cases where no moral, personal, or aesthetic reasons advise in favour of truth, as with the blades of grass or the denial of cancer, then the schmelievers are doing nothing wrong if their insensitivity to standards leads them into error. (And lest you think that the virtue of avoiding error in the extrinsically valuable cases provides a general rationale for believing rather than schmelieving, note that there is nothing to stop schmelievers specifically setting themselves to avoid error in these specific cases.)8

11. The possibility of schmelievingIt might have occurred to some readers to ask whether it is possible for human beings to be schmelievers. The requirement for schmelieving is that you should be insensitive to the norm of truth that guides ordinary human beings. However, it is a familiar point that believing is not a matter of choice (cf footnote 3 above). We cannot choose our beliefs in the way we choose our actions. Given this, it might seem that humans have no option but to respect a standard norm of truth.

Now, I certainly do not want to suggest that belief can be a matter of direct choice. Still, it is a further question whether humans have no option but to respect a norm of truth.

Recall the discussion in Section 3. I there distinguished between a general norm of truth of the form (2)—you may believe p if and only ifp—and such more specific directives as may issue from this norm, such as 'believe p only if you have considered relevant alternatives', or 'believe p

only if your informants are experts'.Now, there seems no doubt that, with some specific directives of this latter kind, alternative

options are indeed open to human beings. To take a substantial and topical example, consider the current debate about 'evidence-based medicine'. This is a genuine dispute about the extent to which the beliefs of medical practitioners ought to be subject to certain standards. Should doctors suspend judgement about the efficacy of treatments that have not been tested in randomized clinical trials? Opinions differ. But there would be no point to this debate if alternative standards were not genuine options for the medical profession.

Still, even if specific directives like this are optional, there may be some more basic standards of truth which humans are incapable of ignoring. Perhaps the very general principle (2) itself, abstracted from any more specific directives it may imply, fails to offer any practical guidance, for the reasons Gluer and Wikforss give, and so is not the kind of standard that we might or might not ignore. But what about some intermediate directive like the following?

(3) Match your beliefs to the evidence you currently possess. It is arguable that humans have no choice but to respect some directive of this kind. Note that none of the cases discussed in this chapter has involved any violations of this principle. On the contrary, all my examples of variant approaches to the truth have hinged on people adjusting what evidence is available to them, not on their ignoring it once they have it. Thus John the cancer sufferer made sure he avoided certain evidence; people who consult experts are seeking out certain items of extra evidence; advocates of randomized clinical trials are recommending that we acquire evidence of a certain form; and so on. Implicit in all these examples is the assumption that, while we can control what evidence is available to us, it is not a further question how we are then to respond to it.

So let me grant, for the sake of the argument, that some such principle as (3) is unavoidable for human beings. There are no doubt further issues here, about how exactly this 'unavoidability' is to be understood, given that there are certainly some bigoted and self-deceiving humans who do violate (3)—for this reason, the unavoidability had better be understood in terms of invariable 'sensitivity' to (3) rather than invariable conformity. Still, we can by-pass this issue here, as I want to conclude with a more basic point—namely, that even if (3) is indeed unavoidable for human beings, and to this extent schmelieving is not a real option for us, nothing of a prescriptive nature follows. We may have no choice but to always respect (3), but this does not mean that we ought always so to respect it.

If we have no choice about (3), why should this be so? It is not hard to imagine beings—the schmelievers—who are otherwise like us, but have no inclination to respect (3). There seems nothing metaphysically or biomechanically impossible about such beings. So what accounts for our difference from them?

The obvious answer is that our commitment to (3) stems from our evolved biological design. Recall my earlier remarks about the function of beliefs. The job of beliefs is to help desires select actions. In order to do this, beliefs need to carry information about the environment, the better to indicate which actions will be successful in satisfying desires in current circumstances. Now, it should be clear that, if beliefs are to fulfil this function, they need to be responsive to the environmental factors that they indicate, and not to internal psychological factors (such as what you expect, or what you would like to be true). It is essential to beliefs fulfilling their cognitive

function that they are controlled by relevant evidence, rather than by other factors. And that is why we are built to respect (3), rather than being able to conform our beliefs to our wishes.

If we view our commitment to (3) in this light, then it should be clear that it carries no universal prescriptive consequences. There are plenty of other cases where our evolved biological design forces us to do things, even when they are of no value. I cannot help blinking when an object moves quickly towards my eye, nor can I stop myself breathing after holding my breath for two minutes. These are good habits as a general rule, which is why evolution has instilled them in us. But there can be cases where nothing of value flows from their exercise. Imagine that you can win a valuable bet by not blinking, and that circumstances are arranged so that no harm will come to you if you don't. Even so, you can't help yourself. You have no choice but to blink. But this doesn't mean that you ought to blink. Insofar as prescriptive talk has a grip here, you surely ought not to blink. ('Ought' may or may not imply 'can'. But it is clear that 'can't not' does not imply 'ought'.)

I think that the unavoidability of (3) is entirely analogous. Evolution has instilled in us the habit of matching our beliefs to the evidence. (It needs to be a habit, not a matter of choice, for the reasons given two paragraphs back.) This is a good habit as a general rule, because it conduces to successful action. But there are cases where nothing of value will flow from its exercise, as with the blades of grass, or the kings of Assyria, or John's cancer. Even so, we can't help ourselves. We have no choice but to match our beliefs to the evidence. But this doesn't mean that we ought so to match our beliefs. If nothing of moral or personal or aesthetic value would be lost, then there would be nothing wrong with ignoring the evidence, even if we can't.9

References

Boghossian, Paul A. (2003), 'The Normativity of Content', Philosophical Issues, 13,31-45.Bykvist, Krister and Hattiangadi, Anandi (2007), 'Does Thought Imply Ought?' Analysis, 67,

277-85.Gluer, Kathrin and Wikforss, Asa (2009), 'Against Content Normativity', Mind, 118,31-70.Gluer, Kathrin and Wikforss, Asa (2010), 'The Truth Norm and Guidance: a Reply to

Steglich-Petersen', Mind, 119,757-61.Kelly, Thomas (2003), 'Epistemic Rationality as Instrumental Rationality: A Critique', Philosophy

and Phenomenological Research, 66,612-40.MacDonald, Graham and Papineau, David (2006), 'Introduction,, in G. MacDonald and D.

Papineau (eds), Essays on Teleosemantics (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 1-22.McGinn, Colin (1989), Mental Content (Oxford: Basil Blackwell).Millar, Alan (2004), Understanding People: Normativity and Rationalizing Explanation

(Oxford: Oxford University Press).Millikan, Ruth Garrett (1993), White Queen Psychology and OtherEssaysfor Alice (Cambridge, MA :

MIT Press ).Papineau, David (1999), 'Normativity and Judgement', Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume,

73,17-43.Steglich-Petersen, Asbjurn (2010), 'The Truth Norm and Guidance: a Reply to Gluer and

Wikforssl Mind, 119,749-56.Wedgwood, Ralph (2002), 'The Aim of Belief', Philosophical Perspectives, 16,267-97.

Whiting, Daniel (2010), 'Should I believe the truth?', Dialectica, 61,213-24.Williams, Bernard ( 1970 ), 'Deciding to Believe', reprinted in his Problems of the Self (Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press, 1973), 136-51.

5Against Belief Normativity

Kathrin Gliier and Asa Wikforss

IntroductionWe have argued against the thesis that content is essentially normative (Gluer and Wikforss 2009a). In the course of doing so, we also presented some considerations against the thesis that belief is essentially normative. In this chapter we would like to clarify and develop these considerations, thereby paving the road for a fully non-normative account of the nature of belief.

Belief is a mental state representing the world as being a certain way. In this sense, it should be uncontroversial to say that belief is a propositional attitude. But which prepositional attitude? A first shot at characterizing the attitude of belief more often than not takes a somewhat metaphorical character: Beliefs have a mind-to-world 'direction of fit'. They 'aim at truth'. They are 'committal'. Traditionally, the ideas behind these metaphors were supposed to be captured by saying that belief is the attitude of holding true. Recently, however, it has been suggested that this actually tells us very little. More precisely, characterizing belief in terms of truth-directedness is too unspecific. There are other attitudes that are, in some sense, truth-directed; examples are cognitive attitudes clearly different from belief such as imagining or assuming.59

The question therefore arises whether a more specific characterization can be given, one that distinguishes belief from all the other cognitive attitudes. Normativism about belief is an answer to this question: According to the belief normativist, what distinguishes belief from attitudes such as imagining or assuming is its normative nature. Attempts to give a purely descriptive account of belief are bound to fail, it is argued, since they leave out the oughts that are essential to belief: Necessarily, nothing not subject to certain norms is a belief.60

In the debate, the normativity in question is standardly construed as prescriptive in nature, and this is how we shall construe it, too. So, here are the basics of the package we are concerned with: There are norms, genuine oughts, governing or guiding any believer's belief formation. Failing to form a belief in accordance with such a norm is incorrect in the strong sense of violating the norm. Moreover, that belief formation is rule governed in this sense is essential to belief. This is often put in terms of constitutivity: It is constitutive of belief that it is governed by norms. The notion of constitutivity is notoriously unclear, but nothing here will hang on it. For our purposes, neither

59 See for instance Velleman (2000:247).60 See for instance Zangwill (1998,2010), Engel (2001; 2007), Wedgwood (2002; 2007), Boghossian (2003),

Shah (2003), Gibbard (2005), Shah and Velleman (2005).

essentiality nor constitutivity need amount to more than metaphysical necessity.61

It should be stressed at the outset, that the content normativity thesis and the belief normativity thesis are distinct. Belief normativism is a thesis about the nature of the psychological state, content normativism is a thesis about the nature of the content not only of belief, but all the propositional attitudes. It is possible to endorse belief normativism without endorsing content normativism, and vice versa. Indeed, many people who reject content normativism accept belief normativism. The question of whether belief is essentially normative is therefore of interest quite independently of whether content is normative.

Nevertheless, the two lines of argument commonly employed in support of belief normativism are quite parallel to those used in support of content normativism. The first line of argument draws on the idea that there is an essential connection between belief and truth, such that belief is that state which is governed by (some version of) the 'truth norm':

(N) One ought to believe that p ifand only if p.

A second line of argument focuses on the connection between belief and rationality. On this view, it is constitutive of belief to be governed by the 'rules' of rationality. These are usually equated with epistemic rules, more precisely, the 'rules' of valid inference, be it logical or 'material'. In contrast to the objective ought of truth, the ought here is a subjective ought, directly engaging with the subject's perspective. Candidate norms would for instance be:

(N2) One oughtto believe thatp if and only if one has sufficient evidence that p.(N3) If one believes thatp and believes that ifp then q, then one ought to believe that q.

The chapter is divided into four sections. Section 1 discusses the argument from truth, Section 2 the idea that truth guides 'indirectly', Section 3 the claim that rationality is essentially normative, and Section 4 the very idea that belief formation is essentially

61 According to some normativists the relevant notion of necessity is that of conceptual necessity (see for instance Jackson 2000; Boghossian 2003; Shah 2003). In what follows we shall also assume that conceptual necessity entails metaphysical necessity. This assumption is not completely uncontroversial, but it should be harmless in this context since it is embraced by those belief normativists that construe belief normativism as a conceptual truth. After all, they aim at making claims about the nature of belief, not about the concept of belief.

rule-guided. All the troubles we shall raise ultimately stem from the same source: very intuitive ideas about rule guidance. It is part and parcel of belief normativism as put forward in the debate that the rules or norms in question are genuine prescriptions capable of guiding belief formation. We shall argue that this is very hard to square with some basic intuitions about rule guidance. Any account of rule-guidance needs to support the distinction between being guided by a rule and merely being in accord with it. The rule must make a difference, so to speak, a difference both to the formation and, consequently, to the explanation of rule-guided belief. A rule-guided belief is a belief that, in a sense to be further specified, has been formed because of the rule. Belief normativism, we shall argue, cannot account for this difference in what we take to be the most natural, intuitive terms. This leaves open the possibility of accounting for it in other terms. It also leaves open the possibility of adopting a quietist attitude to the distinction between being guided by a rule and mere regularity. In both cases, the normativist will have to motivate the departure from intuition, and make it plausible that we are indeed dealing with genuine rule-guidance. Lastly, the normativist could abandon guidance—and thereby genuine prescriptivity—in favor of some other, novel construal of normativity. Since we are only concerned with genuine prescriptivity, that would amount to accepting the conclusion of this chapter.

i. The objective ought: The no-guidance argumentThe suggestion that belief is governed by a truth norm such as (N t) derives from the idea that it is essential to belief that it 'aims at truth'. This, it is argued, needs to be understood in normative terms: A false belief is not merely a truth-directed mental state the content of which is false but a state the formation of which violates a norm. This distinguishes believing that p from assuming that p or imagining that p, since one can assume or imagine what is false without thereby violating any norm. Paul Boghossian, for instance, puts it: 'The truth is what you ought to believe, whether or not you know how to go about it, and whether or not you know if you have attained it. That, in my view, is what makes it the state that it is' (2003: 39).

There has been quite some debate concerning how precisely to formulate the truth norm. As it stands, (Nt) is problematic since it seems to violate the maxim 'ought implies can': It follows that we ought to believe everything that is true, something which is not possible given the infinite number of truths that there are. For this reason, it has been suggested that (N) be replaced by the weaker (N*):

(N1*) One ought to believe thatp only ifp.62

This avoids the problem, but also leaves the truth norm seriously weakened since it fails to provide any real constraints on the subject's belief formation: It no longer follows that ifp is true S ought to believe that p or, even, that if p is false S ought not to believe that p (cf Bykvist and Hattiangadi 2007). Several attempts have been made to overcome the difficulty. 63 It has been suggested that (N.) can be made plausible if it is restricted to apply to beliefs that one considers (cf Wedgwood 2002). Another proposal is that (N) should not be spelled out in terms of oughts but in terms of permissions, so that the truth norm simply tells us that we may believe p if and only ifp is true—a

62 See for instance Boghossian (2003: 37).63 See Bykvist and Hattiangadi (this volume) for a response to some such attempts.

norm that is violated by false belief (Whiting 2010).6

The question concerning the precise formulation of the truth norm is no doubt interesting and the debate is bound to continue. In our 2009 paper (Gluer and Wikforss 2009a), however, we suggested that there is a more fundamental difficulty concerning the idea that truth norms can serve to guide belief formation. This argument we have later called the 'no-guidance argument' (Gluer and Wikforss 2010b). It concludes that no truth norm can make any difference to belief formation. Consequently, it is at odds with the very basics of any intuitive idea of rule-guidance.

The argument starts from the observation that (N1) is conditional in form: It tells the subject to 'do something' under certain conditions C. In order to follow, or be guided by, any such conditional prescription, the subject needs to have some belief as to whether these conditions are fulfilled. Take the rule 'buy low, sell high'. In order to know what to do—buy or sell—the subject needs to form a belief about the market.7 The same holds for (N1): To be guided by (N1), the subject needs to form a belief about whether the condition it puts on the ought is fulfilled. But in this case that amounts to having to form a belief as to whether p is true. In order to know what to do, whether to believe that p, that is, the subject needs to determine whether p. This, we have argued, makes it intuitively very strange to think of (N1) as guiding belief formation.64

There are, as we spell out in some detail in Gluer and Wikforss (2010b), two related reasons for this strangeness: First, the norm cannot influence belief formation, since in order to be guided by (Nt) one already had to form a belief as to whether p. The very question we wanted guidance on—whether to believe that p—needs to have been answered before any such guidance can be received. Thus, (Nt) always comes 'too late, as it were, to do the guiding work it is supposed to do. Second, (Nt) never makes a difference in the following sense, either: It never 'tells me', or 'provides me with a reason' to believe anything other than what I have come to believe anyway. That is, if I believe that p then (Nt) 'gives me a reason' to believe that p, and if I believe that not-p it 'gives me a reason' to believe not-p. As we put it in our original paper, not much guidance is to be had from such a norm.

We would like to emphasize again here that these difficulties arise independently of which formulation of the truth norm one favors: Neither (Nj*) nor replacing 'ought' with 'may' helps solving this problem. Moreover, the difficulty is specific to the truth norm—it does not turn on there being a general problem with objective norms. There is no general no-guidance problem for objective norms such as 'Buy low and sell high' or 'One ought to always promote maximum happiness'. Naturally, such norms can serve to motivate action only in conjunction with certain beliefs on the part of the agent, but in these cases this fact does not pose any difficulties: I believe that the market is at a low and hence the rule provides me with a reason to buy; I believe that

64 The problem is not, as Steglich-Petersen in a reply to our original paper suggests, that 'what the norm prescribes is the very same as what is already the case if the antecedent condition obtains' (Steglich-Petersen 2010: 4). We do not claim that the truth norm really is of the form: One ought to believe that p if(f) one believes that p. This would, Steglich-Petersen argues, be a conflation of the conditions under which the norm deems belief correct with the psychological state a subject must be in in order to apply the norm: To judge whether (N )'s antecedent condition is fulfilled one has to form a belief as to whether p, but this does not mean that what the norm says is simply to believe that p when one believes that p. In our reply, we argue that no such conflation is committed in our argument (cf. Gluer and Wikforss (2010b), where we also respond to further, related worries raised by Steglich-Petersen). Our claim does concern the psychological condition the subject must be in to receive any guidance from (N), and it simply is that this condition is such that it preempts the possibility of (N )'s making any difference to belief formation.

action A would promote maximum happiness and hence the rule provides me with a reason to do A. The trouble with the truth norm is specific to this norm, and derives precisely from the combination of being a norm for belief with putting specifically this condition on its ought: p being true.65

The no-guidance argument concludes that the truth norm—be it in the form of (N t) or any of the others—cannot play the role of a norm guiding our belief formation. Hence, belief normativism cannot be supported by appealing to the connection between belief and truth. Of course, none of this is to deny that there is an important connection between belief and truth. Most obviously, beliefs essentially have truth-evaluable contents. And even a stronger claim seems quite plausible: Belief arguably is the only propositional attitude taking as its conditions of correctness those of its content. Thus, we do not merely say that the content of a belief is false, but that the belief is: S has a false belief iff S believes that p, and p is false. By contrast, we do not say that imagining that p is false simply because p is. And analogously for assuming that p.66 It might even be proposed, although we shall not pursue this suggestion here, that this is the wanted further characteristic distinguishing belief from other truth-directed attitudes.67 But even if one can thus speak of the correctness conditions of belief, this does not entail that there are any oughts involved.68 And the upshot of the no-guidance argument is precisely that the essential connection between belief and truth cannot be construed as one involving norms capable of guiding belief formation—at least not if guidance is understood in anything like the intuitive sense.69

2. Deriving subjective oughts from objective 'aims'It is commonly assumed that the difficulty raised in the previous section can easily be overcome. Even if truth cannot guide belief formation directly, it is held, truth guides indirectly, via the so-called subjective norms of rationality, the 'rules' of logic and evidence.70 Moreover, it is

65 This, also, is why it does not matter to our argument which of the suggested versions of the truth norm one picks: on all of them the relevant condition will be the truth ofp.

66CfWedgwood (2007:158). Unlike Wedgwood, however, we do not think that this observation supports normativism.

67 A proposal along these lines can be found in Dretske (2000). Arguing against belief normativism, Dretske suggests that the fact that being true or false is essential to beliefs suffices to distinguish them from 'other mental states like wishes, desires, hopes, doubts and pains' (2000: 248).

68 For more on this, see Gluer and Wikforss (2009a: 36). See also below, Section 3.69Pascal Engel has suggested that the guidance problem can be solved once we distinguish between 'the statement of

the norm' and 'how the norm is regulated (its regulation)' (2007: 189; this volume). Simply stating the norm, he argues, 'does not tell us how it is implemented in a believer's psychology, but it would be wrong to conclude that the principle does not regulate since 'there must be some relation between the principle and the regulation'. This is so, he argues, since people can be criticized for having false beliefs. However, it is hard to see what Engel's argument is. Of course, the norm is one thing, its psychological role another (although Engel's talk about the regulation of the norm is hard to decipher—norms regulate but are they themselves regulated?). Our point is simply that (N) cannot be a guiding norm, i.e. it cannot play a certain role in the agent's psychology. This claim cannot be rejected simply by asserting that (N) must play such a role. And, of course, one can be criticized for other things than violating prescriptions.

70 Indeed, Shah and Velleman (2005) raise a worry related to our no-guidance argument, and conclude that what follows is merely that truth cannot guide directly. They focus on a specific form of doxastic deliberation where the subject deliberates whether to believe that p. The conclusions reached by such deliberation are a specific kind of 'meta-belief': beliefs as to whether one should believe that p. One cannot engage in such deliberation, Shah andVelleman suggest, unless one accepts that the truth norm applies to the state in question: Deliberating whether to believe p necessarily involves deliberating whether p is true. They then consider the objection that since determining whether p is

suggested, it is precisely because the objective ought of truth holds of belief that the subjective oughts hold as well. Thus, it is essential to belief that it is guided not only by (N) but also by norms of the kind (N2) and (N3) are instances of. Boghossian, for instance, argues that it is because belief is governed by the truth norm that the less controversial subjective oughts hold as well: All of these familiar epistemic norms are grounded in the objective norm of truth. It is that ought that supplies their rationale, even if it has proven extremely difficult to say—in the theory of knowledge— exactly how' (2003: 39).

The question is how we are to understand the notion of 'indirect guidance'. What exactly is the relation between the norm of truth and the norms of rationality? A radical

true requires arriving at a belief with respect to p, they are committed to saying that doxastic deliberation involves a practical syllogism moving from the premises 'I will believe that p if and only ifp is true' and 'p is true' to the conclusion 'I will believe that p, Such a syllogism already involves the judgment thatp is true as its minor premise, and, as they put it, 'believing thatp cannot be an intermediate step in deliberating whether to believe thatp' (2005: 520). The proper conclusion, they suggest, is not that there is something wrong with the truth norm but that 'doxastic deliberation cannot aim at truth directly' (2005: 520). Instead of aiming at acceptingp only ifp is true, one should aim at following some truth-conducive methods. For instance, if one judges that there is sufficient evidence that p then one should be moved to believe that p.

proposal is that the objective ought can simply be reduced to the subjective one. This is the line defended by Alan Gibbard (2005). According to Gibbard, the subjective ought is analytically prior, in fact primitive, and the objective ought can be defined in terms of it: What one objectively ought to do is what one subjectively ought to do if one had full information. Applied to the epistemic case, this means that what I objectively ought to believe is what I subjectively ought to believe in the epistemically ideal situation of full information. Hence, Gibbard argues, even though the truth norm cannot guide directly 'truth is the condition of correct belief' (2005: 349).

Whether or not Gibbard's recipe for reduction succeeds in the case of moral oughts, it is clear that it is problematic in the epistemic case. The claim that S objectively ought to believe that p iff S subjectively ought to believe that p where S has full information is either trivially true or, it would seem, simply false. It is trivially true if 'full information' includes p. But ifp is not included, the claim seems false: Intuitively, there are scenarios where S has all the available evidence and believes what she subjectively ought to believe—that is on the basis of this evidence—and yet the belief in question is false.71There is therefore little hope of reducing the objective norm of truth to the subjective norms of rationality.

Perhaps a weaker relation will do? A common idea is that even if the objective ought cannot be reduced to the subjective one, there is an important means-end relation between the rules of rationality and truth, such that if one aims at truth one ought to follow the rules of rationality. This appears to be what Shah and Velleman have in mind when suggesting that the solution to the problem concerning guidance and truth consists in recognizing that in order to aim at truth one must aim at following some truth-conducive method (Shah and Velleman 2005: 520). It is also suggested by Boghossian's claim that the objective ought provides a 'rationale' for the subjective ought, and Ralph Wedgwood explicitly defends the idea that the norms of rationality stand in a means-end relation to the truth norm.

According to Wedgwood, the norm of truth is the most fundamental norm of belief since it explains all other epistemic norms governing belief. The explanation is supposed to run as follows: Essential to belief is the aim of truth, but, in general, to achieve one's aims one has to do something, one has to use certain means, and the only way to achieve the aim of truth is by revising one's beliefs 'by means of following certain rules' (Wedgwood 2002: 276; 2007: 154). Following these rules thus is required to achieve the aim essential to belief. Consequently, Wedgwood suggests, being regulated by these rules is essential to belief as well.

Which, then, are these rules? Wedgwood proposes that they are the rules that it is rational to believe are reliably error-avoiding in the circumstances (2002: 277). This captures the idea, Wedgwood suggests, that the standards of rational belief are 'oriented' towards the goal of having correct (i.e. true) beliefs: a belief is rational, in relation to a body of information, just in case that body of information 'makes it highly likely that the belief in question is correct' (2007: 156).

In effect, that is, Wedgwood proposes that the rules of rationality provide the necessary means

71 It is, however, not completely easy to spell out what such scenarios are like. One might be tempted to say that evil demon scenarios are extreme scenarios of this sort. But unless one has very strong internalist intuitions about evidence and evidential relations, these might actually rather be cases where there is no rational way of forming (empirical) beliefs on the basis of evidence—as there is no such thing as evidence here. Still, as long as there are (empirical) truths in such a scenario, evil demon scenarios do provide counterexamples to Gibbard's reduction claim. (See also fn. 31 below.)

to the end of truth. His belief normativism is thus a combination of the following three elements: (a) The rules of rationality are capable of guiding belief formation, (b) these rules are essential to belief, and (c) their essentiality derives from truth's being the aim of belief. For the sake of argument we shall not here question (a) (we will return to the issue of guidance in Sections 3 and 4 below). Instead, we shall argue that (b) and (c) cannot be coherently combined (at least not in the way Wedgwood suggests): If truth is the aim of belief, the rules of rationality are not essential to belief. And if the rules of rationality are essential to belief, truth is not its aim. There is a dilemma here.

Let's start with the first horn of the dilemma: If truth is the aim of belief, the rules of rationality are not essential to belief. We shall assume that 'the rules of rationality' is a rigid definite description: It designates the same set of rules in all possible worlds. We take it that this captures what the normativist has in mind: That there are particular rules that are both capable of guiding and essential to belief. Wedgwood certainly seems to think so when he characterizes these as the rules it is rational to believe are reliable means towards the end of truth, and insists that no matter what the world is like it is always rational to believe that the rules of rationality are reliable. 72 But this characterization amounts to a substantial weakening of the required relation between the rules of rationality and the end of truth. Why would Wedgwood want to settle for this? Precisely to avoid the first horn of our dilemma.

To see this, assume that the rules of rationality are the same in all possible worlds, and that we require that the rules guiding belief are such that following them is a reliable means to truth. There clearly are worlds in which following the rules of rationality is not a reliable means to truth—at least with respect to empirical truth. Indeed, in some worlds the most reliable means to the end of empirical truth might be to believe just what one wants to be true. Consequently, which rules we should follow in our pursuit of empirical truth would vary from one possible world to another. In some worlds, it's the rules of rationality, but by no means in all. Such contingency clearly is in tension with the claim that the rules of rationality are essential to belief. Their essentiality to belief therefore cannot be derived from their providing reliable means to the end of truth.

Moreover, what the proper means to empirical truth are depends precisely on contingent matters. It is in general, independently of whether rule-following is involved or not, contingent which 'mechanisms' for forming empirical beliefs are reliable, or reliably error-avoiding. But if we try to construe the matter in terms of rules, this means that the rules in question not only vary from world to world but are bound to be purely instrumental rules.17 On the assumption that the rules of rationality actually are truth conducive, the normative force derivable from the aim of truth would be no different in principle from that of 'imperatives' like 'if you want to go for a ride, you ought to fill up the car'.18 Since there are instrumental rules contingent upon any aims

72 For instance, he says that even if you are in an evil demon world it may be rational for you to regard certain rules as sufficiently reliable in the circumstances (2002: 278). Thus, even in such an extreme scenario, the rules would be the same. At points, Wedgwood does suggest that there may be circumstances in which it is rational to revise one's belief that a certain rule is reliable (one might have evidence that one is in an epistemically problematic situation). This would seem to allow for some variation in the relevant rules. However, Wedgwood holds that what makes it rational in such a situation to revise one's belief about the rule's rationality is further, more basic rules that do not vary from world to world. These are rules that it is rational to follow not in virtue of some other rules, but intrinsically so: 'the only way in which one can reach a rational belief in those rules' rationality is by means of following those very rules' (2002: 280). See also Wedgwood (1999).

whatsoever, this would trivialize the claim that belief is essentially rule-guided.It is in order to avoid this first part of the dilemma, then, that Wedgwood suggests that the rules

that are essential to belief are those that it is rational to believe are reliable means towards the end of truth. Hence, it is not a contingent matter which rules we should follow since it is not a contingent matter which rules it is rational to believe are reliable: No matter what the world is like, it is rational to believe that the rules of rationality are reliable.19 This move preserves the essentiality of the rules of rationality for belief, but only to land us on the other horn of our dilemma: It undermines the idea that this essentiality derives from the aim of truth. Even if we granted that it necessarily is rational to believe that a given rule of rationality is reliably error-avoiding, this belief may be false. Wedgwood himself holds that evil demon scenarios would be cases in point; there, a choice of rule may be rational even though the rule is not reliable in the circumstances, he claims (2002: 278).

Nevertheless, Wedgwood wants to hold on to the idea that these rules derive from the 'fundamental norm of correct belief, that a belief is correct if and only if the proposition believed is true: 'the ultimate purpose or point of conforming to these standards is not just to have rational or justified beliefs purely for their own sake, but to ensure that one believes the proposition in question if and only if that proposition is true' (2007: 14, emphasis ours). A first observation here is that ensuring is factive. I can try

Th That a norm is conditional in form does not automatically imply that it is instrumental. What is distinctive of an instrumental norm is (a) that the normative force with which it imbues acting in a certain way A depends on the subject having a certain goal B, and (b) that A's being a means of achieving B is a contingent fact. (It is thus not an instrumental norm that you ought to move your king and rook in a certain way if you want to castle in chess.)

18 A somewhat similar strategy is endorsed by anti-normativists such as Papineau. Papineau (1999) argues that the apparent normativity of belief reduces to a species of instrumental normativity, derived from moral or personal values: S desires truth and therefore S ought to judge in such-and-such ways.

19 Unless, of course, the rationality of this meta-belief is itself dependent on contingent matters. As Wedgwood notes, there is the threat of a regress here if what makes it rational to believe that rule R is reliable is always a further rule. This is precisely why he thinks it is necessary to appeal to basic rules, 'genuine rules of rationality for all rational beings' (1999: 124).

to ensure something, for instance, shooting duck only, but whether I in fact ensure this depends on what I actually shoot. On Wedgwood's construal, an evil demon scenario is like a scenario where I try to ensure shooting ducks only by means of wearing what I have good reason to believe are duck detecting glasses. In fact, what I am wearing are geese detecting glasses. My hunting method thus is such that by employing it I, in effect, ensure that I shoot only geese. Objectively speaking, my aim—shooting duck only—does not justify or warrant my hunting method. The moral is obvious: Whether an objective aim—be it empirical truth or the shooting of duck—justifies or warrants employing a certain method of acting, or following a certain rule, is as much up to the world as it is up to the world whether the method or rule is reliably error-avoiding. Whether rationality derives from the 'aim' of truth is itself a contingent matter.

It might be objected that things look differently from the subject's own perspective. From the subject's own perspective, there is no alternative way of 'aiming at truth'. It is important here not to be carried away by the analogy with intentional action. It is not essential to belief that believers (intentionally) aim at truth. 'Aiming at truth' is a metaphor, and the suggestion under

consideration is cashing this metaphor in terms of the truth norm: Belief 'aims at truth' insofar as it is essential to belief that it is governed by the truth norm. A state thus 'aims' at what is correct according to its constitutive norm. But what is correct according to the norms of rationality is not the true, but the rational. Thus, if the rules of rationality are essential to belief, belief'aims' at rationality. Since these 'aims' can come apart, what results is paradoxical: Where they come apart, a belief is both correct and incorrect. In other words, it is possible that a belief is such that the subject ought to form it and ought not to form it. This can happen where the norms are prima facie, and thus can be in conflict, but here, the oughts in question are supposed to be essential to belief. Something has to give.

We think there is a general lesson here. It might either be held that the objective ought is essential to belief, in which case the problem of guidance remains unsolved: the rules that do guide, on this view, will be the rules of rationality and these will not be essential to belief. Alternatively, it might be held that the subjective ought is essential to belief, that the rules of rationality are not mere means-ends rules, in which case the objective ought will not be essential to belief. It is not possible to have it both ways: to hold that the objective ought is essential to belief and that the rules of rationality solve the problem of guidance.

The obvious way out for the normativist is to give up on the objective ought and hold that it is essential to belief that belief formation is guided by the norms of rationality. The notion of correctness that is essential to belief, then, is not that of truth, but that of rationality.73 Making this move would ensure that the rules of rationality are not merely instrumental, and it would provide norms that are at least candidates for providing guidance. This takes us to the second line of argument in support of belief normativism.

73 This is the move made by Zangwill (2010). Zangwill stresses that what he takes to be essential to belief is 'horizontal' norms, the norms of rationality, not 'vertical norms', such as the truth norm.

3. The subjective ought: norms and rationalityBelief normativism, again, is a specific package of claims. It is essential to belief, the belief normativist holds, that certain norms or rules govern, or guide, belief formation. In this and the next section, we shall investigate whether the 'rules' of rationality are the norms of belief in this sense. As in previous sections, the focus will be on guidance. In this section, we shall consider whether it is indeed necessary that rational belief be rule-guided. The argument will take the form of a challenge: We shall sketch an account of rational beliefthat, as far as we can tell, is perfectly non-normative. Since this account of rationality appears to be co-extensional with the belief normativist's, the challenge is to motivate why any normative element would need to be added.

It is important to be very clear about what is, and what is not, at issue here. We are not disputing that there is an essential connection between belief and rationality. Nor are we disputing that there is such a connection between rationality and (a certain notion of) reasons. What is a-rational in the sense of not even being a candidate for being rational or irrational cannot be belief, we think.74 Moreover, rationality is essentially a matter of (a certain kind of) reasons. What we are disputing is that belief is essentially such that its formation is guided by the 'rules' of rationality. Such guidance is not necessary, we claim, for being rational. Nor is it necessary for having or providing reasons. That beliefs essentially stand in reasons-relations thus is undisputed ground between the belief normativist and us. The dispute concerns whether it is essential to belief that there are certain norms telling the subject how she ought to reason.

It will be objected that we treat norm-guidedness as if it were an additional feature, something belief could, or could not, have over and above being rational. Frank Jackson for instance argues that rationality and normativity are 'interdefinable in an obvious way: rationality is conformity to norms' (2000: 104). On this view, it is simply a conceptual truth that rationality involves governance by norms and, hence, the very suggestion that there is an essential connection between belief and rationality, without belief being normative, expresses a conceptual confusion.

As is our wont, we fail to see the conceptual confusion. In order for this to be more than mere intuition-mongering, we shall now sketch an account of rational belief that is, as far as we can tell, perfectly non-normative. So, here are the bare bones of how we think of rational belief and of reasons-relations between beliefs. The relevant notion of a reason is subjective in the sense that we are concerned with reasons a subject has. Strictly speaking, on our account reasons are (true or false) propositions.75 Having such a reason is simply to believe the relevant proposition.23 Thus, beliefs, as we also like to put it, provide their subjects with reasons. The reasons themselves, the propositions that are the contents of the relevant beliefs, stand in inferential or evidential relations. And beliefs stand in reasons-relations because their contents stand in these relations; reasons-relations between beliefs 'piggy-back' on the inferential or evidential relations their

74 Moreover, we are on record for holding that belief is essentially such that a subject's belief system instan- tiates a basic rationality, that is by and large and in the most basic cases actually accords with the 'rules' of rationality (cf. Gluer and Wikforss 2009a: 48-52). Nothing that we are arguing in this paper hangs on this— Davidsonian—claim, however.

75One could thus say the notion of a reason employed here is doubly subjective: Not only are we concernedwith reasons the subject has, but these reasons need not be true, either. Of course, there are other, moreobjective ways of thinking about reasons on the market. We are not disputing the usefulness or legitimacy of

It is also a further question whether 'wrong' here is an evaluative notion, and, if so, whether the value in question derives from the nature of belief rather than from something else (such as evolutionary or ethical considerations).

contents stand in. This means that a beliefthat p provides its subject with a reason for believing that q if and only if there is a valid (logical or 'material') inference from p to q. With reasons-relations thus in place, we can then say that it is rational for a subject S to believe that p iffp is evidentially supported (to a sufficient degree and in sufficiently obvious steps) by the reasons the subject has.24 Rationality in general thus becomes a matter of the degree to which a subject's beliefs in fact instantiate the pattern of evidential relations between their contents.25 Obviously, there are a lot of details to be worked out here. But it is fairly clear even from this rough sketch that there won't be any need to add that there is rule-guidance. Whether or not the degree to which a person's beliefs instantiate the 'rules' of rationality can be explained as a result of these rules simply does not matter. The only thing that matters is (the degree of) accordance with these 'rules' or patterns.

At this juncture, it is common to appeal to the idea that we have certain normative attitudes towards errors of reasoning. Asking how belief could lack a normative dimension, Jackson continues: Are we supposed to say that there is nothing wrong with representing that P, and that if P then Q, while refraining from representing that Q?' (2000: 112). The answer, we take it, is that in such a case the subject is being irrational, but that it is a further

such notions. We do think, however, that the notion of subjective reasons our sketch works with captures an important aspect of our folk-psychology, its reasons, explanations, and the notion of (subjective) rationality that comes with them. This rationality, it seems to us, is not essentially normative. See also below, footnotes25, 27.

23 Note that this is distinct from the claim that the subject would have to know thatp is a reason. To have a reason, a subject does not need to possess the concept of a reason. Nor does the subject need to possess the concept of belief. On our construal of having a reason, no second-order beliefs—beliefs about beliefs—are required.

24 While very natural for basic cases such as perceptual belief, more remote relations of logical (or 'material') implication prima facie spell trouble for a conception of rationality that simply makes rationality a matter of instantiating inferential relations. Intuitively, if q for instance is a very remote logical consequence of p, this by itself does not suffice to make believing q rational. Our hypothesis is that in this well-charted area, Carroll-style regresses can only be avoided by biting some bullets. Thus, when pressed on this, we will stick to the claim that S has reasons for the most remote consequences of her beliefs - but we try to mitigate the pain by making rationality a matter of what is, in an intuitive sense to be further spelled out, obvious. What is obvious in this sense might well be a subjective matter.

25 It should be clear from this that our notion of a subjective reason, or of subjective rationality, has an objective component: It is an objective matter what the inferential or evidential relations between propositions are. What is subjective about our account is (a) that rationality depends on the reasons the subject in fact has, i.e. those propositions she believes, and (b) that these propositions need not be true. This notion of subjective rationality obviously owes a great deal to Davidson. It is rather different from the notion of subjective rationality for instance employed by Kolodny (2005). He is concerned with a certain kind of second-order belief: Belief about what rationality requires one to believe. It is subjectively rational, in Kolodny's sense, to have a first-order belief Bp if one has a second-order belief BBp—if one believes, that is, that rationality requires one to believe p. This holds independently of whether BBp is true, and independently of whether one in fact has any (first-order) reasons for Bp. On our view, by contrast, if one lacks (first-order) reasons for Bp then Bp is subjectively irrational—even if one believes that it is rational.

question whether holding an irrational belief is wrong in the sense of violating a norm.26 To retort that it must be wrong since it is irrational is simply begging the question. What is needed here is a substantive argument to the effect that rationality has to be spelled out in normative terms.

Let us be perfectly clear as to what we are claiming here. It has become customary to speak of the very notion of a reason as being a normative notion. On this assumption, the claim that rationality is not normative amounts to a denial of the idea that there is an essential link between

rationality and reasons.76 However, as should be obvious by now, this is emphatically not our claim. Indeed, if there is any claim in the off- ing here that might be a conceptual truth it is this: Being rational is a matter of the reasons-relations between beliefs. On this notion of a reason, it is very hard to see how a wedge could be driven between rationality and reasons. When we claim that rationality is not normative we are thus not questioning the link between rationality and reasons. Rather, we are questioning the normativist construal of both.77

There is an interesting parallel here between this debate and that concerning the normativity of meaning. In the case of meaning, normativists have appealed to the fact that meaningful expressions necessarily have conditions of correct use.78 From this, it has been argued, it directly follows that there are certain norms governing a speaker Ss use of an expression E, norms such as 'S ought to apply E to x if(f) E is true of x. In response to what we have called the 'simple argument, we have urged that the notion of semantic correctness is not normative, but merely allows us to categorize the application of E into two kinds: the true and the false, for instance. That is, from the fact that E has certain correctness conditions, it does not directly follow that E should or ought to be applied in any particular way.3° What both the semantic normativist and the anti-normativist agree on, however, is the extension of 'semantically correct'. It is not the classification of uses into the semantically correct and incorrect that is at issue. The same applications of an expression will be classified as correct (incorrect) by both camps. In order to have a case, the semantic normativist therefore has to provide further motivation as to why a normative element has to be added to the non-normative notion in order to make it into a notion of semantic correctness.

Similarly, the belief normativist's concept of rationality appears to be co-extensive with the non-normativist account sketched above: We do not disagree about which beliefs in fact are

76 Those claiming that rationality and reasons can come apart typically employ an objective notion of reason. According to such a notion, the mere fact that a plate of food contains salmonella is a reason not to eat it (cf Broome 2007: 167). Nevertheless, eating it might be perfectly rational if there is no evidence of the salmonella. On our account, what is relevant to the subject's rationality is not that it is true that the plate contains salmonella but whether or not the subject believes this. Thus, rationality and reasons, in our sense, cannot come apart in this way.We are not disputing that there are objective reasons or that there is a point to the terminology of objective reasons. If there is to be a point to this terminology, however, 'reason' can't just be a fancy term for ordinary facts. Rather, there seems to be a connected idea that only certain facts can be reasons: those that make it the case that it is 'fitting' to have certain attitudes towards certain objects (see for instance Rabinowicz and Ronnow-Rasmussen (2004)). On the basis of this idea, it is then claimed that objective reasons are normative because the notion of fittingness is normative. Leaving aside the question of how this notion of normativity is to be understood, it provides further illustration of the importance of separating objective reasons, in this sense, from subjective ones: From objective reasons being normative, in the sense of making it fitting to have certain attitudes towards certain objects, it obviously does not follow that subjective reasons are normative in any sense.

77In contradistinction to Broome (2007), who questions the normativist construal of rationality but not that of reasons. To Broome the question whether rationality is normative therefore comes down to the question whether the fact that rationality requires S to believe p entails that S has a reason to believe p. Defending anti-normativism about rationality, Broome provides a negative answer to this question. But we wonder whether the resulting position is stable. We agree that that rationality requires S to believep is not a reason for believing p. That is, believing that rationality requires me to believe p does not, just by itself, provide me with a reason for believing p. This would be boot-strapping. However, if rationality does require me to believe p I must have a reason to believe p. How else could it be rational for me to believe p?

78These might be truth conditions, assertibility conditions, or some such, depending on the choice of basic semantic concept.

rational (and which are irrational).79 Again, in order to have a case here, the normativist has to motivate why the normative dimension has to be added, why no non-normative concept suffices as a concept of rational belief. Otherwise, the normativity in question becomes a perfectly idle ingredient of the normativist's concept of rational belief. It might be thought that idleness can be avoided by rejecting the claim that the normativist and the anti-normativist conceptions of rationality are co-extensional. However, this would be ill advised. Since there presumably is agreement on both sides concerning the extent to which a subject's beliefs instantiate any given inferential pattern, rejecting co-extensionality would require accepting that a belief may be classified as irrational despite being inferentially well supported. The challenge, thus, is to motivate normativism while accepting the co-extensionality claim.

We would like to end by posing an additional challenge to belief normativism, one that was mentioned briefly in our 2009 paper. The trouble concerns guidance again, although this time the trouble is completely independent of what the relevant norm might be.

4. The regress of motivationsWe suggested above that the intuitive conception of rule-guidedness requires a (substantive) distinction between being guided by a rule and merely acting in accordance with one. 80 For there to be guidance the rule has to make a difference to (the formation and explanation of) S's behavior; in some sense to be specified, it has to be that S acts in accordance with the rule because of the rule.

Now, the most natural, intuitive idea is that a performance A is guided by a rule R iff R plays a certain role in S's motivation for A. Furthermore, it is very natural and intuitive to spell this out in terms of an intentional condition on rule-guidedness: The role R plays in S's motivation for A is such that there will be a certain kind of intentional explanation for A. This in turn is the kind of intentional explanation that involves some form of acceptance of R.33 Using a belief-desire model of intentional explanation that ought to be fairly uncontroversial in this context, such an explanation would have to include at least two components: Acceptance of the rule on the part of S in the motivational slot, and a belief to the effect that a specific performance is in accordance with the rule. In our 2009 paper, we suggested that the result of applying these very intuitive ideas about rule-guidedness to belief is a (practical) syllogism of this form:81

(Pt) I want to believe what is in accordance with R.(P2) To believe thatp is in accordance with R.(C) I want to believe that p.

79 This might easily be obscured by the fact that there are a number of other parameters that need to be setbefore we can compare any given normativist and non-normativist account of rationality. As far as we cansee, all of these are parameters on which one can go either externalist or internalist, objective or subjective. The maybe most pertinent of such parameters concern evidence and the validity of inference, especially 'material' inference. As hinted above (footnote 15), material inferential relations might well be hostage to the world. But these are issues that are independent of normativism versus non-normativism. Once they have been settled, normative and non-normative accounts of rationality will, as far as we can see, be necessarily co-extensional.

80 Belief normativists in general recognize the need for this distinction. For example, Wedgwood stresses the distinction between conforming to a rule and following it, being guided by it (2002: 276, 287). See also Shah and Velleman (2005: 502-3) and Shah (2003: 459).

81Gluer and Wikforss (2009a: 55). As a model for practical reasoning resulting in rule-guided action, this is developed in Gluer and Pagin (1999). There, it is argued that rules that can play this role cannot at the same time be meaning constitutive.

It should of course be immediately clear why applying this model of rule guidance causes trouble for belief normativism. The trouble is that the practical inference requires S to have another belief, the belief that believing that p is in accordance with the norm.35 However, according to the normativist, this further belief would also have to be motivated by a rule, if it is to qualify as a belief, which is to say that there would have to be yet another belief in place. Thus, we embark on a vicious regress, a regress we have called the regress of motivations.82 Hence, if guidance by rules is understood along the lines suggested here, it cannot be that a state is a belief only if it is formed as a result of S being guided by certain rules.

Is there a way out for the normativist? It is instructive to compare the regress of motivations with more familiar regresses in the epistemological literature. For example, it is well-known that certain versions of justificational internalism threaten to lead to a regress. According to what is sometimes called 'awareness internalism', for instance, a belief B is justified only insofar as there is something X that is a justifier of B and S is both aware of X and believes that X is relevant to the justification of B.83 The question then arises what justifies S's belief that X is relevant to the justification of B. On the assumption that the principle just specified holds for all justified beliefs, a regress ensues. For present purposes, we shall simply call this the 'regress of justification'.84

A common response to this regress is to limit the applicability of the internalist principle, arguing that not all beliefs derive their justification this way. Although we may have reasons to believe that certain methods are truth-conducive, and others are not, ultimately there must be justified beliefs that are not in this sense derived from reasons. As we saw above, Wedgwood makes a move of this kind when he argues that while it is rational to regard certain rules of rationality as error-avoiding, that is, that there are reasons for regarding the rules that way, it cannot be that this holds for all rules. Instead, he appeals to basic rules: rules that it is rational to follow even though they are not such that 'the only thing that makes it rational to follow these basic rules is the fact that it is rational to regard them as reliable' (Wedgwood 2002: 280).

Whatever the merits of such a strategy in response to the regress of justification, it should be clear that it does not help with the regress of motivations. Let us grant that certain beliefs are basic in the sense that they cannot be justified by appeal to further beliefs but derive their justification from other sources (i.e. they are self-justifying, in some sense, or have an externalist justification). Applied explicitly to a normativist version of internalism such as Wedgwood's, let us grant that there are certain basic rules of rationality that do not need justification from further beliefs. The regress of motivations remains, since it does not turn on the idea that the belief that a performance is in accordance with the relevant rule is justified, but merely on the idea that that belief, too, is formed as a result of S following certain rules. The regress, that is, is not a regress of theoretical reason, but a regress of practical reasoning.85 Hence the label: regress of motivations.

82In the 2009 paper we are careful to distinguish this regress from another regress, a regress we call the regress of contents, which is targeted specifically at the content normativist position (2009a: 56-7). As we stress there, the regress of motivations holds independently of what view one takes on the determination of content.

83For a recent discussion of internalism and various regress problems see Bergmann (2006).84 This and various related regresses have a long history especially in the debate between foundationalists and

coherentists. A similar version can be found in Sellars (1956).85 In this respect, also, the regress of motivations differs from Lewis Carroll's well-known regress. The lat-

ter is a regress of theoretical reasoning, showing that the rules of logic cannot function as premises in our reasoning (Carroll 1895).

Here, none of the familiar responses employed in response to the regress of justification apply.It might be thought, however, that even if the move to be employed is not literally the same, it

is strictly analogous. In the wake of Wittgenstein's rule-following considerations it has become popular to appeal to the notion of blind rule-following.86Although the detailed exegesis of Wittgenstein's discussion is much disputed, it is clear that he puts forth a regress argument of some sort, arguing that if one takes rule-following always to involve interpretation then following a rule will be impossible.87 In response to this problem it has been suggested that we need to accept that there is a form of rule-following that does not involve any sense of intentionally conforming to the rule: blind rule-following. Blind rule-following does not involve any intentional condition, and yet is supposed to be a genuine species of rule-following, distinct from mere brute reactions. This, in a sense, mirrors the move made in the case of the regress of justification: Just as there must be a form of 'basic' justification, justification that does not involve appeal to further beliefs, there must be a form of 'basic' rule-following, rule-following that does not appeal to further beliefs.

Giving up on the intentional condition on rule-guidance, however, brings us back to square one. There must, we said, be a substantive distinction between mere accordance with a rule, mere regularity, and genuine rule-guidance. How is this distinction to be substantiated once we give up on the most natural and intuitive understanding of it? A quietist refusal to answer this question—as endorsed for instance by McDowell and Crispin Wright88—cannot but fail to be persuasive in this context. After all, the intuitive, intentional condition appears to be satisfied in all uncontroversial cases of rule-guidedness. Giving it up in precisely certain controversial cases, cases to do with intentional states and their contents, would seem to be a perfectly ad hoc move, simply intended to save a normativist theory under severe pressure. If belief normativism requires endorsing quietism about rule-guidance, so much the worse for belief normativism.

Another, related normativist strategy proposes that there is a form of rule-guidance that is not intentional but takes place on the sub-personal level.89 It might be argued that in the very basic cases, such as belief formation, rule-guidance is not to be understood in terms of motivation, but in terms of some form of sub-personal regulation, possibly construed teleologically. So far, however, this remains the merest suggestion. So far, that is, there is no way of telling whether it can be developed into a recognizable distinction between mere accordance with a

86Wittgenstein (1953). For an appeal to the notion of blind rule-following see for instance Wright (2007) and Boghossian (2008).

87 We spell out our interpretation of Wittgenstein's rule-following argument in Gluer and Wikforss (2010a).88McDowell (1984,1992) and Wright (2007). We discuss blindness and quietism in Gluer and Wikforss (2010a: 160-

4).89Such a strategy is employed by Pierre Jacob (2005) with respect to the normativity of meaning and content. And

Anders Nes, in his response to an earlier version of our paper, suggests that the regress of motivations might be avoided by means of a distinction between 'intentional guidance' and 'sub-intentional guidance' (Nes 2009). The latter type of guidance, according to Nes, merely requires there to be some mechanism ensuring that the subject's reasoning is in accord with the principles of rationality, perhaps some feed- back mechanism of the kind regulating the function of the heart.

rule and being guided by it. This, then, is the challenge the regress of motivations poses for the normativist: To come up with a substantive, non-intentional condition that is intuitively recognizable as distinguishing rule-guidedness from mere regularity or accordance with a rule.90

Since we agree with the belief normativist that rational belief is a matter of the degree to which a subject's beliefs actually are in accordance with the 'rules' of rationality, the challenges posed in this and the previous section combine into a fairly formidable package. Even if the normativist provided a condition that would allow rational belief to recognizably be the result of rule-guidance, he would still need to argue why it is necessary that rational belief be formed in this way, rather than in any other way that ensures a sufficient degree of accordance with the 'rules' in question.

We conclude that the idea that belief is essentially rule-guided faces serious problems and challenges. More precisely, it is the idea of guidance that seems responsible for these troubles. This seems to us to hold regardless of whether the norm constitutive of belief is construed as one of truth, of rationality, or a combination thereof. Belief normativism, as standardly construed, is thus not a plausible theory of the nature of belief. As stressed above, rejecting normativism is not rejecting the idea that there is an essential link between belief and rationality. On the contrary, once rationality itself is construed non-normatively, it appears to be perfectly open to the anti-normativist to claim that it is essential to belief that beliefs stand in rational relations to one another. In our opinion, it is even essential to belief that beliefs by and large instantiate a basic rationality, that is, not only stand in reasons-relations making them rational or irrational, but are in fact by and large rational. Indeed, as we have pointed out at some length elsewhere, this Davidsonian claim coheres better with anti-normativism than with normativism.91 According to the normativist, what is essential to belief is merely that if a state is a belief then it ought to behave in certain ways, it ought to play a certain role. Our view, by contrast, is that it is essential to belief that it does play a certain role—but we shall have to save the details of that story for another occasion.92'47

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6

Belief, Truth, and Blindspots

Krister Bykvist and Anandi Hattiangadi

i. IntroductionIntentional states, such as beliefs, desires, and intentions, are often thought to have two components, an attitude and a propositional content. You can combine different attitudes with the proposition that there is tea in your cup: you can believe that there is tea in your cup, desire that there is tea in your cup, or intend that there is tea in your cup (you can also disbelieve it, assume it, imagine it, consider it, desire its negation, and so forth). One of the fundamental questions in the philosophical study of the propositional attitudes is this: what is it about the attitude you have when you believe that p that makes it the belief that p and not, for instance, a desire or supposition with the same content?

It is popular to answer this question by appeal to the slogan that belief 'essentially aims at truth' (Williams 1970: 151). But what, exactly, does this mean? It is, of course, a truism that to believe that p is to believe that p is true. However, this does not tell us anything distinctive about belief. Similarly, to desire that p is to desire that p is true, and to imagine that p is to imagine that p is true, and so forth. If our question concerns what makes a belief the sort of attitude it is rather than some other attitude with the same content, the slogan interpreted in this way does not help to answer it.

It has recently become popular to interpret this slogan in a specifically normative sense (Kripke 1982; Velleman 2000; Engel 2001, 2005; Noordhof 2001; Wedgwood, 2002, 2007a, 2007b; Gibbard 2003, 2005; Shah 2003; Boghossian 2003; Zangwill 2005). The version of 'doxastic normativism' ('normativism', for short) with which we are concerned holds that the following is a constitutive truth about belief (Blackburn 1984; Stalnaker 1987; Boghossian 1989, 2003; Velleman 2000; Engel 2001; Wedgwood 2002, 2007a, 2007b; Gibbard 2003, 2005; Shah 2003):93

93 There is a range of views in the ballpark that we do not discuss. For instance, Brandoms (1994) inferentialism is arguably committed to the normativity of belief. The norms that Brandom suggests are constitutive of content are inferential, i.e., norms licensing or forbidding certain inferences. For an argument against Brandom's defence of the normativity of meaning and content, see Hattiangadi (2007).

Doxastic Correctness: Your belief that p is correct if and only ifp is true.

Normativists maintain that Doxastic Correctness has normative import in the sense that it entails some normative claim about what you ought to believe (Boghossian 2003;Wedgwood 2002; Gibbard 2003, 2005). They also maintain that Doxastic Correctness is constitutive of belief (Velleman 2000; Wedgwood 2002, 2007b; Boghossian 2003; Gibbard 2003). On one version of the constitutive claim, Doxastic Correctness is meant to capture the metaphysical essence of belief (Wedgwood 2002); on another version, it is meant to capture a conceptual truth (Boghossian 2003; Gibbard 2003; Shah and Velleman 2005). Proponents of both versions of the constitutive claim are committed to giving an account of belief that distinguishes belief from all other propositional attitudes. Indeed, alternative, non-normative accounts of belief are rejected by normativists on the grounds that they fail to identify a distinguishing characteristic of belief (Velleman 2000; Owens 2003; Shah and Velleman 2005).

The interest of these issues extends wellbeyond the foundational metaphysical question of what constitutes belief. It is a widespread view in epistemology that truth is the fundamental epistemic aim or value (David 2001; Sosa 2001; Alston 2002; Wedgwood 2002; Boghossian 2003; Shah 2003; Zagzebski 2003; Shah and Velleman 2005). In this context, the question is whether a truth-norm, which supposedly follows from Doxastic Correctness, is explanatorily fundamental in the sense that it can explain evidential and inferential norms governing belief. For instance, it is sometimes suggested that a truth-norm explains why one ought to proportion one's belief to the evidence, or that one ought to avoid contradictory beliefs, or that one ought to believe the obvious logical consequences of one's beliefs (David 2001; Wedgwood 2002; Boghossian 2003; Shah 2003; Shah and Velleman 2005). Roughly speaking, the thought is that truth is the fundamental epistemic aim. But since the truth is not transparent to us, we need to follow evidential and inferential rules as a means of acquiring true beliefs and thereby satisfying the fundamental epistemic aim. It is because we aim at satisfying this norm that we ought to follow evidential and inferential rules, for following these secondary rules brings us closer to satisfying our fundamental cognitive norm.

The question of whether a normative reading of Doxastic Correctness is both metaphysically and explanatorily fundamental also has direct bearing on the debate about whether there can be normative, pragmatic reasons for belief. For example, Nishi Shah and David Velleman have defended evidentialism about belief on the basis of the claim that Doxastic Correctness is constitutive of belief. They argued that the view that belief is constitutively normative is uniquely able to explain a phenomenon they refer to as the 'transparency of belief' (Shah 2003; Shah and Velleman 2005). According to Shah and Velleman, if you deliberate whether to believe that p, your deliberation is transparent to the question whether p in the following sense: once you have settled the question whether p, you have thereby settled the question whether to believe that p. The view that belief is constituted by Doxastic Correctness is said to explain this phenomenon, as follows. It is part of the concept of belief that the belief that p is correct if and only if p is true. In doxastic deliberation, you deploy the concept of belief, and in so doing you must recognize the normative force of Doxastic Correctness, which, they assume, means that you ought only to believe truths.94 But if you want to comply with this norm, the only considerations you ought to be

94 What we call' Weak Doxastic Ought in the following. 3 Bykvist and Hattiangadi (2007).

sensitive to in determining whether to believe that p are considerations relevant to determining whether p is true. Since it is part of the very concept of belief that only considerations relevant to determining whether p is true can settle the question whether to believe that p, there can be no pragmatic reasons for belief, which are not relevant to the question whether p is true.

In this chapter, we would like to go directly to the heart of these issues: is it true that Doxastic Correctness is both normative and constitutive of belief? We will argue first that 'correct' is not an essentially normative term. So, one cannot say that Doxastic Correctness is normative just on the grounds that it is stated in terms of 'correct'. Moreover, on a very natural understanding, Doxastic Correctness is not even constitutive of belief, since it does not distinguish beliefs from other mental states; it does not answer the original question of what makes a belief a belief rather than some other kind of psychological attitude.

In the following sections, we consider and reject explicitly normative reformulations of Doxastic Correctness. The arguments we present here build on those made in an earlier paper, in which we argued that the following principle, Doxastic Ought, which might naturally be thought to capture the normative implications of Doxastic Correctness, faces serious problems:3

Doxastic Ought: You ought to (believe that p) if and only ifp is true.

The main problems with Doxastic Ought (and variants of it) concern 'blindspots'— true propositions which nevertheless are logically impossible to believe truly. If you ought to believe a blindspot because it is true, then you ought to believe something that, necessarily, will be false if you believe it. In this chapter, we extend the argument to other normative reformulations of Doxastic Correctness, namely:

Doxastic Permissibility: You are permitted to believe that p if and only ifp is true.Doxastic Value: Your belief that p is good if and only ifp is true.

In addition to considerations relating to blindspots, we also consider whether these norms are metaphysically or explanatorily fundamental.

We conclude that belief is not normatively constituted. Though there is a reading of Doxastic Correctness that makes it uncontroversially true, it is not normative. The normative principles that have been suggested in the place of Doxastic Correctness are either untenable, or fail to be either metaphysically or explanatorily fundamental.

2. Correctness and NormativitySome normativists maintain that 'correct' is an essentially normative term, and hence, that Doxastic Correctness must be understood as a normative statement. If this is true, then there is no legitimate reading of Doxastic Correctness as a non-normative statement. The 'correct' in this statement must apply to the state or act of believing that p, and what it says must be that believing that p is correct if and only ifp is true.

However, to view 'correct' as an essentially normative term does not square well with common usage. For example, it does not fit well with the fact that 'correct' is standardly used to mean either 'in accordance with acknowledged or conventional standard' or 'in accordance with fact or truth'. (See, for instance, the OED's definition of the English word 'correct').95

95 The point that 'correct' is not an essentially normative term is raised in Gluer (1999); Hattiangadi (2007); Wikforss (2001); Gluer and Wikforss (2009).

Of course, according to a deflationary notion of normativity, being in accordance with a norm or standard is sufficient for being normative. But it is clear that the normativists are not deploying such a deflationary notion of normativity, for no one would deny that true beliefs are normative in the sense that they accord with the standard of truth. For normativists, to say that Doxastic Correctness has normative implications is to say that it entails that a true belief is something we ought to have, are permitted to have, are rationally committed to have, or something that it would be good to have.

On this more inflationary notion of normativity, to judge that p-ing is correct or incorrect in the sense of meeting or not meeting some standard is not to make a normative judgement. For example, to judge that the utterance 'my mother is upstairs' meets the standard of truth, is not to judge that the utterance ought to be made (for instance, if the proverbial axe murderer is at the door and hunting down your mother, you ought not to utter the sentence). To judge that driving as a woman in Saudi Arabia contravenes conventional standards is not to think a woman in Saudi Arabia ought not to drive. Judging that p-ing is correct is compatible with judging that one ought not to p. Judging that p-ing is incorrect is compatible with j udging that one ought to p. When it is a fact that p-ing meets a certain standard, there is always a further question whether the standard ought to be met. In some cases, the standard ought to be met, in others, not.

If 'correct' is not an essentially normative term, then what does it mean? On our view, 'correct' is a context sensitive predicate, roughly synonymous with 'in accordance with standard x', where the value of x is the standard salient in the context. In some cases, this is an acknowledged, conventional standard, such as the convention that forbids women to drive in Saudi Arabia, or the convention that requires curtsey- ing before the Queen. In other cases, the acknowledged standard, or the standard that is salient in the context, is just the truth. In such contexts, the statement, 'the belief that p is correct' expresses the proposition that the belief that p is in accordance with the facts, or truth; in other words, that the belief that p is true.

Since we cannot conclude that Doxastic Correctness is normative from the mere fact that it is stated in terms of 'correct', the normativist owes us an argument for the claim that, in the context of belief, 'correct' must be given a normative interpretation. One reason to be pessimistic about the cogency of such an argument is that, on the face of it, it seems natural to assume that in the context of belief 'correct' just means 'in accordance with truth' or, simply, 'true'.

Wedgwood (2007c: 157) has argued against this view. First, he claims that it is sentences and propositions that are said to be true or false, whereas it is speech acts, such as assertion, and attitudes, such as belief, that are said to be correct or incorrect. However, this observation does not take us very far. It is acceptable to say 'Sara's belief is true, 'John's assertion is false, but note that it is equally acceptable to say 'what Sara believes is correct,' and 'what John said is incorrect' So, it is neither a solecism to apply 'true' to a belief nor 'correct' to a proposition when it is picked out by a noun clause such as 'what John said/believed,

Second, Wedgwood considers the suggestion that 'is correct' is a synonym for 'has a true proposition as its content'. If this is true, Wedgwood argues, we should be able to describe other mental states as correct whenever they have true contents; but this is not always true. By way of illustration, he says that it seems appropriate to say:

(i) He imagined he was Julius Caesar on the edge of the Rubicon, but what he imagined was not true.

He claims that if 'incorrect' meant 'has a false content, then it would be fine to say:

(ii) He imagined he was Julius Caesar on the edge of the Rubicon, but his imagining was incorrect.

But, Wedgwood concludes, it is not fine to say this.This point is true as far as it goes, but, again, it does not take us very far. These examples

do not show that there is no plausible non-normative reading of 'correct' in this context. First, note that a direct substitution of 'incorrect' into (i) sounds perfectly fine:

(iii) He imagined he was Julius Caesar on the edge of the Rubicon, but what he imagined was incorrect.

Similarly, a direct substitution of 'not true' for 'incorrect' in (ii) sounds just as bad:

(iv) He imagined he was Julius Caesar on the edge of the Rubicon, but his imagining was not true.

So, not only does it seem to be perfectly fine to apply 'correct' to the contents of mental states other than beliefs exactly when the contents are true, it seems that the appropriateness of applying 'correct' covaries with the appropriateness of applying 'true'. It is appropriate to apply 'correct' to a content of a mental state just in case it is appropriate to apply 'true' to the content. Furthermore, it is appropriate to apply 'correct' to a mental state just in case it is appropriate to apply 'true' to the mental state.

Wedgwood could concede that 'correct' has a non-normative reading in these cases but maintain that a normative reading of 'correct' is mandatory when it is applied to those mental states M that are correct just in case they are true. Beliefs fall under this characterization, since a correct belief is a true belief. The problem with this reply is that it would force us to say that all of the following true statements are normative too:

(v) A correct guess is a true guess.(vi) A correct perception is a true perception.(vii) A correct assumption is a true assumption.(viii) A correct supposition is a true supposition.

But these statements are not normative, because it is perfectly coherent to accept them and still deny that we ought (or are permitted) to make a guess/assumption/supposition or have a perception just in case the guess/assumption/supposition/perception is true.

Crucially, our view differs from the view targeted by Wedgwood. Our view is not that in every context 'is correct' means 'has a true content'. This view would be open to immediate refutation, since there are clear cases in which this is not what is meant by 'is correct'—when 'is correct' is applied to acts which do not have contents, for instance, such as the act of driving in Saudi Arabia. Rather, our view is that 'is correct' is context sensitive, and that in some contexts, it picks out the property of having a true content. Assuming that context, the proposition expressed by 'the belief that p is correct' is identical to the proposition expressed by 'the belief that p is true'.

Of course, our account is consistent with the view that there is a genuinely normative standard of truth governing belief. According to our account of the meaning of 'correct, to say that p-ing is correct is to say that it meets a contextually salient standard; in some cases, that standard is normative in the sense that it ought to be met. The point is that even if it is granted that the belief that p is correct if and only ifp, there is a further question whether one ought to or may believe that p. The normativist owes us an argument for the claim that the standard of truth is normative beyond claims about correctness. The normativist cannot simply assume that 'correct' is a normative term in this context, on pain of begging the question.

Once these points are recognized, a number of arguments that have been given previously for the view that the standard of truth is normative can be seen to be non sequiturs. For instance, Allan Gibbard says the following:

For belief, correctness is truth. Correct belief is true belief. My belief that snow is white iscorrect just in case the belief is true, just in case snow is white. Correctness, now, seems nor- mative____The correct belief, if all this is right, seems to be the one [a subject] ought, in thissense, to have. (Gibbard 2005: 338-9)

Paul Boghossian echoes this thought with approval when he says:

. . . it seems right to say . . . ] that correctness is a normative matter, a matter of whether one ought to do what one is doing, and that the correctness conditions of one's thought are constitutive. (Boghossian 2003: 35)

Both Gibbard and Boghossian suggest that 'correct' is a normative term, and that the correctness conditions of a belief are constitutive of it. However, this intuitive defence of the thesis trades on contextual variation in the meaning of 'correct'.96 In some contexts, the property picked out by the predicate 'correct' is the property of truth. Since 'correct' in some contexts picks out truth, 'correctness condition' can also be used co- extensively with 'truth condition'. Of course, it is virtually undeniable that the correctness conditions of one's thought are constitutive, if what is meant by this is that truth conditions are constitutive of the contents of the thoughts. In contrast, it is far from uncontroversial that the truth conditions of a proposition are also conditions under which it is correct in the (inflationary) normative sense to believe the proposition.

Furthermore, Gibbard's implicit argument for Doxastic Correctness being constitutive of belief generalizes to mental states other than belief. Gibbard suggests that it is because, for belief, correctness is truth, that one can infer that the belief that p is correct (in the normative sense) if and only ifp is true. But if this is true, we should be able to conclude that attitudes other than belief are correct if and only if their contents are true. To see why, consider the following case. Suppose that you enter a competition to guess the number of sweets in a jar. There are 322 sweets, and you guess that there are 322. You have no evidence for this—you have simply picked the number out of thin air—but it would be natural to say that your guess is correct. Indeed, in this context, a correct guess is a true guess; any guess other than '322' would have been incorrect. If Gibbard's argument is valid, then we can infer from the fact that a correct guess is a true guess to the fact that the guess that p is correct if and only ifp is true. The same goes for many other cases: a correct perception is a true perception, a correct assumption is a true assumption, a correct supposition is a true supposition, and so forth. It follows that belief is not unique in being a state for which correctness is truth, and hence that Doxastic Correctness is not metaphysically fundamental; it does not answer the question of what makes the belief that p a belief rather than some other mental state with the same content.

Finally, the foregoing points can be applied to Wedgwood's revised formulation of the intuitions about the correctness of belief (this volume: 131). His characterization of the fundamental normative principles governing belief can be restated for guesses, salva veritate in any context in which the salient standard for correctness is truth:97

1. The guess that p when p is true is a correct guess.2. The guess that p when p is false is an incorrect guess.3. The state of wondering whether p, but not guessing that p nor guessing that not p is

neither correct nor incorrect.

96 For more arguments along these lines, see Hattiangadi (2007).97 Wedgwood says that a belief, when true is 'perfectly correct, when false 'maximally incorrect' and that

suspending judgment in a proposition one has considered has an intermediate value between perfect correctness and maximal incorrectness (this volume: 126). He also claims that there are degrees of incorrectness (125). However, we have avoided these constructions because neither 'correct' nor 'incorrect' are gradable adjectives, like 'tall, 'rich, or 'expensive'; correctness and incorrectness do not come in degrees.

Clearly, the conjunction of these three principles are true of guesses, just as the corresponding principles for belief apply to beliefs. Moreover, 'guess' can be replaced with 'supposition', and 'assumption,' salva veritate. The conjunction of the corresponding claims about belief does not, therefore, serve to distinguish beliefs from other mental states. Postulating these principles does not help to answer the foundational question of what makes a belief a belief rather than some other kind of mental state.

Thus, given that 'correct' means (roughly) 'in accordance with a contextually salient standard x, where in some contexts, the salient standard is truth, the conjunction of (1), (2), and (3) is trivial, as are the corresponding principles about belief. Because correctness is not an essentially normative concept, principles about belief formulated in terms of correctness are not necessarily normative. Furthermore, since the principles that have been formulated in terms of correctness do not distinguish belief from other mental states, Doxastic Correctness is not metaphysically essential to belief.

3. TheblindspotproblemTo say that the belief that p is correct is to say that it meets a standard; in some contexts, this is the standard of truth. It is a further question what normative consequences follow, if any. The normativist must, therefore, express the view that belief is constitutively normative in terms of the paradigmatic normative concepts, ought or permission. In our previous paper (Bykvist and Hattiangadi 2007), we considered simply reformulat- ing Doxastic Correctness in terms of ought, as follows:

Doxastic Ought: You ought to (believe that p) if and only ifp is true.98

We argued that Doxastic Ought does not work as it stands. One problem is generated by the fact that Doxastic Ought implies that for any true proposition, you ought to believe it. However, there are not only infinitely many true propositions, but given that any conjunction of true propositions is itself a true proposition, there must be some true propositions that are extremely complex—certainly far too complex for most humans to believe. Take a proposition that is too complex for you to believe. Since you cannot believe this proposition, and since 'ought' implies 'can, it follows that it must be false that you ought to believe the proposition, even if the proposition happens to be true. Since Doxastic Ought is meant to hold for any subject and any proposition, but surely does not hold for propositions too complex to be believed, it must be false.

Of course, the principle that 'ought' implies 'can' is not uncontroversial, as there are some well-known putative counterexamples. For instance, suppose that Smith cannot stop laughing at her boss's haircut, though her boss is clearly taking offence. Though Smith cannot stop laughing at her

98 The parentheses are insertedjust to make it clear that 'ought' has narrow scope. It governs only 'believe thatp' not the whole biconditional 'believe thatp iffp is true. The latter wide scope reading is also problematic, as we point out in our paper. However, since the main resistance to our arguments has been expressed by people who want to defend a narrow scope reading, we will ignore the wide scope reading in the following. We hope to come back to this issue at another time. Suffice it to say here that 'correct' in 'it is correct to believe that p iffp is true' clearly has narrow scope. If you have a true belief, what is correct is your belief, not the state of the world, nor the composite fact expressed by the biconditional 'you believe thatp iffp is true'. Similarly, if you have a false belief, it is the belief state that is incorrect or defective, not the state of the world, nor the composite of your belief state and the state of the world. Thus any candidate normative principle that is put forward to capture Doxastic Correctness must have narrow scope.

boss's haircut, it seems to be true nonetheless that Smith ought to stop. In this case, however, it is merely psychologically impossible for Smith to stop laughing, and 'ought' arguably does not entail psychological possibility (at least not in all contexts). In contrast, it is not humanly possible to believe an arbitrarily complex proposition—and this is arguably a form of metaphysical, as opposed to a mere psychological impossibility. Limits on how much information a human brain can store, and limits on the length of human lives place limits on the complexity of the propositions we can believe (Kripke 1982).

It is for this reason that Boghossian (2003) suggests rejecting the right to left direction of the biconditional in Doxastic Ought, and replaces it with Weak Doxastic Ought:

Weak Doxastic Ought: You ought to (believe that p) only ifp is true.

However, as we argued previously, the resulting principle is non-prescriptive. From the fact that p is false, it follows that it is not the case that one ought to believe that p, not that one ought not to. This is compatible with it being permissible to believe a falsehood; this very weak principle does not even forbid having false beliefs. Moreover, it is worth pointing out that such a weak principle has no hope of being explanatorily fundamental—it cannot explain why evidence would ever give one a positive reason for belief, nor could it explain why we should believe obvious logical consequences of our beliefs, as Boghossian (2003) suggests. If all that can be said about the fundamental nature of the belief is that it is not the case that one ought to believe falsehoods, we cannot on this basis show that evidential reasons are superior to pragmatic reasons.

Another way to resolve some of these problems is to restrict the true propositions one ought to believe to those propositions that one considers, and add an explicit clause saying that one ought not to believe falsehoods, as follows:99

Doxastic Ought 1: If you consider p, then: ifp is true, you ought to (believe that p) and ifp isfalse, you ought not to (believe that p).

This seems to solve the problem. For it seems plausible to suppose that any proposition you consider, you can believe. Arbitrarily complex true propositions are ruled out simply because you cannot consider such complex propositions, and we are no longer required to believe an infinite number of true propositions since it is only if you consider a true proposition that you ought to believe it.

Nevertheless, Doxastic Ought 1 runs into difficulties when it is applied to blindspot propositions. These propositions are such that it is logically impossible for you to believe them truly: necessarily, if they are true, then you do not believe them, and, necessarily, if you believe them, then they are false. These 'blindspots' (Sorensen 1988) are not truly believable.100 The

99 The suggestion is due to Wedgwood, personal communication.100 We assume that blindspots can be understood, and that they can be believed. According to Engel, blindspots

cannot be understood (Engel 2007: 193; see also this volume: footnote 17). Unfortunately, he does not explain why he thinks that these sentences cannot be understood. On the face of it, this is a very odd thing to say, since if we did not understand these sentences, we could hardly classify them as expressing blindspots in the first place. In general, if you do not understand a (descriptive) sentence, you do not understand which proposition it expresses. So, how can we, including Engel, see that they express blindspots? Furthermore, it seems very doubtful that it is impossible for a person to believe a true blindspot. Suppose that you are a radical sceptic and you are considering the true proposition that you have never and will never have any beliefs. The mere fact that it is true does not prevent it from being falsifiable by you any more than the mere fact that it is true that you have never and will never smoke prevents you from ever having a smoke. By believing the proposition that you have never and will never have any beliefs, you would falsify it and thus

example we used in our previous paper was the proposition that it is raining and nobody believes that it is raining. If you believe the proposition that it is raining and nobody believes that it is raining, then you believe that it is raining, and it follows that the proposition that it is raining and nobody believes that it is raining is false. Furthermore, if the proposition that it is raining and nobody believes that it is raining is true, then it follows that you do not believe it.

The blindspot problem for the doxastic normativist is generated in the following way. Suppose that you consider a true blindspot proposition p. Doxastic Ought 1 entails that you ought to believe p. However, if you were to believe p, then p would be false, and Doxastic Ought 1 would say that it is not the case that you ought to believe p. The problem here is not that the proposition cannot be believed, but that the obligation to believe p cannot be satisfied. So this is not a violation of the principle that 'ought' implies 'can'. Rather, it is a violation of the principle that 'ought' implies 'can satisfy, which says that if you ought to believe that p, then it is logically possible for you to dis- charge or satisfy this ought. Or, more generally:

'Ought' implies 'can satisfy'If you ought to A, then it is logically possible for you to A while its being true that youought to A.

Now, the principle that 'ought' implies 'can satisfy' seems as plausible as the principle that 'ought' implies 'can'. Just as one cannot have an obligation to do what is impossible to do, one cannot have an obligation that it is impossible to satisfy. Moreover, it is clearly not merely a psychological impossibility to satisfy the obligation to believe a true blindspot, but a logical impossibility. Since 'ought' implies 'can satisfy', Doxastic Ought 1 must be false.

Perhaps these peculiar blindspots can be accommodated by making the following obvious change to the principle:

Doxastic Ought2: Ifyou consider p, and p is truly believable, then: ifp is true, you ought to (believe that p) and ifp is false, you ought not to (believe that p).10

Doxastic Ought 2 does not imply that you ought to believe a blindspot, even when that proposition is true. However, Doxastic Ought 2 is nevertheless too weak, for it tells you absolutely

give up your radical scepticism. Of course, this is not to say that your believing that you have no beliefs would be rational, but that is another issue.

Jonas Olson (in personal conversation) has suggested a version of this principle that avoids the blindspot problem. Space limitations prevent us from getting into the nitty-gritty of this view, but, very roughly, the idea is to qualify the truth-norm so that it only applies to situations in which the considered propositions are truly believable both separately and in conjunction. Since it is raining and no one believes that it is raining are not truly believable in conjunction, this principle cannot be applied to the blindspot case and the problem is solved, or rather avoided. However, this principle has problems with 'commissive' Moorean proposition, e.g., that it is raining and you believe that it is not raining. This proposition, unlike its 'omissive' cousin, is truly believable and thus not a blindspot, assuming that it is possible to have contradictory beliefs. When you are considering the proposition that it is raining and you believe that it is not raining, you are also considering the proposition that it is raining and the proposition that you believe that it is not raining. Now, each proposition is true and truly believable on its own, and, by hypothesis, true and truly believable in conjunction. Hence, Olson's principle will tell you that you ought to believe that it is raining and you believe that it is not raining. However, if you were to satisfy this obligation (believe the proposition while it is still true and thus something you ought to believe), you would, unavoidably, have contradictory beliefs: you would both believe that it is raining and believe that it is not raining. It is odd that satisfying a truth-norm should sometimes require us to have contradictory beliefs, beliefs that cannot be true together. Ragnar Francen Olinder (2012) has formulated a truth-norm that seems to be able to deal with commissive Moorean propositions, but he admits that he would have to deny that correct beliefs are always beliefs one ought to have (or be permitted to have). It is therefore unclear how 'correct' can still be seen as normative notion on this account.

nothing about what you ought to do when faced with these peculiar propositions. Doxastic Ought 2 does not tell you that you ought not to believe the blindspot. Yet, intuitively, this is precisely the right response to such a proposition: you should not believe it even if it is true. More exactly:

Doxastic Ought Not: If you consider p, and p is not truly believable, then you ought not to (believe that p).

But Doxastic Ought Not cannot be added without coming into conflict with Doxastic Ought 2. The conflict arises because some considered and true propositions that are not truly believable consist of conjuncts each of which is considered and truly believable. For instance, the proposition that it is raining and nobody believes that it is raining is a clear example of such a proposition. Suppose that you consider this proposition and suppose that it is true. Given that the proposition is not truly believable, it follows from Doxastic Ought Not that you ought not to believe that it is raining and nobody believes that it is raining. However, if you consider a conjunction, you must in so doing consider each of the conjuncts. By hypothesis, the conjunction is true, which implies that each of the conjuncts is true—and although the conjunction may not be truly believable, each conjunct is. Given that you have considered each conjunct and given that each conjunct is both true and truly believable, it follows from Doxastic Ought 2 that you ought to believe that it is raining and that you ought to believe that nobody believes that it is raining.101 But by Doxastic Ought Not, you ought not to believe that it is raining and nobody believes that it is raining.102This is a violation of this principle (assuming that ought-not implies not-ought):

AgglomerationIf you ought to (believe that p) and you ought to (believe that q), then you ought to (believethat p and q).

This principle has some intuitive pull, even though it is not entirely uncontroversial (for instance, in the face of lottery and preface paradoxes). However, many of those who defend the normativity of belief have reason to accept this principle, since they also defend the normativity of content (e.g. Boghossian 1989, 2003; Wedgwood 2002, 2007a, 2007b; Gibbard 2003, 2005). If content is

101 Ralph Wedgwood and Benjamin Curtis have (independently) suggested the following: if you consider, at t, the true propositionp, then, from a plausible temporally explicit version of Doxastic Ought 2, it will follow that you ought, at t, to believe p. If you consider a little later at t+1 the true proposition that you do not believe thatp, from this version of Doxastic Ought 2 it will follow that you ought, at t+1, to believe that you don't believe that p. But then there is no synchronic conflict because the oughts are now indexed to different times. That is, Doxastic Ought 2 does not imply that, at the very same time, you ought to believe thatp and you ought to believe that you don't believe that p. This argument assumes that once you are considering the second conjunct that you don't believe that p you have stopped considering the first conjunct p. This is not true in general, especially if the conjunction is short and simple. Indeed, if you are considering both conjuncts in the context of considering the conjunction, and you do not form a doxastic attitude towards either conjunct prior to forming a doxastic attitude towards the conjunction, then the time intervals during which you consider each conjunct overlap, and we are back to the original problem.

102 Some people have objected that the blindspot problem is generated by ignoring crucial temporal indices (we've heard versions of this objection from Ofra Magidor, John Hawthorne, and Antony Eagle). Consider the blindspot proposition 'p and nobody believes that p at t\ where we have now made explicit the moment at which the belief is absent. There is no problem in truly believing now that (p and nobody believes thatp at t), if the present moment is different from t. Of course, the proposition is not truly believable, if t = the present moment. But then it is simply not believable. However, there are propositions that are believable and yet not truly believable at the time they are considered. For example, take any true proposition of the form 'p and, during the period t -1*, nobody believes thatp' which are considered at a time strictly within the period t - t*. At the time you are considering this proposition nothing prevents you from believing it. In order to avoid clutter, we will drop the time indices, and assume that the blindspots are considered at times at which they are also believable.

constituted by norms, it is plausible that Agglomeration will be constitutive of the ordinary concept of conjunction, since Agglomeration seems to be a good candidate for a normativized version of the introduction rule for conjunction.

Furthermore, no matter whether or not Agglomeration is accepted, the normativist is forced to accept the existence of doxastic dilemmas of a certain kind. Suppose again that it is raining and that you are considering the proposition that it is raining, a proposition no one believes. Given the truth of this proposition and Doxastic Ought 2, you ought to believe that it is raining. Similarly, given Doxastic Ought 2 and the fact that no one believes that it is raining, you ought to believe that no one believes it is raining. However, if you satisfy the first obligation—to believe that it is raining—then, given Doxastic Ought 2 and the fact that you now believe that it is raining, it is not true that you ought to believe that no one believes that it is raining, for in the situation in which you satisfy the first obligation, the proposition that no one believes that it is raining is false. That is, even though each obligation is satisfiable separately, and therefore conforms to the principle that 'ought' implies 'can satisfy, they are not jointly satisfiable. Crucially, in this case, necessarily, if you believe all the things you ought to believe, you end up in a situation in which you believe something (viz. that no one believes that it is raining) that it is not true that you ought to believe in that situation.103

4. Permission instead of oughtWe have often encountered the suggestion that the normativist should retreat to the notion of permissibility (e.g. Whiting 2010). Instead of saying that correct implies ought, they claim that correct implies may. If you judge that it is correct to believe that p if and only if p is true, it follows that you judge that you are permitted to believe that p if and only ifp is true. That is,

Doxastic Permission 1: If you consider p, then you are permitted to (believe that p) if andonly ifp is true.

By weakening the principle in this way, it avoids the implication that you ought to believe true blindspots, since Doxastic Permission 1 only tells you that you are permitted to believe true blindspots, and this is compatible with your being permitted to disbelieve them. However, Doxastic Permission 1 still has counterintuitive consequences in the blindspot case. Suppose that

103 Podlaskowski (2010) has recently argued that the blindspot problem can be avoided by qualifying Agglomeration so that it only applies to situations in which all considered propositions are truly believable both taken separately as well as in conjunction. We cannot then move from 'I ought to believe that it is raining' and 'I ought to believe that no one believes that it is raining' to 'I ought to believe that it is raining and no one believes that it is raining', since 'it is raining' and 'no one believes that it is raining' are not truly believable in conjunction. We think that this reply shows that Podlaskowski has misunderstood our argument. As we explicitly say, unrestricted agglomeration is somewhat controversial, and that is why we provide a different argument in our paper that does not rely on this principle. As pointed out above, we argue that the problem is that if I ought to believe that it is raining and I ought to believe that no one believes that it is raining, then these obligations are not jointly satisfiable. For if we believe all the things we ought to do, we end up believing impermissibly. Podlaskowski does mention this alternative argument briefly in a footnote, but goes on to say that this is perhaps something we can live with, since it is the same predicament anyone who accepts Kyberg's solution to the lottery paradox will find herself in. We don't think this is the same predicament. In Kyburg's case, it is perfectly possible to satisfy all doxastic obligations without having an impermissible belief, namely by believing of each lottery ticket that it will not win. Of course, the beliefs will then be jointly inconsistent, but Kyburg thought it was permissible to have jointly inconsistent beliefs. Furthermore, the Preface paradox provides further reason to think that it might be permissible to have jointly inconsistent beliefs.

the proposition that it is raining and nobody believes that it is raining is true. Then Doxastic Permission 1 tells you that you are permitted to believe this proposition. But if it were false, Doxastic Permission 1 would tell you that you are forbidden to believe it. Thus, if you were to believe that it is raining and nobody believes that it is raining, which Doxastic Permission 1 implies that you are permitted to

do, you would believe a falsehood, which Doxastic Permission 1 implies you are forbidden to do. So what we have here is a permission which, if acted upon, would unavoidably change into a prohibition. And this seems fishy. Here's a vivid illustration of the fishiness: imagine you went to a (fish!) restaurant that offers an all-you-can-eat buffet. You pay, and tuck in, but as you do, the waiters come running and explain that you are permitted to eat as much as you want only if you do not eat as much as you want, whereas if you do eat as much as you want, you are forbidden to do so.

A further refinement of Doxastic Permission 1 has been suggested by Wedgwood1 4 and others, which avoids this problem:

Doxastic Permission 2: If you consider p and p is truly believable, you are permitted to(believe that p) if and only ifp is true.

Doxastic Permission 2 does not tell you that you are permitted to believe that it is raining and nobody believes that it is raining, because the principle only applies to truly believable cases. It tells you that you are permitted to believe that it is raining, and permitted to believe that nobody believes that it is raining. But this seems fine, because it is uncontroversial to claim that, in general, if you are permitted to believe that p and permitted to believe that q, you are permitted to believe that p and q.

However, the normativist who accepts Doxastic Permission 2 cannot also say that it is impermissible to refrain from believing p when p is true. If he did, he would have to say that believing what is true is not just permissible but something that ought to be done. So, either the normativist has an incomplete theory, which says nothing about whether you ought to believe truths, or it says that it is permissible to refrain from believing truths. But if the normativist chooses the latter, he will have given up the idea that belief aims at truth. Rather the idea is now that belief aims at the avoidance of falsity. Indeed, one can comply with this version of the truth-norm by simply never having any beliefs. Hence, this does not capture Wedgwood's and other normativists' suggestion that there is a unique doxastic attitude which you ought to have to any given proposition that you consider.

Whiting acknowledges that, strictly speaking, the 'belief aims at truth' slogan has been dumped, but he tries to sweeten the pill by pointing out that the idea that belief aims to avoid falsity is a 'closely related intuition', for 'to say that beliefs aim only at the truth . . . is another way of saying that it aims to avoid falsity (Whiting 2010: 217). Whiting suggests that the change of slogans is not so drastic after all. It is just a change from 'belief aims at truth' to 'belief aims only at truth'.

However, this small change comes at a significant cost: the explanatory fundamentality of the norm of truth. Doxastic Permission 2 does not explain other evidential and inferential norms, such as that you ought to proportion your belief to the evidence, or that you ought to believe the obvious logical consequences of your beliefs. For instance, consider the norm that tells you to proportion your belief to the evidence.DoxasticPermission 2 does not explain this norm, because proportioning your belief to the evidence is not the best way to satisfy Doxastic Permission 2. A policy of forming no beliefs at all would be much better as a means of satisfying this norm. This is because, if you proportion your beliefs to the evidence, you run the risk of forming some false beliefs, which is not permitted, according to Doxastic Permission 2, whereas if you were to adopt the policy of forming no beliefs

at all, you would guarantee that you satisfy this principle. Doxastic Permission 2 could not explain why you ever have positive reason to form a belief.104

It might be argued in response that though Doxastic Permission 2 does not explain evidential norms, there are other norms that apply to belief, which do explain the evidential norms. For instance, if belief is necessary for action, and action is necessary for the satisfaction of desires, then you have a reason to form some beliefs as opposed to forming no beliefs at all. But this is a pragmatic reason for belief—it is not explained by Doxastic Permission 2, nor any other truth-related consideration, but by your desires. If this further pragmatic reason is required to explain why you should proportion your beliefs to the evidence, then Doxastic Permission 2 is not explanatorily fundamental.

Nor, for that matter, can this view rule out normative, pragmatic reasons for belief. Pragmatic reasons for belief are on a par with evidential reasons, since neither stem from the fundamental truth-norm, but from the need to form beliefs for the sake of action. For example, imagine that you are offered $1 million to suspend belief in an obvious tautology, such as either it is raining or it is not. Since it is permissible to suspend belief in either it is raining or it is not, according to Doxastic Permission 2, this principle would not explain why you should not suspend belief in this tautology, despite the chance of receiving a reward. For similar reasons, this principle does not explain why you should believe the obvious logical consequences ofyour beliefs. Since it is permissible to suspend belief in an obvious logical consequence of your beliefs according to Doxastic Permission 2, it cannot explain why you have positive reason to draw obvious conclusions.

It is worth noting that Doxastic Permission 2 will similarly fail to explain the phenomenon of 'transparency', which Shah and Velleman claim is a signal virtue of the normative account of belief. Recall that according to Shah and Velleman, doxastic deliberation is transparent in the following sense: if you deliberate whether to believe that p, your deliberation is transparent to the question whether p is true. Once you have settled the question whether p is true, you have thereby settled the question whether to believe that p. They claim that the explanation of this phenomenon is that Doxastic Correctness is a conceptual truth about belief—it is part of the very concept of belief that the belief that p is correct if and only ifp is true. Ifyou deliberate whether to believe that p, you deploy the concept of belief, and hence can only recognize truth-related considerations as reasons for belief.

This line of explanation has no chance if the normative consequences of Doxastic Correctness are taken to be captured by Doxastic Permission 2. Even if we suppose that Doxastic Permission 2 is a conceptual truth about belief, how could a commitment to the avoidance of false belief explain transparency? Since Doxastic Permission 2 cannot explain why you ever have a positive reason to form a belief, it cannot explain why, if you settle the question whether p is true, you thereby settle the question whether to believe that p. To settle the question whether to believe that p, you need a further reason, over and above the fact that believing that p would be compatible with Doxastic Permission 2, that tips the balance in favour of believing that p over suspending

104 Both Whiting (2010) and Raleigh (2013) seem to be happywith this result. We find this surprising. If the relevant truth-norm cannot even give us reason to form beliefs rather than to withhold beliefs, it is hard to see what all the fuss about the fundamentality of the truth-norm is about.

judgement. This is because, even if you have settled whether p is true, suspending judgement that p is also compatible with Doxastic Permission 2.

5. Truth-norm based on doxastic valuesThe problems generated by the principles we have discussed so far have led some people to consider a very different understanding of the norm that is constitutive of belief. On this approach, the norm is defined in terms of doxastic values. Here is a sketch.105Start by assigning values to beliefs: true beliefs are good, false ones bad, and suspension of belief has some intermediate value.106 Then focus on the propositions a subject considers. Think of all the possible doxastic attitudes the subject can take towards these propositions. Rank these doxastic possibilities according to the overall value of the included attitudes: a true belief rates the possibility a plus, a false one, a minus, and a suspension something in between. For simplicity, assume that a true belief is assigned +1, a false one -1, and a suspension something in between. Finally, define the norms in terms of the ranking of doxastic possibilities:

Doxastic Value Maximization:You ought to have doxastic attitude D towards p iff you consider p and you Dp in all of thehighest-ranked doxastic possibilities (relative to your considered propositions).You are permitted to have doxastic attitude D towards p iff you consider p and you Dp insome of the highest-ranked doxastic possibilities (relative to your considered propositions).

With this simple machinery at hand, we have a solution to the blindspot problem. Take the non-conjunctive blindspots first. Suppose you consider such a proposition p (e.g. the proposition that you have no beliefs), and that it is true (because you are a total sceptic). The possible attitudes you can take towards this proposition are these, assuming that you can affect p's truth-value:

believep (Bp), suspend belief aboutp (Sp), believe ~p, (B~p)

The value-ranking of these doxastic possibilities will then be:

B~p, ~p (+1)

Sp, p (something between +1 and -1)

Bp, ~p (-1)Hence, Doxastic Value Maximization says that you ought to disbelieve the blindspot p. So, the problem is solved for a non-conjunctive blindspot whose truth-value is in your control.

But we can drop this assumption of control and the theory will still provide a solution. If you cannot affect the truth-value ofp, both B~p and Bp would be impossible for you, in which case Sp would be your only remaining option, and we have the result that you ought not to believe that p; more specifically, you ought to suspend belief about p.

105 This is a version of a view we suggested some time ago to Wedgwood, which is similar to the view he discusses in this volume.

106 The main difference between our formulation and Wedgwood's is that whereas we say that true beliefs are good and false beliefs are bad, Wedgwood says that true beliefs are perfectly correct and that false beliefs are maximally incorrect. Our reservations about Wedgwood's formulation have to do with treating 'correct' as a gradable adjective, which we find objectionable (see footnote 5). Unlike 'correct' and 'incorrect', 'good' and 'bad' are gradable adjectives, since we can say things like 'x is good, but y is better', 'x is very good' and so forth.

Now move on to the case of conjunctive blindspots in which each conjunct is a truly believable proposition. Take the proposition that p and you do not believe p (p and ~Bp). Suppose that you cannot affect the truth-value of p (perhaps it is about the past, or a logical truth) but that you can affect the truth-value of ~Bp. If you consider this proposition, then you consider each conjunct. So the set of considered propositions are

p and ~Bp,p, ~Bp.

The best doxastic possibility involving these propositions will then include:

B~(p and ~Bp), Bp, p, B —Bp (i.e., BBp).Since this is the only possibility that will contain only true beliefs (assuming that the truth-value of p is fixed), changing any of these beliefs to a suspension or a disbelief would only lower the total value. So, we have the result that you ought B~(p and ~Bp), you ought (Bp), and you ought (BBp). So, again, the blindspot is something you ought to disbelieve, and this ought judgement is perfectly consistent with the fact that you ought (Bp) and you ought (BBp).

In fact, we can drop the assumption that the truth-value of p is fixed, and we still have a solution. Ifp's truth-value can be changed, then you would have two possibilities at the top of your ranking:

B~(p and ~Bp), Bp, p, BBpand

B~(p and ~Bp), B~p, ~p, B~BpThe result would then be that you still ought to disbelieve the blindspot, but Bp, and BBp are only permissible for you, not beliefs you ought to have.

If both the truth-value of the blindspot proposition p and ~Bp are fixed, the only remaining possibility for you would be:

S(p and ~Bp), Sp, p, B~Bp Since this possibility is trivially the best one, the result is that you ought to suspend belief about p and you ought to believe ~Bp.

Hence, no matter whether we let the truth-value of the considered propositions be within your control, the result is that you ought not to believe blindspots (either you ought to disbelieve them or you ought to suspend belief about them). So, in either case the blindspot problem seems to be solved.

Everything is not rosy, however. The reason why Doxastic Value Maximization avoids the blindspot problem is because, according to it, the fact that a proposition is true at the actual world, @, does not entail that one ought to, or even may believe it. Indeed, in the case of a blindspot that is true at @, it is impermissible to believe it, according to this theory. However, conversely, the theory implies that, in some cases, you ought to believe a proposition that is false at @, and this implication is counterintuitive. Suppose that you consider a true blindspot of the form p and ~Bp, and that you can only affect its truth-value by changing the truth-value of ~Bp. Then in the best doxastic possibility it holds that B~(p and -Bp), Bp and BBp, and thus you ought to believe Bp. But the proposition that Bp is false at @. So, you ought to believe something that is false. For example, take the blindspot that it is raining and nobody believes that it is raining, where you can only affect its truth-value by changing your doxastic attitudes. In the best possibility you will disbelieve that it is raining and nobody believes that it is raining, believe that it is raining, and

believe that you believe that it is raining. Though this is the best doxastic possibility, by hypothesis, the proposition that you believe that it is raining is false at @. Hence, this view tells you that you ought to believe that you believe that it is raining, even though that proposition is actually false.

What is worse, Doxastic Value Maximization implies that in some cases you not only ought to believe a proposition that is false, but that you ought to believe a falsehood even if it would remain false were you to believe it. Suppose, for instance, that if you were to believe that you believe that it is raining, you would still not believe that it is raining. Since it is true that in the best doxastic possibility you believe that you believe that it is raining, the theory says that you ought to believe that you believe that it is raining. Hence, in this case the theory will not just say that you ought to believe what is false; it will also say that you ought to believe something that would be false, if believed. Moreover, the best doxastic possibility is accessible to you, insofar as it is possible for you to bring it about. So, this implication cannot be ruled out simply by adjusting the accessibility relation on worlds, as Wedgwood suggests in this volume.

Doxastic Value Maximization therefore conflicts with the original idea that 'incorrect' means 'impermissible, since the theory entails that in some situations, you ought to have a belief that is not only false, but that would be false if you were to believe it. If false beliefs are incorrect, then the theory entails that I ought to have an incorrect belief. If 'incorrect' entailed 'impermissible', we would have the absurdity that it can both be obligatory and impermissible to believe that p at t. To make this theory coherent it would have to radically break away from the idea that 'correct belief' is a normative expression because that (roughly) 'a belief I ought to have' or 'a belief I am permitted to have.

Even if it is modified in this way, it is not clear that Doxastic Value Maximization could be explanatorily fundamental. Since it implies that you ought, in some cases, to have beliefs with contents that are actually false, the standard explanation for evidential norms will no longer apply. Consider the norm that you ought to proportion your belief to the evidence. This norm is not explained by the present theory. This is because evidence that supports the truth of a proposition, p, is evidence that speaks in favour of the actual truth of p, and evidence against p is evidence that speaks in favour of the actual falsity of p. This means that if you acquire some evidence that p is actually false, this does not give you reason, according to the present theory, to disbelieve that p, for p's actual falsehood is compatible with your being obligated to believe that p. Similarly, if you acquire evidence that p is actually true, this does not give you reason to believe that p, since p's actual truth is compatible with your being forbidden to believe that p.

Thus, although Doxastic Value Maximization can solve the blindspot problem, it has counterintuitive consequences, and cannot be explanatorily fundamental.

6. Correctness as goodnessTo avoid the incoherence threat, Doxastic Value Maximization could be revised so that instead of saying that 'incorrect belief' is normative because it means 'belief one should not have', it could say that 'incorrect belief' is evaluative because it means 'belief that is bad. More exactly, to say

that a belief is incorrect is to say that it is bad, to say that it is correct is to say that is good.107

Can 'correct belief' be understood as 'good belief'? Well, correctness can hardly be seen as a kind of goodness for the simple reason that whereas goodness can come in degrees, correctness cannot. Nothing can be more or less correct than something else. Nor can anything be more or less incorrect than something else: 'correct' is not a gradable adjective, whereas 'good' clearly is. There are a number of tests for gradability of adjectives, involving the appropriateness of adding comparative morphemes (more, less, as), sufficiency morphemes (too, enough, so), or intensifiers (very, quite, rather). The evidence from these tests for treating 'incorrect' as gradable is poor. The following sentences sound odd:

(a) p-ing is incorrect, but p-ing is more incorrect(b) p-ing is incorrect enough(c) p-ing is very incorrect

Compare with a standard gradable adjective, such as 'expensive':108 (d) x is more expensive thany

(e) x is expensive enough(f) x is very expensive

Whereas (a) to (c) are solecisms, (d) to (f) sound fine. The same tests suggest that 'good' is a gradable adjective:

(g) x is better thany(h) x is good enough(i) x is very good

This linguistic point reveals that our concepts of correctness and incorrectness are not graded either—we do not think that either correctness or incorrectness comes in degrees. Of course, we can talk about something being closer to being correct, such as an incorrect answer that was not too far off the mark. But it is a mistake to think that this shows that incorrectness itself comes in degrees.

Of course, that true beliefs are good could be seen as a substantive value judgement rather than as a judgement that is true because of the very nature of belief. In the same way we ascribe intrinsic or final value to pleasure, knowledge, and friendship, we could ascribe intrinsic or final value to correct beliefs. But this is far from what the doxastic normativist is claiming. The idea is not that beliefs are normative or evaluative in the way that pleasure is normative or evaluative. The idea is rather that a proper understanding of the nature of beliefs requires the knowledge of specifically doxastic norms or values. Furthermore, to say that true belief is good in the same way as pleasure is good would be to put forward a very controversial axiology to say the least. Why should we think that a true belief is good in itself, no matter whether it is a belief about the number of hairs on my head or about the fundamental laws of nature? Why should we think that a true belief is good in itself even if it is evidentially baseless?

It is also worth noting that replacing the claim that beliefs are normative with the claim that beliefs are evaluative does not necessarily avoid all variance problems. Suppose that the

107 This view is defended in Karlander (2008).108 For more on gradable adjectives, see Kennedy (1999).

'correctness is goodness' idea is spelled out as follows:

Doxastic Value: Your believing that p is good iffp is true.Your believing that p is bad iffp is false.

Suppose further that what is assigned value here is the abstract state of affairs consist- ing of a person believing a proposition. This generates problems of evaluative variance. For suppose that p is a blindspot and I do not believe that p. Then Doxastic Value entails that the state of affairs that I believe that p is good (because p is true). However, if this state of affairs were to obtain, then Doxastic Value would deem it no longer to be good, since it would then be false and thus bad. So, the state of affairs of believing a blindspot is good only if it does not obtain. This is an especially troublesome case of evaluative variance, since here it is logically impossible to realize the good state of affairs without thereby making sure that it is bad. These good states of affairs are not just necessarily evasive; they are necessarily bad if they obtain. But this would make them poor candidates for being good states of affairs, since they can no longer play the essential role of a good state of affairs, which is to rate the world a plus—to make it better in one respect—by obtaining in the world. Indeed, these good states of affairs would instead play the role of a bad state of affairs, since they would make the world worse by obtaining.

The same point can be made if we focus on belief-type evaluations rather than state of affairs evaluations.

Doxastic Value 1: It is good for you to believe that p iffp is true. It is bad for you to believethat p iff p is false.

Ifp isa blindspot, the state or act of believing p is good only if it is not performed. Were it performed, then it would unavoidably be bad. Again, we have an unacceptable form of evaluative variance. For the essential role of a good act-type is to rate an act-token a plus—to make the act-token better in one respect—by being a type to which the token belongs.

So, we need to change the evaluative principles. A natural way out of this problem would be to say that what we have are not beliefs but beliefs' being true. More exactly,

Doxastic Value 2: Your beliefthat p being true is good (equivalently, the state of affairsthat S believes p and p is good). Your belief that p being false is bad (equivalently, the stateof affairs that S believes p and ~p is bad).

What is assigned value here is no longer a belief-type or the state of affairs that someone believes something but the state of affairs that a certain belief is true (or false). Evaluative variance is avoided by including the value relevant property of being true (or false) in the value bearer.

The trouble with this theory is that it is not metaphysically fundamental, because these value assignments do not distinguish belief from other propositional attitudes. Belief is not the only mental state such that it is good that S has this mental state towards p and p is true. Consider other popular candidates:

Desire: It is good that you desire p, and p is true.Pleasure: It is good that you take pleasure in p, and p is true.Promise: It is good that you promise p, and p is true.

They all have the form 'It is good that you A thatp, and p is true'. So we cannot saythat belief is the only mental state that would be a true substitution for A in this schema.

One reply is to say that even if other mental states satisfy this general schema only belief does so in virtue of the nature of being a belief. For example, even if Desire is true, it is doubtful that it is true in virtue of the nature of desire. Rather Desire is a substantive evaluative claim. This reply is not sufficient. Arguably, if any of Desire, Pleasure, or Promise is true, then it would be a necessary truth. Suppose Desire is such a truth. One could then just as reasonably maintain that a full understanding of the nature or essence of desire requires the knowledge of its necessary evaluative properties as well as its necessary non-evaluative ones. If so, Desire is part of what is needed to fully understand the nature or essence of desires.

A more important point is that by changing the scope of goodness from the belief that p to the conjunction of the belief that p and the proposition that p, we seem to give up on the idea that 'correct' means 'good'. The initial thought that normativists needed to make precise was that true beliefs are correct and false beliefs are incorrect. On this view, it is the belief that p that is correct, not the conjunction of the belief that p and the proposition that p.

7. Concluding remarksWe started with the slogan that belief aims at truth, and the thought that, for belief correctness is truth, and incorrectness, falsity. The principle formulated in terms of correctness, we argued, is not in itself normative. When we considered normative statements about truth, we found that all of the plausible contenders faced difficulties. More exactly, we have seen that the main normative or evaluative readings of the slogans will all have implausible normative or evaluative consequences, or will fail to be either metaphysically or explanatorily fundamental. The prospects of finding a reading of the slogans that are normative and metaphysically as well as explanatorily fundamental look bleak.

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7The Right Thing to Believe

Ralph Wedgwood

i. The'aim'ofbeliefMany philosophers have claimed that 'belief aims at the truth'.109 Indeed, this claim is often taken to express a necessary truth, which forms part of the essence of belief itself. As it is sometimes said, truth is the 'constitutive aim' of belief. According to this view, the way in which belief 'aims at the truth' is one of the distinguishing marks of belief. Thus, for example, some philosophers have suggested that one of the essential features that distinguish beliefs from intentions is that beliefs aim at being true of the world, while intentions aim at making the world true of them.110

However, this claim is hardly true in the everyday sense of 'aim': beliefs are not little archers armed with bows and arrows; they do not literally 'aim' at anything. At best, it is believers that aim at this or that. But it is far from clear that believers have any aim at all concerning most of their beliefs. Some beliefs may be held as a result of a deliberate quest for the truth. But many beliefs (including most of our perceptual beliefs about our immediate environment, and our introspective beliefs, like my belief that I am currently in pain) seem to arise in us unbidden, without any aiming on our part at all.

In what sense then is it true to claim that beliefs essentially aim at the truth? What insight might philosophers be gesturing at when they make this claim? In some of my earlier work (Wedgwood 2002), I have defended a normative interpretation of this claim. According to this interpretation, the claim expresses a normative principle about belief: in effect, it is the claim that belief is subject to a truth-norm.

In the rest of this chapter, I shall explain more precisely what this claim amounts to; I shall also explain how this claim can be developed so that it applies to partial beliefs as well as to flat-out full beliefs. Then I shall analyse and respond to an objection that has been raised against the claim that belief is subject to a truth-norm of this sort by Krister Bykvist and Anandi Hattiangadi (2007). As we shall see, responding to this objection will involve careful reflection on the structure of normative concepts, and on how these normative concepts apply to belief.

109 See e.g. Platts (1979: 257); and compare Wiggins (1989: 147) and Dummett (1993: 42-52).110 See Anscombe (1957: 56) and Humberstone (1992).

2. Correct and incorrect beliefsWhat is the normative interpretation of the slogan that 'belief aims at the truth'? There are many different normative concepts that apply to belief: that is, there are many concepts applying to belief that are—in ways that we shall explore later—essentially connected to the concepts that are expressed by paradigmatic normative words like 'ought'. For each of these normative concepts, there are general principles that specify the conditions under which beliefs satisfy this normative concept. In this sense, there are many norms applying to belief.

Among these general norms that apply to belief, there may be some that form part of the very nature or essence of belief; if there are any such norms, they could be called the essential or constitutive norms of belief. Among these constitutive norms, there may be one that counts as the most fundamental constitutive norm. This norm would be the most fundamental in the sense that it plays a crucial role in the explanation of all the other constitutive norms of belief—while none of the other constitutive norms plays such a crucial role in these explanations.

I propose to use the term 'correct' in the following way. To say that a belief is 'correct' is to say that the belief satisfies this most fundamental of all the essential or constitutive norms that apply to beliefs; and in general to say that an attitude is 'correct' is to say that it satisfies the most fundamental norm that applies to attitudes of that type. So, on this interpretation, the slogan that 'belief aims at truth' is the claim that the most fundamental of the constitutive norms applying to beliefs is the principle that (to put it roughly) a belief is correct if and only if the proposition believed is true?

It is not too hard to see, at least in outline, how this fundamental truth-norm might explain the other constitutive norms of belief. For example, it seems plausible that the notion of a rational belief is also a normative concept: that is, to say that it is irrational for you to hold a certain belief at a certain time is to say that you in a certain sense ought not to hold that belief. It may also be plausible that the principles that articulate the conditions under which beliefs count as rational form part of the essential nature of belief, helping to distinguish belief from other kinds of mental states. So, on these assumptions, the norms of rational belief are also among the constitutive norms of belief. But it may also be that the norms of rational belief are in some way explained by the more fundamental truth-norm that applies to belief.

It may be that one of the requirements of rationality applying to belief is that the propositions that form the contents of one's beliefs should all be consistent with each other. But why should rationality require consistency in this way? What is bad about having inconsistent beliefs? The explanation may have to appeal to the more fundamental truth-norm that applies to belief. Perhaps, rationality requires consistency because if the contents of one's beliefs are not consistent, they cannot all be true— thereby guaranteeing that some of one's beliefs are incorrect. This sort of explanation may be capable of being generalized to all the other requirements of rationality that apply to belief. If so, then it seems plausible that the truth-norm really is the most fundamental of the constitutive norms that apply to belief.

3. Degrees of incorrectnessIn fact, however, I have so far given only a very rough specification of this fundamental truth-norm: this specification will have to be made more precise in various ways. In particular, it is a fundamental fact about belief that beliefs come in degrees: we hold some beliefs with greater confidence than others. Our account of this truth-norm must somehow accommodate this fact.

The best way to do this, I suggest, is to recognize that a belief may deviate or fall short of perfect correctness to a greater or lesser degree—or as I shall put it for short, there are degrees of incorrectness. That is, even if two beliefs are neither of them perfectly correct, one of these beliefs may be more incorrect than the other.111

So a more refined version of this fundamental truth-norm would imply that if a belief is held with maximum confidence, it is perfectly correct if and only if the proposition believed is true. The natural way to extend this principle to beliefs that are not held with maximum confidence would be to say the following: (i) if the proposition believed is false, then the greater the confidence with which you believe that proposition, the more incorrect your belief is; and (ii) if the proposition believed is true, then the greater the confidence with which you believe that proposition, the less incorrect your belief is.112

On this conception, then, this fundamental truth-norm only compares different kinds of belief—that is, different kinds of doxastic or credal attitude—that the believer might have towards a given proposition p, comparing these attitudes with respect to the degree of incorrectness that they have. So this norm does not compare the state of having some doxastic attitude towards p with the feature of having no doxastic attitude at all towards p. Even a stone or a prime number has the feature of having no doxastic attitude at all towards this proposition p, but there is nothing 'incorrect' or 'wrong' or 'mistaken' about the stone's or the prime number's having this feature.

Still, in understanding this fundamental norm, we should understand the notion of a 'doxastic attitude' broadly. For example, in addition to the state of believing a proposition p, and the state of having some particular level of confidence in p, there may also be a state of disbelieving p; presumably, the state of disbelieving p is correct if and only if p, the proposition disbelieved, is false.

Moreover, whenever a thinker considers a proposition p, the thinker automatically has what at least in a broad sense counts as a 'doxastic attitude' towards p. In other words, as soon as you have considered a proposition, you cannot escape having some doxastic attitude towards it. Presumably, if you consider a proposition p and neither believe nor disbelieve p, then your doxastic attitude towards p cannot be perfectly correct—since among the possible doxastic attitudes towards p that you might have, the perfectly correct attitude would be to have either maximum belief in p when p is true or maximum disbelief in p when p is false.

Equally, if you consider a proposition p, and neither believe nor disbelieve p, your doxastic attitude towards p cannot be maximally incorrect either—since the maximally incorrect attitude to have towards p would be either to believe p when p is false or to disbelieve p when p is true.

111 Arguably, the statement that one belief is 'more incorrect' than another is not really correct English. So, for our purposes, it should be taken as an abbreviation of an idiomatic but more cumbersome statement, such as the statement that the first belief 'deviates from perfect correctness to a greater extent' than the second.

112 This idea has been developed in most detail by the formal epistemologists who have devised 'scoring rules' that give a score to sets of partial credences based on their 'closeness to the truth'; see especially Joyce (1998).

Instead, if you consider p and neither believe nor disbelieve p, your doxastic attitude towards p must have an intermediate level of correctness—somewhere between the perfect correctness of getting ps truth-value exactly right and the maximal incorrectness of getting ps truth-value totally wrong.

Here is a more precise model that could capture this idea. Suppose that your belief-system can be represented by a set of precise real-valued credence functions. (These credence functions may have to be partial functions, to allow for 'gaps'—that is, for the propositions towards which you have absolutely no attitude at all.) For every proposition p, let v(p) be the truth-value of p: so v(p) = 1 if p is true, and v(p) = o if p is false. Then the Brier score of your credence Cr(p) in p is the square of the distance between this credence and the truth-value—that is, |v(p) - Cr(p)|2.

According to this model, your doxastic attitude towards a proposition p receives an 'incorrectness-score' corresponding to the average Brier-score of the credences that can represent that attitude.113 So, for example, this model has the following implications:

r. Maximum belief in p when p is true, and maximum disbeliefin p whenp is false, both get the perfect 'incorrectness score' of o (that is, they are not incorrect at all).

2. Maximum belief in p whenp is false, and maximum disbeliefin p whenp is true, both get the worst possible 'incorrectness score' of 1 (that is, they are totally incorrect).

3. Consideringp but having no definite belieftowardsp is in a sense the most indeterminate possible attitude that you can have towards p, which can be represented by means of the set that includes all possible credences between 0 and 1 in p; regardless of whether p is true or false, this attitude will always get the intermediate 'incorrectness score' of 1/3 (that is, the average value of x2 for all real numbers between 0 and 1).

Much further work will have to be carried out to investigate which features of this model reflect the real nature of these degrees of incorrectness, and which are merely artefacts of the mathematical machinery that has been employed. For our purposes, however, it is enough that we have made it clear that there is no difficulty in extending the general idea of this fundamental truth-norm to all these different kinds of belief.

In the rest of this paper, I shall evaluate the claim that belief is subject to a fundamental truth-norm of this sort. Given my interpretation of what it is for a norm to be 'fundamental' in the relevant sense, a complete defence of this claim would require arguing that this truth-norm really is the fundamental norm applying to belief, by showing how this norm can explain all the other constitutive norms that apply to beliefs. I shall not attempt to give such a complete defence of this claim here.1141 shall simply respond to the objection that has been raised against this claim by Bykvist and Hattiangadi (2007). The response to this objection will help us to achieve a better understanding of these normative concepts of 'correct' and 'incorrect' beliefs.

4. Bykvist and Hattiangadi's objectionBykvist and Hattiangadi focus on my claim that the fundamental norm applying to belief is the principle that a belief in a proposition p is correct if and only if that proposition p is true. They

113 For a discussion of the Brier score, see especially Joyce (2009).114 For some first steps towards providing such a defence, see Wedgwood (2011).

say that if my use of the term 'correct' is a genuinely normative use (as I say it is), then this norm must entail a principle that can expressed using paradigmatically normative terms like 'ought'.

According to my suggested interpretation of the truth-norm, there need be nothing incorrect about simply having no attitude whatsoever towards a proposition—such as a proposition that you have never even considered. However, when you do consider a proposition p, then you cannot escape having some doxastic attitude towards p, and that attitude will fall short of being perfectly correct unless it is an attitude of believing p while p is true or an attitude of disbelieving p while p is false.

This is why Bykvist and Hattiangadi (2007: 280, this volume) suggest that the most plausible way to capture my conception of this fundamental truth-norm by using terms like 'ought' is as follows:

(1) For all S,p: if S considers p, S oughtto (believe p) if and onlyifp is true. Then Bykvist and Hattiangadi point out that there are propositions for which this thesis (1) is clearly false. The propositions in question are Moore-paradoxical propositions—such as the proposition that you might express by uttering a first-personal sentence of the form 'p and I don't believe that p'—for example, 'It is raining and I don't believe that it is raining'.

Suppose that you consider the proposition that you might express by means of this sentence. It is clear that this proposition might very well be true: that is, it might very well be true that it is raining and you do not believe that it is raining. Nonetheless, it seems that it is not true that you ought to believe this proposition. At least given the assumption that belief distributes over conjunction (so that ifyou believe 'p & q, you also believe p), this proposition cannot be both true and believed. So if you believe this proposition, you thereby believe something false; and if believing something false is always wrong or incorrect, then believing this proposition will be wrong or incorrect. So, if there is any sense of the term 'ought' that captures the idea that we ought not to have beliefs that are wrong or incorrect in this way, it seems that it cannot be true in this sense that you ought to believe this Moore-paradoxical proposition—even though the proposition is true, and you are considering it. So it seems that this thesis (1) cannot be true.

A proponent of this principle (1) might try weakening it to the following:

(2) For all S, p: if S considers p, and it is possible for S to believe p at the same time as p is true, then S ought to (believe p) if and only ifp is true.

As Bykvist and Hattiangadi (2007: 282) point out, however, this principle is too weak, at least for my purposes. The fundamental truth-norm applying to belief is meant to play a basic role in explaining all of the other normative truths that apply to beliefs as such. But (2) seems incapable of explaining what attitudes we should have towards propositions that cannot be both true and believed (like Moore-paradoxical propositions of the form 'p and I don't believe that p'). As Bykvist and Hattiangadi note (2007: 282), it seems intuitively plausible that there is such a thing as 'the right response' to any such Moore- paradoxical proposition: 'you should not believe it even if it is true'. But as they explain, (2) 'cannot capture this. Bykvist and Hattiangadi conclude that these problems cast doubt on the idea that there is a genuinely normative principle that requires us to believe truths.

The problems raised by Bykvist and Hattiangadi all concern theses that (like (1) and (2)) are formulated by means of words like 'ought. The principle that I wish to defend, however, is

formulated with the word 'correct'. In the rest of this chapter, I shall try to explain how statements about which beliefs are 'correct' are related to statements about what we 'ought' to believe. Once we understand this relation correctly, then we will see that my central principle does not entail any theses that are vulnerable to these problems.

5. Ex post and ex ante normative assessmentsTo understand these normative concepts correctly, we must distinguish two kinds of normative assessments. Specifically, we must distinguish between what I shall call 'ex post' and 'ex ante normative assessments. (This distinction is related to a distinction that has been discussed among ethicists, between 'prospective' and 'retrospective' assessments of actions. But I shall stick with the terminology of 'ex ante' and 'ex post' normative assessments here.)

This distinction,between expost and ex ante normative assessments, is perhaps most familiar in the case of assessments of 'justified' or 'rational' belief. So far as I know, it was Alvin Goldman who first introduced the distinction between ex post and ex ante uses of the term 'justified belief'. This is how Goldman (1979: 21) put it: 'The ex post use occurs when there exists a belief, and we say of that belief that it is (or isn't) justified. The ex ante use occurs when we . . . ignore . . . whether such a belief exists. Here we say of the person . . . that p is (or isn't) suitable for him to believe.' As Goldman explains the distinction, the most important difference between ex post and ex ante uses of 'justified belief' is that the ex post statement 'Your belief in p is justified' entails that you actually believe p, whereas the ex ante statement 'There is justification for you to believe p' does not entail that you actually believe p.

In more recent epistemological discussions, this distinction has come to be expressed by means ofthe distinction between 'doxastic' and 'prepositional' justification—where 'doxastic justification' is picked out by what Goldman originally called the 'ex post use of "justified" and 'prepositional justification' is picked out by what Goldman called the 'ex ante use of "justified" '.115 However, this distinction is by no means restricted to justified belief: it is clear that the very same distinction can be drawn with respect to rational action as well. We can make an ex post statement, of the form 'As 9-ing is rational', which entails that A actually does 9; and we can also make an ex ante statement, of the form 'It is rational for A to 9', which does not entail that A actually does 9—only that 9-ing is, in the relevant way, a suitable thing for A to do.

Moreover, this distinction is also not restricted to assessments of justification or rationality. We can distinguish between the ex ante (or prospective) assessment 'It is right for you to 9' and the ex post (or retrospective) assessment 'Your act of 9-ing is right'. The latter ex post assessment entails that you actually do 9, while the former ex ante assessment does not. So this distinction appears everywhere throughout the normative domain.

Now, the term 'ought' seems always to express an ex ante assessment. Deontic logi- cians all agree, after all, that the T axiom—'O(p) -> p'—is not a logical truth for any normal kind of 'ought'. Indeed, 'ought' seems particularly closely related to the ex ante uses of terms like 'right' and 'wrong'. To say that it is (ex ante) not right for a person to 9 seems to come to the same thing as saying that in some corresponding sense of the term, the person ought not to 9. So 'ought'-

115 For a recent discussion of 'prepositional' and 'doxastic' justification, see Turri (2010).

judgements belong with the ex ante or prospective assessments. Nonetheless, even though the proposition that is embedded inside the 'ought'-operator does not

have to be true for the whole 'ought'-statement to be true, many 'ought'-statements refer, at least implicitly, to the situation that some person is in at a certain time. We might say, for example, that in your current actual situation you ought not to believe a given proposition p. This statement concerns a certain class of possibilities—namely, the possibilities that are in some relevant way available from your current actual situation. The point of this statement is to draw attention to a certain favoured subset of those possibilities, and to say that throughout this favoured subset of the relevantly available possibilities, you do not believe p.116 Intuitively, this favoured subset of the available possibilities consists of those possibilities in which the doxastic attitudes that you have towards the propositions that are in question are in the relevant way fitting or appropriate.

A parallel point applies to ex ante statements about what you 'may permissibly believe. 'You may permissibly believe q' is true if and only if there is some available possibility belonging to the relevant favoured subset in which you believe q—that is, an available possibility in which (a) your doxastic attitudes towards the propositions in question are in the relevant way fitting or appropriate, and (b) you believe q.

Presumably, these 'favoured' possibilities, in which your doxastic attitudes towards these propositions really are 'fitting or appropriate' in the relevant way, are possibilities in which a corresponding ex post or retrospective normative assessment is true. Thus, for example, the statement that we have just considered 'You ought not to believe p' is true if and only if you do not believe p in any possibility (within the relevant domain of available possibilities) at which your doxastic attitudes towards the propositions in question are (expost or retrospectively) fitting or appropriate.

As we shall see, this conception of the relationship between ex post and ex ante normative assessments can be used to tease out the implications of my claim about when beliefs count as 'correct' for questions about what we 'ought' to believe, or about what we 'may permissibly' believe.

6. The correctness-related sense of'ought'Let us return now to my claim that the fundamental norm applying to belief is the principle that a belief counts as correct if and only if the proposition believed is true. It seems to me that this principle is best understood as a thesis about when beliefs can be truly described as being ex post or retrospectively 'correct', not as a thesis about when it is ex ante or prospectively right or fitting to believe a proposition.

For the rest of this discussion, I shall simplify matters by ignoring all other kinds of belief other than (a) outright beliefs—that is, beliefs that are held with full confidence—and (b) the kind of attitude that one has towards a proposition p when one considers p but has no definite belief towards p at all. Let us assume that the state of disbelieving a proposition p can simply be identified with the state of having an outright belief in the negation ofp, and that the state of

116 Compare the account of the semantics of'ought' that I gave in my earlier work (Wedgwood 2007: ch.5, section 5.1).

suspending judgement about p can be identified with the state of considering p but having no definite belief towards p. (These assumptions are probably not exactly right, but they should be close enough to the truth for our present purposes.) Otherwise, I shall simply ignore all the other kinds of beliefs or doxastic attitudes that one might have. So, in particular, I shall ignore such doxastic states as partial credences, and the qualitative state of being more confident of one proposition than of another, and the like.

Given these simplifying assumptions, the fundamental norm of correctness applying to beliefs can be summed up as the conjunction of the following three general propositions:

r. The state of having an outright belief inp whenp is true is a perfectly correct belief.2. The state of having an outright belief inp whenp is false is a maximally incorrect

belief.3. The state of suspendingjudgement about p has an intermediate value, somewhere in

between the perfect correctness of believing p when p is true and the extreme incorrectness of believing p when p is false.

Every instance of these three general propositions is an ex post assessment of a doxastic attitude that a thinker actually has towards a specific proposition p. Together, these three propositions specify when such belief-states are perfectly correct, when they are maximally incorrect, and when they have this intermediate level of correctness. Moreover, given our simplifying assumptions, and the assumption of bivalence (that is, the assumption that the proposition p must be either true or false), these three general propositions cover absolutely all doxastic attitudes that the thinker might have towards this proposition p.

Given this principle about which beliefs count as (ex post) correct, we can use the connection that I postulated in the previous section between ex post and ex ante normative assessments to derive conclusions about what propositions we 'ought' to believe, or about what propositions we 'may permissibly' believe. Admittedly, these conclusions will employ a somewhat special use of the terms 'ought' and 'may'—specifically, a sense that we could call the 'correctness-related' sense; but it seems that it is perfectly possible to use the terms 'ought' and 'may' in this sense.

According to the connection that I postulated between ex post and ex ante normative assessments, a statement of the form 'You may permissibly 9' is true if and only if there is some 'relevantly available possibility' in which you 9 and the relevant ex post assessments of fittingness or appropriateness are true. So to make use of this connection, we need to identify the relevant domain of 'possibilities' that count as 'available' from the situation that you are in at the relevant time t.

There seems to be no reason why there should not be several different concepts of 'availability', each of which might be relevant in some contexts where the term 'ought' is used; these different concepts of 'availability' correspond to a range of different concepts that could be expressed by 'ought' in these contexts. But to fix ideas, I shall identify a particular concept of availability, which seems to yield intuitively plausible truth-conditions for this use of 'ought.

The keypoint for this concept of the possibilities that are 'available' to you at a certain time t is that at this time t, you have certain capacities for thinking and reasoning in various ways, and certain opportunities for exercising those capacities. The relevantly available possibilities are those that are available to you through the way in which you avail yourself of these opportunities for

exercising these capacities at t.So, for every way W of exercising these capacities such that you have an opportunity for

exercising these capacities in way W at t, there is an available possibility in which you exercise your capacities in that way W at t. In addition, for each of these ways of exercising your capacities W, and each proposition p such that it is true in the actual world that if you were to exercise your capacities in way W, p would be true, all the available possibilities in which you exercise your capacities in way W must also be possibilities in which p is true. In general, a possibility is 'relevantly available' if and only if there is a way of reasoning or thinking open to you at t such that, if you were to think in that way at t, that possibility would be realized. Otherwise, however, all of these possibilities are as much like the actual world as possible. So, in particular, all facts about how your mental life was in the past before t are exactly as they are in the actual world; and all the facts that are causally independent of the way in which you exercise these capacities at t are also exactly as they are in the actual world.117

What is it for one of these 'relevantly available' possibilities to belong to the 'favoured subset' of this domain? I shall suppose that in every context in which we talk about what you 'ought' to believe at a given time (in this correctness-related sense of 'ought'), there are certain propositions that are in question. In many contexts, the 'propositions that are in question' will include all the propositions that you are actually considering at the relevant time, although in some contexts they may include other propositions as well (and there might even be some contexts in which the propositions in question do not include the propositions that you are considering at the time).118

The favoured subset of the domain consists of the possibilities where your doxastic attitudes towards the propositions in question have the lowest degree of incorrectness—that is, they are no more incorrect than the attitudes that you have towards these propositions in any other possibility in this domain.

We can use the model that was sketched in the previous section to measure the degree of incorrectness that your doxastic attitudes towards these propositions have. If your attitude of belief or disbelief towards a proposition is perfectly correct, we can assign that attitude an incorrectness score of 0; if your attitude of belief or disbelief towards a proposition is totally incorrect, we can assign that attitude an incorrectness score of 1; and if your attitude towards a proposition is suspension of judgement, we can assign that attitude the intermediate incorrectness score of 1/3. We can then simply add up the incorrectness scores that you get for each of the propositions that are in question to obtain your overall incorrectness score for those propositions. The favoured subset of the relevantly available possibilities consists of the possibilities in which you get the lowest overall incorrectness score for your doxastic attitudes towards these propositions. That is, a possibility belongs to this favoured subset if and only if there is no other available possibility in

117 Moreover, given my understanding of what it is for a possibility to be 'available, this is true even on a weak interpretation of 'causal independence' according to which a true propositionp is causally independent of how you exercise your capacities if and only if there are no two ways of exercising your capacities W1 and W2 open to you such that if you exercised your capacities in way W1, p would be true, and if you exercised your capacities in way W2, p would not be true.

118 It is important that the 'propositions in question' do not include absolutely all propositions, since otherwise my account would imply that every thinker ought to believe all truths. Still, there may be contexts in which it is true to say, of some propositionp that you have not actually considered, 'You ought to believe p'; so in these contexts, the 'propositions that are in question' must include p even though you have not actually considered p.

For a discussion of these 'doxastic paradoxes, see Burge (1984).

which you get a lower incorrectness score for these propositions: in the favoured possibilities, your attitudes towards these propositions are no more incorrect than in any of the other available possibilities.

This conception of the relevantly 'available' possibilities and of the relevant 'favoured subset' of these possibilities allows us to derive a number of conclusions about what we 'ought' to believe, or 'may permissibly' believe, in this correctness-related sense. First, suppose that you are in a situation in which you have considered a proposition p, and there is a relevantly available possibility in which you believe p and that belief is perfectly correct—that is, an available possibility in which p is true, and you believe p. Then, in the correctness-related sense of 'permissibility, this is a case in which it is permissible for you to believe p.

These cases in which it is permissible (in this correctness-related sense) for you to believe p include both (a) cases where the proposition p will be true independently of how you exercise your thinking and reasoning capacities, and (b) cases where there is a way of exercising these capacities open to you such that if you were to believe p as a result of this way of exercising your capacities, p would be true. In either case, there is a relevantly available possibility in which your doxastic attitudes towards the propositions in question are perfectly correct, and you believe p—which is enough to make it permissible for you to believe p.

Secondly, suppose that you are in a situation in which there is no relevantly available possibility in which you correctly believe p—that is, no available possibility in which you believe p and thereby believe the truth. Then in the relevant sense, it is not 'permissible' for you to believe p—that is, you ought not to believe p. This includes both (a) cases in which the proposition p will be false anyway, independently of how you exercise your thinking and reasoning capacities, and (b) cases in which the truth-value of p depends on your thinking or reasoning but there is no way of thinking or reasoning open to you such that if you believed p as a result of thinking in this way, p would be true.

Given our conception of the domain of relevantly available possibilities, these two conclusions cover all the propositions that you have considered, whatever they may be: that is, these principles guarantee that for every proposition p that you have considered, either it is permissible for you to believe p, or else it is not permissible for you to believe p.

It is plausible that the terms 'ought' and 'may' are duals of each other. That is, a statement of the form 'You may permissibly 9' is true if and only if the corresponding statement 'It is not the case that you ought not to 9' is also true. If this is right, then a specification of the truth conditions of statements about what you may permissibly believe will immediately entail a specification of the truth conditions of statements about what you ought to believe. Thus, given what I have proposed, it follows that 'You ought to believe p' is true, in the correctness-related sense of 'ought, if and only if all of the relevantly available possibilities in which you have the least incorrect beliefs possible in the propositions in question are ones in which you believe p.

Finally, I have proposed that suspending judgement aboutp (which I am here identifying with the state of considering p but having no definite belief towards p) always has an intermediate value, between the perfect correctness of believing a true proposition and the extreme incorrectness of believing a false proposition. In this way, suspension of judgement is always inferior to the perfectly correct state of believing what is true (although it is superior to the totally

incorrect state of believing what is false). So, in fact, the only cases in which it is, in this correctness-related sense, 'permissible' for you to suspend judgement about p are cases where all the relevantly available possibilities in which you have the least incorrect doxastic attitudes towards the propositions in question are ones in which you suspend judgement about p. They cannot be cases where there is an available possibility in which you either believep or believe the negation of p and thereby believe a truth: if there were such a possibility, this would be a possibility in which your doxastic attitudes are less incorrect than they are in the possibility in which you suspend judgement about p—in which case no possibility in which you suspend judgement is one in which you have the least incorrect doxastic attitude available towards p.

In effect, this means that the only cases in which suspension of judgement is (in this correctness-related sense) a permissible attitude to take towards p are cases where there is no way of thinking or reasoning available to you that will ensure either that if you believed p as a result of this way of thinking, p would be true, or that if you believed the negation ofp as a result of this way of thinking, the negation ofp would be true. For example, this will happen if any belief in either the proposition or in its negation is 'self-falsifying'. One instance of this is the self-referential proposition, 'I do not believe this very proposition'—since this proposition cannot be correctly believed, and it can only be correctly disbelieved if it is simultaneously (and incorrectly) believed.12 Another instance of this is the case in which a powerful demon is going to ensure that whatever proposition you believe will be false. In these cases, suspension of judgement is permissible: indeed, since suspension of judgement is the only permissible doxastic attitude in these cases, these are also cases in which you ought to suspend judgement about the relevant proposition.

These three conclusions together imply that for everypropositionp that it is possible for you to believe or to suspend judgement about, there is a permissible attitude for you to take towards the proposition. Belief in p will be permissible if either p is true independently of how you exercise your capacities for thinking, or there is some way of thinking open to you such that if you believed p as a result of that way of thinking, p would be true. Belief in the negation of p will be permissible if either p is false independently of how you exercise your capacities for thinking, or there is some way of thinking open to you such that if you believed the negation of p as a result of thinking in that way, the negation of p would be true. Suspension of judgement will be permissible if neither of those two conditions holds. This picture is, moreover, clearly motivated by the fundamental principle about when beliefs count as correct or incorrect, together with the proposals that I have made about how ex post normative assessments are related to the corresponding ex ante assessments that are expressed using terms like 'ought'.

Admittedly, this picture has some interesting consequences. Perhaps the most striking consequence is that there can be cases in which it is permissible to believe p and also permissible to believe the negation of p. This will happen in some rather unusual cases of self-verifying beliefs, where there is both a way of thinking open to you such that if you were to believe p as a result of that way of thinking, p would be true, and also a way of thinking open to you such that if you believed the negation of p as a result of thinking in this way, the negation of p would be true. (For example, there might be a demon keeping track of your reasoning who will ensure that p would be true if you believed p, and that the negation ofp would be true if you believed the

negation ofp.)Since it presumably can never be permissible to believe both p and its negation, it follows that

the 'permissibility' operator does not agglomerate over conjunction: 'It is permissible for you to 9'

and 'It is permissible for you to y' do not jointly entail 'It is permissible for you to 9 and y'. But we should never have expected the permissibility-operator to agglomerate. It is permissible for Buridan's Ass to go to the bale of hay on the Left, and it is also permissible for the Ass to go to the bale of hay on the Right, but it is not permissible for the Ass both to go to the Left and to go to the Right.

Some philosophers might suggest that although statements about what it is 'permissible to do' do not agglomerate in this way, statements about what it is 'permissible to believe' must be different. Prima facie, however, one would expect all the concepts that can be expressed by the term 'permissible' to have the same basic logic. So I see no reason to think that 'permissible' would agglomerate over conjunction in this case, given that it clearly does not agglomerate in other cases. In general, the semantic proposals that I have made here clearly imply that the logic of permissibility will have to be broadly similar to the logic of possibility, and it is obvious that 'It is possible that p' and 'It is possible that q do not jointly entail 'It is possible that p and q'. So it seems that agglomeration is not a plausible principle for any kind of permissibility.

7. Reply to Bykvist and HattiangadiThe picture that I have outlined above reveals how we should respond to the objections of Bykvist and Hattiangadi. Consider the Moore-paradoxical proposition 'p and I don't believe that p'. Evidently, the truth-value of this proposition is not independent of how I exercise my capacities for thinking. Since this proposition cannot be both true and believed, there is no way of thinking or reasoning open to me in my current situation such that if I believed this proposition as a result of thinking in that way, this proposition would be true. So it is not permissible for me to believe this proposition, even if it is actually true.

In fact, on certain natural assumptions, if this Moore-paradoxical proposition is true, it is permissible for me to disbelieve it. Indeed, if it is true, I ought to disbelieve it. The point is somewhat tricky, and so it is worth exploring carefully.

Suppose that this proposition is in fact true in the actual world w*. Let us also assume that in the context in which we are talking about what I ought to believe, all of the following three propositions are 'in question': the conjunctive proposition 'p and I don't believe that p, and its two conjuncts, p, and the proposition 'I don't believe that p'. Finally, let us assume that the truth-value of p is independent of how I think at the relevant time.

Since 'p and I don'tbelievep' is true,p must clearly also be true. Since the truth ofp is independent of how I think at the relevant time, there is a relevantly available possibility in which p is true and I believe p. The 'favoured subset' of the relevantly available possibilities must be a set in which I have the least incorrect doxastic attitudes that are possible towards all the propositions that are in question—including this proposition p. So, it seems, if there is any relevantly available possibility in which I have a perfectly correct doxastic attitude towards all the propositions that are in question, this must be a possibility in which I believe p.

Since I believe p in all these possibilities, if there are any of these possibilities in which I also have a perfectly correct attitude towards the proposition 'I don't believe that p, my attitude towards that proposition in those possibilities must be disbelief; so if there are any of these possibilities in which I also have a perfectly correct attitude towards the conjunctive proposition 'p and I don't believe that p, that attitude must also be disbelief. So it seems that there are some relevantly available possibilities in which I have perfectly correct attitudes towards all three propositions (p, 'I don't believe that p, and 'p and I don't believe that p'); but they are all possibilities in which I believep, and disbelieve both 'I don't believe that p' and the conjunction 'p and I don't believe that p'.

This might seem puzzling: after all, we are assuming that the conjunction 'p and I don't believe that p' is true in the actual world w*. So how can it be permissible to disbelieve it? The answer is that the truth of this proposition in the actual world, along with the assumption that I am considering the proposition p, entails that my beliefs are not as they ought to be in the actual world. The relevantly available possibilities in which I believe as I ought to believe are all distinct from the actual world, and—more specifically—they are possibilities in which this Moore-paradoxical proposition is not true.

In this respect, Moore-paradoxical propositions are similar to propositions that explicitly imply that the believer's attitudes towards the propositions in question fall short of being perfectly correct—like the proposition (if it exists) that I could express by the sentence 'I falsely believe this very proposition'. Some philosophers might be tempted to deny that this sentence expresses any proposition at all.119 But other philosophers will argue that it seems possible to consider this proposition, and if the proposition can be considered it must exist. If I do consider this proposition, then I clearly ought not to believe it, since there is no available possibility in which I believe this proposition and it is true. In any possibility in which I do not believe this proposition, this proposition is straightforwardly false, and so the only way to have a perfectly correct doxastic attitude towards that proposition in that possibility is by disbelieving it. So in fact, if I consider this proposition, I ought to disbelieve it.14 The only difference between this proposition 'I falsely believe this very proposition' and the Moore-paradoxical proposition 'p and I don't believe that p' is that the former proposition cannot be true at all, whereas the latter proposition can be true (so long as it is not believed).

At the same time, my account allows that it can be true to say that one 'ought' to believe a preface-like proposition, like 'Some of my beliefs are false'. My account allows this because I am not assuming that 'the propositions in question' must include all the propositions that one has ever considered. In some contexts, the propositions in question include only those that the believer has recently considered. In these contexts, the 'available possibilities' include possibilities in which the believer has various different doxastic attitudes towards the propositions in question, but they do not include any possibilities in which the believer's doxastic attitudes towards other propositions are different from what they actually are. So in these contexts, the proposition 'Some of my beliefs are false' will be true in all of the available possibilities, and all the possibilities in which one's attitude towards this proposition is as correct as possible will be possibilities in which one believes it. So in these contexts it is true to say that one 'ought' to believe this

119 For this approach towards these paradoxical sentences, see for example Prior (1971:88).

proposition.The account that I have given here makes the truth-conditions of a statement about what one

'ought' to believe highly sensitive to which propositions are (as I have been putting it) 'in question' in the context in which the statement is made. For example, suppose that the proposition 'p and I don't believe that p' is true, but in the context in which the term 'ought' is used, the propositions that are 'in question' include neither p nor the conjunctive proposition 'p and I don't believe that p, but only the proposition 'I don't believe that p'. Then there is at least one relevantly available possibility in which I have perfectly correct doxastic attitudes towards all the propositions that are in question, and I believe 'I do not believe that p'. So in this context it is true to say that it is permissible for me to believe 'I don't believe that p'. In this way, the account that I have given here implies that there are contexts in which it is true to say of this case that it is permissible for me to believe 'I don't believe that p, even though it also implies that there are also other contexts in which (because the proposition p is in question in those contexts), I ought not to believe 'I don't believe that p'.

This feature of my account might seem to make it impossible for this kind of'ought' to play any interesting role in guiding our thinking. If I am asking what to believe, it hardly seems useful for me to be told merely that in one sense I may permissibly believe q and in another sense I may not! In fact, however, in any context in which one asks what one 'ought' to believe, there will already be certain propositions that are in question, which will help to define the precise concept that 'ought' expresses in this context. In this context, if one makes a judgement (about what one ought to believe) involving that precise concept, it will be that judgement that will guide one's thinking. Typically, in a context of this sort, the propositions that are in question are precisely the propositions that one has considered in that context, since it is precisely about these propositions that one is seeking to make up one's mind. (It is for this reason that I suggested in the previous section that in many contexts, the propositions that are in question include those that the relevant thinker has considered; this is the case in any context in which the speakers using terms like 'ought' are focusing on the questions that the thinker herself is considering.)

In general, the truth about what one ought to believe depends on the problem to which the various possible beliefs that one might have are candidates for being the solution. It is not surprising that different problems may call for different solutions, and that there is no set of beliefs that solves all possible problems. So it is not in any way a defect of the account that I have given here that what it is true to say about what we 'ought' to believe depends in many cases on which propositions are in question in the context in which the term 'ought' is being used.

In conclusion: it seems that the claim that beliefs are subject to a fundamental truth-norm can be defended against the sorts of objections that Bykvist and Hattiangadi have developed. The key to this defence lies in careful attention to the semantics of normative concepts, and in particular to the distinction between ex post and ex ante normative assessments.120 References

Anscombe, Gertrude E. M. (1957), Intention (Oxford: Basil Blackwell).

120 Earlier versions of this chapter were presented at a conference on the Aim of Belief at the University of Oslo, and at Victoria University in Wellington and the University of Auckland. I am grateful to those audiences, and also to Krister Bykvist, for some extremely helpful comments. The first draft was written during my tenure of a Research Fellowship from the Leverhulme Trust, to whom I should also express my gratitude.

Burge, Tyler (1984), 'Epistemic Paradoxes', Journal of Philosophy, 81 (1), 5-29.Bykvist, Krister and Hattiangadi, Anandi (2007), 'Does Thought Imply Ought?' Analysis, 67 (4),

277-85 .Dummett, Michael (1993), The Seas of Language (Oxford: Clarendon Press).Goldman, Alvin (1979), 'What is justified belief?', in G. S. Pappas (ed.), Knowledge and

Justification (Dordrecht: Reidel), 1-24.Humberstone, I. Lloyd (1992), 'Direction of Fit', Mind, 101,59-83.Joyce, James M. (1998), 'A Nonpragmatic Vindication of Probabilism,, Philosophy of Science, 65

( 4 ), 575-603 .Joyce, James M. (2009), 'Accuracy and Coherence: Prospects for an Alethic Epistemology of Partial

Belief', in Franz Huber and Christoph Schmidt-Petri (eds), Degrees of Belief Synthese Library Vol. 342 (Berlin: Springer), 263-97.

Platts, Mark (1979), Ways of Meaning (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul).Prior, Arthur N. (1971), Objects of Thought, P. T. Geach and A. J. P. Kenny (eds) (Oxford: Clarendon

Press ).Turri, John ( 2010 ), 'On the Relationship between Propositional and Doxastic Justification',

Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 80 , 312-26 .Wedgwood, Ralph (2002). 'The Aim of Belief', Philosophical Perspectives, 16,267-97.Wedgwood, Ralph (2007). The Nature ofNormativity (Oxford: Clarendon Press).Wedgwood, Ralph (2011), 'Primitively Rational Belief-Forming Processes, in Andrew Reisner and

Asbjorn Steglich-Petersen (eds), Reasonsfor Belief (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press ), 180-200.

Wiggins, David (1989). Needs, Values, Truth, 2ndedn (Oxford: Basil Blackwell).

8

Non-Evidential Reasons to Believe

Jonathan Adler and Michael Hicks

1. Introduction: Reasons to believe or for believing?Evidentialism, following Clifford (1999), is the thesis that the only considerations relevant to whether one ought or ought not to believe are epistemic, and thus that one ought only to believe what one's evidence (or, more generally, epistemic reasons121) establish. The conceptual evidentialist goes further than Clifford, insisting that this constraint of belief's ethics to its epistemics is derived from the concept of belief.

Clifford expressed his evidentialism in ethical terms: of what one should not, or ought not, or would wrongly believe, allowing that one can believe against the evidence at will. Though conceptual evidentialism endorses the spirit of Clifford's ethical claims, in two ways it departs from their letter. First, and most importantly, rather than focusing on what ought to be believed, it takes as fundamental what must be believed (what is judged true) and what cannot be believed (what one recognizes lacks adequate evidence). Thus, one can only arrive at an 'unethical' belief via indirect means, which obscure one's lack of adequate evidence. Epistemically speaking, one correctly believes (asserts) that p only if one's evidence or reasons establish, or one knows, that p. As the reasons relevant to establishing that p speak to the truth ofp, this establishes a conceptual connection from the believer and the belief to the aim of truth (Adler 2002a: ch. 1). In this chapter, we defend this conception of the aim of belief from putative counterexamples: non-evidential reasons to believe are supposed to be reasons speaking to the correctness of a belief, without speaking to the belief's truth. Such reasons would undermine the claim that the considerations determining belief do so by aiming it at the truth.

One striking feature of this account is that it offers an explanation of our inability to choose beliefs, of 'doxastic involuntarism'—while one can choose on the basis of any number of considerations, one can only believe, by contrast, on the basis of evidence. 122If one assumed doxastic

121 Evidence alone would be too narrow. Your belief that slavery is wrong is not based mainly on evidence but on principles about every person's right to a minimal respect and freedom. Also, when you look at the BMW parked outside the cafe, and come to believe that it is black, you just see that the BMW is black. There is no mediating—evidential—inference. Still, you have sufficient epistemic reasons for believing that the car is black. Furthermore, your evidence or reasons extends to those borrowed by deference to testimony, authority, or experts. Your reasons extend also to ones that your conscious self does not recognize or can access: you might have reasons to believe a favored Internet site is biased, though you do believe its report (and take yourself to have sufficient reasons to believe it). Young children can have reasons for their beliefs without the concept of reason or belief.

122 Cf. Bernard Williams's (1970) discussion of the aim of belief and doxastic involuntarism. Nishi Shah (2002) has pointed out that merely noting that there is a conceptual connection between belief and truth is not enough to uphold the claim that belief is genuinely involuntary. He focuses on Williams's reliance on the following conditional: 'If I could acquire a belief at will, I could acquire it whether it was true or not.' As he notes, similar conceptual constraints (for

voluntarism, it would be natural to construe evidentialism as an ethical thesis—though one can believe against the evidence, one ought not. This is Clifford's position, and our rejection of it is our second departure from him. Consider an adaptation of William Styron's Sophie's Choice, inspired by Kavka's (1983) Toxin Puzzle. On Monday, the Nazi commander tells Sophie that if she believes today that on Wednesday she will give her daughter a poison to drink, he will not take away her son now to be murdered. (As in Kavka's case, it is essential to the story that she is explicitly under no obligation to actually give her daughter the poison.) There could hardly be a greater incentive for Sophie to come to the belief. Knowing however that on Wednesday she will not act accordingly, she cannot come to the belief now.

Construed as an ethical claim, evidentialism breaks down here. Were Sophie to succeed where she manifestly cannot (namely, in believing contrary to the evidence that she will give her daughter the poison), she would deserve no moral criticism. Our Kavka-inspired twist appears to remove the story from the realm of moral dilemmas; and so, insofar as evidentialism is an ethical thesis, this is a counterexample to it.123

However, the story suggests that not all considerations favoring belief are reasons to believe. The well-being of Sophie's family is obviously a consideration favoring belief; were it a reason to believe, Sophie would have every reason to believe. The tragedy, then, consists precisely in the fact that this is not so—alas, she has no reason to believe. Hieronymi (2005) characterizes the distinction we have in mind as one between 'constitutive' and 'extrinsic' reasons for belief; to avoid prolixity, we will distinguish the (constitutive) reasons to believe from the (extrinsic) reasons for believing. The Sophie case suggests, then, that reasons to believe determine a proprietary, self-standing

instance, he says, one cannot lie without intending to deceive) do not prove their antecedents involuntary, so the mere fact that I cannot acquire the belief that p without taking p to be true does not show that belief is involuntary: the conditional is false. When the evidentialist elaboration of the connection between belief and truth is inserted, however, Shah's objection collapses. The amended conditional is: 'If I could believe p at will, I could acquire it for reasons that are not relevant to establishing p's truth.' The amended conditional, for lying, would be 'If I could lie at will, I could lie for reasons irrelevant to deceit.' But the consequent of this conditional is true: even if you cannot lie without intending to deceive, nevertheless you can lie while having no reason to deceive, and you can lie while being aware you have no reason to deceive. Belief's connection to epistemic reasons is different. Believing while taking yourself to lack adequate epistemic reason is, as Williams says, incoherent, or at least irrational. (We return to this point below.)

123 This is not to say that evidentialism does not have ethical implications: it does, operating through one's obligations to honesty to oneself. Such consequences are, however, defeasible.

ethics of belief.124 In what follows, we defend the claim that only epistemic reasons are reasons to believe in this sense, by considering a series of counterexamples.

We focus on this line of thought, for such counterexamples, if they succeeded, would undermine the straightforward reading of the thesis that belief aims at truth we suggested earlier. The anti-evidentialist provides non-epistemic considerations that appear to figure in the fixation of belief. What we shall argue, then, is that there is no reason to think such considerations can coherently so figure.

Before explaining this incoherence argument, we should briefly mention another, more radical, way of objecting to our strategy. Consider the suggestion that Sophie's tragedy consists solely in the fact that, as a matter of psychology, she is unable to believe as she manifestly ought. One might refuse to recognize a distinctive ethics of belief, and so reject the distinction between the constitutive reasons to believe and the more general, extrinsic, reasons for believing. 125 We see two ways of motivating such a claim. First, one might appeal to the claim that epistemic reasons to believe are insufficient to determine belief. If it turns out that non-epistemic considerations are quite generally implicated in the fixation of belief, then we have mislocated the inefficacy of the considerations that fail to move Sophie. In Section 2, we consider the line of thought that underpins this argument, and find it wanting. A second motivation, though, is more general and would not be moved by that argument. One might appeal to a conception of reasons that provides a principled ground for rejecting any distinction like the one we derive from Hieronymi's discussion, so that even if it is true (as a matter of psychology) that only evidence figures in the determination of belief, nothing normative follows from this. This line of thought, according to which Hieronymi's distinction between constitutive and extrinsic reasons, so to speak, fails to carve the space of reasons at its joints,126

threatens to founder on terminological issues. That is to say, it might be that we are just using the word 'reasons' differently. We acknowledge, though, the active debate in the metaphysics of reasons about the kind of distinction we would like to rely on, and concede that we cannot settle that debate now. What is striking about this line of thought, for our purposes, is its denial of not just the letter, but the spirit of Clifford's intellectual ethics.

Clifford's central idea concerned honesty to what belief requires (and with it, honesty to oneself). When people believe on the evidence, they can openly recognize the history of their coming to and maintaining the belief. Recognizing the importance of this claim for the metaphysics of reasons is accepting the spirit of Clifford's evidentialism: minimally, it suggests that belief has an ethics, in

124 The comparison that guides our thought here is to the way rational considerations can trump moral ones. If you are offered a million dollars to, for instance, be rude, you might conclude that it is rational, in this case, to be rude. It does not follow that ethical norms license rudeness. Similarly, then, it might be rational, even moral, for Sophie to believe, without it following that the norms of belief (of belief's ethics) license Sophie's belief.

125 Cf. Reisner (2009). Insofar as Reisner's only point is to show that in some suitably broad sense reason demands that Sophie believe as she cannot, we have no dispute (cf. n. 4 above). Our claim, though, is that there is a narrower conception of normativity impinging specifically on belief. We do not here propose a general view of the metaphysics of reasons; as we say in the text, the Sophie case makes clear a principled ground for distinguishing kinds of reason in relation to belief.

126 Shah (2006) argues that the anti-evidentialist must choose between 'transparency' (the idea that to find out whether to believe that p, one tries to find out whether p) and a plausible account of the nature of reasons, derived from Bernard Williams. His argument, then, is very much in the spirit of this paragraph: if one accepts the psychological evidence for evidentialism, then in order to drain it of its prima facie normative import, one must provide a metaphysics of reasons. We take it to be a positive feature of evidentialism that it provides an entry point into such debates. As we stress in the conclusion, there is something unsettling about the special pleading required to incorporate anti-evidentialist themes into an otherwise coherent evidentialist psycho-normative picture. We do not simply endorse Shah, because we prefer to (and believe we can) remain neutral for present purposes about the metaphysics of reasons.

which evidence at least plays a part. Our claim is the more controversial converse, which can be put in the form of a tough, but fundamental, test:

You cannot in full awareness believe that p and believe that what reasons you possess areinsufficient to establish that p.127

The test is tough in that many people do claim to hold such beliefs, and are happy to cite non-epistemic reasons to shore up support for their beliefs. But our derivative thesis is that they do not (and cannot) do so under the condition of full awareness of those reasons as non-epistemic or insufficient. We elaborate one diagnostic consequence this derivative thesis suggests in the conclusion to this chapter.

Corresponding to the claim about what cannot be believed, belief for non-evidential reasons gives rise to incoherence. Take a case with a similar background to Sophie's Choice. A survivor of a Nazi concentration camp believes life is worth living because failing to believe it would likely sink her into a morally debilitating state of despair, harmful to herself and those who depend on her. But it is (rationally) incoherent to assert 'Life is worth living because to believe otherwise would sink me into a morally debilitating state'. The incoherence is the surface of a contradiction:

(A) I believe that 'life is worth living' is true, only because if I believed otherwise that would sink me into a morally debilitating state.

(B) But that I would avoid sinking into a morally debilitating state if I believed it in no way suggests that 'life is worth living' is true.

Insofar as this is offered as an example of non-epistemic reasons to believe, (A) must be construed as a reason-giving statement. But on this reading, it straightforwardly contradicts (B): (B) says that the reason proffered in (A) is no reason at all.128

Bernard Williams (1970: 150) similarly noted that self-deception for 'non-truth centered motives' is 'deeply irrational, precisely because belief aims at the truth. The discomfort Williams describes with a non-truth-centered mode of belief generation nicely captures our thesis that considerations that do not speak to the truth of a claim (and yet, somehow, figure in its generation) offend against the nature of belief. (We return to the normativity implicit in 'offense' in the next paragraph.) By contrast, the incoherence (and Williams's discomfort) would evaporate were the 'because' followed by what is in fact an epistemic reason. 'That there is in most any life a predominance of pleasure, beauty, and happiness over pain, sorrow, and sadness' is a reason to believe life is worth living.9

The incoherence argument is mirrored in assertion, because the basic implication of assertion, like belief, is the truth of what is asserted. The parallel between assertion and belief is much discussed and controversial: especially problematic for us is the fact that assertion, unlike belief, is (at least often) voluntary, and so subject to a prescriptive norm. As we have stressed, belief's norm is not prescriptive in this way.

We hasten to emphasize that this does not preclude belief's subj ugation to norms. Not all norms

127 Conceptual evidentialism requires that one have sufficient reasons to believe p, not that one know what they are. Of course you cannot have sufficient reasons to believe, unless there was a time when you came to the belief for specific reasons or evidence. Your belief is justified if its history is one in which it arises for sufficient reasons, regardless of your present access to those reasons. From your point of view this will hold for any of your beliefs, even while knowing that some of them are ill-founded. The consequence is, however, that one can regard each of one's belief as justified.

128 Two qualms: (i) Does it beg the question to gloss' in no way suggests that P is true' as'R is no reason to believe that P is true'? No. Replace 'believe' with 'think' 'judge' even 'suspect' In all these cases, the contradiction is apparent: that which in no way suggests that P is true gives one no reason to suspect that P is true. Surely, where there is no reason to even suspect, there is no reason to believe. (ii) Could someone deny

are prescriptive. In this case, given adequate ('constitutive') reasons, unless there is interference of the sort ruled out by the full-awareness clause, (correct) belief simply follows. The normativity of this descriptive-psychological fact1 ° is reflected in the observation that you can be asked a justification-seeking 'Why'-question for what you believe (Anscombe 1969). You invite criticism, from others and yourself, if your belief turns out to be false. This responsibility implies that to believe correctly it will

B? Such a move buys coherence here with a deeper and more complex incoherence, but one might think it worth the cost. It will not help here, though, for it suggests (what is our point anyway) that to acknowledge something as your reason to believe is to take it to be an epistemic reason.

9 There are special cases: Your decision to/can figure as an epistemic reason to believe you will f, precisely because it is up to you. Granted—but is it a sufficient reason? A serious difficulty arises here if you have statistical evidence that many or most who decide to f fail (e.g. decisions to diet). Depending on your self-knowledge (your knowledge of your success at self-control for important decisions of policy) this self-knowledge can trump the statistics as applied to yourself. The issue leaps in complexity and interest when studies are factored in that show that subjects are highly confident of their own positive self-judgments, but they also judge that their peers tend to overestimate their positive qualities. We cannot engage the issue, though if we did our path would be that the relation of the decision to believing you will succeed is first-personal, but the application of the statistics is taken from a third-person perspective. Arguments have been offered for why these may not be combinable, though little explored in epistemology. (Although he does not discuss this kind of case, our response is influenced by Holton's notion of partial belief and its close tie to all-out belief and the differences of both from credences. See Holton (2009: ch. 2). See also Berislav Marusic (2012).)

10 Gluer and Wilkforss (this volume) explicitly rule out the possibility of non-prescriptive norms like this. The metaphysics of normativity is a controversial topic, about which we can, alas, say little now. We suspect that something like Ginsborg's (2011) invocation of a Kantian notion of 'primitive normativity' is applicable to what we are saying here. But our minimal commitment is as follows: if you specify adequate reasons for belief, there is no further question, along the lines of 'why, given that you had adequate reasons to believe, did you believe?' Absent interference, one just does believe. Thus, if belief is subject to norms—this is the claim defended in the text—they must be non-prescriptive. While we are committed to the claim that there are non-prescriptive norms of belief, we do not have settled views on how this fact interacts with the literature on normativity.

not be enough that when you believe that p the truth ofp explains your belief. The latter fact—belief's correctness condition—must play a role as a reason for your belief.

According to David Papineau (this volume) a community could do without the practice of belief, construed as we construe it. Papineau holds that, even if it is a matter of conceptual fact that belief aims at truth (he disputes this), nevertheless, there is no normative ground for requiring the institution of belief, thus construed. Our community could instead consist of 'schmelievers', whose belief-like psychological states do not have truth as a conceptual norm. Reflection on justification-seeking 'why?' questions makes a 'schmelieving' community harder to imagine than Papineau suggests, though. If schmelief is otherwise like belief, it will arise in the process of rational inquiry, and schmelievers will expect justification-seeking 'why do you schmelieve that p?' type questions. Just as above, such questioners will not be satisfied by non-epistemic considerations. If so, schmelief just is belief, with its conceptual connection to truth and knowledge. It is, in part, to avoid this that Papineau thinks a schmelieving community could allow unchallengeable schmeliefs, like specific 'views' about the number of blades of grass on one's lawn.129 But, clearly, Papineau has in mind that such attitudes would not arise in the course of rational inquiry (if they did, they would be challenge- able in the ordinary way) and this foregrounds the question of the unity of such attitudes with the attitudes that do arise in the course of inquiry.

To resist this line of thought, Papineau insists that his view applies equally to the social practice of

129 He introduces this example as a belief that has no value whatsoever, so is not motivated by non-epistemic reasons either. He offers a more searching example, that does involve non-evidential 'value' closely related to an example that Nozick gives, which we consider below. See §3.1, esp. n. 33.

epistemic evaluation: there is, he thinks, no intrinsic value to it. For this thought to undermine our argument, it must imply that the social practice of asking 'why?' (and finding yourself beholden to such questions) is optional. But even considerations of etiquette (which severely restrict the legitimacy of 'why?' questions) don't affect the basic logical point, which is that to say that 'I have no reason to believe that p' is tantamount to saying 'I do not believe that p'. (See our discussion of 'detachment' in the next subsection for a more careful presentation of this point.) That assertion and belief are legitimately subject to justification-seeking 'why?' questions is the impetus for our claim that there is a proprietary ethics of belief. And once again, if there are 'assertions' or 'beliefs' not legitimately subject to such questions, the question why such states/acts count as assertions or beliefs must, it seems to us, be raised.130

130 According to Papineau, the answer is that the attitudes in question are cognitive states, the function of which is to track the truth, and which are prompted by perception and guide action in just the way belief does. We offer this account a dilemma: either it falls short of identifying states that enter into ordinary reason-giving relations (else they would be susceptible to justification-seeking why questions), or it does not. If the former, then there are many familiar reasons to think such an account is not an account of belief (to believe is, as they say, to take a position in the space of reasons); if the latter, it is belief, not schmelief, and so our argument stands. Whether this dilemma is escapable or not (presumably the first horn is the one to embrace), the consequence is that just as, earlier, the anti-evidentialist had to supply a metaphysics of reasons, here, the anti-evidentialist has to supply and defend a metaphysics of belief. Evidentialism, it seems to us, is in the preferable position of being motivated independent of any specific account of reasons or belief.

The foregoing is intended to focus the discussion that follows: we understand the critics we address below to accept the connection between belief and rational inquiry that motivates our evidentialism. They hold, however, that there are counterexamples, or principled reasons for believing there are counterexamples, to the claim that only evidence rightly determines belief. Thus, in what follows, we focus on whether, in addition to the considerations that aim belief at truth, there might be other considerations that determine the profile of belief.

In the original debate between James and Clifford, this shared ground was under- lined in a striking passage from James: where on Clifford's view, one ought not believe, say, that Abraham Lincoln's existence is a myth, James concedes that one cannot. The central thesis of this paper is that James's observation is perfectly general—as he says, such considerations constitute the 'fabric of the truths that we do believe in' (James1951: 90).

This reference to James suggests two basic strategies for anti-evidentialism. First, one might stress the putative conservativeness of evidentialism, and argue that pragmatic considerations can sometimes justify a more liberal, or risky, doxastic strategy (seek truth, as opposed to avoid error). In Section 2 we address this possibility in two ways, first (§2.1) by arguing that evidentialism is not unduly conservative, and second (§2.2) by showing that evidentialism is not a thesis about how to 'balance' two competing goals at all: where a question about balancing might arise, it is irrelevant to the ethics of belief.

The second Jamesian strategy is to show that the nature of belief is such that evidential considerations underdetermine belief (James suggested that what determines belief is not, primarily, evidence, but our 'passional natures'). Section 3 begins with a minimal version of this idea (§3.1), the suggestion that, though if one believes one must believe on the evidence, pragmatic considerations can license withholding judgment. A stronger version (§3.2) appeals, for instance, to cultural relativity to suggest that one's j udgment of the sufficiency of evidence is a consequence of pragmatic considerations. A stronger version yet (§3.3) purports to show that at pains of regress, epistemic principles must be determined by non-evidential considerations. None of these cases succeeds: for one thing, none overcomes the problem raised in §2.1, that only epistemic considerations can figure in the fixation of belief; and for another, each can be explained away, as resting on considerations irrelevant to the ethics of belief.

We conclude on a diagnostic note in Section 4. Evidentialism comports well with a variety of ordinary observations about belief, observations that the anti-evidentialist would not want to dispute. If the pragmatic considerations were directed not at belief, but at nearby notions like commitment, they would fall into place as important features of our lives without conflicting with the evidentialist conception of belief. We, believers, do not always aim at truth, but belief, we argue, does.

2. Doxastic strategies2.1 High probability and full belief

One of the most lasting complaints about evidentialism is James's, that it prizes caution—avoiding error—over risk—believing truth.131 This has two parts: first, qua doxastic strategy, evidentialism

131 For contemporary versions of this charge see, e.g., Charles Taylor:Clifford assumes that there is only one road to truth________To put it dramatically, we can winthe right to believe a hypothesis only by first treating it with maximum suspicion and hostility. James holds, on the contrary, that there are some domains in which truths will be hidden from us unless we go

is unduly risk-averse; and second, whether evidentialism is unduly risk-averse or not, it represents one epistemic standard among many in the quest for believing truths. One might see such a debate as broadly conciliatory to the view that belief aims at truth, insofar as it acknowledges that inquiry has truth as its overall aim. However, the anti-evidentialist thesis is that taking truth to be the aim of belief is an expression of a sort of fallacy of division, applying the over-arching aim of inquiry to each belief: the anti-evidentialist holds that, at least in some circumstances, a justifiable strategy for maximizing true beliefs is to rely on a non-evidentialist (and thus not truth-directed) doxastic strategy. In this subsection, we consider the first of these two counter-arguments, and argue that there is no reason to think evidentialism is unduly risk-averse. We return to the question, whether there are multiple possible standards of belief acceptance in the next.

Consider a traditional probabilistic criterion of acceptance:

You can come to correctly believe (accept) p if the probability ofp on the evidence isgreater than some threshold (e.g. .93) below 1.132

The opposition between this principle and conceptual evidentialism enters with the permission it grants, to believe p when its probability on the evidence is less than one. To believe that p is to fully believe it without any qualification to degrees of belief (or belief that the probability of p is greater than.93).133 We understand that as the elimination of all possibilities of falsity or error. While on our view, this is to have probability one,134 if you have qualms about assigning probability one beyond logical truths, the elimination of possibilities of error as the standard for adequate evidence suffices.

If you have eliminated all possibilities of falsity, you pass the threshold for full belief, warrant or knowledge, even though there is more certainty to be gained by re-checking or by examining way-out possibilities. Substituting a standard of maximal certainty for the former threshold notions provides a foothold for a form of contextualism which can be drawn upon by arguments for non-evidential reasons. For instance, in disputing the 'purism' principle that they attribute to evidentialism, Fantl and McGrath argue:

You can know, in advance, that your spouse will be home around 5pm; but your epistemic position improves once you see him walking in the door. You can know, sitting on your front porch, that there is a tree in your backyard, but your epistemic position improves once you look out your back window. That one can improve one's epistemic position in these ways can be confirmed by thinking of the bets one would rationally take before and after the improvement. (Fantl and McGrath 2007: 560)

Greater certainty can be achieved by finding more positive evidence above the threshold, as in Fantl and McGrath's example. But this has no bearing on whether the threshold has already been met for acceptance or full belief or warranted belief without this additional evidence. Similarly, a

at least halfway toward them. Do you like me or not? If I am determined to test this by adopting a stance of maximum distance and suspicion, the chances are that I will forfeit the chance of a positive answer. An analogous phenomenon on the scale of the whole society is social trust; doubt it root and branch, and you will destroy it (Taylor 2002: 44).

132 Compare also Swinburne (1981).133 Whenbelief isof a high probability, not all-out, then different logical consequences hold, e.g.,a conjunction

is not closed.134 There is one threshold that meets the arbitrariness (and the insufficiency) charge bluntly: a probability of 1.

We assume that some successful answer (e.g. Williamson 2000: chs 10-11) is available to the obvious objection that a probability of 1 allows for no alteration or revision of belief.

betting test is inappropriate as a ground to deny acceptance or full belief or warrant, since anything with favorable grounds past the threshold will obviously be a better bet without implying that the less certain belief is not also entitled to acceptance, full belief or warrant.

When the threshold is not reached, and there is an assignment of a probability less than 1, say, .98, the agent should only believe p to the corresponding degree, for example, 'I'm almost certain that p\ 'The probability ofp is .98'. Degrees of belief should be proportionate to the evidence (Hume 1977). Rather than believing or saying 'John is in Paris', you can believe or say 'John is very probably in Paris', when the evidence is very positive, but inconclusive. You have available that more accurate alternative.

The probabilistic principle allows, by contrast, for full belief or acceptance on grounds that only yield a high probability (or, for Swinburne (1981), a probability greater than %). This seems clearly wrong. Assume that the distribution of black and red balls in an urn containing 1,000 balls is just shy of the (alleged) threshold for belief that the next ball you pull will be black (if the threshold is .93, then assume there are 929 black balls). If you now replace a red ball with a black that is enough to license belief that the ball you select will be black. This is unacceptably arbitrary. After all, there remains the gap due to the probability of selecting a red ball.

The crucial issue (for the opponent of evidentialism) is whether there is an evidential gap—whether evidence inherently underdetermines belief—and if so, how to fill it. If there is this gap, how could moral, practical, prudential, or even rational considerations of the need to hold a belief bridge it? The gap is, on one form of expression, between small possibilities of error and no possibilities. But since non-epistemic reasons do not eliminate any possibilities of error, they cannot bridge that gap. (We return to this point shortly.)

One might worry, though, that if this argument is successful, it proves too much: after all, we are committed to the claim that only a .99 degree of belief would be available if the number of black balls is 99 and the number of red ones is 1. (The anti-evidentialist, by contrast, takes non-evidential considerations to be able to bridge the gap and license belief.) But if from the belief that there is .99 chance of selecting a black ball one cannot infer an all-out belief that one will select a black ball, is that not tantamount to a skepticism about any empirical knowledge on the basis of evidence that does not entail what it is evidence for?

This objection relies on the observation that there are 'risky' (e.g. inductive) inferences, which everyone but the skeptic would like to endorse. We accept this observation, but see no reason to think such inferences are not evidentially grounded. This requires us to deny that inductive inferences are relevantly comparable to the inference concerning the balls in the urn. To do so, consider the distinction between probabilistic and what we might call nomological grounds. The former, typified by the balls in the urn (and the game show model in the next subsection) do not license expansive inferences. Inductive leaps, by contrast, take the evidence to presuppose laws or regularities, which can j ustify moving from probabilities much less than one to, not j ust higher probabilities, but acceptance as true. Trivial examples include, for example., 'My tires are very low, so I am bound to get a flat when we go mountain riding.' 'The refrigerator is empty, so our son must have come home hungry late last night.'135 These are cases where the conclusion apparently licensed is clearly stronger than the premises offered in its defense.

135 In various ways, different philosophers draw this distinction. See for example McDowell (1997: section 4). It is worth reiterating that the contrast stands, regardless of one's conception of inductive inference: we are not, here, explaining induction but relying on it.

Inferences like this are risky: extreme risks are taken in extrapolating from chemi- cal samples in craters to the extinction of the dinosaurs; or from red shifts in the light spectrum observed by the Hubble telescope to the expansion of the universe; or, for a pedestrian case, from the slight touch of your date's hand on yours to the fact that she reciprocates your romantic interest. 136 To understand these inferences as risky, though, is to understand them as assigning probability 1 to their conclusions. We term them fallible, precisely because they could be wrong (whereas, if your conclusion is that such-and-such is 85 percent likely, that it turns out not to have happened does not show that your conclusion is wrong). That evidentialism licenses fallible inferences like these shows that it is not risk-averse, and may be accompanied by doubt or a lack of certainty. Probability 1 marks knowledge, not certainty.

We are aware that our opponent finds this account unsatisfactory: specifically, she insists that evidentialism leaves inductive inference a mystery. The suggestion, then, must be that if we allowed non-evidential considerations to fill the inductive gap, the mystery would disappear. This, we shall argue, is false. The profile of inductive inference is evidentialist through-and-through.

Note that the conclusions we have been discussing are detachable from their grounds. To believe p is for p to be the way the world is (transparent from one's first-person point of view). Harman (1986) has observed that we must lose track of our reasons, given our need to economize. Our claim is complementary—evidential grounds may in this way be lost. Once the evidence has served its purpose of establishing that p, once p is accepted, the epistemic value of the evidence is absorbed or used up. No continuing support is required of its truth. As we said in Section 1, the purpose of epistemic reasons is to produce true belief. Once they have served that purpose, they can be aban- doned. You can express your belief that p, without being in a position, any longer, to state your grounds, both for reasons of economy and because truth is what you seek grounds to settle.137

Of course, there may be reasons to hold on to your evidence, subsequent to its serving its role. Trivially, you may want to remember that a neighbor steered you right that his electrician would do a good job, so as to call on that neighbor again when you need a plumber. Or, if a matter is controversial or a product of extended reflection, a belief may be closely attached to its justification, as with views about abortion. Or, you may need to explain a judgment to others or to yourself. In these cases, there is additional cause to maintain the reasons that led to belief. Such causes, though, are strictly external to the role reasons play in producing the belief. Epistemically speaking, the process of detachment is perfectly justified.

By contrast, even if someone were to claim to have come to a belief for non-evidential reasons, it would be inappropriate for such reasons to be detached from the belief. Non-evidential reasons are supposed to justify coming to a belief when the evidence is indeterminate, and special conditions are met such as their personal importance or one's special insights or experience. Call this putative form of justification, which includes deference to authority, a 'rationale'. The most obvious difference

136 McGlynn (2013) complains that the distinction between full and partial belief is vague at best, and so cannot play the role suggested for it in the discussion of lottery cases in Adler (2002a). The distinction we offer here, between probabilistic and nomological grounds is intended to clarify the matter. To take his example, even in a neighborhood where cars are rarely stolen, it is risky to believe that your car has not been stolen: of course you could be wrong. But it seems clear to us that there are circumstances in which inductive grounds license this belief, in marked contrast to the lottery cases, in which knowledge of the mechanism by which the winning number is produced destroys the possibility of believing that your ticket (not probably, but definitely) will not win. There is no similar randomizing mechanism in car thievery, at least that we know of.

137 Contrast the following exchanges: (1) 'How do you know?' 'I can't recall.' (2) 'How do you know?' 'No reason.' (1) is, at least provisionally, acceptable, whereas (2) is self-contradictory.

between such a rationale and evidence is that, as a rationale does not derive from the truth of the proposition, it is not fungible in the way evidence is. If you lose a piece of evidence (and the proposition is true) you can typically find another. Not so with a rationale. Another difference is that most rationales are directed to the believer, unlike evidence which is directed to the proposition believed. Both of these considerations suggest that one ought not detach a rationale from the belief thus rationalized.

A more pressing reason for holding on to one's rationale is to meet expected challenges. Consider the suggestion that one can believe the universe has a moral order

because otherwise life would not be worth living.138 You think that you are permitted to come to beliefs for such reasons, since it cannot be settled by the evidence. Can you maintain that belief when accessing it shorn of the rationale for believing it? When you access it, as when you assert it to a hearer, you cannot view it the way you might view your belief that your neighbor has a cat named 'Tiger'. The latter you can maintain merely thinking that you acquired it in some reliable way. A hearer would believe you if you asserted it without need for you to provide backing. But the claim that the universe has a moral order strikes you (the speaker), as it would a hearer, as problematic. You know that evidence for such a claim is scant or hard to discern, that the claim requires extensive clarification and that reflecting on the same universe many draw a negative conclusion. So if your putative belief is to be maintained, and you have picked up no support for it since accepting it,139 the only backing to meet the expected challenges from yourself or another will be to revert to the original rationale.

A distinct problem for treating risky inferences as underwritten by non-evidential principles comes from reflection on the fact that such principles are often expressed as doxastic permission (you may believe, e.g., that the world has a moral order). Such 'discretion' licenses opposed conclusions, whereas inductive and related evidentially expansive inferences do not. Inductive inferences are warranted if and only if they are based on the total available relevant evidence. The evidence sufficient to accept p cannot also be sufficient for q, where p implies not q. The logic of evidence, notjust evidentialism, is incompatible with the permission for 'discretion'.140

Thus, 'risky' nomological inference cannot be backed by a (non-evidential) rationale. The conclusions of such inferences are detachable from their grounds, and do not allow discretion; 141

beliefs backed by a rationale would not have this profile. If such inferences are acceptable, they are acceptable on the basis of the evidence for them, and nothing more. We have not provided an account of inductive inference here, but it is clear that inductive arguments are often designed to establish their conclusion, not merely to show it to be probable. Inductive considerations can only succeed at this goal if they supply evidence sufficient to establish their conclusion; this, we take it, is manifestly possible (and familiar). Thus, there is no reason to see evidentialism as epistemically

138 Adams (1987). For similar examples, see also Taylor (1989), van Inwagen (1999), Pace (2011).139 As we discuss below (n. 39), it is possible that a Pascal's Wager-type situation can epistemic reasons into

view. If so, then, as we put it in the text, you have picked up reasons for your belief that allow your rationale to lapse. But it is precisely because it has been replaced by evidence that it can lapse; and the non-epistemic considerations only served the purpose of encouraging you to find that evidence. They could not serve as reasons to believe.

140 If there is discretion or permission to believe (or not) then different persons are licensed to believe opposed conclusions—e.g. life is worth living; life is not worth living—or suspension of judgment, whereas if the requirement of total evidence is satisfied inductive inferences cannot license opposed conclusions. If this result is acceptable, the belief must be relativized to a rationale of different personal needs for the belief and so would also be non-detachable. Statements of discretion are common in popular discussions of science:

If certain physical constants had slightly different values, stars would not have formed to cook up the atoms that made the biological molecules. Since early in the century, some truth seekers have taken this sort of argument as a reason to believe that the universe was created with people in mind.But one is also free to choose the opposite belief: that the coincidences simply show that life is indeed an incredible fluke. (George Johnson 'Science and Religion: Bridging the Great Divide' The New York Times June 30, 1998: F4, our emphasis.)

141 Catherine Elgin (in correspondence) helpfully observes that cases superficially like the previous can be found in science: the evidence for 'the universe is endlessly expanding' is scant and hard to find and not compelling to everyone (or many); some physicists take symmetry considerations that speak in favor of 'the Higgs Boson exists' to suffice in proving that it does. Surely these cases work, though, because at least the evidence available to the layperson is not sufficient: it would be inappropriate for us to believe or not. What, though, of the practicing physicist, intimately aware of the evidence? There seem to be two distinguishable

risk-averse.

2.2 Balancing seeking truth and avoiding error

It is sometimes alleged that, even if evidentialism does not imply (undue) epistemic risk-aversion, its standard can only be fixed by appeal to pragmatic grounds. As Wedgwood (2008) has put it, 'no purely epistemic principle can tell us how to balance these two goals—seek truth; avoid error—against each other. The idea is that, when moral judgment and action cannot be undertaken without belief, the balance might shift toward seeking truth (Jamesian courage and risk-taking) and away from avoiding error (Cliffordian caution), and so the sufficiency for evidence is correspondingly lowered. Referring to Riggs (2003), Pace writes,

___all epistemological theories take an implicit stand on how to balance the two-part truthgoal in how high they set the standards for justified belief or knowledge. For evidentialists, advice on the best way to balance the truth goal is implicit in how much evidence and what degree of support they require in order for the evidence to be sufficient for justification. Requiring a very high degree of evidential support is to favor the 'avoid falsehoods' part of the truth goal, whereas lowering the standard privileges the 'believe truths' part. (Pace 2011: 253)24

cases. In one, the physicist says, e.g., 'I find symmetry considerations very powerful, and so am inclined to believe the Higgs Boson exists.' Here, the reference to herself makes explicit that she is not claiming that the evidence actually establishes the claim. That the Higgs Boson exists is not how it is, from her first-personal perspective; it is just what she expects empirical researchers will find. In the second case, she takes that evidence to be sufficient: she says, 'Symmetry considerations establish that the Higgs Boson must exist.' If this is her position, she must be committed to the idea that colleagues who do not accept this argument suffer, in some way or other, a failure of rationality (or lack the relevant background evidence). Elgin imagines a situation in which her colleague 'merely' requires a higher degree of evidential support. On our reading, while such hesitancy in the face of (let us assume) adequate evidence is understandable, it is an error. (It is, of course, plausible that it is our protagonist who is in error.) There are deeper issues specific to the epistemology of science, which we cannot broach here.

24 Pace elaborates on his view and its compatibilitywith evidentialism:the strongest argument for the moral encroachment seems to me to be a value-based argument based on two claims. First, the property described by the moral encroachment view is distinctively epistemic. It inherits its claim to being an epistemic property in virtue of its relation to the two-part truth goal. It offers substantive advice for balancing the epistemic goal of believing truths and avoiding errors. If our modified Jamesian point is correct that there is no principled, purely epistemic rationale for setting the threshold of evidential strength required for justification, then evidentialism requires some other principled rationale for doing so. Second, the property is a valuable way of balancing the truth goal.Setting the threshold using moral considerations will result in a very important epistemic property (Pace 2011: 261).

The comparison is to the trade-offs made by a company producing speakers for rock concerts—louder is better requires restraint to maintain quality of sound. There is an important insight in this comparison, and it is worth drawing it out to see that it is mis- applied as a ground for pragmatic reasons to believe.25

We can begin by noting that the Jamesian distinction as typically expressed is ill-conceived. To seek truth is a goal, but avoiding error is a constraint on how that goal is achieved. As is sometimes said: if you cared only to seek truths, believe everything or believe a contradiction. To avoid error, though, is not a goal—it defines no activity. The closest one could come to following it is to not act or judge at all. When the complementary remark is made that if you want just to avoid error you should believe only tautologies, the ill conception is evident: the aim of avoiding error is really construed as 'if you are seeking truth and insist on never acquiring an erroneous belief, then believe

only tautologies'. The goal of seeking truth is tacit in the goal of 'avoiding error', which is otherwise empty. Thus, it is inappropriate to claim that 'seek truth' and 'avoid error' are two competing goals: they are both needed in a specification of the goal of inquiry.

The goal of inquiry is to seek truth (or knowledge), while avoiding error. The question that faces us, then, is how this over-arching aim of inquiry relates to the individual steps within it. On our view, the aim of inquiry is a compositional consequence of the aim of belief: the goal of inquiry is to seek truth, because individual acts of inquiry ('doxastic deliberation, as it sometimes referred to) aim at the truth. Such compositional inferences are familiar: airport security knows that the chance of a terrorist going on a plane is minuscule, yet they only use speeded up procedures if they can be sure that this does not sacrifice safety. Though some terrorists might slip through their net, they certify that each passenger is not a terrorist.26 Will Shortz, the famous editor of the New York Times crossword puzzles, does not tolerate any errors nor would his readers, despite knowing that he has made and presumably will make errors. What Shortz produces is obviously not the analogue of tautologies. In these cases, then, the goal of minimizing errors overall is inseparable from the goal, in each individual case, of not making an error. Such, we take it, is the case with belief-formation as well.

Our Jamesian critic disputes this putative compositional relation. Pace offers a number of examples intended to show that the goal of inquiry overall swings free of the

Pace requires that there is no other source but pragmatic-moral-prudential grounds for setting the threshold, since evidence is used up. But this ignores related, empirical knowledge that is not evidence. The evidence for a chemistry experiment and a psychology experiment are provided in their respective articles. Yet, for comparably bold claims, we are more confident of the conclusions of the chemistry experiment than the psychology experiment, given our background knowledge about the fields and the likelihood of contrary findings later.

25 We do not consider how the selection of significance levels for Type I and Type II statistical errors fits balancing views, which would excessively lengthen this chapter and which is not taken up by any of the authors who propose balancing.

26 Given the modern security apparatus, a successful terrorist attack provokes questions (what went wrong with that case?), rather than reflection on probabilities. Though mistakes will be made, mistakes are unacceptable.

aim of individual acts of belief-formation. Were this right, our discussion of the aim of inquiry would have no consequences for the aim of belief: in individual cases, pragmatic reasons to believe might further the truth-directed aim of inquiry.

One example features a husband and wife struggling with trust issues, who manage to give each other the benefit of the doubt for the sake of their marriage. Assume that the evidence has shown that the proposition 'my husband is trustworthy' is probable, but also that the husband begins to call often that he has to work late in the office and he is more distracted and distant at home. Both are evidence for possibilities that the husband is not trustworthy. According to Pace, if the belief that the husband is trustworthy is of great importance to the wife and if other moral-prudential conditions that favor seeking truth are in place, then the balance could shift against avoiding error. The anti-evidentialist suggests the wife is permitted to come to, or to maintain, the corresponding belief in her husband's trustworthiness. But if she does accept the (putative) permission does that not leave her belief, in light of her evidence, incoherent? She will believe all-out that her husband is trustworthy and that there is a serious possibility that the husband is not trustworthy.142

142 Recall the discussion in the introduction: we are making an epistemological, not a moral or prudential point. We take no stand on the sort of question one addresses with one's marriage counselor.

For another example, which also brings out the parallel to assertion, consider Riggs's illustration of a widget manufacturer balancing high output and low defects. Assume that the optimal—profit-maximizing—balance is 5,000 widgets containing 20 defective ones. Now translate widgets to beliefs or assertions. If it is determined that for every 5,000 new beliefs you acquire, 20 will be false, can you simply believe all 5,000? If you asserted to a colleague all 5,000, where you told him of the optimal blend with a minor number of defective beliefs, would he just believe all of them? No. You could say to him 'Well that's the best I could do. Shouldn't you be grateful for all the good information that I am giving you?' But his response will be 'Yes, I am grateful. Still, I cannot believe that each one is true.' This discussion reflects the point of the last subsection: a stress on balancing and the indeterminacy of evidential sufficiency cannot overcome the coherence problems we considered there.

In our experience, this argument, which is basically a reiteration of the incoherence argument of the introduction, is powerless against the basic Jamesian intuition that balancing is relevant to doxastic deliberation. Thus, it is worth understanding the sense in which that Jamesian intuition is right. Balancing, we suggest, figures in determining strategies of inquiry, not the final judgment at the close of inquiry. If a proposition is of great importance to your life it may be rational to invest unusually great effort in investigating it. Evidentialism offers no critique of the need to balance 'avoid falsity' and 'seek truth'—as roughly how much effort and time to invest in determining the truth of a proposition (hypothesis)—so far as strategies for investigating hypotheses goes.

For instance, you want to find a ring that is lost, presumably in the house. But you will not search forever; a restricting goal is that you need to get on with other matters. If the ring is made of diamonds, you will balance the goals heavily in favor of a long search ('avoid error'). But if it is only a costume jewelry ring, the balance will shift, and you will give up the search sooner ('seek truth').

However, there is not yet a final judgment on the question motivating inquiry— where the ring is. One location (hypothesis) is more worth pursuing than another. The aim to avoid error is incorporated into the negation rule—the difference between the high probability and probability one (or, for hypotheses, undefeated reasons to favor a competing hypothesis.) But acceptance implies that the evidence uncovered by the search is representative, even if one search was much more extensive than the other.143

One feature of this example is that the set of possible hypotheses (locations) is not explicit or known in advance. We know likely spots are under the couch or edges of the rug, and we know that underneath the floor or inside the wall are extremely unlikely. But we have no full inventory in advance. Consequently, it is expected that an appeal to the importance of an issue or a rise in costs is a good reason to extend search as a reflection of prudence, given ignorance and fallibility. Conflict with the normative aim of belief theory would come out in the possibility of pragmatic considerations that count as normative on belief: but prudential considerations about continuing the search say nothing about how one ought to believe.

The diagnostic suggestion, then, is that the anti-evidentialist has confused the way pragmatic

143 The glint of the ring enables you to come to realize it is under the couch. The ring's value explains why you were looking, and so saw the glint, but your reason for believing it is under the couch is the glint, not the value. In some sense, the value of the ring is a reason you came to have a belief about where it is—it is a reason for believing—but in no sense is it a reason to believe, e.g., that the ring is under the couch. This, we take it, is the contrast alluded to in n. 9 above: such cases rely on reasons for believing that are only reasons for believing, if you believe some specific proposition; they are, nevertheless, not reasons to believe that proposition.

considerations structure inquiry (against a background of ignorance) for reasons to close inquiry. If we eliminate some background ignorance, then, the temp- tation for this confusion should dissipate. And indeed it does. Imagine you are playing a TV game show like Treasure Hunt, and when the host—Monty Hall—is not looking, you are encouraged to check behind the unopened doors to decide whether you should select a different door from the one you already selected. Whether the number of doors is 3 or 2,000, if the results are negative so far, then until you have opened (eliminated) all but one, you cannot know whether the remaining door contains the treasure, regardless of external facts like how much time you are allotted or the worth of the treasure.

Each door you open (without revealing the treasure) raises the probability that the treasure is among the remaining unopened doors. Still, no matter how high the probability (you eliminated all but 2 of the 2,000 doors), you cannot know that either remaining door contains the treasure. Instead of asserting or believing that the treasure is behind door 1,999, you have an alternative: to believe or assert that there is such-and-such very high probability (but less than one) that it is. As long as inquiry is still open, further evidence could shift the probability toward a different door. When decisive evidence in favor of one door is found, the implied claim is that further evidence will be either supportive or otherwise misleading.

In this model case, there is no place for balancing the goals of seeking truth and avoiding falsehood: the requirement is to eliminate all but one door, and that is the (fallible) threshold for evidential sufficiency. Unless you have eliminated all but one door, you cannot know. When the prize value is very high, even if you've eliminated all but one door, you might double-check your assessment: the prudential considerations rehearsed above are still active. But here it is clear that they concern knowing that you know or being sure that you know, not whether you know.144

In this example and model, the aim is to determine the correct door, not to form the best judgment of which door is correct. You can always form the best judgment at a time, even at some distance from knowing which is the correct door. For instance, if the doors vary in probability (different door colors render it more or less likely that the prize is behind that door), the best judgment will be selection of the most probable door. But the reasoning above still applies: the best judgment need not be the correct judgment, as you recognize.

The best judgment is the best judgment at a time on the available evidence. In practical reasoning, the demands of action typically press you to act well before inquiry into what would be ultimately best for you to do can be completed.145 This difference between aiming at bestness (in the circumstances) and aiming at correctness is characteristic of the difference between practical reasoning (to action) and theoretical reasoning (to belief)146 (Adler 2002b). The balancing view appeals to a model for practical reasoning. But what is at issue is theoretical reasoning with its end-point of all-out judgment.

144 See further Adler (2012).145 Of course, assertion is avoluntary act, often under demands to act now or very shortly—this is one of the

reasons for the disanalogy between assertion and belief noted in the introduction. Still, the constraint that maintains the parallel is that what is asserted claims its truth, not just its 'bestness. (For more on the parallel, see Adler 2002a: ch. 10, Appendix).

146 Riggs (2003) mentions that the ultimate goal to maximize profits is relative to external conditions. If these 'external conditions' are the best we can do at the time, then this further argues that the reasoning is practical not theoretical. In theoretical reasoning, there is no time restriction.

3. The nature of belief3.1 Thepragmaticstructure of inquiry

According to James, belief reflects not just the evidence but our passional nature. Evidential considerations underdetermine belief. We have conceded that pragmatic considerations can structure efforts in inquiry; the first of the anti-evidentialist strategies we consider in this section exploits this concession. Pragmatic considerations might justify turning a blind eye to evidence, and so withholding belief on a matter that is evidentially determined. In §3.2 we turn to a second strategy, which is backed by familiar examples, appealing, for example, to socio-cultural relativity, to argue that we overestimate the evidential grounding of our beliefs. A related concern, taken up in §3.3, is that 'foundational' beliefs must be determined by non-evidential grounds.

Nozick (1993: 69-70, 86-7, 99) offers the following example: A mother cannot accept the evidence of her son's guilt, as to do so would hopelessly depress her without prospects for benefits. Nozick grants that when it is rational for a person to hold a belief, there is an evidential basis, which he develops. The proposal is that practical rationality justifies not forming a belief when, very briefly, the costs well outweigh the potential benefits. For Nozick, then, non-evidential reasons can determine whether it is rational to have a belief on the matter at all.147 Evidentialism does not seem to take a stance on that. It tells us what believing demands, but not whether one must hold a belief.

But this is only partially correct. If belief is transparent to its content, there is nothing more to believing that p than to judge without reservation that p, interferences aside. As noted in the introduction, given adequate evidence, this simply is the typical case. Thus, Nozick's question of the rationality of holding a belief at all is, typically, simply pre-empted by one's judgment that p. Still, there is a way in which judgment is voluntary. A person can refuse to judge and instead just distract himself from the matter. But how is one to adopt this strategy and avoid judgment altogether, without having a clue that one is to avoid it? We cannot evaluate all propositions for whether they are fit candidates for judgment or belief. Nozick's mother, whose son is in trouble, cannot decide in advance that she will not hear any evidence about her son, if she remains an active participant in her local community. She unavoidably learns of the evidence about her son, when she hears the reports. The question to her is what conclusion to draw from the evidence or from merely knowing that it exists.148 Then Nozick's proposal enters. So the implementation of Nozick's proposal requires a judgment-stage. But at that stage there is opposition to evidentialism, if to judge that p is tantamount to believing it.

Nozick's example raises a further question. If the mother determines that she does not have sufficient reason to engage with the evidence of her son's possible guilt, how is she to succeed at avoiding it, aware as she is of that evidence? The expected method is motivated distraction and related means of self-deception. She forgets the contrary evidence or she comes to believe that there is no evidence of guilt. If, by contrast, she

147 Steglich-Petersen (e.g. 2009:402) also stresses that pragmatic considerations can lead one not to engage in, or complete, doxastic deliberation. Compare this license for withholding belief to Papineau's example, in his contribution to this volume, of a man who has cancer but believes otherwise and avoids getting a test that would disabuse him of his false belief. Papineau's case is more starkly opposed to evidentialism, but the discussion of Nozick's case applies there as well.

148 Similarly, in Papineau's case: John is supposed to know that he has a genetic predisposition for an untreatable cancer but not believe he has the cancer, though he has not had the test he knows would settle it. Like Papineau, we are not inclined to judge John, but, given his genetic predisposition, refusing to take the test does not strike us as the behavior of someone who believes he does not have the cancer. (If he really believed it, wouldn't he get the test, just, say, to put his wife at ease?)

has good—epistemic—reason to believe the evidence is false (she knows that there are powerful forces trying to slander her son), she will not need self-deception.149

So long as it is true that the mother employs self-deception to avoid engagement with the evidence, her example fails to fulfill the 'full awareness' condition of our original account of evidentialism. This is the pattern of many anti-evidentialist arguments in the literature. For instance, Keller (2004) and Stroud (2006) claim that norms of friendship require positive beliefs about one's friend to be sustained, even when there is evidence of his wrongdoing. But what does one do with the evidence?150 Similarly, 'positive illusions' are sometimes defended: circumstances in which responsiveness to the evidence will lead one to succeed less well (to lose confidence), particularly when the beliefs are about oneself or a group to which one identifies. However, to acquire unrealistically positive or self-confident beliefs requires self-deception, confabulation or cognitive dissonance. Those who defend 'positive illusions' must concede the basic evidentialist claim, that in these cases one cannot come to, or maintain, a belief hon- estly, in full awareness of its basis. 151 As we noted in the introduction, there are circumstances in which the pragmatically rational, or ethical, thing to do might be to engage in anti-evidentialist maneuvering.

All of these discussions, then, highlight circumstances in which there might be pragmatic reasons for coming to a belief; the required techniques—distraction and self-deception—are sure signs the considerations in question are not reasons to believe. These cases are no evidence that there is a hidden, non-evidential, reason to believe.

3.2. Non-evidential influences on the structure of belief

The previous examples appeal to the idea that in certain special cases, pragmatic conditions can license belief; more problematic for us is the claim that pragmatic considerations are all but universally required. This is, for instance, how we understand the challenge posed by the following passage:

149 That she still might want to avoid the 'evidence' is no surprise. In the simplest case, if she knows the 'powerful forces' are quite artful, she might be concerned that they will manage to dupe even her.

150 One might complain that there is a phenomenon worthy of explanation here, regardless, namely that friendship is a reliable indicator of positive belief. But the evidentialist has a variety of explanatory resources, starting with the endogeneity of both quantity and kind of evidence, relative to closeness of friendship (I know more about you if we're close, and my evidential base is more likely to be skewed towards a positive evaluation; moreover, those who judge you poorly will typically stop being your friend). There is a tendency to assume that any evidential consideration is available to anyone, regardless of their relationship to the person being evaluated. Stroud suggests, for instance, that we would expect a friend to have a more positive judgment of someone than an historian, even if the historian knew everything the friend knew. This identity of evidence is, of course, impossible in practice and, so far as we can tell dubious even in principle. Thus, we suspect, what drives her intuition is not a case of evidential identity.

151 Textor (2004) treats the conditions of full awareness as an imposition on belief, and so he can go on to claim that if the condition fails, the question of the correctness of the belief remains open:

___we cannot believe at will if we try to form a belief in full consciousness. But that you cannot conceive yourself doing something in full consciousness, does not entail that it is impossible (Textor 2004: 138; similarly 137 on unassertibility)

But the condition of full awareness is not imposition, but simply an abstraction to focus on the concept of belief. If an incoherence arises, it can be pinned on incompatibility with belief. Given that full awareness conditions play this role, Textor's worry is how a normative conclusion is to follow from what cannot or must be believed, which are supposed to reflect conceptual incoherences. How, he asks, can conceptual bar- riers fix norms about how one should or ought to believe? The demand for adequate reasons or evidence is not a prescriptive 'ought', but only a condition of correctness (Section 1). Once one fixes how one correctly believes, transition to an ethical 'ought' rather than an 'ought' of rationality follows a route like that for why self-deception, though often rational, still involves a dishonesty to oneself. The mediating premises necessary to get to an ethical 'ought' are premises about the concept of belief, the way belief expresses who one is, and notions of integrity and honesty, applied to oneself.

It should give us pause that we would not have beliefs that are central to our lives—for example, about important matters of politics and religion—if we had not been brought up as we in fact were. It is an accident of birth and upbringing that we have them, rather than beliefs sharply rival to them, and (here's the rub) we shall frequently have to admit, if we are reflective and honest, that we consequently do not believe as we do because our grounds for our beliefs are superior to those which others have for their rival beliefs. (Cohen 2000: 9)

We all grow up in communities that cannot help but have a deep influence on our important, controversial, or prominent beliefs, unlike, say, our simple perceptual ones. We would not have these beliefs, if we grew up in neighboring communities. Nothing in acknowledging this fact of powerful non-epistemic influences of social development and local culture conflicts with evidentialism per se, but only with how realistic its demands are.

However, we draw a weaker conclusion from Cohen's evidence than he does. Cohen concludes that 'we consequently do not believe as we do because our grounds for our beliefs are superior to those which others have for their rival beliefs.' But it is one thing to claim that these beliefs are causally influenced by factors outside of reasoned argument, which we accept, and quite another to take the much stronger line Cohen's text suggests—that success in reasoned argument has no bearing on why we believe as we do. This is very implausible, and we do not think that Cohen means to imply that reasons are always rationalizations.152 If Adler had grown up in an extremely religious community, he would likely—but not definitely—have been a theist. It does not follow that his atheism is unjustified (i.e. not maintained by virtue of the superiority of argument, even if in good part believing it is influenced by his mostly secular upbringing). Elga (2005) briefly discusses studies which show that within limits we overrate ourselves as teachers, automobile drivers, and so on, and as self-raters compared to others. When confronted by this data most of us back down, if only temporarily. But despite the strong, specific tendency to these self-promoting ratings, it does not follow that many people do not know that they are good (and much better than average) teachers, automobile drivers, and so on.

One problem is that Cohen should not use 'our' and 'we', which implies a uniform, or close to it, causal path from upbringing to important opinions. The connection is only one of statistical regularity. There are many individuals whose upbringing loses grip due to the force of argument. Consider obvious examples like the growth of vegetari- anism or charitable donations, deriving from the effect of reasoned argument, not, in many cases, upbringing, culture, authority, or, more obviously, self-interest.

Nevertheless, even the weaker version of Cohen's conclusion is troubling. But it is not troubling for conceptual evidentialism or truth as the aim of belief, in particular. Cohen is not implying that the biases introduced by upbringing are forever the sustaining force for the beliefs so formed. Rather, Cohen's troubling datum points to a serious fallibility about those opinionated beliefs. Cohen's datum highlights the difficulties in our regularly living up to the demands of conceptual evidentialism, particularly for opinionated belief. We are heavily susceptible to unrecognized non-evidential influences that affect what we believe.

3.3 Basic beliefs

Cohen's datum points to our susceptibility to non-conscious influences on what we believe from upbringing and early environment. These influences cannot be openly recognized, while belief is

152 For a critique of reasons as rationalization, see Adler (2006).

maintained. But there is a strong tradition that maintains that our most basic and significant beliefs cannot be evidentially determined, and that this necessity is readily acknowledged. These beliefs are basic or foundational beliefs like the Humean-inductive assumption that many present and past regularities hold into the future. Whatever beliefs are chosen, the crucial claim for our purposes is that there must be (to block the regress argument) beliefs that justify others but are not themselves justified.

Plantinga (1983), while rejecting foundationalism, promotes the view that there are properly basic beliefs, which are warranted (or justified) without grounds or argument. Given their groundlessness, for our purposes, Plantinga's reformed epistemology can be classed with the Wittgensteinian view inspired by On Certainty (1969) that no grounds are available for hinge propositions, and with the view defended, for example by Strawson, that philosophically significant claims (such as that there is an external world or that we are free or that roughly the future will be like the past in regularities) are not subject to evidential considerations because belief in them is a presupposition of any other beliefs. These are justified automatically by our natural, limited, human condition and practices.

There are two conflicts with evidentialism here. First, there is the question, whether there are, or must be, beliefs for which there is no evidence. Second, there is the possibility that arises from an affirmative answer to this question: namely that the subject is free to choose from a variety of potential groundless beliefs. It is in connection to this second claim that it is sometimes suggested, on Plantinga's behalf, that belief in God is comparable to belief in sense-experience, or in testimony. The general issues raised by the first incompatibility would take us too far afield to address here. For present purposes, the second incompatibility is the one that presses: for if it is right, non-evidential considerations must determine basic beliefs. But the parallel will not hold. On the contrary, there is little reason to think basic epistemic principles, like trust in testimony, are not evidentially grounded.

You ask a stranger for the location of the Fulton Fish Market. He provides the answer and you take the #3 downtown. The friend who you are with challenges your easy acceptance: 'Why do you believe him?' The friend is seeking specifics about the stranger that provide reason to trust him, but you obviously lack knowledge of any such specifics. A characteristic response you might offer is this: 'Why shouldn't I trust him?' You reject the challenge, and turn the burden on your friend. The stranger has no reason to lie or deceive, and his unhesitant response indicates a native familiar with the location. Your rejection of the challenge indicates a broad and deep trust in the testimonial practice, which you extend to the case at hand, not having any reason to deny that the stranger is conforming to the practice. Now is this a basic belief—something like Reid's principle of credulity, 'a disposition to confide in the veracity of others, and to believe what they tell us' (Reid 1983: 95)? We cannot seek evidence for it because any evidence we find will itself depend on testimony and there is no evidence available for the hearer about the stranger. Without an initial stance of trust, we could not take their utterances (sounds) to be assertions with meaning.

But the line of reasoning leading to basic beliefs ignores a glaring fact: Testimony and induction are overwhelmingly and verifiably successful for gaining true information and drawing inferences. This is not true for the claims for religious basic beliefs.153How can this glaring fact be captured?

153 When it comes to Wittgensteianian 'hinge' propositions or Moorean propositions their obviousness is evidential obviousness: I see my hands, and know what hands look like; I have heard the genealogical stories of my family, and now I know something about carbon dating, etc. Since we are obviously right about them, we don't maintain our evidence. These are beliefs that have been detached from their overwhelming grounds.

In an important recent paper, Shogenji (2006) provides a confirmation model that applies to testimony. Details of his complex probabilistic model are not necessary to set out. One part of his strategy and one implication of his model are, though, crucial. The part of his strategy that is important is that the credibility of testimony can be treated, not as a presupposition or presumption, but as a hypothesis subject to (indirect) confirmation or disconfirmation. The important implication is expressed by Shogenji as follows:

removal of [the credibility hypothesis] from the background support not only makes the indirect confirmation of [it] non-circular, but it also reveals the full extent of indirect confirmation. Beliefs based on testimony are part of the web of beliefs we regularly rely on when we form a variety of expectations. This means that the hypothesis that testimony is credible plays a crucial role when we form these expectations. As a result, even if we do not deliberately seek confirmation of the credibility hypothesis, it receives tacit confirmation whenever observation matches the expectations that are in part based on the credibility hypothesis. Even ifthe degree of tacit confirmation by a single observation is small, there

are plenty of such observations. Their cumulative effect is substantial and should be sufficient for justifying our trust in testimony. (Shogenji 2006: 343-4)

This pattern of tacit confirmation conforms to our reflective judgment that the success of the confirmable practices can play an evidentially justificatory role for particular judgments. It also conforms to common sense. The 'cumulative effect' informs our conversational practice and, specifically, the initial rejection of the challenge ('Why shouldn't I believe him?'), and it can do so without any definite recognition of these workings, since the overwhelming obvious success of the practice swamps the occasional, though highly salient, cases in which we are given false or deceptive testimony.

Why is this powerful form of evidential support which the practice is so dependent upon overlooked? The main reason, we suspect, is that the regress argument that is the key ground to introduce basic beliefs is a problem of ultimate justification, not everyday justification. Everyday justification is justification to competent members of one's epistemic community, resting on such innocuous assumptions as a shared interest in truth and that presentation to others is more likely to uncover flaws or faults than relying on oneself. The justification does not merely seek agreement or consensus or con- vergence as a substitute for truth, but as excellent evidence of it. If you ask me why I am bringing my car to an out-of-the-way mechanic, I respond, 'He's serviced my car for a long time and always done a good job, while charging a fair price, and you immediately recognize this as a good reason. Your recognition confirms, for me, that it is a good reason. The appeal to success for a practice is this kind of appeal generalized—effectively the appeal to tacit and indirect confirmation for the testimonial practice and similarly for inductive inference provides us with a secure and common basis for explanation, acquisition of good information, and prediction.

An informal test for the difference that confirmation of inductive and testimonial practice makes, that is unavailable for other alleged basic beliefs, is the response to failures or contrary evidence or skeptical questioning. The basic beliefs require something like commitment to withstand the failures or contrary evidence (see the next section for more on commitment). Commitment, like faith, requires that one not be moved to alter one's commitment (and the corresponding beliefs) by a normal range of undermining evidence or considerations. But when an informant provides us with false testimony or an inductive inference fails, commitment is not necessary to absorb these cases under the expected fallibility of these practices, given their overwhelming evidential backing. There is no such backing for an example like the practice of treating the Biblical texts as authoritative. So commitment is required.154

4. Conclusion: Belief or commitment?Most of the arguments we have considered have had the following structure: First, the evidence does not or cannot settle the truth of various propositions. Second, this evidential gap (or absence) leaves latitude for human decision, interests, and concerns to intervene (to bridge the gap). These first two premises are inadequate, as argued in §2.1 above, since in these cases we can just form no full beliefs on the matter. We suspend judgment. And either way, the pragmatic considerations seem incapable of filling the gap, without maneuvers that are recognizable as illicit belief-formation

154 This fact need not be opposed to evidentialism. For instance, Pascal suggested that a necessary condition for coming to believe in God is that one be a committed member of a Christian community. Assuming he does not mean to suggest that joining a Christian community is tantamount to brainwashing, the idea must be that epistemic reasons only become available from the standpoint of Christian commitment. Were Pascal right, this would be an evidentialist account. That the epistemic reasons are not available from outside

processes. So, third, it is insisted that there is a range of beliefs (or disbeliefs), which include those various evidentially unsettled propositions, that are necessary or rationally required for worthwhile and legitimate ends. In these cases, not holding a belief or suspension of judgment is not an option. (In James's memorable phrase, belief is forced.)

Previously, we focused on the first two premises. In this closing section, our main focus is the third premise. The reason to want non-evidential reasons to eventuate in belief is evident: the non-evidential reasons speak to the instrumental importance of the belief in question. However, there are a number of disparities between the concept of belief as we understand it, and that which is required if anti-evidentialism is to succeed. We list here some of the claims that conceptual evidentialism implies, which have all been touched on or discussed earlier, and which are hard to square with anti-evidentialism, even of the modest, conciliatory form:

1. The full belief thatp, as contrasted to a degree of belief, is transparent to the content of the belief.

2. To believe thatp is to treat it as known—factive from the first person point of view—and detachable from the reasons or evidence to believe it.

3. There is a parallel between the epistemics of belief and the epistemics of assertion centering on the aim or claim of truth.

4. You cannot believe at will.5. Only when your belief is based on epistemic reasons can you, while recognizing those

reasons and their role in belief formation, maintain your belief (without exploiting indirect methods like distraction or self-deception.)

These claims form a unity—mutually implicating—with the last being most prominent in this chapter. They are supported by everyday examples and our responses to them, even if those responses have to be controlled to maintain focus on the concept of belief: for instance, many people will readily claim outright that they hold certain

the standpoint of Christian commitment is what inspires Plantinga to describe them as properly basic; it simply does not follow that they are not epistemic reasons. And so far as we can tell, if Christians deny this reading of Pascal's suggestion, it is tantamount to them endorsing the interpretation of conversion as brainwashing, an interpretation they presumably seek to avoid.

beliefs, for example that astrology works, with recognizably little or no evidence, or even against the evidence.

Anti-evidentialists typically specify only a narrow set of beliefs, roughly limited to contents that, as beliefs, would be personally important and that would direct significant activities or pursuits. 155

Evidentialism, however, spans the endlessly varied propositions that can be the content of belief. Anti-evidentialism cannot compre- hend the vast scope of potential beliefs. For the overwhelming bulk of our beliefs, anti-evidentialists accept an evidentialist account. Anti-evidentialists, then, look to be trying to make exceptions for which, if the vast bulk of cases that they accept are grounded in the concept of belief, there is no latitude.

This special pleading would be greatly mitigated if anti-evidentialist considerations were not directed towards belief, but towards attitudes, like commitment, that are often closely associated with belief. Commitments are not just social: when it does not involve coordination with others, the main point of commitment is for one's earlier self to bind one's later self, since one's earlier self anticipates contrary reasons or evidence. The present, committing self worries that these contrary reasons will persuade its later self to act or to judge differently than presently. The commitment is to maintain one's stance regardless of, and in anticipation of, contrary findings.156 If the other team gets far ahead in the early innings, the evidence might suggest despondence about your team's chances. But with your commitment in place you can stand by your team's ability to come back far longer: you do not treat the early deficit as a reason to alter your trust that your team will win.

We conjecture that, oftentimes, non-evidential reasons to believe are better cast as reasons to adopt the corresponding commitments, which are explicitly undertaken to resist doubts and what would otherwise be rational counter-considerations and counter-evidence. Commitments often require corresponding full beliefs, not just a wide range of actions, practices, and high degrees of belief.157 But commitment can induce full belief, for instance, by limiting the sorts of evidence to which one is exposed, so you can commit yourself to acquiring the beliefs without establishing that the beliefs hold. (The incoherence lying under the surface here comes out in the fact that in so committing yourself you cannot be aware of the evidential restrictions the commitment will induce.) Our claim is that when the commitment gives you reason (motive) to acquire the corresponding beliefs, you do not thereby give yourself a reason to believe.

The concept of belief determines its own ethic: the only reasons that can figure self-consciously in belief formation are reasons speaking to the truth of the belief. Thus, belief's aim, it is natural to say, is at the truth. Of course, pragmatic considerations can and, in a variety of ways, inevitably do distort the process of belief-formation. There is no reason, we have argued here, to think that this inevitable fact distorts the proprietary ethics of belief: belief, properly formed, is sensitive only to evidence.158

155 Reisner (2008) develops a logical model intended to make sense of this, by suggesting that it is only in extraordinary circumstances that pragmatic considerations outweigh evidential ones. This strikes us as a codification of the problem: anti-evidentialism only gets what traction it has from consideration of special cases.

156 It has been suggested that fallibility implies a similar temporal dimension to belief. Recognizing one's fallibility does constitute an openness to revision, but it is not a reason to revise. Since a reason to revise a belief is an epistemic reason of the falsity or failure of justification of the belief, a specific reason to revise the belief in the future would equally be a reason to cease believing now. Deeply held commitments might induce fear in such an eventuality.

157 Some religions are suffused with demands for all-out beliefs in the form of creeds (Wood 2002:2.1.3).158 Thanks to Berislav Marusic, Andrew Reisner, Catherine Elgin and, especially, Timothy Chan for helpful comments

on earlier drafts and discussion related to the topic of this paper.

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Leaps of Knowledge

Andrew Reisner

i. IntroductionThis chapter considers two unpopular philosophical claims. One is that doxastic voluntarism, the view that agents can, at least sometimes, choose what they believe, is true. 159 The other is that strict evidentialism, the view that all reasons for belief are evidential reasons, is false. I do not aim to defend either view, but rather to show that, if defensible, they are consistent with two commonly held views in epistemology and the psychology of belief: that the aim of belief is either truth or knowledge and that this aim plays a central role in setting the norms of belief.

A difficulty in discussing doxastic voluntarism is that its falsehood is commonly taken as a datum.160 There is an influential body of work suggesting that it is a conceptual truth that beliefs are involuntary. My own view is that whether or not beliefs can be formed voluntarily is an empirical rather than a conceptual question, but that is not a matter that I care to take up here. This chapter will assume, for the sake of argument, that doxastic voluntarism is in all relevant senses possible.

There is a parallel difficulty in discussing strict evidentialism (henceforth just 'evidentialism'). As with the falsehood of doxastic voluntarism, the truth of evidentialism is also commonly accepted as a datum, indeed as a conceptual truth.1611 have argued in some detail elsewhere that evidentialism is not a conceptual truth and may not just be assumed as a datum.162 I shall not revisit the matter here. For the purposes of this chapter, it will suffice to treat the truth of evidentialism as an open question.

Preliminaries now set aside, in this chapter I shall argue that both a limited doxastic voluntarism and anti-evidentialism are consistent with the claims mentioned above: that the aim of belief is truth or knowledge and that this aim plays an important

159 The classic modern discussion of doxastic voluntarism is Williams (1970).160 See Hookway (2000), Kelly (2002), and Shah (2006).161 See Parfit(200i),Skorupski(20i0).162 See Reisner (2007,2008,2009).

role in norm-setting for beliefs. More cautiously, I shall argue that limited doxastic voluntarism is (or would be) a useful capacity for agents concerned with truth tracking to possess, and that having it would confer some straightforward benefits of both an epistemic and a non-epistemic variety to an agent concerned with truth tracking.

2. Unstable beliefs with single and multiple fixed points

There is considerable debate about how to interpret claims of the form: the aim ofbelief is truth or the aim of belief is knowledge.163 I shall understand these aims as pertaining to particular beliefs rather than to an agent's complete belief set. A sketchy, but intuitive, way of understanding belief's having the aim of truth or knowledge is this: belief's regulatory mechanisms are primarily geared towards truth tracking (or towards truth tracking in the right way for the knowledge aim), and a belief's role in our cognitive architecture is to provide an accurate representation of its objects. Even in this sketchy account of belief's having the aim of truth or knowledge, there is much to quibble with and still more left out, but I shall not attempt further elaboration here.

One might propose a variety of cognitive mechanisms for belief acquisition and change. The default assumption in writings about theoretical reason is that agents (or perhaps well-functioning agents) modify their doxastic states in response to changes in perceived evidence. This process is involuntary, although voluntary psychological activity (e.g. theoretical deliberation) may trigger the involuntary changes.

In ordinary cases, in which we as a matter of course trust our senses, our beliefs change as we encounter new stimuli. The tree outside my window that appeared to be an aspen in the gloaming now appears to be a sugar maple in the clear sun. This change in appearance automatically trigger changes in my belief about what kind of tree I have been looking at.

For beliefs that we arrive at as the result of reasoning, belief change is triggered when we take ourselves to have sufficient evidence for the proposition about which we are reasoning. I may initially have no view about who the greatest quarterback of all time is, but on researching the statistics and news archives, I take myself to have sufficient evidence that it is John Elway. Taking oneself to have evidence need not be a conscious process nor need it entail any particular belief about evidence. Taking oneself to have sufficient evidence for a proposition that one did not already believe normally triggers the formation of a new belief.

This is an attractive model of cognitive regulation, but it is inapplicable to some circumstances. It is on these that I shall focus. The first circumstances of interest are those in which an agent has an unstable belief with either a single fixed point or multiple fixed points. Let us consider an example of each: 2.1 The numbers game with a singlefixedpoint

Alice has volunteered to participate in a psychology experiment at her university.164 The experiment uses a new and absolutely flawless mind-reading machine. The parameters of the experiment are known and understood fully by Alice.

Alice is attached to the mind-reading machine, which is in turn attached to a large visual display that is within Alice's view. When the machine is turned on, Alice will be asked to predict what

163 See Velleman (2000), Wedgwood (2002).164 This example is adapted from Reisner (2007).

number will appear in 20 seconds' time on the display. That number will be determined by a function of what Alice believes the number will in fact be. In particular, the function is n/2 + 1, where n is the number that Alice believes will appear on the screen. If Alice changes her mind, the machine resets and will display the new number (according to the function) in 20 seconds' time from when Alice changes her mind. Finally, if Alice has no belief about which number will appear on the display, the number 16 will appear, unless Alice develops a belief about what number will appear prior to the number 16's appearing. In that case, the clock will reset and the n/2 + 1 formula will become operative.

Alice appears to be in a pickle if she has any beliefbut that the number will be 2. Other beliefs will lead her to form a new belief on account of the updating rule and are thus unstable. Suppose that she believes that the number will be 100. She knows that belief will cause the display to display 51, leading her to believe that the number will be 51. She knows that her new belief will cause the number to be 26.5, leading her to believe that it will be 26.5, and so on. If she believes that the number on the display is 2, however, her belief will be stable, true, and she will have perfect evidence that the number will be 2, given her other knowledge.

2.2 The numbers game with multiplefixedpoints

This experiment is the same as the numbers game with a single fixed point, save that the function that determines what number appears on the screen is more complicated. If n is greater than or equal to 0, then the formula remains n/2 + 1. But, if n is less than 0, it is n/2 - 1. In the modified experiment, Alice knows and understands the modification.

2.3 The single fixed-point numbers games and evidence

In the first version of the numbers game, there is a single fixed point: 2. The only belief that Alice can have that will be true (and also not self-undermining given her other knowledge) is that the number on the screen will be 2. This raises three interesting questions. The first is whether, and if so why, Alice ought to believe that the number on the screen will be 2. The second is whether she can believe that the number on the screen will be 2. The third is if she can believe it, how she can believe it.

In answering the first question, the first thing to note is that if Alice ought to believe that the number will be 2, it is not on account of evidence in any very direct way. To see why, some stipulations are required. Let us suppose that Alice lacks a brute disposition to form stable beliefs and that she also lacks a brute disposition to believe that she has a disposition towards stable beliefs. Let us also suppose that Alice is not self-deluding such that she can get herself to believe there is evidence when it is plainly lacking.

To have evidence that the number on the screen will be 2, given her other knowledge, Alice would need to have evidence that she will believe that the number will be 2. Absent brute dispositions of the kind ruled out by the above stipulations, it is difficult to see where this evidence would come from. Alice arrives at the experiment lacking the belief that the number will be 2. She can reason her way to a conditional claim, namely that if she believes the number that will appear on the display will be 2, it will be 2. Conditionals are not evidence for their own antecedents, so this new piece of information will not provide evidence that Alice will believe that the number on the screen will be 2.

To the extent that Alice's cognitive regulatory mechanism for belief is sensitive to her evidence,

Alice will not come to believe that the number will be 2. Indeed, nai've reasoning leads Alice down a very difficult path. As seems likely, she will have no view about what number will appear on the display when she starts the experiment. She knows that this will cause the number on the display to be 16. If she comes to believe on that basis that the number will be 16, that new belief will cause the number to be 9. Her arithmetic reasoning will lead her to the conclusion that the number will, as a result of her new belief, actually be 5.5, and so on. Eventually Alice's mathematical reasoning capacity will be exhausted if she keeps on, and presumably she will cease to have a belief, leading, as she will know, to the number on the display's being 16. This will lead to her believing that the number will be 16, and the cycle will repeat itself.

Alice will not have evidence on a simple probabilistic view about evidence: p is evidence for q just in case the probability of q given p is higher than the probability of q given not p.165 Perhaps some more sophisticated account of evidence would allow for the following: p is evidence for q if p entails that any belief but q will be false and that q would be true.166 On this view, p would be the facts (or Alice's knowledge) about the numbers game; q would be that the number will be 2. This more sophisticated view about evidence provides an answer to the first question. Alice does have a reason to believe that the number will be 2, and that is because she has evidence for it. It also provides an answer to the second and third questions. Alice can believe that the number will be 2, and she can do so because she is sensitive to her evidence.

2.4 The multiplefixed-point numbers game and evidence

The same considerations, mutatis mutandis, apply to the multiple fixed-point numbers game as apply to the single fixed-point numbers game, when working with the simple view of evidence. This is not the case when working with the sophisticated view of evidence.

In the multiple-fixed point numbers game, there are two fixed points: 2 and -2. Thus, it is not true of 2 that one will have a false belief unless one believes it, and the same goes for -2. The sophisticated account of evidence does not even yield that one has evidence that the number will be either 2 or -2. Alice's beliefs will be false unless she believes that it will be 2 or believes that it will be -2. Holding in place the supposition that she has no brute dispositions to believe one way or the other, or brute dispositions to believe that she will believe one way or the other, Alice cannot have evidence for any belief in the multiple fixed-point numbers game.

3. Believing absent evidenceIf the sole regulatory mechanism of belief formation is sensitivity to evidence, then Alice could not form the belief that the number will be 2 in the single fixed-point numbers game, if what she is in fact sensitive to is evidence of the simple kind. If she is sensitive to the complex kind of evidence, then she can form her belief based on evidence. Neither the simple nor the more sophisticated account of evidence would trigger a belief that the number will be 2 or the belief that the number will be -2 in the multiple fixed-point version of the numbers game. In these cases, Alice cannot believe that the number will be 2 (or believe that it will be -2), if the only cognitive regulatory mechanism for belief formation is sensitivity to evidence.

165 See Harman (1999).166 This has been suggested to me in response to the original discussion of the single fixed-point numbers game

in Reisner (2007). I do not endorse this view, but I have no interesting argument against it.

Someone wishing to defend the view that Alice can believe that the number will be 2 in the single fixed-point numbers game has various non-evidential regulatory options at his disposal for explaining how. I shall briefly canvas two of them, but more of the same style may be possible. The first of these is what I shall call 'stability':

(Ci) Stability: Absent any other regulatory considerations, an agent's beliefs are sensitive to stability.

In cases for which there is a single fixed point, stability regulation may be sufficient to form a belief. In the single fixed-point numbers game, that belief would be 2.167 Here is a second proposal:

(C2) Knowledge: An agent can, and sometimes does, believe something when she knows (or has a very high confidence) that it will be true, if she believes it.168

I do not intend to discuss the plausibility of either stability or knowledge as cognitive regulatory mechanisms, but I do wish to highlight an important feature of them both. In the single fixed-point numbers game, stability and knowledge would both yield the fixed-point solution. If, when confronted with epistemic environments in which (simple) evidence was lacking, one's beliefs were formed according to stability or according to knowledge, one could still form all of one's beliefs without choosing. To put things another way: stability and knowledge would lead to the stable belief in an agent for whom all belief formation was involuntary.

These mechanisms are not sufficient for forming a stable belief, absent the capacity to voluntarily choose beliefs, for the multiple fixed-point numbers game. It is easy to see why for both stability and for knowledge. In the case of stability, there is ex hypothesi more than one stable belief. Thus, a cognitive regulatory mechanism that selected for stability would have its choice underdetermined. Exactly the same is true for knowledge. In the multiple fixed-point numbers game, Alice knows that her belief will be true, if believed, when the contents of that belief are that the number on the display will be 2, and also when they are that the number on the screen will be -2. Underdetermination is the death of involuntary belief forming mechanisms.169

Within the range of cases to which stability or knowledge apply, an agent who pos- sessed a limited capacity to choose her beliefs would be able to arrive at one of the fixed points. She could choose either 2 or -2. If stability or knowledge restricted the mem- bership of her belief choice set, her cognitive regulatory mechanism would still in an important sense be truth governed. Only true beliefs would (and could) be acquired and held in the multiple fixed-point numbers game and other scenarios with the same basic structure. I shall return to this point in Section 5.

4. Non-evidential reasons for beliefWe can distinguish between two broad classes of normative reasons for belief: evidential and non-evidential.170 It will be useful to have working definitions of each:

(Ri) Evidential reasonsfor belief: Fact /is an evidential reason for agent a to believe b just in case f is evidence171 for the contents of b.

167 I discuss stability in more detail in Reisner (2007).168 The knowledge proposal isalso discussed in more detail in Reisner (2007).

169 Strictly speaking, one could start rigging up more elaborate cognitive models. When encountering multiple fixed-point scenarios, an agent's cognitive regulatory mechanism could have a randomizer that arbitrarily selects one of the options. This addition strikes me as ad hoc.

170 See Reisner (2009) for an extended discussion of the difference and Reisner (2008) for a discussion of how evidential and non-evidential reasons for belief can be weighed against each other.

171 If one thinks that evidence is relative to an agent, then this can be expressed as 'evidence for agent a'. For a

and

(R2) Non-evidential reasonsfor belief: Fact f is a non-evidential reason for agent a to believe b just in case f is a reason for a to believe b andf is not evidence for the contents of b.

R1 is designed to ensure that reasons for belief are present or absent at the same time and in the same ways as evidence. I am hoping to capture the views of strict evidentialists172 in doing so, because 'normative reason for belief' is a term of art. I doubt that there is a properly intuitive notion to capture. R2 is designed to capture any reason for belief that is not an evidential reason. This leaves open the question of whether there are non-evidential reasons for belief. I have argued that there are elsewhere,173 but here I am assuming that there are non-evidential reasons for belief for the sake of argument.

If R1 is correct, then whether there are evidential reasons for belief in the single fixed-point numbers game depends wholly on whether one accepts the simple or the complex account of evidence. Neither the simple nor the complex account of evidence will deliver an evidential reason for belief in the multiple fixed-point numbers game. This is because the presence (or absence) of an evidential reason for belief is entirely parasitic on the presence (or absence) of evidence. As discussed in Section 2.4, no evidence is available to Alice in the multiple fixed-point numbers game.

A normative version of both stability and knowledge delivers reasons for belief in both the single and multiple fixed-point numbers games. I shall only discuss the multiple fixed-point numbers game here for the sake of economy, but the same considerations apply mutatis mutandis in the single fixed-point version, save that the reasons are unique in the single fixed-point case (because there is a single fixed point). A first attempt at a normative version of stability and knowledge is:

(R3) Normative stability: Fact f is a reason for agent a to believe b iff makes it the case that b is a stable belief for a.

and

(R4) Normative knowledge: Fact f is a reason for agent a to believe b iffmakes it the case that a knows that b will be true, if a believes b.

As they stand, neither R3 nor R4 is very plausible as an account of a type of normative reason for belief. A modified version of R4 can salvage normative knowledge, but for reasons that I shall presently explain, normative stability is more difficult to preserve.

The benefits of having stable beliefs depend on the context. One could generate evil demon cases in which one is either rewarded or punished for having stable beliefs. They are of no special interest here. Outside of evil demon cases, and more earthly cousins, most of the benefits derived from having stable beliefs are in the conservation of cognitive resources. Provided that the topic of the belief is of no great moment (as in the example in this chapter), an unending cycle of reasoning is a waste of mental energy, not to mention time. Doxastic stability is no guarantor of truth, and in cases in which the stable beliefs are the true ones, one suspects that the reason giving force of stability is merely derivative from the reason giving force of truth.174 Thus, I tentatively conclude that the fact that a belief would be stable is unlikely to have non-derivative reason-giving force. Cases in which

thorough discussion of evidence and theoretical reasons, see Skorupski (2010).172 See Kelly (2002), Parfit (2001), Shah (2006), and Skroupski (2010) as examples.173 See Reisner (2007,2008,2009).174 For an interesting discussion of the way that truth crowds out other epistemic considerations, see Pritchard

(2011).

being a stable belief provides a reason are cases in which there is already some other more basic reason-giving consideration.

Normative knowledge, on the other hand, has inherent plausibility. Its inherent plausibility comes from an assumption set out in Section 1, namely that the aim of belief plays a role in setting the norms of belief. This requires elaboration.

In this chapter, our working understanding of what it is for belief to aim at truth is that the cognitive regulatory mechanisms for the formation of individual beliefs are geared towards tracking truth. We may modify our understanding of the aim of belief if we take the aim to be knowledge, including appropriate riders concerning an agent's being appropriately epistemically situated.175

If one allows that belief's constitutive aims play a role in setting the norms for belief, then one expects at least some of the normative reasons for belief to be concerned with arriving at the truth. This is vague. A precise way of understanding it is offered by strict evidentialism: all reasons for belief are evidential reasons.176 A more ecumenical evidentialist can offer the weaker position: insofar as the aim of belief is truth, some normative reasons for belief are evidential reasons. 177

Evidence, however, does not exhaust the ways in which the aim of belief might set truth-tracking belief norms. To see why, consider the numbers game example.

In the multiple fixed-point numbers game, Alice knows that if she believes that the number that will appear on the display is 2, then that number will be 2. Thus, Alice knows that she will acquire a true belief if she comes to believe that the number on the display will be 2. For the reasons discussed in Section 2.4, Alice lacks evidence that the number on the display will be 2, but she is guaranteed that if she forms the belief that it will be, then she will have acquired a new true belief.

Acquiring this new belief is consistent with the aims of her cognitive regulatory mechanisms for believing. She aims at having her individual beliefs come out true, and it is only by believing that the number on the display will be 2, or by believing that the number on the display will be -2, that she will have beliefs that she knows will be true. Indeed, she knows that all other beliefs will be false. Her beliefs are guaranteed to fail to track the truth, unless she forms the belief that the number on the display will be 2, or unless she forms the belief that the number on the display will be -2. If we take the aim of belief (and the concomitant goals of her cognitive regulatory mechanism) seriously as setting norms for belief, there is a reason to believe that the number will be 2, or to believe that the number will be -2.

At first blush, this appears to commend R4, the principle that I earlier said was flawed: (R4) Normative knowledge: Fact f is a reason for agent a to believe b if/makes it the case that a

knows that b will be true, if a believes b.

It does not.178 R4 gets things wrong by being too permissive. Here is a counterexample. Suppose that Alex is perfectly reliable about predicting his own behaviour. Alex knows that if he believes that he will drop an anvil on his foot, he will in fact drop an anvil on his foot. Alex knows this because his beliefs about his own behaviour are perfectly reliable indicators. Nonetheless, it is clearly wrong to say that these facts about Alex jointly give Alex a reason to believe that he will in fact drop an anvil

175 See Williamson (2000) for an extended discussion of the idea that belief aims at knowledge.176 See Adler (2002).177 See Steglich-Petersen (2009) for more discussion on the relationship between the aim of belief and our

reasons.178 Orat least I believe that it does not. Normative knowledge is effectively a doxastic version of ratification;

those attracted in general to ratification may not be especially worried about the objections to normative knowledge raised below.

on his foot. What is the difference between Alex's case and Alice's earlier on? Alice's belief causes its own truth, whereas Alex's belief is perfect evidence of its own truth. Alex's coming to believe that he will drop an anvil on his foot will not cause him to drop an anvil on his foot. Rather, some disposition to perform a particular action, let us say, causes Alex to believe that he will perform that particular action.

This points the way to a less permissive version of normative knowledge:

(R4*) Normative knowledge*: Fact f is a reason for agent a to believe b iff makes it the case that a knows that if a believes b, then as believing b will cause b to be true.

The difference between R4 and R4* is in the last clause. An agent's belief must cause itself to be true ('cause' should be interpreted loosely here) in order for there to be a reason for the agent to have that belief.

One might still worry about R4*, owing to a view in the philosophy of action, cognitivism, 179

which holds that intentions are special cases of beliefs about what one will do. In combination with R4*, cognitivism appears to lead to the conclusion that we have a great many reasons to believe that we will act in certain ways, since having the intention to f under favourable circumstances causes one to f. Nonetheless, cognitivism should not be treated as a source of concern for R4*, as any account of reasons for intending according to the cognitivist understanding must exempt intention-beliefs from having the aim of truth as understood here.

Normative knowledge as spelled out in R4* is consistent with the pair of views that the aim of belief is truth or knowledge and that the aim of belief plays a role in setting the norms for belief. In cases like the multiple fixed-point numbers game, where evidential norms do not help an agent track the truth, normative knowledge is not only consistent with this pair of views, but suggested by them. Normative knowledge entails the falsehood of strict evidentialism. Strict evidentialism may yet be true, but it is not because it is the sole norm of belief that is consistent with the aim of belief's being truth or knowledge.

5. Knowledge*, normativeknowledge*, and doxastic voluntarism

Normative knowledge*, if true, is sufficient in the single fixed-point numbers game to determine what Alice ought to believe, because there is only one belief that satisfies its conditions. The non-normative cognitive regulatory mechanism, knowledge*, is sufficient, ceteris paribus, in the single fixed-point version of the numbers game to determine what Alice will believe. This can be seen by spelling out knowledge more precisely here as knowledge*:

(C2*) Knowledge*: Absent evidence, an agent can and sometimes does form a belief when she knows that having that belief will cause it to be true.

If we accept the simple view about evidence, then in the single fixed-point numbers game, Alice lacks evidence. Ex hypothesi, the belief regulatory mechanism that is available to her is knowledge*, which selects the only available belief that satisfies its conditions, the belief that the number on the display will be -2.

Neither knowledge* nor normative knowledge* are sufficient to select a belief (psychologically or normatively) in scenarios that have the form of the multiple fixed-point numbers game. This is

179 See Setiya (2007) and Velleman (1992) for discussions of cognitivism. See Langton (2004) for worries about cognitivism.

because there is no unique solution to the multiple fixed-point numbers game. On the cognitive regulatory side, knowledge*is left with more than one belief to choose from. On the normative side, normative knowledge* provides reasons of equal strength for more than one belief.

That knowledge* and normative knowledge* suffice or fail to suffice for their respective purposes in the same scenarios is unsurprising. One way of understanding knowledge* is as being a special case of a general cognitive regulatory mechanism:

(C3) Reasons: Under normal circumstances, agents involuntarily form beliefs in response to what they take to be their epistemic reasons.

C3 is phrased subjectively in order to avoid mysteries about how external epistemic reasons could play a direct causal role in belief formation. It is also designed to be neutral about what an agent can take to be an epistemic reason. Two constraints on how to understand C3 must be introduced.

The first is that taking is not meant itself to be a reflective or conscious process. Agents need not possess the concept of a reason or be able to articulate the considerations on which a belief is formed. This restriction runs contrary to much of the current thought about what it is to be a reason, which holds that for something to be taken as a reason, an agent must be able to articulate it in some way, at least retrospectively, if asked. Current thought may be correct, although I suspect it is not. My weaker condition does not preclude instances of taking to be a reason that meet the stronger and more popular condition. I offer the weaker condition to focus on an idea that I believe enjoys broad consensus. That idea is that cognitive regulatory mechanisms, or at least rational ones, are sensitive to what an agent takes to be her reasons. What counts as being taken as a reason need not be settled here.

The second constraint is that 'epistemic' must be understood in some reasonable way. Epistemic reasons cannot be pragmatic reasons (although the same fact could in some circumstances be both an epistemic and pragmatic reason) for belief. I suggest that we understand epistemic reasons as non-evidential reasons that are nonetheless truth-concerned. It strikes me as implausible to suppose that most agents are working with a sophisticated theory of what an epistemic reason is, but barring some interesting further beliefs,180 they do not take the fact that it would be a great thing ifp were true to suggest that p is in fact true.

With these constraints on board, reasons covers the more common circumstance in which an agent forms beliefs in response to her (apparent) evidence. Knowledge is just a special case of reasons. Because evidence-based belief formation is the normal circumstance, accepting reasons makes doxastic involuntarism an especially attractive view about belief formation. This is because given an evidential state, e, and a proposition, p, an agent will have one of three clear and mutually exclusive kinds of reasons: a reason to believe p, a reason to disbelieve p, or a reason to suspend judgement about p. Because these three kinds of reasons are mutually exclusive, according to reasons a well-functioning cognitive regulatory mechanism will always be able to determine a single doxastic state for an agent based on what she takes to be her evidence. Being able to form beliefs voluntarily would therefore be either superfluous or would go against the norms set by the aim of belief. It would be superfluous if the agent chose the evidentially recommended belief state, because reasons already would ensure that she forms that belief state. It would go against the norms set by the aim of belief if the agent chose a belief state other than that recommended by the evidence,

180 E.g. perhaps a Panglossian believes that because this is the best of all possible worlds, the fact that something would be the best state-of-affairs is a reason to believe that it is the actual state-of-affairs.

as doing so would violate the norm set by the aim of belief that belief be truth tracking.The situation is different when we turn to the multiple fixed-point numbers game. Here, neither

knowledge* nor normative knowledge * provides a unique solution. There is, by normative knowledge*, equally good reason to believe that the number on the display will be 2 and to believe that the number on the display will be -2.181 Knowledge*, lacking a unique solution, also does not have a determinate answer as to which belief to form.

In essence, this is a case in which there are no epistemic reasons that favour believing 2 over -2 or vice-versa. And, it is also a case in which there is no epistemic reason to suspend judgement, because the rules of the numbers game are set up so as to ensure that suspending judgement is unreasonable. Despite this being the state of affairs, the only way to track truth is to believe one of 2 or -2. Because the rules and operation of

181 Note that normative knowledge does not generate a reason to believe (2 v -2). Having this disjunctive belief will not cause it to be true that the number on the display will be (2 v -2).

the numbers game are transparent to its players, they cannot (or ought not, at any rate) to take themselves to have a reason to believe 2 over -2 or vice-versa. Tracking truth dictates that they believe one or the other, but not either one in particular.

This case is a kind of doxastic Buridan's Ass. To avoid starvation, a hungry donkey must choose one of two equidistant and equi-delicious bales of hay, despite not being able to form a rational prejudice for one over the other. In cases of action, we assume this is possible. The donkey, or rather his human counterpart, has a psychological capacity to choose when the reasons for favouring one choice over another are exhausted. This capacity for brute choice is sometimes regarded as extra-rational. If it is, it is nonetheless a precondition of one's ability to satisfy rational requirements of the form: choose a or b.

In the multiple fixed-point numbers game, a capacity to choose a belief would be required for a non-self-deluding agent to meet her requirement to track the truth. If we suppose that the right way to understand normative knowledge* is that an agent has a reason, or (more strongly) is required either to believe 2 or to believe -2,182 then an agent must arrive at one of those two beliefs despite having no epistemic prejudice for one over the other. No sound theoretical reasoning will lead to one belief over the other. Some capacity for spontaneous belief formation is required; most plausibly this would be a capacity to choose what to believe.

As I am not seeking to defend the possibility of doxastic voluntarism, let me make it clear that 'most plausibly' is not intended to convey unrestricted plausibility. If doxastic voluntarism is impossible or highly improbable, then the issues raised by the multiple fixed-point number game do not constitute, as far as I can see, an independent argument for doxastic voluntarism. Rather, if doxastic voluntarism is possible in the relevant senses and not wholly implausible, it looks like the right cognitive capacity for this job.

The upshot is that doxastic voluntarism, if possible, is useful for a truth-tracking agent, at least in these limited circumstances. Indeed, it is more than useful. It looks like the best way for an agent to securely track the truth in cases where knowledge* and normative knowledge* apply. This very limited kind of doxastic voluntarism is consistent with the view that the aim ofbelief is truth (or knowledge) and that the aim ofbelief plays a role in setting the norms of belief.

6. Leaps of knowledge: from instability to a fixed point and from one fixed point to another

It is possible now to give a more precise account of the sort of doxastic voluntarism that is consistent with, and possibly commended by, the view that the aim of belief is truth and that this aim sets some of the norms of belief. This is a limited kind of doxastic voluntarism, one that not only tracks truth, but ensures knowledge:

(D1) Voluntarism: An agent can choose her belief just in case three conditions are met.(A) Evidence does not issue a relevant requirement (either for a belief, disbelief, or suspension

ofjudgement).(B) The agent knows that her having the belief will cause the belief to be true.(C) Normative knowledge does not issue a reason forjust a single belief.

Voluntarism as spelled out in D1 allows for doxastic choice in cases in which the agent is in a

182 To avoid confusion about scope: Reason (B2 v B-2).

position to make a leap of knowledge. It does not permit an agent to make a leap of faith. An agent can only choose a belief that she knows will be true, if believed, not one about which the evidence is merely indecisive.

One may therefore think of the kind of doxastic voluntarism that is consistent with the aim of belief's being truth or knowledge as 'leap-of-knowledge' voluntarism, as opposed to the much stronger 'leap-of-faith' voluntarism that is often the target of doxastic involuntarists.

Whether or not we have leap-of-knowledge voluntaristic capacities seems to me to be an empirical question. If our cognitive regulatory systems have evolved under pressures to track truth, it at least seems possible, given the epistemic utility of being able to choose beliefs in some circumstances, that human cognitive regulatory mechanisms have evolved with a limited capacity to choose beliefs.

One of the limits on our capacity to choose beliefs according to voluntarism as spelled out in Di is an implied trumping rule concerning the operation of our cognitive regulatory mechanisms. This appears in clause (A) of Di. An agent can only choose her beliefs when what to believe is not settled by evidence (or apparent evidence). On the normative side, normative knowledge* is only relevant when evidential reasons are lacking. On the psychological side, knowledge * is only operative when evidential regulatory mechanisms are not relevant. In the multiple fixed-point numbers game, evidence has no role to play on either the normative or the psychological side. There are other cases in which this is not so. It is interesting to consider them, suspending clause (A) for the moment.

6.1 Thepowerofpositive thinking

Consider the following situation.183 Robert visits an internist for his annual physical examination. He receives a phone call from his physician later in the week with some unsettling news. Robert has a rare and dangerous illness that is connected to his brain states. Improbably, it is connected in particular to brain states that encode beliefs about this specific illness. Patients who believe that they will recover from the illness always do. Patients who believe that they will not recover from the illness never recover. And, patients who have no view about the matter never recover. These outcomes have been shown by extensive research, Robert is truthfully advised, to be caused by the brain states that encode beliefs about the illness.184

Having been told this, Robert will realize that he is in a bad way. Not having felt ill or ever having heard of this illness prior to his visit to the doctor, Robert had no belief about whether he would recover from this illness. He now has very strong evidence that his lack of belief will cause him not to recover. This leads him to form the belief that he will not recover, which is itself further and self-sustaining evidence that he will not recover. Of course, if Robert were to come to believe that he will recover, he in fact would. That belief would become evidence for itself and would cause itself to be true.

6.2 Pragmatic inducements and leaps of knowledge

Voluntarism as spelled out under D1 rules out the possibility of Robert's choosing to believe that he will get better. This is only because of clause (A). In cases like the power of positive belief, a direct change in one's belief would also be a leap of knowledge. There are two fixed points for Robert: believing he will recover and believing that he will not recover. Suspending judgement, once he has been informed of his diagnosis and the nature of the disease, is unstable.

183 This section's name is borrowed from Harman (1999).184 One can also produce evil demon variants of this example.

If agents can at least choose their beliefs in the limited way allowed by voluntarism, are there any grounds for thinking that perhaps a slightly less restrictive version of doxastic voluntarism that would allow Robert to change his belief directly might be the case? This depends on one's reaction to two questions.

The first question is whether leaps of knowledge from fixed point to fixed point are possible under any circumstances at all. If not, then Robert will certainly need to seek out a hypnotist or find some other indirect way to effect a change in his belief. The second question is under what conditions a fixed point to fixed point leap can occur, if it is possible at all.

I suggest, tentatively, that if one can make a leap of knowledge from one fixed point to another, it is because of a weak kind of pragmatic encroachment.185 Let us return briefly to the multiple fixed-point numbers game to see the case for this weak kind of pragmatic encroachment. In a slight modification to the original example, the rules as set out previously still apply, but now Alice will win a prize if she believes that the number on the display will be -2, but she will not win the prize if she believes that it will be 2.

From an epistemic point of view, nothing has changed in this modified version over the original. If Alice's cognitive regulatory mechanisms are governed solely by truth-tracking considerations, and reasons are only truth-concerned, changing the pragmatic inducements will affect neither the psychological nor the normative balance sheet. Nonetheless, it does not seem unreasonable to think that Alice, with her capacity to choose which number she believes will appear on the display, would choose -2 in order to win the prize. If we grant her even this limited doxastic voluntarism, she will have the ability to make some choices on a pragmatic basis. Her ability to do so will be consistent with the view that epistemic considerations are completely dominant, both psychologically and normatively, in belief formation.

This modified version of the multiple fixed-point numbers game and the power of positive thinking are both cases in which there are multiple fixed points that differ with respect to pragmatic inducements. In the modified multiple fixed-point numbers game, it seems likely that if Alice has any ability to choose her beliefs at all, she will have the ability to do so taking pragmatic inducements into account. This particular instance of weak pragmatic encroachment does not come at an alethic cost.

It is in alethic cost that the power of positive thinking example differs importantly. In order to make a direct change in his beliefs, Robert's choice would have to override the evidential considerations. This would undermine the lexical dominance of (apparent) evidence in determining belief states as required by clause (A).

How high a cost would it be? There is no straightforward answer. It is not clear to me that anything about the aim of belief requires that evidence take priority in cases in which knowledge* (suitably modified to remove the stipulation that evidence is dominant) could apply. Knowledge* is motivated by an interest in tracking-truth and gaining knowledge, just as evidential belief regulation is. At the same time, there is a difference in the degree of pragmatic encroachment between the power of positive thinking and the multiple fixed-point numbers game. The former has a larger pragmatic encroachment, because there is an epistemic consideration, evidence, to which one can appeal to determine which fixed point to settle on. There is none in the latter. Thus, pragmatic considerations can do more work in the former case than in the latter, moving from mere, and

185 I am using the term 'pragmatic encroachment' in a different way from its current use in the knowledge and justification literature.

optional, tiebreakers to considerations that can override properly epistemic cognitive regulatory mechanisms.

7. ConclusionI have argued in this chapter that a limited version of doxastic voluntarism is consistent with and perhaps suggested by the suppositions that the aim of belief is truth or knowledge and that the aim of belief plays a role in setting the norms for belief. That is the most solid conclusion of the chapter.

A less solid conclusion is that a limited pragmatic encroachment on cognitive regulation remains consistent with the aim of belief's being truth or knowledge in the modified multiple fixed-point numbers game and cases with a similar structure. That is to say, in those cases in which one is moving from unstable beliefs to a stable one. I have also considered cases in which an agent is at a fixed point, but has other fixed points available. The example discussed in this chapter is the power of positive thinking. I have argued that any plausibility of accepting a degree of pragmatic encroachment in the multiple fixed-point numbers game case does not automatically carry over to these fixed point to fixed point cases. Further, accepting that an agent has a limited capacity to choose her beliefs in the multiple fixed-point numbers game does not imply that she has that capacity when she already has a belief that is a fixed point.

The reason why the two kinds of cases are different both with respect to pragmatic encroachment and doxastic voluntarism is that an agent who starts at a fixed point already possesses evidence that her belief is true. Thus, while consistent with the aim of having individual beliefs track truth (or having them become knowledge), doxastic voluntarism is not required for truth-tracking or knowledge acquisition.

I have also argued that strict evidentialism is not required by the aim of belief's being truth or knowledge and the aim of belief's playing a role in setting the norms of belief. I have argued in the past186 that philosophers who try to connect strict evidentialism with doxastic involuntarism are mistaken. That claim was too strong. Doxastic involuntarism is unproblematically consistent with the aim of belief's being truth or knowledge, if strict evidentialism is true. If strict evidentialism is false, doxastic involuntarism may leave us short of living up to the aim of belief.187

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Nothing but the Truth: On the Norms and Aims of Belief

Daniel Whiting i.

Introduction

The following has the appearance of a platitude:

(C) One correctly believes that p if and only if it is true that p

This seems equivalent to, or at least to imply:188

(T) One may believe that p if and only if it is true that p189Evidently,

(T) breaks down into the following conditionals:

(T-NEC) One may believe that p only if it is true that p(T-SUFF) One may believe that p if it is true that p

Call the view that truth provides the standard for believing, the truth view.190

A principle that appears to be a platitude might, of course, turn out to be false, at least if taken at face value. In recent years, the idea that knowledge, rather than truth, provides the standard for believing has grown in popularity and prominence. Call this, the knowledge view. According to it, the following principle holds:

(K) One may believe that p if and only if one knows that p

188 For defence of the claim that statements about what it is (in)correct to do imply statements about what one may (not) do, see Whiting (2010: §3), though little in what follows hangs on that claim. Some deny either that there is a general standard for believing of any sort or that the standard for believing has normative import. Such views are not my present concern.

189 Note that here, and in all formulations of the norms that follows, 'may' should be understood as having narrow scope. Note also that in what follows I am concerned only with outright belief, not degrees of belief or confidence.

190 I defend the truth view in Whiting (2010). Other proponents include Lynch (2004), Boghossian (2008: ch. 4), Wedgwood (2002), Gibbard (2005), Shah and Velleman (2005), Baldwin (2007), Millar (2009), and Littlejohn (2010), though they differ in how they formulate the norm of truth.

Evidently, (K) breaks down into the following conditionals:

(K-NEC) One may believe that p only if one knows that p(K-SUFF) One may believe that p if one knows that p191

No doubt there are other candidate norms for belief, such as:

(J) One may believe that p if and only if one has justification for believing that p

However, the proponent of the knowledge view might consider (J) a variant of (K) (cf. Sutton 2007) and, if justification falls short of knowledge, a proponent of either the truth view or the knowledge view might consider (J) as in some way derived from (T) or (K). Whatever its relationship to other candidate norms governing belief, I shall for the most part set (J) aside and focus instead on the disagreement between proponents of the truth view and of the knowledge view. Specifically, I shall defend the truth view against the various arguments which have been put forward in the recent literature which seem to speak against it and in favour of the knowledge view.

Some might reject (T) immediately on the grounds that whether or not one may believe that p does not depend on the truth of that belief—a matter which is, so to speak, out of one's hands—but only on what else one believes (to leave the alternative deliberately vague). Other than to note that the suggestion that one might derive (J) from (T) goes some way to speaking to this worry, I shall not address this point, since, again, my concern is the dispute between advocates of the truth view and of the knowledge view. Both agree that whether or not it is true that p determines (in part or in whole) whether or not one may believe that p.

Since knowing that p entails that p, the proponent of the truth view has no reason to deny (K-SUFF). Since knowing that p is incompatible with its being false that p, the proponent of the knowledge view has no reason to deny (T-NEC). Accordingly, I shall focus on attempts to argue against (T-SUFF) and in favour of (K-NEC). Although those attempts are due to some of the most prominent contemporary philosophers, and although they challenge a deeply entrenched conviction, namely, that truth and falsity are the primary dimensions of assessment for belief, the knowledge view has so far received almost no critical assessment and almost no attempt has been made to defend the truth view in the face of it.192

If there are general normative principles governing belief, then one might expect having a clear conception of what those norms are to inform and constrain theories of the nature of belief. Likewise, if the notions of truth or knowledge figure in the relevant normative principles, then one might expect that fact to inform and constrain theories of the nature of truth or of knowledge. Though they provide some indication of the importance of the task at hand, I shall not explore such issues in the present paper, sticking instead to the prior issue of what the relevant principles are.

191 Williamson (2000:11), Adler (2002), Engel (2005: 89-90), Bird (2007: 93-5), Sutton (2007), and Bach (2008), endorse (K-NEC). Williamson (2005b: 108) and Bird (2007: 93-5) appear also to endorse (K-SUFF). It is perhaps surprising that explicit endorsements of (K-SUFF) are less frequent—if one knows that p, it is hard to imagine what reason there could be not to believe that p.

Smithies (2012) defends a version of (K) formulated in terms of being in a position to know that p.192 In stark contrast to the voluminous literature evaluating the knowledge view of assertion. A notable, though

not the only, exception is Littlejohn (2010). Several of the arguments I examine are not arguments Littlejohn considers and, where there is an overlap in focus, my arguments differ substantially from his. Nonetheless, our respective discussions are complementary.

2. An objection to the knowledge viewThe knowledge view appears to conflict with the ways in which we criticize and evaluate beliefs. Suppose David asks, 'Who do you believe will win the next election?' Kelly might reply, 'The Republicans'.193 It would be very odd for David to reply, 'You don't know that!' And it would be entirely appropriate for Kelly to reject this challenge by saying, 'I never said that I did—I was only telling you what I believe'. Note that David might be right that Kelly does not know this but, still, his remark seems out of order.

In contrast, it would not be odd for David to respond, as one might expect if (T) holds, 'You're wrong—the Democrats will win'. Likewise, it would not be odd for David to respond, as one might expect if (J) holds, 'You've no reason to think that!' Of course, both challenges might fail—if it turns out that Kelly's belief is true or adequately supported by reasons—but the important point is that remarks of this sort do not in general seem out of order. Kelly cannot dismiss challenges concerning her belief's truth-value or its justificatory status as she can those concerning her possession, or otherwise, of knowledge.

These observations suggest that the knowledge view is mistaken—it is not the case that one may believe that p only if one knows that p. Of course, this is not decisive and there might be ways in which proponents of the knowledge view might seek to reject the observations or show that, despite appearances, they are consistent with her position. Rather than pursue the matter further, I shall turn to the arguments which have been offered in support of (K-NEC). If those arguments are unsuccessful, the attempt to deal with the above objection lacks motivation. To anticipate, I shall claim, not only that the arguments are unsuccessful, but that some of the considerations they appeal to turn out, on reflection, to count against the knowledge view.

3. Arguments for the knowledge view of assertionA common strategy is to argue for the knowledge view of belief by appeal to the knowledge view of assertion. Suppose that one may assert that p only if one knows that p. Suppose also that, given a 'far-reaching parallel between belief and assertion' (Adler 2002: 13), one can read off the norms of belief from those governing assertion. (K-NEC) would seem to follow.194 This strategy has the benefit of freeing proponents of the knowledge view of belief from having to argue directly in favour of (K-NEC). Whatever considerations support the knowledge view of assertion support in turn the knowledge view of belief.

The first difficulty the strategy faces is that the knowledge view of assertion is false and the arguments provided in support of it are unsuccessful. There is, however, not space here to justify such a bold assessment.195 Accordingly, I shall set it aside, since the strategy faces other problems.

As noted above, the attempt to read norms of belief directly off those governing assertion assumes that belief and assertion are in some way internal and external counter- parts. This

193 Given the question to which she is responding, Kelly's utterance should not be heard as a flat-out assertion that the Republicans will win the next election. I shall consider the relation between belief and assertion in the next section.

194 For this strategy, see Williamson (2000: 10, 238, 255-6), Adler (2002: 36), Bird (2007: 95ff), Sutton (2007: 44-8).

195 For a critique of the knowledge view of assertion, see Whiting (forthcoming). The arguments I provide there would equally provide a response to the arguments I survey here in support of the knowledge view of belief. Nonetheless, I shall not rely on them. For other critiques of the knowledge view of assertion, see Lackey (2007, 2011), Brown (2008b, 2010), Levin (2008).

assumption is false. Believing is a state whereas asserting is an action. In turn, actions are usually considered to be either events or processes. If assertion, so understood, has an internal counterpart, then it is judgement, not belief. At most, then, one can infer the norms of judging from those governing asserting. It is a further step, one which might stand in need of justification, to infer the norms of believing from those governing judging. That said, perhaps, as Bird suggests (2007: 96), it would be 'odd' if the standards to which judgement is subject were different from those to which belief is subject, especially, one might add, since judgement typically issues in belief.

If one allows that belief is the internal counterpart of assertion, and grants that knowledge is the norm of assertion, a further difficulty facing the strategy under consideration is that there is no obvious reason to expect the norms governing belief to be identical to those governing assertion; indeed, there is some reason to think that they differ and, in particular, that the former are more demanding than the latter.

Precisely because asserting is 'external', rather than 'internal, it is, if not necessarily a social act, then necessarily a potentially social act. As a result, in evaluating an assertion, one might have to take into account the effect it might have on others, the expectations and needs of one's interlocutors, the part that speech act might play in the unfolding conversation, and so on. Evidently, all these considerations are foreign to the assessment of belief. Most significantly perhaps, assertion, unlike belief, is a potential source of testimony and is liable to be treated as such. Hence, in asserting, one takes on responsibility for others' beliefs, in addition to one's own. 196 In light of these observations, it should come as no surprise that a situation in which one may believe that p might not be a situation in which one may assert that p. Just as what one can get away with in the privacy of one's own home differs from what one can get away with on the street, so what one can get away with when believing differs from what one can get away with when one expresses one's belief in asserting.

None of these points demonstrate conclusively that one cannot show that (K-NEC) holds of believing because a similar principle holds of asserting. They do, however, suggest that there is no easy route from the norms governing assertion to those governing belief. Rather than pursue this matter further, I shall explore whether one can appeal directly to considerations analogous to those which motivate the knowledge view of assertion in support of the knowledge view of belief. The most prominent ways in which philosophers try to argue for the former are by attending to so-called Moorean assertions (see Unger 1975: 256; Williamson 2000: 253-4; Adler 2002: 36; Sutton 2007: 44) and by reflecting on cases involving so-called lottery assertions (see Unger 1975: 261; Williamson 2000: 244-9; Sutton 2007: 44). I shall consider each, adapted to belief, in turn.

3.1 Moorean beliefs

Suppose Elliot asserts:(1) Dogs bark, but I don't know that dogs bark.

What Elliot asserts is consistent and might be true. Nonetheless, his assertion seems absurd. He should not assert (1). Suppose that it would be equally absurd to believe (1), and so he should not do

196 Interestingly, Reynolds (2002) appeals to the idea that assertion is a source of testimony in support of the knowledge view of assertion. Cf. Williamson's suggestion that 'to make an assertion is to confer a responsibility (on oneself) for the truth of its content' (2000: 268). Nothing like this seems to be involved in believing. Cf. also Adler's claim that 'Our responsibilities rise when we assert beliefs to others, placing demands on their time and effort, while recommending that others accept and act on them' (2002: 82).

so. It is not clear how the truth view could explain this.197

In contrast, an explanation is readily available to the proponent of (K-NEC). In believing (1), Elliot adopts an attitude subject to a certain norm, namely, (K-NEC), but, given what he believes, Elliot's attitude cannot possibly satisfy that norm. Elliot may believe the first conjunct only if he knows that dogs bark; in which case, the second conjunct is false and he may not believe it. Conversely, Elliot may believe the second conjunct only if he knows that he doesn't know that dogs bark, which entails that he doesn't know that dogs bark; in which case, he may not believe the first conjunct.

While it is clear that one should not assert (1), it is far from obvious that one should not believe it or that doing so involves the same kind of absurdity.198 On the contrary, realizing that some of one's beliefs do not qualify as knowledge seems to me an important component of intellectual honesty or cognitive integrity. (There is, of course, a difference between believing that one has beliefs which fall short of knowledge and believing of a particular belief that it does so.)

Experience suggests that intuitions on this matter can go either way. What clouds the issue is that it is very hard, if not impossible, not to hear (1) as asserted. This makes it correspondingly difficult to keep apart our judgements as to whether (1) may be asserted and our judgements as to whether it may be believed.

In view of this, it is instructive to compare (1) with the following:

(2) I believe that dogs bark, but I don't know that dogs bark.(3) I believe that dogs bark, but dogs don't bark.

While (3) seems absurd or inappropriate—as one would expect given the truth view of belief—(2) does not—as one should expect given the knowledge view of belief.

The proponent of (K-NEC) might question the significance of this. It is common to suggest that sentences of the form 'I believe that p' typically serve, not to express or attribute the belief that p, but to make hedged assertions, or to express or attribute the belief that it is probable that p (cf. Adler 2002: 11; Sutton 2007: 64). Hence, whether or not (2) seems inappropriate is no guide as to whether or not (1) is.

Interestingly, the truth view provides a straightforward explanation, not available to the proponent of the knowledge view, of why asserting that I believe that p should be more cautious than simply asserting that p. Suppose that knowledge is the norm of assertion. In asserting that p, I commit myself in some sense to knowing that p, while in asserting that I believe that p, I do not; I commit myself only to knowing that I believe that p. However, if knowledge is the norm of belief, then I would remain (indirectly) committed to knowing that p. Alternatively, if truth is the norm of belief, I am (indirectly) committed only to its being true that p. If these, admittedly speculative, remarks are correct, then the fact that assertions of (2) are more cautious than assertions of (1) supports the truth view.

Be that as it may, consider:

(4) I fully/really/genuinely believe that dogs bark, but I don't know that dogs bark.

Evidently, this is neither hedged nor cautious; in thinking or asserting (4) I attribute to myself the

197 Baldwin (2007) and Millar (2009:148-9) appeal to some version of the truth view in accounting for the absurdity of believing that I believe thatp, but not-p. However, neither Baldwin nor Millar tackle belief in propositions such as (1).

198 Littlejohn (2010: §§3-4) accepts that there is something wrong with believing propositions such as (1) and tries to account for this consistently with the truth view.

outright belief that dogs bark, while denying that this belief counts as knowledge. (4) does not seem inappropriate. This is not what one would expect if believing were governed by (K-NEC). Thus, we have reason to doubt that it is. Moreover, if (4) is not inappropriate, then surely (1) is not, considered as believed not asserted.

A proponent of the knowledge view might continue to insist that, the above attempt to show otherwise notwithstanding, (1), considered as believed, is inappropriate or absurd. In that case, there is a clash of intuitions. How might progress be made?

Huemer motivates what he calls 'the knowledge norm for belief' (2007: 146) by appeal to allegedly Moorean beliefs such as (1), and in turn seeks to account for that norm by appeal to two principles. It would be productive to consider whether one can motivate (K-NEC) directly by appeal to those principles, and so bypass reliance on mere intuitions concerning apparently Moorean beliefs.

According to Huemer (2007: 148), the following principle of 'metacoherence' seems plausible:

(MC) Consciously believing that p commits one, on reflection, to comprehensively, epistemically endorsing one's belief that p.

Endorsing one's belief in the relevant respect is a matter of making a second-order judgement which positively (epistemically) evaluates the first-order belief.

Huemer (2007: 148) adds to this the following 'endorsement theory of knowledge':

(EK) Knowledge attribution is the most comprehensive epistemic endorsement.

(MC) and (EK), Huemer claims, together imply that there is a knowledge norm for belief.An immediate reason to doubt that this line of thought is of any use to the proponent of the

knowledge view is that (MC) is restricted to conscious belief. Thus, at most, (MC), together with (EK), could support a version of (K-NEC) restricted to conscious belief, whereas proponents of the knowledge view intend to offer an account of the norms governing belief generally, conscious or otherwise.

Perhaps this is not a serious concern—one might simply drop the restriction to conscious belief without affecting the plausibility of the principle. A related, but distinct, problem is that, according to (MC), one is normatively committed to comprehensively, epistemically endorsing one's belief when one reflects on it. So, one way to ensure one does not violate the commitment expressed by (MC) would be to ensure one does not reflect on one's beliefs. So, at most, (MC), together with (EK), could support the following:

(K-NEC*) One may believe that p only if (one knows that p or one does not reflect on one's belief that p)

This principle is implausible. Surely, whatever norm governs belief, it should not actively discourage reflection on one's beliefs and their epistemic credentials. In any event, whatever is to be said for it, (K-NEC*) does not look like what proponents of the knowledge view are after.

Setting this aside, the attempt to appeal to Huemer's principles in support of the knowledge view faces another difficulty. (MC) and (EK) suggest that, if one believes that p, one is committed to taking one's belief to amount to knowledge. Of course, one's taking one's belief to qualify as knowledge is consistent with its actually falling short of knowledge. In light of this, it seems that (MC) and (EK) could at most support:

(K-NEC**) One may believe that p only if one takes oneself to know that p

Again, whatever is to be said for this principle, it is not what proponents of the knowledge view intend to advance.

Surely, one might reply, one should not take oneself to know if one does not know. This is true—indeed, it is precisely the verdict (T) delivers—but nothing in (MC) and (EK) deliver that thought.

Setting this aside, it is worth considering more carefully what Huemer means by a 'comprehensive, epistemic endorsement'. According to Huemer, to endorse a belief, in this sense, is to judge that there is no sufficient reason not to hold it. Correlatively, to reject or not to endorse one's beliefis to judge that 'one ought not to' hold it (2007: 149-50). In view of this, (EK) amounts to the thesis that to judge that one's belief constitutes knowledge is to judge that one may hold it, and to judge that one's belief falls short of knowledge is to judge that one may not hold it. Thus, once one spells out Huemer's notion of a comprehensive epistemic endorsement, it appears that (EK) just is (K-NEC), or a reformula- tion of it. Hence, it evidently cannot be used, in conjunction with (MC) or otherwise, to provide independent support for the knowledge view.

3.2 Lotteries

Suppose that Stanley has a ticket in a lottery. The chances of winning the lottery are, as Stanley is aware, 1/1,000,000. Stanley has yet to hear the results of the lottery, which was drawn earlier in the day. He asserts flat-out:

(5) My ticket didn't win.

Assume that (5) is true. Despite this, and despite the extremely strong probabilistic grounds in support of (5), intuitively, Stanley should not assert this. Instead, he should only conjecture that his ticket didn't win, or assert that his ticket probably lost.

Should it turn out that, intuitively, just as Stanley should not assert (5), he should not believe it, it is hard to see how the truth view could explain this, even if one grants that (T) generates some version of (J). In contrast, if (K-NEC) holds, and if Stanley cannot know the lottery proposition, as seems plausible, the knowledge view could easily account for the impropriety of his belief.

This argument against the truth view is too swift. Suppose that (T-NEC) generates a subsidiary norm, according to which one may believe that p only on grounds which could not easily lead one to believe falsely. If such a norm holds, this would explain why it is wrong for Stanley to believe (5). Although the odds of the ticket's having lost are extremely high, one could easily believe falsely if one were to believe (5) on that basis alone.

Having registered it, I shall not pursue this strategy any further. Later (§5), I shall have a lot more to say about attempts to derive such a justification norm from the truth norm.

The above argument is too swift in another respect. Unfortunately for the proponent of the knowledge view, intuitions with respect to believing (5) do not seem to match up to intuitions with respect to asserting it. At the very least, those intuitions are less strong in the former case than in the latter. Whether or not one thinks that Stanley should believe the lottery proposition, given the overwhelming likelihood that it is true—indeed, given that it is true—it certainly seems as if he may do so. It would surely be wrong or excessive to say that Stanley may not believe that his ticket didn't win.

At worst, then, reflection on lottery beliefs counts against (K-NEC). At best, there is a standoff of intuitions; in which case, there is as yet no reason to relinquish the truth view.12 The proponent of the knowledge view needs to provide a principled reason to think that subjects like Stanley should not believe lottery propositions like (5).13

At this point, a defender of (K-NEC) might introduce the following additional considerations (cf. Smithies 2012: §5). Assume that Stanley may believe (5) (because it is true, and perhaps also because it is highly probable on his evidence). Were Stanley to form this belief, he might act on it

and throw his ticket away. However, other things being equal, Stanley should not throw his ticket away on the basis of his belief alone. And, surely, if it is wrong to act on a certain belief, one should not have that belief. Thus, the initial assumption is false. Moreover, the argument continues, were Stanley to know (5), then, other things being equal, it would not be wrong for him to throw his ticket away on the basis of that knowledge.14

12 For a rather different response to lottery cases, which accepts, with the knowledge view, that one should not believe a lottery proposition and tries to explain this away consistently with the truth view, see Littlejohn (2010: §2).

13 Sutton (2007:48-53; cf. Smithies 2012: §5) provides a more elaborate argument for (K-NEC) by appeal to lottery propositions. Consider:

(i) One can justifiably believe that ticket1 didn't win.(ii) If one can justifiably believe that ticket1 didn't win, one can justifiably believe that ticket2 didn't

win and one can justifiably believe that ticket3 didn't win and . . . one can justifiably believe that ticket1000000 didn't win.

(iii) So, one can justifiably believe that ticket1 didn't win and ticket3 didn't winand . . . ticket1,000,000 didn't win.

Since (iii) is absurd, Sutton claims, we must reject the initial assumption (i). One cannot justifiably believe that ticket1

didn't win (and so one may not believe this), even though the probability that it is true is extremely high, indeed, even if it is true. Since one also cannot know that ticket1 didn't win, this seems to point towards (K-NEC).

Though a full discussion of this issue is clearly beyond the scope of this paper, it is worth noting some reasons to doubt that this argument undermines the truth view and motivates the knowledge view. First, (iii) is not absurd, unless one adds (as Sutton does) that the subject knows that one ticket will win. Thus, at most, the argument shows that one may not believe that a ticket will lose when one knows that some ticket will win. Thus, it fails to show that generally one may not believe that a ticket didn't win in cases where that belief is true and/or highly probable on one's evidence.

Second, even if, with Sutton, one rejects the initial assumption, this might not lead straight to (K-NEC). If one is not justified in believing on merely probabilistic grounds thatp, and so should not do so, there might be grounds of a different sort which are not knowledge-affording and on which one might be justified in believing that p, and so on which one may so do (see Nelkin 2000).

Finally, one might deny that the argument is valid. The move to (iii) assumes that justification is closed under conjunction. Arguably, if one is justified in believing thatp and justified in believing that q, it does not follow that one is justified in believing thatp and q (see Kyburg 1961; Foley 1979; Klein 1995). Whether or not justification is closed under conjunction, the present focus is on candidate norms of belief formulated in terms of what one may or may not believe; it is certainly false that, if one may 9 and one may y, one may 9 and y (see Whiting 2010: §5).

14A line of thought like this seems to lie behind Sutton's 'modesty' argument (2007: 53-7), which aims to show that one should not hold lottery beliefs.

Note that Sutton's 'posterior evaluation' argument (2007: 57-9) cannot be used to reject the truth view, since it allows that there are cases in which one may form a true belief—indeed, in which one should do so!—despite lacking the relevant knowledge.

If one grants that the reason Stanley should not act on his lottery belief is that he does not know it, this at most shows that knowledge is the norm of practical reasoning: one should not rely on the proposition that p in one's practical reasoning, if one does not know that p.199 If this is correct, it is consistent with the truth view. One may believe that p, even if one does not know that p, so long as one does not rely on what one believes in one's practical reasoning.

One might reply that it is surely in some sense belief's job or aim to provide prem- isses for practical reasoning (cf. Bird 2007: 94); in which case, a belief one may not act on or reason from is not doing its job; in which case, in turn, one should not have such a belief. This suggests that one cannot keep apart, in the way I suggested, the norms of belief and of practical reasoning.

Waters run deep here. I shall postpone discussion of belief's aim until later (§5). And it is beyond the scope of the present chapter to explore fully the nature of practical reasoning or to settle decisively debates concerning the norms governing it. For now, I shall point to some considerations which at least suggest that reflection on lottery beliefs and reasoning about what to do involving them does not straightforwardly undermine the truth view of belief or support the knowledge view.

Note first that, given what he believes, there is a clear sense in which it would not be wrong for Stanley to throw his ticket away. Ex hypothesi his belief is true; hence, it is a fact that his ticket lost; and this fact speaks in favour of, or at least does not speak against, throwing the ticket away. If Stanley does so, he does not act wrongly, that is, he does not do what there is reason not to do.

In this way, a proponent of the truth view can respect the intuitive link between belief and action, or the idea that it is the function of belief to provide the grounds for action. That is, if it is a constraint on belief that what one believes be a reason or warrant for acting, then the relevant lottery belief meets that constraint.

No doubt an opponent of the truth view will point out that what is denied is not that, given what Stanley (truly) believes, he may throw the ticket away; what is denied is rather that Stanley may reason from what he believes to throwing the ticket away (or deciding to do so). Fair enough. But it is important to keep in view what this example shows. Contrary to my earlier concession, it does not show that one may act on the basis of or reason from one's belief only if it qualifies as knowledge (and so, in turn, that one may hold that belief only if it qualifies as knowledge). First, there might be other explanations as to what is wrong with the relevant reasoning than that Stanley does not know that his ticket lost.200 Second, it has not been shown that it is never okay to reason from or act on beliefs which fall short of knowledge. Suppose, for example, that Stanley decides on the basis of his (true) belief that his ticket didn't win not to quit his poorly paid and unrewarding job (though the opportunity to do so presents itself). There is nothing manifestly wrong with this reasoning. So, if one may have a certain belief only if one may reason from or act on that belief, Stanley's lottery belief seems to pass that test.

Admittedly, the truth view's advocate owes an account of why it appears that a subject like Stanley may perform certain actions or make certain decisions on the basis of a true lottery belief but not others (such as throwing away the ticket). But equally the knowledge view's advocate owes an account of why it appears that a subject like Stanley may perform certain actions or make certain decisions on the basis of a true lottery belief which falls short of knowledge (such as sticking with his job). As far as explanatory obligations go, they are on all fours.

199 For defence of aversion of this principle, see Hawthorne and Stanley (2008). For criticisms, see Brown (2008a), Hill and Schechter (2007), Levin (2008), Neta (2009).

200 For some such alternatives, see Hill and Schechter (2007), Levin (2008), Neta (2009).

Moreover, whatever one's views concerning the norms of belief, there is some reason to expect that the standards for belief and for practical reasoning can diverge, that is, that a belief one may have might not always be a belief one may act on. 201 It is plausible to think, consistently with both the truth and knowledge views of belief, that the propriety of holding a certain belief is determined solely by whether or not that belief is true and/or its epistemic status, that is, by epistemic considerations. Alternatively, practical considerations are irrelevant to whether or not one may believe that p.202 (Of course, such considerations might bear on whether or not one has reason to form a belief whether p.) In contrast, it is not at all plausible to think that the propriety of acting or deciding on the basis of a given belief is determined solely by epistemic considerations. Alternatively, practical considerations can hardly be irrelevant to whether or not one's belief may figure in one's practical reasoning about what to do.203

Suppose, to use a stock example, that, having just seen the bank's opening hours posted on its door and having been there on several previous Fridays, one (truly) believes that the bank is open on Friday. Intuitively, one may believe this. However, whether one may act on this belief by, say, going to the bank on Friday to withdraw money might further depend on what is at stake. Intuitively, if the stakes are high—if, say, one needs money on Friday to pay the ransom on one's children and the relevant bank is the only one in the vicinity—then one should be certain that the bank is open on Friday before acting on the belief ('I need to make sure . . . '). In contrast, intuitively, if the stakes are low—if, say, some cash would just be handy for purchasing coffee and the relevant bank is one of many in the immediate area—then one's (mere) true belief might suffice as a basis on which to act ('I think it's open but, if I'm wrong, it's hardly the end of the world . . . '). Though not decisive, this suggests that the standards for practical reasoning vary with the circumstances—in particular, with what is at stake—in a way that the standards for belief do not.

Returning to the case at hand, though Stanley's belief that his ticket didn't win is true, if Stanley may not throw away his ticket on that basis, this does not threaten the truth view of belief, let alone establish the knowledge view. A belief one may have might not always be a belief one may rely on in one's practical reasoning. Belief, one can grant, does its job if and only if it delivers truths (i.e. facts) which constitute grounds for action. Whether one may act on those grounds might further depend on (practical) considerations, including what is at stake.

The starting point for this discussion of practical reasoning was the claim that intuitions concerning lottery beliefs do not seem to point to (K-NEC) and so away from (T-SUFF). Though there is no doubt more to be said about such matters, the excursus via the role beliefs play in reasoning about what to do, and the norms governing such reasoning, has not yet forced us to discount those intuitions.

201 Interestingly, a prominent proponent of the knowledge view of belief, namely, Williamson (2005a: §5), allows that there might be situations in which it is appropriate for a subject to rely on the proposition that p in practical reasoning—since she knows that p—but in which, given the stakes, one might criticize the agent or judge her reasoning to be bad were she to do so—since she does not know that she knows that p. There is not a big gap between this view and one according to which beliefs one may have need not be beliefs one may rely on in practical reasoning.

202 This thought might be denied by some of those who accept so-called 'pragmatic encroachment' though that would depend on how exactly the thought is spelled out, as well as on the nature of the relevant encroachment. Even if one thinks that practical considerations play some role in determining the epistemic status of a belief, one might not think that the very same practical considerations play a role in determining whether one may rely on that belief in one's practical reasoning.

203 Brown (2008a) and Levin (2008) defend the view that the standards for practical reasoning are determined by the practical circumstances.

4. Cleverly disguised mules and the value of knowledge

So far, I have argued that one cannot simply read off the norms governing belief from those governing assertion and that versions of the arguments standardly offered in support of the knowledge view of assertion do not succeed when applied to belief. It is worth, then, turning to other considerations, independent of the debate over assertion, which proponents of (K-NEC) appeal to in motivating that principle.

Williamson (2005b: 109) argues for the knowledge view and against the truth view by inviting us to reflect on cases like the following. Holly is at the zoo and sees what appears to be a zebra in a cage. Unbeknownst to Holly, what she sees is in fact a cleverly disguised mule. Given this, Williamson says, it is 'wrong' for Holly to believe that it is a zebra. Of course, Williamson notes, Holly's evidence makes it highly probable that her belief is true. However, he continues, this at best provides Holly with an excuse.204Thus, Williamson concludes, since Holly needs an excuse for falsely believing that it is a zebra, her doing so must be wrong.

All this is, of course, consistent with the truth view. But Williamson goes on to consider another sort of case which might be thought to undermine it. Fred is at the zoo and sees what appears to be a zebra. It is in fact a zebra, and so Fred's belief that it is a zebra is true (and, indeed, justified). However, the enclosure is full of cleverly disguised mules and it is sheer luck that Fred saw the only genuine zebra. Due to the luck, Fred does not know that it is a zebra. According to Williamson, 'Given that he does not in fact know that it is a zebra, he still seems to need some excuse for believing that it is a zebra, in which case it is wrong for him to believe that it is a zebra' (2005b: 109). If this is right, it points to (K-NEC).

At best, this is inconclusive. At worst, reflection on this scenario counts against, not for, the knowledge view. In contrast to Holly, it is simply not clear that Fred is in any need of an excuse and, by the same token, that Fred is wrong to believe what he does. Compare the two cases from the perspective of a third party. Aware that Holly's belief is false, despite being justified, one might be inclined to correct her belief and, other things being equal, it would be appropriate to do so. But aware that Fred's belief falls short of knowledge, despite being true and justified, one would surely not be inclined to correct his belief and it would not be appropriate to do so—indeed, there is nothing to correct!

The extent to which one has the impression that Fred stands in need of correction, one might add, might be due to the thought that he probably has false background beliefs (for example, that this is zebra territory).

Williamson might reply as follows. Surely, if given the choice, Fred would prefer to know that it is a zebra than merely to believe this truly and justifiably. The underlying thought behind this reply is that knowledge is valuable, or at least better than anything which falls short of it. If so, it might seem to follow that one should not believe that p if one does not know that p. This thought is explicit in Bird's defence of the knowledge view. According to Bird, 'it is better for an agent to have knowledge than true belief'. In turn, he takes this to show that 'anything short of knowledge is a failure' (2007: 95).

Appealing to the idea that knowledge is more valuable than true belief does not support

204 Indeed, Williamson adds, it is a poor excuse, since having such evidence is consistent with being in a position to know that one does not know (as in lottery cases).

Williamson's assessment of Fred's situation above, and so does not support (K-NEC). First, it is notoriously difficult to show that knowledge is better than anything that falls short of it and there is reason to doubt that it is.205

Second, even if it could be shown that knowledge is better than mere true belief, justified or otherwise, appealing to that point might prove too much. It is as plausible to think that reflective knowledge—knowledge that comes with knowing that one knows—is better than unreflective knowledge (cf. Millar 2010: ch. 8), or that understanding is better than mere knowledge (cf. Kvanvig 2003: ch. 8; Pritchard 2010: ch. 4). Following Bird's reasoning, one would have to conclude that one may believe that p only if one knows that one knows that p, or only if one understands why it is the case that p. These claims are implausible—the norms are obviously too demanding—and it is very unlikely that a proponent of the knowledge view would want to endorse them. (Both are consistent with (K-NEC) but not with (K-SUFF).)

Even if one grants that knowledge is better than that which falls short of it, (K-NEC) does not follow (at least, without further ado). In general, the fact that 9ing is better than ying does not seem to entail that one should not y or that it would be wrong to y. Recall that the fact that 9ing is better than ying is consistent with its being the case that there is some value in ying or some reason to y. More importantly, the fact that 9ing is better than ying is consistent with there being no disvalue in ying and so no reason not to y. Returning to the case at hand, from the fact that knowledge is better than true belief, if it is a fact, it does not follow that it would be wrong to have a (mere) true belief or that one should not have such a belief. For this reason, in addition to those discussed above, reflection on the value of knowledge vis-a-vis that which falls short of it does not undermine the truth view or support (K-NEC).

5. Theaimof beliefAn alternative route to (K-NEC) is via the idea that belief has a constitutive aim. If that aim is suitably connected to knowledge, then one might take (K-NEC) to follow.206

On some views (e.g. Wedgwood 2002), talk of the aim of belief is just a (darker) way of talking about the norm of belief. Evidently, if belief's aim is understood in this way, one cannot invoke it to settle disputes concerning belief's governing norms. Accordingly, I shall focus on so-called 'teleological' views, according to which one can explain the norm of belief by reference to its independently specifiable aim.

It is not at all obvious how to understand the claim that belief aims at knowledge. For present purposes, I shall assume that, however aim-talk is ultimately cashed out, the proponent of the knowledge must hold the following:

(BAK) The aim of believing that p is satisfiedonlyif oneknows thatp

Given (BAK), perhaps it follows that, on pain of thwarting the aim of doing so, one should not believe that p if one does not know that p.207

205 For discussion, see Kvanvig (2003, which includes a critique of Williamson's account of the value of knowledge, which Bird defers to), Pritchard (2010).

206 Owens (2000: 38), Williamson (2000: 11, 47), Adler (2002: 8), Engel (2005: 89-90), Bird (2007: 93), Sutton (2007: 23), McHugh (2011), and Smithies (2012: §6), all claim that 'belief aims at knowledge'. Elsewhere (Whiting 2012), I defend a certain interpretation of the claim that belief aims only at the truth.

207 Even granting this aim, it is a contentious issue whether (K-NEC) follows. In general, if one aims to 9, it does

This might provide an argument for the knowledge view, but only if there is some reason to accept the specification of belief's aim.208 Typically, proponents of the knowledge view defend (BAK) by appeal to the very same arguments, discussed above, offered in

not follow that one has reason to 9 or to take the means to 9ing, or reason not to do anything that prevents one from 9ing. That depends on what the value of 9ing is. Exploring this issue is beyond the scope of this chapter.

208 Littlejohn (2010: §3) rejects (BAK) on the grounds that it clashes with (C). While sympathetic to this point, I doubt that proponents of the knowledge view will accord it much weight (cp. Smithies 2012: §6). It is worth considering how one might motivate (BAK), and so justify the rejection of (C).

support of (K-NEC) (cf. Williamson 2000). Since those arguments are unsuccessful, or so I have argued, how else might one motivate (BAK)?

A common strategy is to start from the thought that belief aims at least at truth and to proceed from there to (BAK).209 Bird, for example, argues as follows:

If truth were sufficient for the fulfilment of [belief's] constitutive aim then one could have no complaints with someone whose beliefs were true. But clearly this is not right. A belief that is merely accidentally true and lacks justification may rightly be criticised on that score. (Bird 2007: 94)

This suggests that the aim of believing is satisfied only if one believes truly and with justification. What, Bird asks, would explain this? His answer is that the aim of believing is satisfied only by knowledge, which entails truth and justification.

This argument to the best explanation is unconvincing. First, one might point out that, at most, Bird's reasoning shows that belief's aim is satisfied only if one's belief is justified and true. What, one might ask, motivates attributing to belief a still more demanding aim? Bird, anticipating this, says that 'it would be odd if the norm for belief were the conjunction of two independent factors' (2007: 94-5).

In response, a proponent of the truth view might remind us that, as noted at the outset, if (T) holds, one would expect it to generate a secondary principle such as (J). Likewise, if belief aims only at truth in the relevant sense, this might generate a subsidiary aim concerning justification. Thus, truth and justification, though distinct, are not independent factors in the relevant sense: that the former is needed to satisfy belief's aim explains why the latter is. Thus, even if one grants Bird's claim that the aim of believing is satisfied only when one's belief is justified, the proponent of the truth view is equally able to explain why this should be so.

A different line of thought to Bird's is as follows.210 Suppose that the aim of believing that p is satisfied only if it is true that p. If a subject has this aim, she cannot simply sit around and hope to achieve it; rather, she must adopt a 'method' or 'purposive means' to satisfying it (Williams 2005 [1978]: 24; cf. also Wedgwood 2002: §4). One way to avoid falsity would be to form beliefs only via processes or on grounds that are truth-conducive. More specifically, the line of thought continues, if one aims to form only true beliefs, one should aim in turn to form only 'well-grounded' beliefs, that is, beliefs based on reasons or brought about in such a way that they could not easily be false. This is, of course, a version of the now-familiar attempt to generate a j ustification aim from a truth aim; however, the justification aim the line of thought delivers is a particularly demanding one.

It appears a short step from here to the knowledge view. If one's aim in believing is satisfied only if one's belief is true and well-grounded, then one's aim is to believe safely. And, if one's aim in believing is satisfied only if one's belief is safe, then it is satisfied only if the belief constitutes knowledge. Given this aim, the line of thought concludes, (K-NEC) follows.

This attempt to extract (BAK), and so (K-NEC), from the claim that the aim of believing that p is satisfied only if it is true that p faces several problems. First, it assumes that believing safely that p is

209 The only other strategy I am aware of is to argue for (BAK) by appeal to considerations concerning the role that evidence plays in motivating belief (this strategy is suggested by Owens (2000: Part I) and developed systematically by McHugh (2011)). This issue is too large to tackle here, though I hope to do so elsewhere.

210 The attempt to derive a knowledge aim from the truth aim in the way I consider below originates, to my knowledge, in Williams 2005 [1978]: 22-31. Wedgwood (2002) develops the proposal in detail. Millar (2009) advances a similar line of thought, though he does not explicitly draw the conclusion that belief in some sense aims at knowledge.

sufficient for knowing that p.211 While many (e.g. Williamson 2000) would accept that having a safe belief is necessary for having knowledge, it is extremely contentious to suggest that it is enough for knowledge. At the very least, then, the proponent of the strategy under consideration has work to do in defending the sufficiency claim.

Second, recall that the above attempt to extract a knowledge aim from the truth aim starts with the seemingly innocent thought that, if one's aim is to believe only the truth, one needs a 'method' or 'means' of achieving it. Presumably, the thought lying in the background here is that often the truth is not directly available or, in cases where it is, its being the truth is not transparent. Surely, by the same token, if one aims only to have well-grounded beliefs, one needs a 'method' or 'means' of achieving this aim. That one's belief is, say, based on reasons in such a way that it could not easily be false is typically not directly available or transparent. Subjects in Gettier-situations, for example, do not have well-grounded beliefs, though this is not something subjects in those situations can be aware of. This suggests that, if the aim to form only true beliefs generates an aim to form only well-grounded beliefs, this will generate in turn a further aim to form beliefs by methods or means that make them likely to be well-grounded. What exactly such methods or means are need not concern us; what matters is that such methods and means, even when they deliver true beliefs, are not likely to be knowledge-yielding— after all, they should be available to subjects in Gettier-scenarios. So, if one tries to derive further aims from the truth aim, it is unclear why that derivation should termi- nate in an aim concerning well-groundedness, which together with truth might give us safety and so knowledge, rather than some less demanding aim concerning some kind of justification, which even with truth does not afford knowledge.

To reach a similar conclusion via a different route, suppose one aims only to believe the truth. Given this aim, pursuing the above line of thought, one might have a subsidiary aim to form only beliefs with justification. But what kind of justification? On the one hand, one might aim to have only beliefs which are well-grounded (which, with truth, yields knowledge). On the other hand, one might aim to have only beliefs that have the kind of support, which includes probabilistic support, available in Gettier-situations (which, with truth, does not yield knowledge). In satisfying the former subsidiary aim, one would be less reliant on luck in achieving the primary aim of avoiding falsehood than one would be in satisfying the latter subsidiary aim, but the former subsidiary aim is harder to satisfy the latter. In view of this, one might ask, why should we expect the aim to believe only the truth to deliver an aim to have only well-grounded beliefs, and so knowledge, rather than the less demanding aim to have justified but less-than-well-grounded beliefs? How careful one should be in one's efforts to secure an aim depends on how serious it would be if one failed to meet it. Given that having a false belief does not appear very serious (at least, independent of its content), it is not clear how, starting from the truth aim alone, one could arrive at such an exacting aim, one which is satisfied only if one's belief is well-grounded and so in turn, taking the aims together, which is satisfied only if one has knowledge.212

So far, I have challenged the attempt to derive on behalf of the knowledge view an aim in believing which is satisfied only if one knows from an aim which is satisfied only if one's belief is

211 This is not the assumption that knowledge admits of a reductive analysis. Our conception of what it takes for a belief that p to be safe might derive from our conception of what it is to know that p.

212 This echoes a line of thought in Williamson (2000:245-7), which seeks to show that the knowledge rule for assertion cannot be derived from a truth rule for assertion.

true. However, even if the derivation succeeds, the attempt to use it to motivate (K-NEC) faces a serious difficulty, precisely because it concedes at the outset that the truth aim is fundamental. If one concedes this much, one should concede that the knowledge aim gives way, as it were, to the truth aim. Alternatively, the truth aim 'swamps' the knowledge aim.213 To appreciate this, consider the following. I aim to own only Picassos. Having neither the contacts nor the expertise to purchase them directly, I adopt the only effective method or means available to me: I hire a purchasing agent to act on my behalf and instruct her accordingly. So as to avoid unwittingly purchasing works by Braque or Gris, I aim only to purchase works via my agent. On one occasion, I purchase some second-hand rolls of canvas, intending to make a tent. On unroll- ing the canvas, I find I have unwittingly purchased a series of lost Picassos. In this case, I have failed to satisfy my subsidiary aim only to purchase works via my agent. Nonetheless, I have not failed in my primary aim: to own only Picassos. In view of this, that I failed in my subsidiary aim is neither here nor there. Equally, it would be wrong to judge that I should sell or otherwise disown the Picassos I find myself owning.

This example points to the following, plausible general principle: if one aims to y only as a means to satisfying one's aim to 9, then, if one satisfies one's aim to 9, one has no further reason to y or to aim to y.

If, as per the strategy above, one aims to believe only what one knows as a means to satisfying one's aim to believe only the truth, then, if one believes the truth, one has no further reason to believe only what one knows or to aim to do so. Hence, given the truth aim as primary, in a situation in which one believes the truth, but lacks knowledge, one has no further reason to stick to the subsidiary aim and relinquish one's belief. The knowledge aim is swamped by the truth aim. In which case, one cannot appeal in the manner explored above to the aim of belief in support of (K-NEC); if one aims to believe only what one knows as a means to believing only the truth, then, when one has a true belief which falls short of knowledge, it does not follow that one should not have that belief.214

The main aim of this chapter is to reject the knowledge view and the arguments offered in support of it. However, I hope, in doing so, to defend the truth view. Accordingly, a possible objection at this point is as follows. Doesn't the truth view face a similar swamping problem? I have granted that, if there is an aim in believing which is satisfied only if one's belief is true, this might generate a subsidiary aim which is satisfied only if one's belief is justified. Surely, by parity of reasoning, the latter aim gives way to the former. This might in turn cast doubt on attempts to generate (J) from (T).

In response, note first that, if there is a problem here, it clearly provides no comfort to those

213 This acknowledges that what follows is akin to the notorious 'swamping problem, which seems to face any attempt to show that the value of knowledge is instrumental to the value of true belief. For discussion, see Kvanvig (2003: ch. 4), Pritchard (2010: ch. 1).

214 Perhaps there is a different way of thinking about the relation between aiming only at truth and aiming only at knowledge. Suppose it is important that one has a true belief as to whether p. In that case, one might aim to have knowledge concerning whether p, rather than mere true belief, since knowledge that p is rationally immune to being undermined by evidence that not-p. And, if one aims to have knowledge concerning whether p, one should believe that p only if one knows that p. (This line of thought is inspired by Millar (2010: ch. 8), though Millar's focus is whether knowledge is valuable, not whether it is the aim of belief, and Millar's conclusion is that what is of value is not mere knowledge but reflective knowledge.) This story is plausible but it provides no support for (K-NEC), since it is restricted to cases where it matters to the subject whether p. Suppose that it does not matter whether p (it is utterly trivial). It is hard to see why it should matter that one's belief whether p is rationally immune to doubt, and so it is hard to see why one should aim to have knowledge whether p.

seeking to establish (K-NEC). Second, one must recall the dialectical situation. In the present context, the proponents of the truth view and the knowledge view both accept as fundamental the aim only to believe the truth. The issue, then, is what subsidiary aims one might derive—an aim only to believe with justification, perhaps, or an aim only to believe what one knows. Either way, the truth aim and the norms it delivers take precedence over the subsidiary aim and the norms it delivers. Hence, if the version of the swamping problem I have advanced is real, the proponent of the truth view gets to keep hold of (T) and has to tell a different story about what, if anything, generates (J); in contrast, if the problem is real, the proponent of the knowledge view gets nothing and has no story to tell at all.

The point of the present section is not that one cannot show belief to have an aim which is satisfied only by knowledge, from which one might derive (K-NEC). The point, rather, is that showing this requires showing the knowledge aim to be fundamental, not derivative. That said, it seems likely that any argument which one might offer in support of attributing this aim to belief could be used directly to argue for (K-NEC), in which case the detour via belief's aim is something of a distraction.

6. ConclusionAt the outset, I suggested that it appears to be a platitude that believing that p is correct if and only if it is true that p, and so that one may believe that p if and only if it is true that p. I think we can continue to take that appearance at face value. While some have tried to suggest otherwise, claiming that knowledge provides the standard against which belief is measured, the arguments in support of this suggestion are unsuccessful. Indeed, several of those arguments appeal to data (concerning, for example, lottery beliefs, Moorean beliefs, and Gettier-scenarios) which, on inspection, seem to undermine, rather than favour, the knowledge view. In light of this, and the initial objection to (K-NEC), it appears, not only that we have no reason to accept the knowledge view, but that we have reason to reject it.

In closing, it is worth noting that, for all that has been said here, the proponent of the knowledge view can have much of what she wants. Knowledge might be the norm of assertion (bearing in mind that there is no direct route from the norms governing assertion to those governing belief). Knowledge might be the goal of enquiry (bearing in mind that not all beliefs are arrived at through or in the service of enquiry). Knowledge might be the norm of practical reasoning (bearing in mind that not all beliefs are grounds on which one acts). Knowledge might be the norm for beliefs which concern matters of importance (bearing in mind that not all beliefs concern such matters). One can grant this much while insisting that knowledge, in general, is not the norm for belief—truth is (or so I believe).215

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Truth as the Aim of Epistemic Justification

Asbj0rn Steglich-Petersen

i. IntroductionA popular account of epistemic justification holds that justification, in essence, is a means that we rely upon to achieve the ultimate aim of believing the truth about the propositions we are interested in forming beliefs about—in short, that epistemic justification aims at truth. An influential objection against this account points out that it is committed to holding that only true beliefs could be justified, which most epistemologists regard as an obvious falsehood, and thus as sufficient reason to reject the account. In this chapter I attempt to defend the view that epistemic justification aims at truth, not by denying that it is committed to the factivity of epistemic justification, but by showing that, when we focus on the sense of 'justification' relevant to the aim account's purposes, it isn't in fact possible for a belief to be at once justified and false. In Section 2, I introduce the view that epistemic justification aims at truth, present the argument that it is committed to the factivity of justification, forestall certain initial objections to this argument, and point out some consequences of the argument to the related thesis that believing aims at truth. In Section 3, I consider and reject three popular intuitions speaking in favour of the possibility of justified false beliefs. In Section 4, I consider whether an account of epistemic justification that makes justified false beliefs impossible might be altogether too demanding, before concluding in Section 5.

2. The problemMany philosophers have been attracted to a theory of belief, according to which believing aims at truth. Some understand this claim in normative terms, as expressing a constitutive norm of correctness for belief, for example that believing P is correct,

in some distinctively normative sense, only if P is true.216 I have argued that the claim is best understood in teleological terms, as the claim that when a person believes that P, she has the aim of believing P truly, or at least has some sub-intentional surrogate of such an aim. This interpretation gives rise to something similar to the norm of correctness, namely a criterion of success. Trivially, if believing P involves having the aim of believing P truly, someone believing P will be successful in doing so only if P is true.217 However, for the purposes of this chapter, I shall more or less ignore the dispute between 'normativist' and 'teleological' interpretations of the truth aim, and for convenience use 'norm of truth' and 'aim of truth' interchangeably, according to what seems most natural in the context. The problem I wish to discuss is relevant for proponents of both normative and teleological accounts.

As compelling as the truth norm may seem, almost all who defend it recognize that truth cannot be the only relevant consideration when evaluating beliefs. The main problem is that the truth norm, on its own, seems to provide little guidance for someone wishing to form a belief about some subject matter. It seems that the truth of a proposition doesn't by itself make it the case that I ought to believe it, nor does its falsity make it the case that I ought to disbelieve it, even if I am interested in forming a belief about it.218 The additional relevant consideration when evaluating beliefs is often expressed in terms of epistemic justification, or in terms of a requirement that beliefs must be adequately backed by epistemic reasons.

Whatever the details of the correct account of justification turn out to be, the mere fact that truth isn't the only relevant consideration when evaluating beliefs raises the question of how to understand the relationship between the two kinds of evaluation. It would be odd, at least prima facie, if the two kinds of evaluation turned out to be completely distinct from one another, and many philosophers have consequently tried to account for the nature of justification in terms of the aim of truth. One influential version of this type of account, which I shall from now on refer to as the 'instrumentalist' account of epistemic justification, tries to understand epistemic justification as, in essence, a means to achieving the ultimate aim of believing the truth with respect to the relevant propositions. 219 As the account goes, since we cannot achieve the aim of believing the truth directly, we must instead rely on norms of epistemic justification as 'instruments' to forming true beliefs, and this instrumental role of epistemic justification is what accounts for its essential nature. Apart from being strikingly simple, one of the main virtues of this account is that it assimilates the normativity of justification, that is, the nature of the 'oughts' that the requirement of epistemic justification gives rise to, to a kind of normativity that many philosophers find relatively unproblematic, not least from a naturalistic point of view, namely instrumental normativity. According to the instrumentalist account, whether a belief in a particular proposition is justified is simply a matter of whether it is formed in a way that, in a suitable fashion, advances the aim of believing the truth with respect to

216 Or something similar—it is debatable what exact form the norm is best understood as having, but this will not matter a great deal for the purposes of this talk. For proponents of the normative interpretation, see Wedgwood (2002), Boghossian (2003), Shah (2003), Shah and Velleman (2005), among others. For discussion of the correct form of the truth norm, see Bykvist and Hattiangadi (2007), Gluer and Wikforss (2009), among others.

217 See Velleman (2000) and Steglich-Petersen (2006,2009,2011) for this interpretation.218 I shall accept this point for the purposes of this paper, although I think that it is often exaggerated, for

example as presented by K. Gluer and A. Wikforss (2009). See Steglich-Petersen (2010) and Gluer and Wikforss (2010) for further discussion.

219 For prominent examples of this type of account, see Foley (1987), Alston (1989), Giere (1989), Laudan (1990), Kitcher (1992), Nozick (1993), and Velleman (2000).

that proposition, and this property seems amenable to naturalistic analysis.As a number of people have pointed out, however, there is a potential problem with this

instrumentalist picture of the nature and normative force of justification: it seems committed to denying the possibility of justified false beliefs. There are a number of versions of this objection floating in the literature, developed most prominently perhaps by Stephen Maitzen (1995) and Richard Fumerton (2001, 2002), but the argument can be stated quite simply: Suppose that epistemic justification gets its rationale, or internal aim, from advancing the ultimate aim of believing the truth with respect to the propositions we are interested forming beliefs about. It follows that a belief is justified, or is successful vis-a-vis the internal aim of epistemic justification, only if the belief advances the aim of truth. But trivially, only true beliefs advance the aim of believing what is true—a false belief will detract from it, not advance it. So a belief can be justified, or successful vis-a-vis the internal aim of epistemic justification, only if it is true. Many would regard this as an absurd consequence of the account, and therefore a sufficient reason to reject it.220

The obvious initial response to this argument is to change focus from the justification of individual beliefs, to the methods or norms of justification by which beliefs ought to be formed. When evaluating whether justification serves the truth aim, we shouldn't evaluate whether individual justified beliefs serve that aim, but whether the aim is served by the general methods by which the beliefs are formed. When we ask whether a belief is justified, we are asking whether the belief is formed according to a method or norm which, when followed, tends to serve the aim by resulting in true beliefs. And it is clearly compatible with a certain method of belief formation tending to result in true beliefs, that not every belief formed in accordance with that method be true. So one might be tempted to conclude that the instrumentalist can allow justified false beliefs, after all. Cases of instrumental action like the following also support this line of thought.221 Suppose that I want to choose a strawberry-flavoured chocolate from the box, but I don't know which chocolates are strawberry-flavoured. However, I do know which chocolates are strawberry-shaped. If it is probable on my evidence that there is a high correlation amongst the chocolates in the box between strawberry flavour and strawberry shape, then it seems reasonable for me to aim at a strawberry-shaped chocolate as a means to the end of a strawberry-flavoured chocolate. So if a philosopher inspired by Maitzen and Fumerton objects that my plan is incoherent because I have forgotten that strawberry shape is not a sufficient condition for strawberry flavour, the objection may seem less than compelling.

But this reply on behalf of the instrumentalist account is incompatible with the ambitious explanatory goals of that account, for two reasons. The first reason is that the instrumentalist account attempts to identify the internal aim and not merely an external aim of epistemic justification. An internal aim of some type of aim-directed state or activity is an aim that plays a role in defining the essential nature of that state or activity, such that one couldn't be in the state or engage in the activity without having that aim. An external aim, by contrast, is any subsidiary aim one might have in some state or activity, as a contingent matter, for example when one performs the activity as a means to achieving something else, but could have performed it without that instrumental aim. For example, the aim-directed activity or action type of dishwashing plausibly has clean dishes as its internal aim—one couldn't be dishwashing unless one aimed at this. But one might have any number of external

220 There are some notable exceptions to this. E.g. Armstrong (1973), Williamson (2000), and Sutton (2007) all seem to hold that a belief can be justified only if true.

221 I owe this example to TimothyWilliamson.

aims in engaging in dishwashing—making someone happy that the dishes have been washed, for example. The contingent nature of external aims means that one can be successful as far as the internal aim of some type of activity goes, without being successful in some external aim with which it happened to be performed. For example, I can successfully wash the dishes without being successful in thereby making someone happy. The example above involving instrumental action relies on this type of case: I can be successful in picking a strawberry-shaped chocolate without being successful in the external aim of thereby coming to pick one that is strawberry flavoured. But it is clearly not possible to be successful vis-a-vis the internal aim of an action, and not achieve that aim. I cannot be successful in my effort to pick a strawberry-shaped chocolate, unless I actually end up with a chocolate that is strawberry shaped, just as I cannot successfully wash the dishes without the dishes actually becoming clean. So if the internal aim of relying on epistemic justification is to believe the truth of the proposition one relies on justification to form a belief about, one clearly cannot be successful in doing so without that belief being true. And since 'justified' just means 'successfully justified, it follows that a belief cannot be justified unless it is true.

The second reason that the above initial reply on behalf of the instrumentalist fails, is that if we take seriously the claim that the essential nature of epistemic justification is that of being a means to achieving our aim of believing truly, the validity of any candidate norm of justification must be judged by whether beliefs formed in accordance with it advance or detract from achieving the aim of truth. The ambitious instrumentalist cannot help herself to a predetermined set of norms of justification, and, upon observing that following them in most cases advances the aim of truth, decide that they are essentially means to advancing that aim, even if they sometimes allow false beliefs. Instead, she begins with the guiding assumption that the essential nature of

epistemic justification is to advance the aim of truth, and on that basis decide what the valid norms or methods of belief formation ought to be. And, trivially, if a particular norm of justification allows that beliefs formed in accordance with it are on occasion false, that norm will, at least sometimes, condone beliefs that detract from the aim of truth, in which case the ambitious instrumentalist must reject the norm in favour of a norm which doesn't condone false beliefs. Maitzen (1995) illustrates this point by reference to a similar problem facing act utilitarianism in ethics. According to the act utilitarian, the morally right action to take in any given situation is the action that maximizes utility. But that doctrine faces the problem of making it very difficult to decide what to do—it is not always obvious which alternative will maximize utility, and sometimes it will be outright impossible to find out. So the act utilitarianism yields a decision rule, which is in many cases difficult or impossible to follow. This problem is in relevant respects analogous to the problem facing someone wanting to apply the truth norm directly to beliefs.

A popular response is to adopt an alternative doctrine, rule utilitarianism, telling us to follow the general action rules, which, if followed, will tend to maximize utility. These general rules seemingly have the advantage of being more readily applicable in choice scenarios than the simple rule of act utilitarianism. Suppose, for example, that you are considering whether to lie in a particular situation. Act utilitarianism requires of you that you lie only if that is the action that results in the greatest utility in that particular situation. But how are you to determine this? Rule utilitarianism, on the other hand, tells you to lie if lying generally tends to maximize utility, which, it appears, is easier to determine. So while you may not be able to predict on a particular occasion whether utility is best served by lying or by telling the truth, you might know that lying tends not to maximize utility, and thus decide to tell the truth. This strategy is analogous to the method-based instrumentalist explanation of justification. But making this move from act to rule utilitarianism results in a well-known dilemma: either the adopted rules will be inconsistent with the basic tenet of utilitarianism, namely the ultimate aim of maximizing utility, or the new doctrine of rule utilitarianism will have to recommend the very same actions as act utilitarianism, thereby doing nothing to alleviate the initial concern about inapplicability. For suppose that the rules get their rationale from serving the ultimate aim of maximizing utility. Then a rule will be valid only if following it will result in actions, which maximize utility. But that would effectively make the rule equivalent in its recommendations to the simple rule stating that one should always choose the act which maximizes utility. If the ultimate aim of maximizing utility is to be served by the rules, the rules cannot differ in its recommendations from those made by the simple act utilitarian decision rule. Maitzen claims that a similar dilemma will face any attempt to save the instrumentalist account of justification by invoking imperfect methods of belief formation. Either the justifying norms, methods, or mechanisms for belief formation will be inconsistent with the basic aim of truth, or the justificatory norms will be satisfied only when the simple truth norm is satisfied too.

Having rejected this initial objection to the argument that instrumentalist accounts are committed to the factivity of justification, it is important to limit the scope of this argument in a crucial respect. The problem as I have set it up was that if the internal aim of justification is to end up believing the truth, there couldn't be justified false beliefs, that is, beliefs that are successful vis-a-vis the internal aim of justification, and yet false. But there might be another and more serious problem arising from reasoning parallel to that leading to the first problem: if the internal aim of justification is to end up believing the truth, there couldn't be unjustified true beliefs, that is, beliefs that are successful vis-a-

vis truth, but unsuccessful vis-a-vis the internal aim of justification. If the internal aim of justification were to end up believing the truth, a true belief would necessarily satisfy the internal aim of justification, and hence couldn't be unjustified. But one could clearly have a true but unjustified belief!222

To see why the instrumentalist isn't committed to denying the possibility of unjustified true beliefs in the way that she is committed to denying the possibility of justified false beliefs, it is instructive to compare the present problem to the so-called 'swamping problem' facing instrumentalist theories of the value of justification.223 If we suppose that the value of justification is to be understood as the instrumental value of promoting the intrinsic value of believing the truth, a problem arises when we wish to explain why a justified true belief is more valuable than an unjustified true belief, since the value to be promoted by justification would then already obtain in a true belief, regardless of its justification. The value of justification is 'swamped' by the value of truth, as it were. But there is a crucial difference between claiming that truth is the value to be promoted by epistemic justification, and claiming that truth is its internal aim. Here's the difference, starting at the general level: If S aims at bringing about some condition C by p-ing, the obtainment of C does not by itself make that instance of p-ing successful in bringing about C, even though the obtainment of C by itself is sufficient for S to get what he valued, and therefore aimed at bringing about by p-ing. In short, it is possible to get what one values while being unsuccessful in bringing it about. Suppose, for example, that S aims at making his wife happy by washing the dishes. The fact that his wife already is happy does not mean that S successfully made her happy by washing the dishes, even though it does mean that S in the end obtained what he valued, and aimed for in washing the dishes, namely for his wife to be happy. This point holds regardless of whether the obtainment of C is the internal aim of p-ing in the sense of being what p-ing as an action-type necessarily aims at, or whether C is a mere external aim one adopts in p-ing. Suppose, as above, that the internal aim of dishwashing is clean dishes. The fact that the dishes are already clean, or would get clean by magic regardless of anyone washing them, is not sufficient for an act of dishwashing to be successful in its internal aim of clean dishes. For that act to be successful in its internal aim, the dishes would have to get clean as a result of the act of washing them, and this holds even if we value the clean dishes equally regardless of how they got clean. So the fact that C could obtain without being the result of p-ing does not present any obstacle to the obtainment of C being the internal aim of p-ing. The internal aim of dishwashing is clean dishes, even if clean dishes by itself is insufficient to make an act of dishwashing successful. These considerations apply to the case of justification as well. Even if an instance of relying on epistemic justification aims at achieving the state of believing the truth about the relevant proposition, the fact that the proposition is truly believed does not by itself make the reliance on epistemic justification successful. For that to be the case, the true belief would have to be a result of the reliance on epistemic justification. So the fact that a belief could be true without this being the result of being justified, or indeed without being justified at all, is no obstacle to regarding the obtainment of a true belief as the internal aim of justification. This means that the argument against the possibility of justified false beliefs as stated above doesn't establish the parallel conclusion against the possibility of unjustified true beliefs. The argument concerns the conditions under which an instance of justification is successful in its internal aim, and not merely

222 I am grateful to TimothyWilliamson for urging me to consider this.223 For a helpful recent discussion of the swamping problem, see Pritchard (2011). In my (2011), I have defended

a teleological account of epistemic value.

the conditions under which the state of affairs aimed at happens to obtain regardless of reliance on justification.

If the above is correct, there are compelling reasons for thinking that the instrumentalist account of epistemic justification must deny the possibility of false justified beliefs. Insofar as one regards this as an unfortunate consequence, this doesn't just threaten a certain attractive account of the point of justifying one's beliefs. As pointed out recently by Kathrin Gluer and Asa Wikforss (2009), it also threatens the plausibility of supposing that belief aims at truth in the first place. One reason for this is that many philosophers have been attracted to the notion of beliefs aiming at truth precisely because this seemed to provide a promising explanation of the nature of justification. If the truth aim cannot provide such an explanation, there will thus be one less reason for supposing that beliefs aim at truth. Another and perhaps more serious problem is that the norm of truth is sometimes defended from the charge of not providing guidance, and thus of being without normative significance, by arguing that we can conform to the norm of truth in an indirect way by way of ensuring that our beliefs are justified (e.g. Shah 2003). But if justification cannot be seen as essentially being a means to true beliefs, this defence will fail, in which case the thesis that beliefs aim at truth might itself begin to look less plausible.

In the rest of this chapter, I shall attempt to defend the instrumentalist account of epistemic justification, and thus, in the process, defend the idea that beliefs aim at truth. However, I shall not doubt the soundness of the above argument, but instead focus on a single crucial presupposition that it makes, namely that a belief can be at once justified and false. I shall argue that the notion of justification relevant to the aim-theorists' concerns does not allow beliefs to be at once justified and false. Even so, it should be mentioned that the reasons I offer against the possibility of justified false beliefs do not depend on a prior acceptance of Maitzen and Fumerton's argument. Although their argument is my initial motivation for reevaluating the possibility of justified false beliefs, it plays no role in my arguments against it, and anyone uncon- vinced by Maitzen and Fumerton's argument can thus treat what follows as an independent defence of the factivity of justification.

3. The case in favour of justified false beliefsIn this section, I shall consider three popular intuitions speaking in favour of the possibility of justified false beliefs. I shall argue that they are either false, or concern a sense of 'justification' that is irrelevant as a guide when an agent considers what she ought to believe. But before I go on to this, Id better define the sense of 'justification' relevant to our purposes a little more carefully.

The main complaint against the truth norm was that it doesn't provide guidance, in the sense of informing the agent what she ought to believe in regard to some proposition on any given occasion. In other words, it doesn't tell the agent what she has reason to believe. It is the sense of justification that can play this role that is interesting from the point of view of supplementing and defending the truth norm. Consequently, I shall restrict my question concerning justification in the following way. In asking whether some type of fact or consideration could act as justification for S in believing P, I shall focus on whether that fact or consideration could act as an adequate epistemic reason for which S believes that P. Some type of fact or consideration justifies S in believing P, in this sense, if mentioning that a fact or consideration of that type obtains, would be an adequate,

that is, sufficient, answer on S's behalf to the question 'what gives you epistemic reason to believe that p?'224 Call this the 'reasons constraint' on epistemic justification. Although this may seem like not much of a restriction at all, it will transpire later on that certain compelling intuitions concerning the justification of belief actually concern a different sense of 'justification, which, I shall argue, is not directly relevant to agents when considering what to believe.

3.1 Probabilism

The first popular intuition in favour of justified false beliefs I shall consider is what I call Probabilism:

Probabilism: When the evidential probability for S that P is sufficiently high, S has justification for believing that P.

I take this thesis to encompass not only theories of justification that explicitly understand justification as a matter of one's evidence raising the probability of a proposition

224 The qualification 'epistemic' is important since, as I have argued elsewhere, ifhaving sufficient reason for belief to taken to imply that one ought to take up the belief, epistemic considerations alone never suffice. One must also have a practical reason to form beliefs about the relevant proposition. See Steglich-Petersen (2008, 2011) for more on this.

being considered for belief, but also theories that rely on the probabilistic relation to ground other justifying properties. For example, on some interpretations of reliabilism, being formed by reliable processes justify beliefs simply because the relative fre- quency with which beliefs resulting from those processes are true, makes it probable, to some suitable degree, that the resulting beliefs are true. My discussion of Probabilism should therefore be taken to apply to these forms of reliabilism as well.

Before considering its merits, three remarks about the above statement of Probabilism are needed, which will also apply to the subsequent statements of intuitions in favour of justified false beliefs. The first thing to note is that Probabilism is a statement concerning the sufficiency of the antecedent for the consequent. So, on the definition of 'justification' given above, it says that the fact that a person's evidential probability for P is sufficiently high, would be an adequate reason for that person to believe that P.The second thing to note is that Probabilism is a statement about propositional justification rather than doxastic justification. In order for the evidential probability for S that P to provide doxastic justification for S to believe that P, S must base her belief that P on this. But whether S does this or not, we can ask whether the relevant evidential probability would justify S in believing P, were S to base her belief on that, which is what I shall mean by 'propositional' justification. Finally, Probabilism does not state anything about the cognitive relation S must stand in to the antecedent condition, in order for S to rely on it in justifying the relevant belief. I shall, as far as it is possible, hold this issue open (I return to it briefly in Section 4). However, there is a clear sense in which we can ask about the adequacy of reasons independently of any considerations having to do with the epistemic access we have to those reasons. When evaluating whether an agent, in p-ing for reason R, was p-ing for an adequate reason, one line of inquiry would proceed by asking 'Well, suppose that R (or the fact constituting R) is the case, and that the agent had adequate access to R, would R then be a good reason to p?' It is a question of this kind I shall ask concerning Probabilism, and we do not need to suppose anything specific about the agent's access to the antecedent condition at the present stage—even granting adequate access to the facts held by Probabilism to justify beliefs, I shall argue that the thesis fails.

Returning now to the main issue: Probabilism speaks in favour of justified false beliefs in the rather straightforward way that it is possible for a proposition to have a high probability given a person's evidence, and yet be false. Lotteries provide an especially clear example of this: suppose that S holds a single ticket in a million-ticket fair lottery, and S knows these facts. In that case, the evidential probability for S that she will lose is extremely high. Yet, despite the high evidential probability that S will lose, it is possible that she won't. Nevertheless, it has seemed plausible to many that in this situation, S is justified in believing outright that she will lose.225

My argument against probabilism has two main components. First I shall argue that probabilism is committed to permitting irrational practices of belief formation, and that the only obvious way of dealing with this problem leads to new problems. Later on, in Section 4, I shall argue that the intuitive appeal of probabilism can be accounted for in a way that does not allow false justified beliefs.

The irrational practice of belief formation that probabilism is committed to permitting, is what I shall call doxastic risk-taking. The notion of risk involved is the standard decision theoretic notion,

225 Prominent examples include Russell (1948), Chisholm (1957), Goldman (1986), Hawthorne (2003), Pryor (2004), and Pritchard (2005).

according to which a decision is taken under risk whenever the agent knows the probabilities of the states of nature relevant to the outcome of the action, but does not know for certain which of the states will ensue. When forming a belief that P, the state of nature relevant to the success of doing so is that in which P is true, so we can define doxastic risk as follows:

Doxastic risk: When S forms a belief that P while having merely probabilistic knowledgethat doing so will result in believing P truly, S forms the belief under risk.

Why is doxastic risk-taking always irrational, if ordinary risk-taking in action is frequently rational? One way of seeing this is by simply reflecting on what it means to take a risk in action. When an action is performed under risk, or at least perceived risk, the agent performs the action in the hope that a particular outcome will ensue. She doesn't believe that it will ensue, since if she did that, she wouldn't regard the action as a risky one. So the very notion of risk seems to exclude belief that the action will have a particular outcome. This means that there is something paradoxical about the notion of doxastic risk, since in this case, the risky 'action' is exactly a belief that the success-condition of the 'action' will ensue, which contradicts the idea that the belief was formed under risk. One cannot regard oneself as taking a risk in some particular act if one knows that taking the act will entail not regarding it as risky.

One might think that this paradoxical situation can be resolved by observing that 'under risk' refers to the agent's doxastic situation prior to completing the act. As this objections goes, performing an action under risk means that the agent is unsure about the outcome of the act prior to, and perhaps during its completion, but this is of course compatible with the agent coming to believe that a particular outcome ensued once the act is completed. For example, my bringing an umbrella on a walk may be a risky action in the sense that I, prior to and perhaps during portions of the walk, am unsure about whether it will rain and thus be worthwhile to carry the umbrella. But this is compatible with me coming to believe that it rains, for example in the case that it indeed starts to rain. But the fact that bringing my umbrella was a risky action is not perturbed by this subsequent belief.

How would such an explanation go in the case of doxastic risk? Perhaps we could say that all it takes for a belief that P to be risky is that it is taken up or formed while the agent is unsure as to whether P, but that this is compatible with the agent no longer being unsure as to whether P, once the belief is formed. This would mean that the risky belief is essentially a revision of the initial doxastic state, but perhaps this is a consequence we can live with—after all, in the unproblematic umbrella case above, the agent also comes to revise her doxastic state concerning the possibility of rain, from a state of being unsure to a state of being sure. But there are several crucial differences. First, whereas in the umbrella case, the revision in the agent's doxastic state happens in response to new evidence about the relevant state of nature (e.g. seeing that it rains), no new evidence would motivate the revision in the case of doxastic risk. The revision would simply happen in response to the state of being uncertain as to whether P Second, the probabilist should be wary about any such revisions in doxastic state. After all, the initial doxastic state of ascribing a certain probability to P, is the state on which the probabilist proposes that we base the belief that P. So defending the rationality of doxastic risk by reference to the possibility revising in the initial doxastic state upon forming the risky belief is hardly an option for the probabilist.

Given this, it seems, in fact, that forming a belief under risk will necessarily result in rationally incompatible beliefs. Suppose that S, upon evaluating her evidence, finds that the probability of P upon her evidence is.6 (call this her 'evidential belief'). Suppose that.6 is the threshold above which

believing P is deemed justified by Probabilism (this supposition is of course false, but assume it for the sake of argument). Since one can form a belief in response to an evidential belief only if one doesn't thereby revise that evidential belief, Probabilism then recommends that S both believe that her evidential probability of P is.6, and believe outright that P is true. But these seem like rationally incompatible beliefs for S. In order to resolve this, the obvious move for the probabilist is to raise the evidential probability required for justifying belief. But there does not seem to be any value of evidential probability short of 1, such that the evidential belief concerning the evidential probability of P, and the outright belief that P, are rationally compatible. So forming a belief under risk will always lead to rationally incompatible beliefs.226

It may be objected that when forming beliefs in response to evidence, we rarely form beliefs in response to beliefs concerning evidential probabilities, but rather in response to beliefs in the propositions, which, if true, raise the probability of the target proposition to the appropriate level. 227

Suppose, for example, that you consider whether to believe that Gordon Brown has resigned as Prime Minister. The relevant evidence here may include various writings in the news media, and perhaps a televised speech in which he announces his resignation. According to the probabilist, such facts can justify believing that Gordon Brown has resigned if they jointly raise the probability of that proposition to an appropriate level. But it seems that even the probabilist could grant that no explicit belief in this latter probabilistic proposition is needed in order for the news media stories and the televised speech to justify the belief, in which case she would avoid commitment to the rationally incompatible beliefs. However, while it may well be the case that no explicit belief in the probabilistic proposition is needed, this would do little to help the probabilist. First of all, even if the probabilist can grant that no explicit belief in the probabilistic proposition is needed, she must still hold that it is in virtue of raising the evidential probability of Gordon Brown having resigned, that the evidential propositions justify believing that. So even if the probabilist can avoid commitment to explicit beliefs that are rationally incompatible, she is still committed to something just as bad, namely implicit reliance on the truth of some set of propositions, which cannot be rationally believed at once.

A further objection might be that since P, and the proposition that the probability of P upon a person's evidence is some value short of 1, can both be true at once, that person can believe both propositions without contradiction, and thus without irrational- ity. In reply, observe first that the fact that two propositions can be true at once doesn't entail that they can be believed at once without irrationally. The most famous example of such a pair of propositions is the one involved in 'Moorean absurdities', where a person judges that P and that she does not believe that P. Clearly, these propositions can be true at once, and it is thus also possible to believe that P and that one does not believe that P without any contradiction in content. Yet, most people would find such a pair of beliefs somehow irrational.228 So the mere compatibility of two propositions doesn't make the pair of those propositions available for rational belief. Still, some might feel that declaring the relevant beliefs rationally incompatible simply begs the question against the probabilist. For those, it might be more convincing to consider the role such beliefs would play in motivating rational action.

226 This does not exclude that we can and maytake risks when adopting the attitude of accepting as opposed to believing some proposition. For this distinction, see especially Cohen (1992).

227 I am grateful to Ralph Wedgwood for raising this objection.228 Explaining exactly why it would be irrational has proven difficult (hence 'Moore's paradox'). For a recent

collection devoted to this, see Green and Williams (2007).

Suppose that an agent must choose whether to p, where the success of p-ing is P-dependent. Suppose further that the agent believes both that P and that the probability of P upon her total evidence is.9. It is not difficult to imagine situations in which she should p in response to the one belief, but not p in response to the other, thus leaving the agent with contradictory recommendations. It is no help for the probabilist to claim that the evidential belief is relevant to the rationality of action only via rationalizing an outright belief, since in the context of an action, the rationality of which depends upon the exact probability that it will be successful, it should strike us as especially implausible to let an evidential probability short of 1 justify an outright belief that the action will be successful. Nor is it any help to point to decision-rules that take probability intervals or fuzzy probability regions rather than simple probabilities as inputs, since by hypothesis, no such intervals or regions exist in the case at hand.229 So it seems that allowing the rationality of both believing that P and that one's evidential probability of P is some value short of one, will come at the cost of allowing conflicting action recommendations.

229 For an example of decision rules involving probability intervals, see Gardenfors and Sahlin (1982). For the notion of fuzzy regions of probabilities, see Sturgeon (2008).

The obvious probabilist reply (that some readers no doubt have been waiting for) is to retreat to a principle concerning the justification of degrees of subjective credence. A plausible version might be this:

Credence Probabilism: When the evidential probability for S that P is D, S has justificationfor adopting credence in P to degree D.

As plausible as this principle may be, however, it doesn't immediately tell us about the justification of outright belief, which was our initial interest. If Credence Probabilism is to tell us anything about the justification of outright belief, some principle must thus be provided which links the justification of degrees of credence to the justification of outright belief. One such principle is known as the Lockean Thesis:230

The Lockean Thesis: Outright belief that P = Any degree of credence that P above threshold T.

The Lockean Thesis together with credence Probabilism entails that when the evidential probability for S that P is above a certain threshold (the threshold of evidential probability which justifies a degree of credence above the threshold for outright belief), S will be justified in an outright belief that P. This seems to resolve the problem with rationally incompatible beliefs, since the belief supported by the evidence 'really' just is a degree of credence, compatible with the evidential belief.

However, the combination of Credence Probabilism with the Lockean Thesis gives rise to another problem. The problem has to do with the conditions under which one is justified in making assertions. The following principle seems plausible:

The Belief-Assertion Principle: When S is epistemically justified in outright believing P, S isjustified in asserting P.

The Belief-Assertion Principle together with Credence Probabilism and the Lockean Thesis entails that when the evidential probability for S that P is above a certain threshold (the threshold of evidential probability which justifies a degree of credence above the threshold for outright belief), S will be justified in asserting that P. But it seems false that a mere evidential probability of P above some threshold short of 1 could justify a person in asserting that P. It could at most justify that person in asserting that Pis quite likely, or in asserting that she is quite confident that P; not in baldly asserting that P.If the Belief-Assertion Principle is correct, either Credence Probabilism or the Lockean Thesis must thus be false. But if either of those principles is false, the retreat from Probabilism to Credence Probabilism cannot solve the original problem of permitting doxastic risk, while accounting for the justification of outright belief, at least not in lieu of some other principle connecting the justification of degrees of credence with that of outright belief. In sum, the prospects for Probabilism as an intuition concerning justification of outright belief are beginning to look less promising, and the thesis therefore doesn't lend support to the possibility of justified false beliefs. This does not mean, of course, that evidential probabilities have no role to play in justifying beliefs. What that role might plausibly be, I will return to in Section 4.

3.2 Blamelessness

The second main intuition in favour of justified false beliefs is what I shall call Blamelessness:

230 For recent discussions of the Lockean Thesis, see Sturgeon (2008) and Foley (2009). The term 'Lockean Thesis' is sometimes used for the claim that the rationality of outright belief is a part of the rationality of degrees of credence, but I shall use it for the identity claim below.

Blamelessness: When the epistemic situation of S is such that she couldn't be blamed forbelieving P even if P is false, S has justification for believing P.

The possibility of justified false beliefs does not follow immediately from this intuition, but it does when the intuition is coupled with the very commonplace observation that we frequently are blameless for our false beliefs.

Especially vivid examples of blameless yet false beliefs are to be found in sceptical scenarios, such as those in which a person's perceptual inputs are systematically manipulated to misrepresent the person's surroundings. In such cases, we are inclined not to blame the person for her false beliefs about her surroundings. And for many, this is tantamount to regarding those beliefs as justified. But much more commonplace examples are also easy to come by; for example, people are often misled by persons they have no reason to distrust, without being blameworthy for their false beliefs.

However, in the sense of 'justification' we are interested in here, namely that living up to the reasons constraint, Blamelessness should strike us as false. We never do, nor ought we, form beliefs in response to the antecedent condition that we would be blameless for doing so. The fact that one would be blameless for believing P is not a good reason for believing P.

We can back up this prima facie verdict in the following way. Note first that for any norm N, we can distinguish between the conditions under which an agent conforms to N, and the conditions under which an agent can be held blameless for failing to conform to N. There is a real difference here: trying to conform with a norm N is not the same as trying to satisfy the conditions under which one can be excused for not conforming to N. Further, given this distinction, if Blamelessness is a genuine norm that we ought to conform to when forming beliefs, there must also be a set of conditions under which one can be excused for not conforming to Blamelessness. But that is absurd: there is no such thing as the set of conditions under which one can be held blameless for failing to be blameless in forming a belief. So it is doubtful that Blamelessness should guide us when forming beliefs.

This does not entail that it is uninteresting to ask whether someone can be blamed for a false or unjustified belief. It is often very important to know whether someone exerted proper care when forming his or her beliefs. It may even be the case that there is a sense of 'justification' that would be the proper label for this kind of status (I doubt that many epistemologists have a very good grip on their pre-theoretical linguistic intuitions concerning the term 'justification'). But if what we are interested in is the norm we ought to comply with when forming beliefs, Blamelessness is not what we are looking for.

3.3 Modal conditions

So far, I have considered and rejected two intuitions one might have thought favoured the possibility of justified false beliefs. I argued that Probabilism is false, and that Blamelessness concerns a different sense of 'justification' from the one we're interested in. An important part of what makes Probabilism so implausible, is that it allows probabilistic evidence for P to justify outright belief that P, even when the possible error scenarios in which P is false are probabilistically 'on a par' with the scenarios in which P is true. This holds in lottery cases where the possibility of one's ticket being the winning ticket is a highly unlikely one, but not any stranger or farther removed from actuality than the possibilities in which any of the other tickets win. But perhaps there are other justifying conditions of a broadly modal kind, that allow for the possibility of error without the error possibilities being probabilistically on a par with those in which the belief is true.

There are many candidates in the literature for modal conditions linking belief to truth. Most prominent of these are so-called 'safety' conditions, which obtain roughly whenever a belief is true not only in the actual world, but also in some class of relevantly similar non-actual worlds, with error possibilities farther removed in modal space. These are typically presented as necessary conditions for a belief to count as knowledge, rather than as conditions or analyses of epistemic justification. But most importantly for our purposes, safety conditions don't typically allow for false beliefs, since they require the belief to be true in the actual world. So safety conditions don't speak in favour of the possibility of justified false beliefs. If there is some modal condition on justification, which speaks in favour of justified false beliefs, it must thus be some weaker condition than safety.

A compelling illustration of a condition linking belief to truth in a seemingly stronger sense than a merely probabilistic one, while also allowing for falsity, can be found in Smith (2010), who adapts the example from Nelkin (2000). Suppose that Bob has configured his computer screen such that, whenever it is turned on, the background colour is determined by a random selection mechanism. One in a million times, the screen will be red; the rest of the times it will be blue. Suppose that Bob turns on the screen and leaves the room before anything appears on it. It now seems that on Bob's evidence, there is a.999999 chance of the screen being blue. Compare now Bob's epistemic situation to Bruce's: when Bob walked out of the room, Bruce walked in and now sees that the screen is blue. It seems that from a purely probabilistic point of view, Bruce's evidence is worse that Bob's—after all, for all he knows, there's a chance that he is hallucinating or being played a clever trick with coloured lights, and it is plausible enough to suppose that the probability of any of these scenarios is higher than .000001. In spite of this, it seems that Bruce is better justified than Bob in believing the screen to be blue, despite being worse off probabilistically. Bruce also seems justified in asserting that the screen is blue, while we would expect Bob to hedge an assertion about the colour of the screen in a way that indicates that he merely knows it to be highly probable that the screen is blue.

There clearly is a sense in which Bruce's belief is justified, despite the possibility of falsity, and the comparison to Bob shows that Bruce's justification does not come down to a matter of mere evidential probability. Because of this, the case also seems to exemplify a set of circumstances in which one can be justified in believing P outright, despite the evidential probability being short of 1. The question is whether the sense in which Bruce is justified is the one we're interested in. Here I think matters are less clear. Given the discussion above, we have (at least) two rival interpretations of Bruce's justification. One possibility, of course, is that the sense in which Bruce is justified is the guiding sense of justification relevant to the instrumentalist account of epistemic justification, in which case that account would be in trouble. But another possibility is that Bruce's belief is justified merely in the sense of being blameless, in which case his example would not cause trouble for the instrumentalist account. In order to decide between these rival interpretations, a more detailed diagnosis of the case of Bruce and Bob is needed.

The diagnosis proposed by Smith himself does not decide this question either way. Smith's explanation of the difference between Bruce and Bob is that whereas falsity in the case of Bruce's belief would require an explanation, no explanation would be required in the case of Bob's belief, since the possibility of falsity is probabilistically 'on par' with any of the scenarios in which Bob's belief turns out true. Just like we wouldn't feel that winning the lottery would require a special explanation, despite being so unlikely, we wouldn't feel a need to explain the falsity of Bob's belief about the colour of the screen if it turned out to be red, despite being so unlikely. Bruce, on the other

hand, would feel puzzled if the screen turned out to be red, despite appearing blue—some explanation would be needed: How could he get it wrong? But does the fact that error would require an explanation in Bruce's case and not in Bob's indicate that Bruce is justified in a stronger sense than being blameless for his belief? To answer that, we must look deeper into Bruce's situation.

One important clue comes from reflecting on how Bruce himself would think of the possibility of his belief being false. When Bruce formed his belief that the screen is blue in response to seeing that the screen is blue, Bruce, if he is anything like an average believer, most likely didn't even consider the possibility of him hallucinating or being played a clever trick. And we would not blame him for not thinking of these error possibilities. One plausible explanation of us withholding blame for this, is that it would take considerable imagination and ingenuity to conjure up ways in which evidence as solid as Bruce's could allow for error. And, in general, we are inclined to withhold blame for people failing at difficult tasks requiring imagination and ingenuity. Bob's evidence, on the other hand, came equipped with an inbuilt and obvious error possibility, however unlikely, in as much as his evidence was that of knowing about the probabilities encoded in the random selection mechanism determining the colour of

the screen. So it would not put any particular strain on Bob's imagination to think of ways he could be wrong about the colour, and we would consequently not withhold blame from Bob were he to disregard this very obvious possibility of error. If prompted to consider the question, or helped to imagine the relevant scenarios, Bruce might of course have come to believe that him having a perceptual experience of the blue screen did leave open the possibility of him having this experience because of a clever trick, rather than because of the screen actually being blue. But crucially, this would presumably make Bruce think differently of his grounds for believing that the screen is blue. He would then be taking into consideration one or more error possibilities, whereas before he didn't take into consideration any such possibilities at all. But once Bruce takes into consideration these error possibilities, it becomes unclear how his epistemic situation differs from Bob's, especially if we've already conceded that the probability of error in Bruce's case may well be as high as or higher than in Bob's case. If Bruce takes seriously these possibilities of error, he should find that he is on a par with Bob after all. But nothing has changed about Bruce's grounds for believing that the screen is blue—his evidence is the same, namely that of seeing that it is blue. But by coming to realize that the evidence leaves open certain hard to imagine error possibilities, Bruce thinks differently of the support his evidence provides for his belief about the colour of the screen. He realizes that he was wrong about the level of support provided by his evidence for the belief that the screen is blue.

If this diagnosis is plausible, it suggests that the sense we have of Bruce being better justified than Bob comes down to a matter of Bruce's error possibilities being more difficult to imagine than Bob's, thus making it more forgivable for Bruce to fail to imagine them. The fact that Bruce would think differently of his justification if the error possibilities were brought to his attention, shows that Bruce's justification is superior to Bob's only in the sense of it exempting him from blame in case he ends up with a false belief, to a higher degree than Bob's justification would exempt Bob from blame. But in that case, the sense in which Bruce's belief is better justified than Bob's, is not a sense that should be a worry to the instrumentalist account of epistemic justification.

This concludes the negative part of the chapter, arguing against some of the most common intuitions in favour of the possibility of justified false beliefs. I do not pretend to have refuted these intuitions conclusively, or to have discussed every possible consideration counting in favour of justified false beliefs. But I do think the above should at least give reason to explore the plausibility of accounts of justification, which do not allow false beliefs to be justified. I shall not attempt to flesh out a detailed positive account of epistemic justification with that feature here. In the remaining part of the chapter, I will instead concentrate on an objection that is no doubt on the reader's mind by now: If neither evidential probabilities short of 1, nor additional circumstances such as those Bruce found himself in, could justify belief in a sense relevant to the instrumentalist accounts purposes, won't the instrumentalist account of epistemic justification be impossibly demanding? I shall argue that it needn't be as demanding as it initially may seem.

4. The Demandingness ObjectionTo fix matters in discussing whether the instrumentalist account is committed to an excessively demanding account of epistemic justification, it will be useful to consider a slightly more precise thesis than that of justification being factive. Supposing that the instrumentalist account of justification will let one's justification depend on one's evidence (on some suitable construal of that property), it seems that the instrumentalist, insofar as he is committed to the factivity of

justification, must at the very least be committed to evidence being factive, and to one's evidence only justifying what it ensures the truth of. This minimal constraint can be summarized in what we might call Implication:

Implication: S has just ification for believing P only if the truth ofP is implied by S'sevidence.

It is important to stress that Implication is not intended as an account of epistemic justification. For one thing, it only indicates a necessary, not a sufficient condition for a belief to be justified. P's truth being implied by one's evidence could not plausibly be seen as a sufficient condition for being justified in believing P, since we would then have justification for believing things we clearly don't have reason to believe, such as the conjunction of all of the propositions that form part of one's total evidence, or, even worse, all of the logical consequences of those propositions, however complicated. So further constraints on what it takes to have justification for believing P, in addition to P being implied by one's evidence, are clearly needed. Nevertheless, the Implication thesis is useful to consider for the purposes of finding out whether the instrumentalist account of justification is overly demanding, because even Implication by itself will seem much too strict for many, and the troublesome demandingness associated with the instrumentalist account being factive will stem from its commitment to something like Implication. But I think that this sense of Implication being excessively demanding can be dispelled at least in part by considering three mitigating considerations.

The first mitigating consideration is that in many cases where a person's evidence doesn't imply the truth of P, Implication allows that the evidence may nevertheless justify the person in believing a proposition concerning the evidential likelihood that P, by implying the truth of this probabilistic proposition. This is not always the case. There are cases in which the fact that the evidential probability for S that P is D will not be implied by S's total evidence, since even if E is S's total evidence, E does not imply that S's total evidence includes E or that E includes S's total evidence. But in cases where the agent has access to those latter facts, the probabilistic proposition is implied by the evidence. In cases where no precise evidential probability is yielded by the evidence, or we are unable to assess the precise probability, we may be justified in believing an equally imprecise probabilistic proposition. For example, seeing Gordon Brown announcing his resignation in a televised speech may make it quite likely or very likely that Gordon Brown has resigned, without yielding a precise evidential probability for this. In such cases, Implication allows that we believe a correspondingly vague proposition, for example that it is quite likely, given the evidence, that Gordon Brown has resigned. But however vague this proposition is, the evidence does imply its truth.

So even if we are never justified in believing a falsehood, it is compatible with the Implication thesis that we are often justified in believing some proposition to be likely, which nevertheless turn out false. I suspect that many have found it plausible that we can be justified in believing a falsehood because they confuse the subtle distinction between being justified in believing some proposition to be very likely, and being justified in simply believing that proposition to be true. The psychological reaction upon discovering that a proposition is false is also likely to be similar, given the two kinds of prior attitude. Even if the belief that some proposition is likely is not strictly speaking falsified by the falsity of the proposition believed to be likely, one is nevertheless likely to feel surprised by this, given one's evidence. What is more, justified beliefs, or knowledge, concerning such likelihoods are

sufficient as grounds for rational action. There is no reason to suppose that the role played by rational degrees of credence in decision theory couldn't be equally well played by justified outright beliefs concerning probabilities.

The second mitigating consideration is that even in cases where we lack epistemic justification for believing a proposition, it is possible to be justified in accepting a proposition for some restricted range of purposes (Cohen 1992), where the latter justification will often involve a combination of epistemic and pragmatic considerations. There may be cases, for instance, where the computing costs of relying on probabilistic knowledge in deciding what to do exceeds the potential benefits of doing so, it which case it is reasonable to instead rely on acceptances of the truth of some simple non-probabilistic propositions, and act as if some proposition is simply true rather than just likely. Although this is not the same as having adequate epistemic reason to believe such simple propositions, we may sometimes confuse this with the justification of acceptances.

The third mitigating consideration in reply to the demandingness objection is that Implication says nothing about the conditions under which one can be held blameless for believing what one is not justified in believing. It is possible for a person's belief to not satisfy Implication, and nevertheless be blameless. Plausibly, one condition for being blameless is that one made an honest attempt at forming a justified, and thus true belief, exerting as much care and skill as one could muster in assessing one's evidence. As suggested above, it may also make one less blameworthy if the relevant error possibilities upon one's evidence were hard to imagine or understand. No doubt, there are many more complex and important things to be said about these conditions under which one can be considered blameless for a false belief, and there is no harm done in continuing to use the term 'justification' to speak of them, as long as one keeps in mind that those conditions cannot act as antecedent conditions in a norm that guides agents when forming beliefs.231 But the feeling that Implication is too demanding may

231 For an interesting study devoted to the conditions under which we are blameless for our beliefs, see Nottelmann (2007).

TRUTH AS THE AIM OF EPISTEMIC JUSTIFICATION 223

just come down to confusing justification in the sense that are important for our present purposes, with the conditions for being blameless for one's beliefs.

There are no doubt many other objections to the claim that justification is factive that I cannot consider here. I wish to close, however, by briefly addressing a different sort of concern, of a more methodological nature, which the comments made in this section may have raised for some. 232 The concern is that the meagre conceptual resources of belief, truth, and the instrumental relation, which the ambitious instrumentalist proposes to explain epistemic justification in terms of, won't be rich enough to yield an adequate account of epistemic justification, since it leaves out the idea that justification depends on some property more accessible to the agent than truth, without providing an obvious way of accounting for what that property might be. In the discussion above, I simply took for granted an understanding of evidence, which, as on any reasonable construal of that term, must be somehow accessible to the agent having it. I did that with the sole purpose of being able to frame the discussion of demandingness in the more concrete context of the Implication thesis. But it hasn't yet been shown how evidence, and the access we have to it, can be explained in terms of the basic elements of the instrumentalist account, and one may worry that such an explanation isn't forthcoming. If the instrumentalist resolves this by simply helping himself to an understanding of evidence and accessibility, one might worry that this will make the instrumentalist account obsolete, since all of the interesting epistemological questions will be settled in advance by the presupposed understanding of those terms, leaving no substantial explanatory work to be done by the instrumentalist account. Or so the worry goes.

While I agree that there are large and unresolved questions about the nature of evidence and accessibility for the instrumentalist to answer (I hope to do so on another occasion), they are not as intractable as the above suggests. The above worry presupposes that an eventual instrumentalist account of justification can invoke no epistemic resources other than belief, truth, and the instrumentalist relation, without becoming obsolete. But it is far from clear why this should be so. The instrumentalist account is an account of the essential aim or rationale of epistemic justification. It thus provides the normative back foil necessary for deciding between theories of the more specific epistemic properties that play a role in justifying beliefs. Suppose, for example, that we are considering a substantial question about evidence, such as the question of whether evidence is factive. It seems that we can decide this question only if we already have an idea of the role evidence is to play in justifying beliefs, which in turn requires that we have settled on a view of the essential point of epistemic justification. If we thought that epistemic justification was essentially a matter of rendering epistemic agents blameless for their beliefs, rather than being a matter of guiding them to believe the truth, we would presumably take a very different view of the nature of evidence—in particular, there would be no motivation for regarding it as factive. So a theory of the essential point of epistemic justification will in many cases decide, and be needed to decide, between rival accounts of more particular epistemic properties. This means that even if our theory of particular epistemic properties such as evidence will invoke additional resources than those relied upon by the instrumentalist account of the aim of epistemic justification, the instrumentalist account will be far from obsolete. It is, at least in part, our opinion about the basic aim of epistemic justification that gives us reason to prefer one theory of some lower level epistemic property over another. This

232 Again, I am indebted to Timothy Williamson for urging me to consider this.

doesn't mean, of course, that no other consideration can influence our theories of lower level epistemic properties. If the instrumentalist account of epistemic justification is work- able only if we accept a theory of evidence that seems independently very implausible, that will of course count against the instrumentalist account. But that just shows that no part of the overall account is isolated from critique, which, it seems, is a characteristic of any philosophical theory. It does not follow from this that the basic picture of the aim of epistemic justification cannot play a role in deciding between theories of lower level epistemic properties.

5. ConclusionI have argued that an influential objection to the instrumentalist account of epistemic justification, namely that it precludes the possibility of justified false beliefs, is not in fact an objection, but a plausible consequence of the theory. Of course, much more must be said before we have a completely convincing case against the possibility of justified false beliefs, but I hope that the reader will find it plausible that if we by 'justification' mean an adequate guiding reason to take up belief in a proposition, the intuitions usually cited in favour of the possibility of justified false beliefs are less compelling than they seem initially. There are no doubt other reasons why someone might reject the instrumentalist account of epistemic justification. But I hope to have shown that at least one objection to it is less compelling that often supposed.233 References

Alston, W. P. (1989), Epistemic Justification (Ithaca: Cornell University Press).Armstrong, D. M. (1973), Belief, Truth and Knowledge (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press ).Boghossian, P. A. (2003), 'The Normativity of Content', Philosophical Issues, 13,31-45.Bykvist, K. and Hattiangadi, A. (2007), 'Does Thought Imply Ought?' Analysis, 67,277-85. Chisholm, R. (1957), Perceiving (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press).Cohen, L. J. (1992), An EssayonBeliefandAcceptance (New York: Clarendon Press).Foley, R. (1987), The Theory of Epistemic Rationality (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press ).Foley, R. ( 2009 ), 'Belief, degrees of belief, and the Lockean Thesis', in F. Huber and C.

Schmidt-Petri (eds), Degrees of Belief. Synthese Library Series (Dordrecht: Springer), 37-47. Fumerton, R. (2001), 'Epistemic Justification and Normativity', in Matthias Steup (ed.), Knowledge, Truth and Obligation: Essays on Epistemic Responsibility and the Ethics of Belief (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 49-60.Fumerton, R. (2002), 'Theories of Justification', in Paul K. Moser (ed.), Oxford Handbook of

Epistemology, (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 204-33.Gardenfors, P. and Sahlin, N. (1982), 'Unreliable Probabilities, Risk Taking, and Decision

Making', Synthese, 53,361-86.Giere, R. ( 1989 ), 'Scientific Rationality as Instrumental Rationality', Studies in History and

Philosophy of Science 20,377-84.

233 The ideas developed in this chapter originate in my 2007 Cambridge PhD dissertation, and owe much to discussion with my supervisor Jane Heal, and examiners Quassim Cassam and Alan Millar. Previous versions of the paper were presented at Oslo University, Aarhus University, University of Calgary, and University of Copenhagen. I am grateful to Timothy Chan, Nishi Shah, Pascal Engel, Asa Wikforss, Kathrin Gluer, Ralph Wedgwood, J. Adam Carter, Paul Horwich, Anandi Hattiangadi, Anders Nes, Olav Gjelsvik, Stephen Mumford, Johanna Seibt, Lars Bo Gundersen, Eline Busck Gundersen, Anne Meylan, Carl Erik Kuhl, Asger Steffensen, and two anonymous referees for Oxford University Press for useful comments. I am especially indebted to Timothy Williamson, who provided extremely helpful written comments on an earlier draft, and presented a reply to the paper at the CSMN Aim of Belief conference, which has improved the paper substantially. Finally, I wish to thank the Danish Research Council for Culture and Communication for financial support.

Gluer, K. and Wikforss, A. (2009), 'Against Content Normativity', Mind, 118,31-70.Gluer, K. and Wikforss, A. (2010), 'The Truth Norm and Guidance: A Reply to Steglich-Petersen', Mind ,

119 , 757-61 .Goldman, A. (1986), Epistemology and Cognition (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press). Green, M. and Williams, J. N. (eds) (2007), Moore'sParadox: Newessays on belief, rationality, and

the first person (Oxford: Clarendon Press).Hawthorne, J. (2003), Knowledge and Lotteries (Oxford: Oxford University Press).Kitcher, P. (1992), 'The Naturalist's Return', ThePhilosophical Review, 101,53-114.Laudan, L. (1990), Aimless Epistemology?', Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, 21,

315-22 .Maitzen, S. (1995), 'Our Errant Epistemic Aim', Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 55 (4), 869-

76.Nelkin, D. (2000), 'The Lottery Paradox, Knowledge and Rationality', Philosophical Review, 109,

373-409 .Nottelmann, N. (2007), BlameworthyBelief, SyntheseLibrarySeries (Dordrecht: Springer).Nozick, R. (1993), The Nature of Rationality (Princeton: Princeton University Press).Pryor, J. (2004), 'What's Wrong with Moore's Argument?' Philosophical Issues, 14: Epistemology,

349-78 .Pritchard, D. (2005), Epistemic Luck (Oxford: Oxford University Press).Pritchard, D. (2011), 'What is the swamping problem?' in A. Reisner and A. Steglich-Petersen

(eds), Reasons for Belief, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 244-59.Russell, B. (1948), Human Knowledge: Its Scope and Limits (London: Unwin).Shah, N. (2003), 'How Truth Governs Belief', Philosophical Review, 112,447-82. Shah, N. and Velleman, D. (2005), 'Doxastic Deliberation', PhilosophicalReview, 114,497-534. Smith, M. (2010), 'What Else Justification could be', Nous, 44,10-31.Steglich-Petersen, A. (2006), 'No Norm Needed: on the Aim of Belief', Philosophical Quarterly, 56,499-

516.Steglich-Petersen, A. (2008), 'Does Doxastic Transparency Support Evidentialism?', Dialectica,

62, 541-47.Steglich-Petersen, A. (2009), 'Weighingthe Aim of Belief', Philosophical Studies, 145,395-405. Steglich-Petersen, A. (2010), 'The Truth Norm and Guidance: a Reply to Gluer andWikforss', Mind, 119,749-56.Steglich-Petersen, A. (2011), 'How to be aTeleologist about Epistemic Reasons', in A. Reisnerand A. Steglich-Petersen (eds),Reasonsfor Belief (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 13-33. Sturgeon, S. (2008), 'Reasons andthe grain of belief', Nous, 42,139-65.Sutton, J. (2007), Without Justification (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press).Velleman, J. D. (2000), ThePossibility of Practical Reason (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Wedgwood, R. (2002), 'The Aim of Belief', Philosophical Perspectives, 16,267-97.Williamson, T. (2000), Knowledge and Its Limits (Oxford: Oxford University Press).

Indexacceptance 50, 52, 94, 147-9, 155, 222 accessibility 42, 117, 223 action 40, 41, 51, 76, 78, 79, 152, 187, 206, 213 Adams, R. M. 151, 165Adler, J. 4, 7, 8, 9, 13, 15, 140ff, 149, 156, 159, 165,

174, 182, 185, 186, 187, 188, 189, 197, 20

2 agglomeration 111-2, 135-6 aim

instrumental 207. See also means-end relation; normati

vity, instrumental; value, instrumental internal and external 49-51, 206-10 aim

of belief. See belief, aim of Alston, W. 8, 15, 83, 98, 101, 121, 205, 225 Ansc

ombe, G. E. M. 2, 15, 123, 139, 144, 165 Anti-evidentialism. See evidentialis

m Armstrong, D. M. 206, 225 assertion. 4, 6, 10, 34, 43, 48, 55, 74, 104,

140,

144-5, 151, 154, 156, 163, 185-91, 195, 200, 202, 216, 218, 219. See also testimony assuming 80, 82asymmetric dependence theory 71 attitudes. See doxastic attitudes, propositional

attitudes availability 131-7, 162, 199 axiological account of the aim of belief. See belief,

aim of: axiological account of

Bach, K. 185, 202 Baldwin, T. 184, 188, 202 Bayes' Theorem 29 Bayne, T. 57, 61belief. See also commitment, disbelief, judgement, schmelief aim of 1-14, 32-63, 72-3, 89, 141, 167-8, 184-6,

197-201, 204-5

as knowledge

10, 14, 22-3, 58-60, 167, 184-203. See also knowledge nor

m as rationality 89axiological account of 5, 35, 49-52, 100-2,

115-18. See also truth, value of normative account of 2-7, 11, 12, 13, 24-6, 32-60, 64-79, 80-97,

100-21, 123-38, 184, 197, 204-5. See also norm, constitutive; normativity; truth norm teleological account of 35-7, 58, 96,

197-201, 205

animal 56-7 basic 160-2biological account of 33-4, 73 concept of 3, 9, 11, 17,

25-7, 33-5, 44, 54-6, 75,

81, 91, 101-2, 114, 140, 158, 163-5 conscious. See conscious mental states constitutive norm of. See norm, constitutive correct 2, 5, 13, 20, 32, 34, 105, 110, 119, 140. See

also correctness deciding to. See

doxastic voluntarism degrees of. See also belief, partial; confidence; credence; probability 8, 21-3, 29-31, 147-8, 164, 184 ethics of 9, 140-6, 165 fixation of 142, 146. See also regulation flat-out. See belief, full

full 8, 21-2, 123, 130-1, 147-52, 163-4, 184, 189,212-18

passim maximum 126outright 8, 216. See also belief, full partial 8, 13, 23, 123, 144, 149. See also belief,

degress of; credence platitude about 1, 3, 9, 14, 32, 184, 202 rational

29, 56, 59, 87, 90-3, 97, 124, 215. See

also rationality regulation of. See regulation

religious 159-162, 164. See also faith believing at will.

See doxastic voluntarism Bergmann, M. 95, 98 biological

design 73 Bird, A. 185, 187, 193, 196, 197, 198, 202 Blac

kburn, S. 43, 61, 100, 121 Blame 18, 217-23blindspot proposition 12, 13, 45-6, 102, 107-21.

See also Moore's Paradox

Boghossian, P. 2, 3, 4, 5, 15, 26, 31, 32, 34, 37, 40, 45, 61, 66, 79, 80, 81, 82, 85, 86, 94, 96, 98, 100, 101, 106, 108, 111, 121, 184, 202, 205, 225Brandom, R. 3, 15, 24, 31, 62, 71, 100, 121 Broome, J. 5, 15, 44, 47, 61, 92, 98, 182 Brown, J. 187, 193, 194, 202 Burge. T. 134, 139 Buridan's Ass

135, 178Bykvist, K. 4, 5, 7, 8, 12, 13, 15, 20, 31, 44-7, 61,

65, 66, 79, 83, 98, 100ff, 102, 107, 121, 123, 127-8, 136-8,

139, 205, 225

Capgras's delusion 56Carroll, L. 43, 61, 91, 95, 98certainty 22, 148-9. See also error, fallibility,probability Chan, T. 1ff, 31,

60, 165, 182, 202, 224 chess 6, 69, 74-6, 88. See also games Chisholm, R. 212, 225

Clifford, W. 8, 9, 15, 140, 141, 143, 146, 147, 152, 165cognitive regulatory mechanism 170-181

passim. See also regulation, cognitive cognit

ivism 36, 41-2, 175 Cohen, G. 159, 160, 165 Cohen, L. J. 52, 61, 214, 222, 225 coherentism 95commitment 13, 25-31, 146, 162-5 confabulation 158confidence 29, 125-6, 131, 158, 171, 184. See also

belief degrees of confirmation 161-2conjunction 107, 110-2, 116, 121, 128, 135-8, 147,

191-2, 198, 221

conscious mental states 32, 49, 50, 53, 55-7, 140,

158, 160, 165, 168, 176, 190 consideration. See also reason epistemic 51, 146, 173, 181, 194, 211 moral 148

non-evidential 146, 149-50, 160 practical 51, 148, 194pra

gmatic 13, 64,

146, 155-9, 163-5, 181, 222 prudential 148, 155, 156 considering a proposition 45, 55, 58, 83, 108,

110-1, 127-8, 131-8 passim consistency 112, 124-5 constitutive norm. See norm, constitutive content 2, 9, 33, 37, 71-2, 80-4, 100, 104-6, 111,

124-5. See also meaning contextualism 148correctness 2,-5,

7, 11, 13, 14, 17-18, 20-2, 27, 32-6, 101, 103-7, 124-7, 130-8. See also belief, correct; ought, correctness- related sense of as goodness 118-21 deflationary notion of 12, 34, 103-7 degrees of 22, 106, 125-7, 133 counterfactual 19. See also world, possible credal attitude. See doxastic attitude credence 125-7, 131, 144, 216, 222. See also belief,

degrees of;

belief, partial credulity, principle of 161 Curtis, B. 111

Davidson, D. 38, 90, 91, 97deciding to believe. See doxastic voluntarismdecision theory 38, 222deflationism. See truth, deflationary

account of degrees of belief. See belief, degrees of deliberation

doxastic 6, 41, 45, 49-50, 52, 54-5, 85, 101-2,

114, 153-4, 157, 168. See also trans

parency practical 24, 26

demandingness 196, 198-200, 204, 220, 221-4 deontic 5, 20, 34-6, 38-9, 46, 48, 53-4. See also

norm, ought, prescription desirability 8, 17-19, 23-4 desire 2, 11, 17-25 passim, 28, 78, 84, 88, 94, 100,

114, 120-1

detachment 5, 13, 47, 145, 150-1, 161, 163

direction of fit 2, 33-5, 72-3, 80

directive 40, 44, 53, 77-8. See also

imperative,

prescription disbelief 27, 112, 116-18, 126-7, 131-7 passim,177,

179, 205discretion, doxastic 151 dissonance, cognitive 50, 158 doxastic attitude 111-17, 125-38 doxastic deliberation. See deliberation, doxasticdoxastic strategies 147-56 passim doxastic voluntarism 7-

8, 13, 14, 41, 51-2, 83,

140-1, 163, 167-8, 176, 178-82 Dretske, F. 37, 38, 44, 61, 84, 98 Dummett, M. 6, 15, 25, 31, 32, 61, 71, 123, 139

Eagle, A. 111 Elga, A. 159, 165 Elgin, C. 151, 152, 165 enabling condition 57

Engel, E. 1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 10, 11, 15, 32ff, 34, 35, 38, 41, 43, 46, 48, 51, 54, 57, 59, 61, 80, 83, 85, 98,

100, 109, 121,

185, 197, 202, 224

epistemic justification. See also evidence;

justification; justified false belief; reason, epistemic aim of 9-10, 14, 58, 204-26 deontological conception of 8 instrumentalist account of 205-11, 224 normativity of 206 reasons constraint on 211 error 66-8, 77, 146, 147, 148, 152-6,

218-20, 222 evidence 8, 13, 17, 27-30, 36, 40, 50-1, 59-60, 77-9, 81, 101,

140-65 passim, 168-82 passim. See also epistemic justification, evidentialism; probability, evidential; reason, evidential evidence gathering 6, 8, 11, 29-31 evidence-based medicine 77 evidential relation 86, 91 evidential support, degree of 152 Evidentialism 8, 9, 13, 14, 101, 140-65,

167, 182 conceptual 9, 13, 140f strict 167f evil demon scenario 86-9,

173, 180 evolution 73, 78-9, 92 Ewing, A. 20, 31

ex ante and ex post 13, 128-31, 135, 138 factive 10, 60, 88, 163, 204, 209, 211, 221, 223-4faith 162faith, leap of 179fallibility 149, 155-6, 160, 162, 164. See also

certainty, error Fantl, J. 148, 165 Fernandez, J. 57, 61 fixed

point 168-182 passim Fodor, J. 71Foley, R. 21, 23, 31, 51, 52, 61, 192, 202, 205, 216,

225foundationalism 95, 160 friendship 119, 158Fumerton, R. 10, 15, 206, 207, 210, 211, 225

game 6, 38, 41, 69. See also chess, rulenumbers 14,

169-181 passim Gardenfors, P. 215, 225 Gettier, E. 199,

200, 202Gibbard, A. 2, 3, 8, 15, 20, 21, 31, 32, 37, 61, 80, 86,

98, 100, 101, 105, 106, 111, 121, 184, 203Giere, R. 205, 225 Ginsborg, H. 144, 165 Gjelsvik, O. 60, 182, 224 Gluer, K. 2, 4, 5, 6, 12, 15, 37-43, 46, 57, 60, 62, 66, 71, 77, 79, 80ff, 83, 85, 90, 93, 94, 96, 97,

98, 103, 121, 205, 210, 224, 225Goldman, A. 129, 139,

212, 225 governance 6, 34, 50-8, 70-2, 74-5, 81-2, 89,

189Greco, D. 18, 31 Green, M. 215, 225 guessing 36, 51, 105-7guidance 6, 11, 12, 36, 39-48 passim, 53, 57-8, 62, 66, 74-7, 82-97, 205, 210-1. See also governance, motivation no-__________objection 39-43, 46

Harman, G. 150, 165, 170, 179, 182 Hattiangadi, A. 4, 5, 7, 8, 12, 13, 15, 20, 31, 44-

7, 61, 65, 66, 79, 83, 93, 98, 100ff, 102, 103, 106, 107, 121, 122, 123, 127-8, 136-8, 139, 205, 224, 225Hawthorne, J. 15, 111, 193, 203, 212, 225Heal, J. 4, 15, 224Hicks, M. 4, 7, 8, 9, 13, 140ffHieronymi, P. 7, 9, 15, 141, 142, 165Higgs Boson 151-2Hill, C. 193, 203hinge propositions 160-1Holton, R. 144, 165Honesty 141, 143, 158, 188Hookw

ay, C. 167, 182Horwich, P. 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 10, 11, 17ff, 18, 20, 24, 26,

27, 29, 31, 224 Huemer, M. 57, 62, 189-91, 203 Humberstone, I. L. 2, 3, 4, 5, 15, 123, 139Hume, D. 148, 165

Imagining 36, 80, 82, 84, 104 Im

perative 35, 39, 40, 42, 53, 54, 88. See alsodirective, prescription incoherence argumen

t, the 142, 144, 154 inconsistency. See consistency induc

tion. See inference, inductive inference

inductive 23, 28, 149-52, 160-2 nomological 149, 151 inferential relation 91, 93

inferentialism 71, 100 inquiry 41, 145-7, 154-5 goal of 7, 32, 147, 153-4 pragmatic structure of 156-9 instrumental relation. See means-end relation instrumentalist account of epistemic

justification. See epistemic justification, instrumentalist account of intention 36, 49-51, 89, 94, 96, 100, 123, 175 interests 18,

19, 34, 163 internalism 43, 44, 95 involuntarism, doxastic. See doxastic voluntarism

Jackson, F. 81, 90, 91, 98 Jacob, P. 96, 98James, W. 146, 147, 152-6 passim,163, 165Jarvis, B. 44, 48, 62Joyce, J. 125, 126, 139judgement 50, 55, 85, 156-7, 187, 190

suspension of 106, 115-16, 131, 134, 146, 151,

163, 177, 179, 180 justification. See also reason basic 96

doxastic and propositional 129, 212 epistemic. See epistemic justification norm of 14, 17, 28, 206-8 regress of 95-6 justified false belief 10, 14, 204, 206, 209-24

Kant, I. 144 Karlander, K. 11

8, 122 Kavka, G. 141, 165 Keller, S. 158, 165Kelly, T. 36, 51, 52, 62, 64, 66, 79, 167, 172,182, 186 Kennedy, C. 118, 122 Ki

tcher, P. 205, 225 Klein, P. 192, 203 Knowledge

as aim of belief 10, 14, 22-3, 58-60, 167,

184

-203 leap of 13-14, 167f, 178-82 norm 22-3, 58-60, 184-20

3 reflective 196, 201

Knowledge (Cont.) tacit 53, 55

value of 14, 21, 22-3, 195-7

, 200 Kolodny, N. 91, 98 Kripke, S. 2, 15, 100, 108, 122

Kvanvig, J. 196, 200, 203 Kyburg, H. 112, 192, 203

Lackey, J. 187, 203 Langton, R. 175,

182 Laudan. L. 205, 225 law of logic 38law of nature 28, 119, 149. See also inference,

nomological leap of faith. See faith, leap of leap of knowledge. See knowledge, leap of Levin, J. 187, 193, 194, 203 Littlejohn, C. 79, 184, 185, 188, 192, 197, 203 Lockean Thesis, the 216 lottery paradox, the 14, 58,

59, 111, 112, 149, 188,

191-5, 202, 212, 218Lynch, M. 3, 7, 15, 184, 203

MacDonald, G. 74, 79 McDowell, J. 96, 98, 149, 165 McGinn, C. 71, 79 McGlynn, A. 149, 165 McGrath, M. 148, 165 McHugh, C. 197, 198, 202, 203 Magidor, O. 111Maitzen, S. 10, 15, 206, 207, 208, 210, 211,

225Marusic, B. 144, 165 May See permissibility

Mayo, B. 32, 62meaning 2, 27, 34, 37, 46, 92, 94, 96, 100, 161. See

also content means-end relation 10, 24, 86, 89, 207, 223. See also aim, instrumental; normativity, instrumental; value, instrumental method 85, 89, 95, 163, 198-200, 206, 208 Millar, A. 3, 15, 51, 62, 69, 79, 184, 188, 196,

198,2

01, 203, 224Millikan, R. 71, 79 modal condition 218-20 Monty Hall 155

Moorean propositions. See Moore's ParadoxMoore's Paradox 12, 14, 110, 128, 136, 137, 161, 188-191, 202, 215. See also blindspot proposition Moran, R. 54, 62Motivation 20, 24, 41-4, 47, 50, 55, 94-6, 142, 186, 211, 224. See also governance, guidance, internal

ism regress of 94-7 Mulligan, K. 34, 62nature, uniformity of 28 necessity 35, 81. See also

world, possible Nelkin, D. 192, 203, 218, 225 Nes, A. 96

, 97, 98, 224 Neta, R. 193, 203 Noordhof, P. 35, 51, 62,

100, 122 norm. See also ought, reason, value -governed. S

ee governance -guided. See guidance as force maker 47

as prescriptive 39, 64, 69,

76, 81, 144, 158. See

also prescription constitutive 2-7, 10, 11, 25-7, 34-5, 39-40, 44,

47-55, 59, 70-2, 81, 89, 124-5, 127, 204 correct-making feature of 33, 41, 43 evidential 10

1, 114, 118, 175 expression of 41, 42, 58 hypothetical 36 inferential 101, 113 knowledge of 53 moral 11, 17, 19 objective 53of

knowledge. See knowledge norm of rationality. See rationality, norm

of of truth. See truth norm ontology of 36 practical 51 regulative 44, 53 satisfaction condition of 33, 53 sensitivity to 75 subjective 53 teleological 42, 44 normative concept 2, 5, 12, 13, 20-1, 26, 93, 107,

124, 127-8, 138 normative force 5, 7, 11, 26, 37-44, 46, 69, 88, 102

, 206normative freedom 39, 41, 43, 46, 55 normative impotence. See guidance, motivation,n

ormative force normativism. See belief, ai

m of: normativeaccount of normativity

deflationary notion of 103-7 instrumental 42, 72, 88, 206. See also aim, instrumental; means-end relatio

n; normativity, instrumental; rule, instrumental; value, instrumental primitive 144 Nottelmann, N. 222, 225 Nozick, R. 145, 157, 165, 205, 225 numbers game. See game, numbers

obligation. See ought Ol

inder, F. 110, 122 Olson, J. 97, 110

ought 5, 8, 17-22, 25, 35, 47, 84, 107, 124, 127-38, 158. See also norm, reason

correctness-related sense of 5, 130-6

doxa

stic 102, 107-11

implies can 8, 12, 79, 82, 83, 108, 109, 112

moral 86, 158

objective 81-9 passim

subjective 81, 85-93

to do 41Owens, D. 1, 15, 51, 62, 101, 122, 197, 198, 203

Pace, M. 151, 152, 153, 154, 166Pagin, P. 6, 15, 94, 97, 98Papineau, D. 4, 5, 6, 9, 11, 12, 33-4, 52, 62,

64ff, 71, 74, 79, 88, 99, 145, 157 Parfit,

D. 9, 15, 172 Pascal, B. 151, 162, 163, 166 Peacocke, C. 59, 60, 62 perception 76, 105-6, 145 permissibility 5, 12, 35, 42, 46, 66, 84, 102, 107,

108, 112-15, 116

-17, 130-8, 147, 151, 154, 184-6

Piller, C. 9, 16, 19, 31, 49, 62Plantinga, A. 160, 163, 166Platonism 41-2Platts, M. 123, 139pleasure 119-120Podlaskowski, A. 112, 122positive illusion 158positive thinking 179-81practice 11, 31, 41, 69, 74-6,

145, 160, 162, 164pragmatic encroachment 180-2, 194preface paradox, the 111-2, 137prescription 37-48 passim, 53-4, 64-71

passim, 76-7, 82-5. See also norm, as prescriptive prescriptive. See norm, as prescriptive prescriptive force. See

normative force Price, H. 25, 31 Prior, A. N. 137, 139Pritchard. D. 173, 182, 196, 200, 203, 209, 212, 225 probabilism 211-8probability 29-31, 147-52, 153, 155-6, 170, 192 probability

evidential 211-222 passim. See also epistemic justification; evidence; reason, evidential subjecti

ve 56. See also credence promise 120propositional attitudes 2, 8, 9, 11, 12, 27,

33-4, 52, 72-3, 75, 80-1, 84, 92, 100-7 passim, 120-1. See also acceptance, assuming, belief, desire, disbelief, doxastic attitudes, guessing, imagining, intention, judgement prospective and retrospective. See ex ante and

ex post Pryor, J. 18, 212, 225

quietism 82, 96Rabinowicz, W. 92, 99, 182 Ra

ilton, P. 26, 31, 39, 42-3, 62 Raleigh, T. 114, 122 rationale 150-2

rationality 51, 81, 85-93, 125, 157. See also belief, rational; reason as aim of belief 89 epistemic 51norm of 38-41, 85-6, 89, 158 requirement o

f 92, 124-5 rules of 81, 86-9, 95, 97 rationalization 159

reason. See also consideration, justification, norm, ought, value aesthetic 11, 64-72, 76-9 constitutive and extrinsic 9, 141-2 content-related and attitude-related 9 doxastic 11, 65

epistemic 2, 9, 14, 36, 49, 52, 140-4,

150-1, 162-4, 176-7, 205, 211-12. See also epistemic justification evidential 108, 114, 167, 172-4, 179. See

alsoe

vidence moral 11, 64-72, 76-9 non-evidential 9, 13, 14, 140-66,

172-7, 182 object-given and state-given 9 objective 92. See also ought, objective personal 11, 64-72, 76-9 practical 51-2, 211pragmatic

101-2, 108, 114, 153-4, 158, 177 prudential 51su

bjective 91-2. See also ought, subjective taking to be 176 theoretical 95,

168, 172 to believe and for believing 9, 13, 140-6, reasoning 56, 91, 132-6, 168, 170, 173 logical 43 parity of 201

practical 94-5, 156, 193-5, 202 theoretical 95, 156, 178. See also reason, theoretical Reed, B. 58, 62regularity 33, 76, 82, 96, 97, 149, 160 regulation 11, 36-7, 41-2, 50, 53-

58, 85, 96. See also goverance, guidance cognitive 168, 181. See also cognitive regulatory mechanism Reid, T. 161, 166Reisner, A. 7, 9, 13, 14, 16, 51, 62, 142, 164,

165, 166, 167ff, 169, 170, 171, 172, 173,

182

Reynolds, S. 187, 203 Riggs, W. 152, 154, 156, 166 risk, doxastic 13, 114, 152, 213-16 Ronnow-Rasmussen, T.

92, 99 Rosen, G. 33, 62 rule 48, 75, 85-97

-following 42, 86, 88, 95, 96. See also

goverance, guidance -governed. See governanc

e -guided. See guidance basic 43, 87, 88, 95constitutive 6, 41. See also norm, con

stitutive inferential 101ins

trumental 88. See also aim, instrumental; means-end relation; normativity, instrumental; value, instrumental of etiquette 38, 55, 145 regulative 41 Russell, B. 212, 225

safety condition 199, 218Sahlin, N. 215, 225Scanlon, T. 53, 62skepticism 46, 109, 115-16,

162, 217Schechter, J. 193, 203schmelief 52, 75-9,145. See also beliefSchroeder, T. 38, 62scope 4-5, 17-18, 44-8, 50, 65-6, 107, 121, 178,

184Searle, J. 2, 6, 16, 41, 62self-deception 48, 50, 56, 57, 78, 144, 157, 158, 163 Sellars, W. 95, 99 Setiya, K. 7, 16, 175, 183

Shah, N. 1, 3, 4, 6, 16, 26, 31, 32, 34, 35, 41, 42, 45, 50, 52, 54, 62, 63, 80, 81, 85, 86, 94,

99, 100, 101, 114, 122, 141, 142, 166, 167, 172, 182, 183,

184, 203, 205, 210, 224, 225, 226

Shogenji,T. 161, 162, 166 Shortz, W. 153Skorupski, J. 53, 62, 167, 172, 183 Smith, M. 43, 62, 218, 219, 226 Smithies, D. 59, 62, 185, 192, 197, 203 Sophie's Choice 141, 143 Sorensen, R. 109, 122 Sosa, E. 41, 45, 63, 101, 122 stability

171-3, 178 Stalnaker, R. 100, 122 Stanley, J. 193, 203Steglich-Petersen, A. 9, 10, 14, 16, 35, 36, 42, 43, 48, 52, 55, 57, 63, 79, 83, 99, 157, 174, 183, 204ff, 205, 211, 226 Stroud, B. 158, 166 Sturgeon, S. 215, 216, 226 Styron, W. 141sub-personal level 50, 96. See also consciousmental state

s success 2, 14, 60, 65, 67, 78-9, 205-10, 213 success se

mantics 71 suspension of judgement. See judgement,

suspension of Sutton, J. 185,

187, 188, 189, 192, 197, 203, 206, 226 swamping problem, the 200-1, 209Swinburne, R. 147, 148, 166 symmetry 152

Tappolet, C. 20, 31 Tautology 26, 114, 153 Taylor, C. 147, 166 Taylor, S. E. 151, 166teleological account of the aim of belief. See belief, aim of: teleological account of teleosemantics 71

testimony 25, 67, 68, 140, 160-2, 187. See also

assertion Textor, M. 158, 166 Thomson, J. J. 40, 48, 63 t

oxin puzzle, the 141

transparency 11, 52, 53-8, 59, 101, 114-15, 142. Seealso deliberation, doxastic tr

iviality objection, the 37-44 trust 147, 154, 161, 162, 1

64, 168, 217 truth 1-3, 10, 25-7

deflationary account of 7, 27 norm 2-8, 11-14 passim, 17-31 passim, 32-60 passim, 64-79 pas

sim, 85-6, 101, 110, 113-14, 123-38 passim, 184ff,

205, 210

value of 6-7, 11, 21-3, 25, 28, 31, 49, 65-7, 70,

115-18, 200, 209

Turri, J. 129, 139

Unger, P. 188, 203 utilitarianism 67, 208

Vahid, H. 1, 16, 49, 63 value. See also norm, reason aesthetic 6-7, 64-72, 76-9 epistemic 29, 49, 150, 209. See also

epistemic

justification; reason, epistemic final 119instrumental 7, 11, 24-5, 35, 163, 200,

209.

See also aim, instrumental; means-end relation; normativ

ity, instrumental intrinsic 35, 36, 119, 145, 209 moral 6

-7, 24, 25, 64-72, 76-9 personal 6-7, 64-72, 76-9 pragmat

ic 24-5 value of truth. See truth, value of van Inwagen,

P. 151, 166

Velleman, J. D. 1, 4, 6, 16, 26, 31, 32, 34, 35, 41, 45,

49, 50, 54, 62, 63, 80, 85, 86, 94, 99, 100, 101, 114,

122, 168, 175, 183, 184, 203, 205, 226

volunta

rism,

doxasti

c. See

doxasti

c

volunta

rism

wanting

. See

desire

Wedgwood, R. 1, 3, 4, 5, 8, 13, 16, 20, 31, 34,

37, 59, 60, 63, 70, 79, 80, 83, 84, 86-9, 94-5, 99,

100, 101, 104-6, 108, 111, 113, 115, 117, 122, I23ff, 124, 127, 130, 139, 152, 166, 168, 183, 184, 197, 198, 203, 205, 214, 224, 226 Whiting, D. 1, 5, 10, 14, 16, 32, 34, 46, 48, 63, 66,

79, 83, 99, 1

12, 113, 114, 122, 184, 187, 192, 197, 203

Why-question, justifica

tion seeking 144 Wiggins, D. 123, 139

Wikforss, A. 2, 4, 5, 6, 12, 15, 37-43, 46, 57, 60, 62, 63, 66, 71, 77, 79, 80ff, 83, 85, 90, 93, 94, 96, 97, 98, 99, 103, 121, 122, 205, 210,

224

, 225

Williams, B. 1, 7, 10, 16, 32, 52, 63, 68, 79, 100, 122, 141, 142, 144, 166, 167, 183, 198, 203

Williams, J. N. 215, 225William

son, T. 4, 5, 6, 10, 16, 34, 48, 59, 60,

63, 147, 166, 174, 183, 185, 187, 188, 194-200,

203, 206, 209, 223, 224, 226

Wint

ers, B. 7, 16 wishful thinking 50, 56 Wittgenstein, L. 2,

95-6, 99, 160, 166 Wood, A. W. 164, 166 worldactual 19,

117, 132, 136-7, 218 possible 19, 24, 87, 177 Wright, C.

7, 16, 32, 63, 96, 99

Zagzebski, L. 63, 101, 122 Zalabardo, J. 1,

16, 35, 52, 58, 63 Zangwill, N. 2, 4, 16, 80, 89, 99, 100, 122

17 See Dummett (1959) and Price (1988). 30 Gluer and Wikforss (2009a: 36-7; 2009b: 16-17). See also Gluer (2001: 6of.), Hattiangadi (2007), and Wikforss

(2001: 205 ff.) 14 Personal communication.

3 Some philosophers will object that this principle is trivial, on the grounds that the claim that a belief is correct just obviously means that the proposition believed is true. I have set out to answer this objection elsewhere (Wedgwood 2007: 157-8).

Aim of Belief

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