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What Does Belief Have to Do with Truth?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 September 2018

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Abstract

I argue that the widely-held view that belief aims at the truth is false. I acknowledge that there is an important connection between truth and belief but propose a new way of interpreting that connection. On the account I put forth, evidence of truth constrains belief without furnishing an aim for belief.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy , Volume 93 , Issue 4 , October 2018 , pp. 557 - 570
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 2018 

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References

1 Williams, Bernard, ‘Deciding to Believe’, in Problems of the Self (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973), 136–51CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 Anscombe, G.E.M., Intention (Oxford: Blackwell, 1957), 56Google Scholar.

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4 It was Williams who introduced the phrase ‘belief aims at the truth’, but Searle's idea that belief has a ‘mind-to-world direction of fit’, an idea already to be found in Anscombe though without the label, essentially amounts to the same thing. See Williams, op. cit. note 1, and Anscombe, op. cit. note 2.

5 For dissenting views, see James, William, ‘The Will to Believe’, reprinted in Burkhardt, F. et al. (eds) The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1979), 291–341Google Scholar, and, more recently, Owens, David J., ‘Does Belief Have an Aim?’, Philosophical Studies 115 (2003), 283–305CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Papineau, David, ‘There Are No Norms of Belief’, in Chan, T. (ed.) The Aim of Belief (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2013), 64–79CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For a discussion of subversive truths we may prefer not to know, see Kitcher, Philip, Science, Truth, and Democracy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 147–166Google Scholar. There are also evolutionary theories according to which the aim of belief is survival. See, for instance, Stich, Stephen, The Fragmentation of Reason (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1990)Google Scholar.

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16 This example is reminiscent of Preston-Roedder's discussion of the belief in human decency. See Preston-Roedder, Ryan, ‘Faith in Humanity’, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 87 (2013): 664–87CrossRefGoogle Scholar. I return to the difference between Preston-Roedder's view and mine at the end.

17 One could say that if I speedily recover, that makes my belief true. So actually, my belief did aim at its own truth. But of course, this isn't what the tradition means by ‘belief aims at truth’: the slogan means that belief aims to match an independently existing reality, not that belief aims to bring about its own truth. This is precisely why belief and desire are supposed to have different ‘directions of fit’.

18 Jollimore argues that love gives us this kind of epistemic advantage. See Jollimore, Troy, Love's Vision (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2011)Google Scholar. In related discussions, Stroud advances the thesis that friendship may require epistemic partiality while Keller contends that being a good friend sometimes requires being epistemically irresponsible. See Stroud, Sarah, ‘Epistemic Partiality in Friendship’, Ethics 116 (2006): 498–524CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Keller, Simon, ‘Friendship and Belief’, Philosophical Papers 33 (2004): 329–51CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

19 Belief-like states may have an impact on my mood – for instance, I may laugh or cry while watching a movie – but these effects are relatively superficial and tend not to linger for very long after the cause of the state, e.g., the film, is over.

20 Adler, Jonathan and Hicks, Michael, ‘Non-Evidential Reasons to Believe’, in Chan, T. (ed.) The Aim of Belief (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2013), 140–66CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

21 Papineau, op. cit. note 5.

22 Adler and Hicks quote Cohen making the closely related point that many of our most important political and religious beliefs are an accident of birth – we have them simply because we were born at a particular time in a particular place.  Op. cit. note 20, 159, Cohen, G.A., If You're an Egalitarian, How Come You're So Rich? (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000), 9Google Scholar.

23 See Watson, Gary, ‘Responsibility and the Limits of Evil: Variations on a Strawsonian Theme’, in Agency and Answerability: Selected Essays (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 256–86CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

24 I thank Mike Huemer for this point.

25 Op. cit. note 16. This is the strategy taken by Preston-Roedder in his discussion of the belief in the fundamental decency of human beings. Preston-Roedder contends that while it may be epistemically irrational to hold this belief, it is morally virtuous to be epistemically irrational in this way.

26 Michael Huemer suggests that the following is an instance of a Moore-paradoxical statement: ‘It is raining, but I have no justification for thinking so.’ Huemer, Michael, ‘Moore's Paradox and the Norm of Belief’, in Nuccetelli, S. and Sea, G. (eds) Themes from G.E. Moore: New Essays in Epistemology and Ethics (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 142–157Google Scholar at 146. Cf. Gallois, André, ‘Consciousness, Reasons, and Moore's Paradox’, in Green, M. and William, J. N. (eds) Moore's Paradox: New Essays on Belief, Rationality, and the First Person (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007) 165–188Google Scholar, at 166–7, de Almeida, Claudio, ‘Moorean Absurdity: An Epistemological Analysis’, Green, M. and Williams, J. N. (eds) Moore's Paradox: New Essays on Belief, Rationality, and the First Person, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 146–162Google Scholar at 156, Adler, Jonathan and Armour-Garb, Bradley, ‘Moore's Paradox and Transparency’, in Green, M. and Williams, J. N. (eds) Moore's Paradox: New Essays on Belief, Rationality, and the First Person (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 146–162Google Scholar, at 161–2.

27 Op. cit. note 27.

28 Papineau, op. cit. note 5.

29 Note that Papineau attacks only the normative interpretation of the truth-aim theory, not the descriptive one. He argues only that a ‘schmelieving’ community is possible, not that ours is such a community.

30 Op. cit. note 20, 145.

31 Op. cit. note 20, 144.

32 Acknowledgments: I owe thanks to Maggie Taylor for help with preparing the final version of the manuscript and to Mike Huemer, Ralph Wedgwood, and Anthony O'Hear as well as to audiences at St. Joseph's College and the 2015 Central APA for helpful comments on earlier drafts of this paper.