Why believe the truth? Shah and Velleman on the aim of belief
2010; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 13; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1080/13869790903318524
ISSN1741-5918
Autores Tópico(s)Logic, Reasoning, and Knowledge
ResumoAbstract The subject matter of this paper is the view that it is correct, in an absolute sense, to believe a proposition just in case the proposition is true. I take issue with arguments in support of this view put forward by Nishi Shah and David Velleman. Keywords: belieftruthnormativityaim of belief Acknowledgements I am grateful to Nishi Shah for his comments on this material. I presented a version of this paper at the University of Santiago de Compostela. I am grateful to that audience. This research was funded by a grant from the Arts & Humanities Research Council (UK). Notes Notice that doxastic relativism does not entail relativism about truth. A doxastic relativist can hold that many propositions are non-relatively true or false. What she would question is the claim that believing true propositions is non-relatively right and believing false propositions non-relatively wrong. In 'On the Aim of Belief', David Velleman offers three reasons for being interested in the debate between absolutists and relativists (Velleman 2000 Velleman, J. David. 2000. "On the aim of belief". In The possibility of practical reason, Oxford: Clarendon Press. [Google Scholar], 244–6). One that has received considerable attention in recent years arises from the thought that absolutism, if correct, would lend support to the thesis that mental content is normative. This thesis, in turn, is seen by some as posing an obstacle to the naturalisation of mental content, although Velleman appears to think that his own version of absolutism might help remove this obstacle. On the threat to naturalism posed by the normativity of content, see Kripke (1982 Kripke, Saul. 1982. Wittgenstein on rules and private language, Oxford: Blackwell Publishing. [Google Scholar]). On the connection between absolutism and the normativity of content, see Boghossian (2003 Boghossian, Paul. 2003. The normativity of content. Philosophical Issues, 13: 31–45. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar], 2005 Boghossian, Paul. 2005. "Is meaning normative?". In Philosophie und/als Wissenschaft, Edited by: Nimtz, C. and Beckermann, A. 205–18. Paderborn: Mentis. [Google Scholar]). It may seem that doxastic absolutism presupposes a substantive conception of truth, but, as Shah and Velleman have argued, it might be possible to formulate an analogue of the truth criterion within a deflationist setting. See Shah and Velleman (2005, 523–5). See Velleman (2000 Velleman, J. David. 2000. "On the aim of belief". In The possibility of practical reason, Oxford: Clarendon Press. [Google Scholar]); Shah and Velleman (2005); Shah (2003 Shah, Nishi. 2003. How truth governs belief. Philosophical Review, 112: 447–82. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar], 2006 Shah, Nishi. 2006. A new argument for evidentialism. Philosophical Quarterly, 56: 481–98. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]). Other contemporary absolutists include Paul Boghossian Boghossian (2003 Boghossian, Paul. 2003. The normativity of content. Philosophical Issues, 13: 31–45. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]) and Ralf Wedgwood Wedgwood (2002 Wedgwood, Ralph. 2002. The aim of belief. Philosophical Perspectives, 16: 267–97. [Google Scholar]). Earlier endorsements of the view can be found in Edgley (1969 Edgley, Roy. 1969. Reason in theory and practice, London: Hutchinson. [Google Scholar]) and Griffiths (1962–63 Griffiths, A. Phillips. 1962–63. On belief. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 63: 167–86. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]). Forms of relativism have been advanced, among others, by Richard Foley and David Papineau. See Foley (1993 Foley, Richard. 1993. Working without a net, New York: Oxford University Press. [Google Scholar]), Papineau (1999 Papineau, David. 1999. Normativity and judgment. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, : 16–43. Supp. Vol. 73 [Google Scholar]). In later papers, this feature of the concept of belief is expressed with a bicondional norm: 'Classifying an attitude as a belief entails applying to it the standard of being correct if and only if it is true' Shah and Velleman 2005, 498). See also Shah (2006 Shah, Nishi. 2006. A new argument for evidentialism. Philosophical Quarterly, 56: 481–98. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar], 489). I don't think this change of formulation reflects a change in Shah's views. Notice, though, that endorsing absolutism does not require endorsing normativism. For example, David Velleman's initial defence of absolutism in 'On the Aim of Belief' carried no commitment to normativism. Unless, that is, the utilitarian subscribes to a crude pragmatist account of truth, according to which maximising utility is what makes a belief true. I am grateful to an anonymous referee for raising this point. See also Shah (2006 Shah, Nishi. 2006. A new argument for evidentialism. Philosophical Quarterly, 56: 481–98. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar], 489). One could argue that all that aiming requires is that the subject believes that the activity can bring about the outcome, and this wouldn't sustain a cogent argument for transparency. I am grateful to an anonymous referee on this point. See also Shah (2003 Shah, Nishi. 2003. How truth governs belief. Philosophical Review, 112: 447–82. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar], 469). I follow Shah and Velleman in setting aside cases in which p is nonfactual. See Shah and Velleman (2005, 530, fn. 12). My point can also be expressed in terms of a distinction between the intention to form a belief as to whether p and the intention to form a true belief as to whether p. I claim that the second kind of intention is identical with the intention to answer the factual question, whether p. Hence it doesn't provide instances of transparency. The first kind of intention, by contrast, is different from the intention to answer the factual question, but it doesn't provide instances of transparency either, because the question whether to believe p, in this sense, doesn't inevitably give way to the factual question. Imagine a variant of Pascal's wager, adapted to a religion in which eternal damnation is reserved for the agnostics: any belief concerning the existence of God will spare you this fate. I am indebted on this point to an anonymous referee. For Descartes' views on this point, see Williams (1978 Williams, Bernard. 1978. Descartes: The project of pure enquiry, Harmondsworth, , UK: Penguin. [Google Scholar], Chapter 6). The Humean will observe that there are exceptions to this general claim about how belief that p is produced. The cases that we would describe as 'believing in the teeth of the evidence' are cases in which the belief that the evidence strongly supports p doesn't bring about the belief that p. There is no reason why the Humean shouldn't accept that the case of belief exhibits peculiarities that are not present in other non-voluntary mental phenomena. In particular, she could accept Bernard Williams's point that acquiring a false belief will often require acquiring many other false beliefs. See Williams (1973 Williams, Bernard. 1973. "Deciding to believe". In Problems of the self, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]). Shah and Velleman's explanation of why we cannot form beliefs arbitrarily is predictably different from the Humean explanation. See Shah and Velleman (2005, 502–5). Alternatively, the Humean might preserve the analogy between theoretical and practical reasoning by arguing that intention formation, no less than belief formation, is something that happens to us, sometimes as an effect of considering the relevant evidence. I am grateful to an anonymous referee on this point. Velleman draws a distinction between two theses: the thesis that belief involves regarding a proposition as true and the thesis that belief aims at regarding a proposition as true only if it really is true (Velleman 2000 Velleman, J. David. 2000. "On the aim of belief". In The possibility of practical reason, Oxford: Clarendon Press. [Google Scholar], 243). The view that I am labeling teleologism is Velleman's construal of the second of these theses. See Velleman (2000 Velleman, J. David. 2000. "On the aim of belief". In The possibility of practical reason, Oxford: Clarendon Press. [Google Scholar], 256–63). Some authors have objected to the idea that the putative instances of this phenomenon exhibit any degree of phenomenological uniformity. See Ramsey (1978 Ramsey, Frank Plumpton. 1978. "Truth and probablilty". In Foundations. Essays in philosophy, logic, mathematics and economics, Edited by: Mellor, D H. 58–100. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. [Google Scholar]), Kneale (1949 Kneale, William. 1949. Probability and induction, Oxford: Clarendon Press. [Google Scholar]). But accepting this point shouldn't force us to deny the phenomenon. On this issue see Price (1969 Price, H. H. 1969. Belief, London: Allen & Unwin. [Google Scholar], 275–89), Mellor (1980 Mellor, D.H. 1980. Consciousness and degrees of belief. In Prospects for pragmatism, ed. D.H. Mellor, 139–73. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press [Google Scholar]). However, my proposal is incompatible with Mellor's dispositional account of assent. See Hume (1978 Hume, David. 1978. A treatise of human nature, 2, Oxford: Clarendon. [Google Scholar], 624; 2000 Hume, David. 2000. An enquiry concerning human understanding, Oxford: Clarendon Press. [Google Scholar], sec. 5, part 2). A position along these lines was put forward by L.J. Cohen. See Cohen (1992 Cohen, L. Jonathan. 1992. An essay on belief and acceptance, Oxford: Clarendon. [Google Scholar]). I think that a position along these lines also has the resources for accommodating cases of self-deception, in which you believe a proposition but you are not disposed to feel convinced of its truth when prompted. I am not going to develop this point here. See also Burge (1979 Burge, Tyler. 1979. "Individualism and the mental". In Midwest studies in philosophy IV, Edited by: French, P., Uehling, T. Jr. and Wettstein, H. K. 73–121. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]). The notion of regulation for truth than Shah and Velleman put forward in 'Doxastic Deliberation' is weak enough to be compatible with the influence on belief of evidentially insensitive processes (Shah and Velleman 2005, 500). Hence the discovery that we need to consider is not simply that some beliefs are influenced by evidentially insensitive processes, but that belief is not regulated for truth even in Shah and Velleman's weak sense. See the preceding footnote.
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