Strong knowledge, weak belief?

According to the knowledge norm of belief (Williamson in Knowledge and its limits, Oxford University Press, Oxford, p. 47, 2000), one should believe p only if one knows p. However, it can easily seem that the ordinary notion of belief is much weaker than the knowledge norm would have it. It is possible to rationally believe things one knows to be unknown (Hawthorne et al. in Philos Stud 173:1393–1404, 2016; McGlynn in Noûs 47:385–407, 2013, Whiting in Chan (ed) The aim of belief, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2013). One response to this observation is to develop a technical notion of ‘outright’ belief. A challenge for this line of response is to find a way of getting a grip on the targeted notion of belief. In order to meet this challenge, I characterize ‘outright’ belief in this paper as the strongest belief state implied by knowledge. I show that outright belief so construed allows this notion to play important theoretical roles in connection with knowledge, assertion and action.

Intention

This chapter develops a view according to which there is a constitutive aim of intention that parallels the constitutive aim of belief, and both of these constitutive aims can be used to explain some of the rational requirements governing intentions and beliefs. The chapter first considers in what sense there is an “aim of intention.” It begins by looking at many of the philosophical ideas associated with the “aim of belief,” noting that some of these won’t easily carry over to the “aim of intention” in the relevant way. However, if we understand constitutive aims in terms of the “job descriptions” of attitudes, there is room for optimism here. It then considers how the constitutive aims might explain certain consistency and coherence requirements, including means–ends coherence. The chapter critiques Michael Bratman’s suggestions for how these explanations might go, and offers an alternative view, which it calls “Non-normative Disjunctivism.”

The aim of belief and the aim of science

I argue that the constitutive aim of belief and the constitutive aim of science are both knowledge. The ‘aim of belief’, understood as the correctness conditions of belief, is to be identified with the product of properly functioning cognitive systems. Science is an institution that is the social functional analogue of a cognitive system, and its aim is the same as that of belief. In both cases it is knowledge rather than true belief that is the product of proper functioning.

To believe is to believe true

It is argued that to believe is to believe true. That is, when one believes a proposition one thereby believes the proposition to be true. This is a point about what it is to believe rather than about the aim of belief or the standard of correctness for belief. The point that to believe is to believe true appears to be an analytic truth about the concept of belief. It also appears to be essential to the state of belief that to believe is to believe true. This is not just a contingent fact about our ordinary psychology, since even a non-ordinary believer must believe a proposition that they believe to be true. Nor is the idea that one may accept a theory as empirically adequate rather than as true a counter-example, since such acceptance combines belief in the truth of the observational claims of a theory with suspension of belief with respect to the non-observational claims of a theory. Nor is the fact that to believe is to believe true to be explained in terms of an inference governed by the T-scheme from the belief that P to the belief that P is true, since there is no inference from the former to the latter. To believe that P just is to believe that P is true.

Epistemic Akrasia

Chapter 9 argues that accessibilism is needed to explain the epistemic irrationality of epistemic akrasia—roughly, believing things you believe you shouldn’t believe. Section 9.1 defines epistemic akrasia and separates questions about its possibility and its rational permissibility. Section 9.2 argues from the premise that epistemic akrasia is never rationally permissible to the conclusion that the JJ principle is true. The remaining sections motivate the premise that epistemic akrasia is never rationally permissible: section 9.3 appeals to an epistemic version of Moore’s paradox, section 9.4 to the slogan that knowledge is the aim of belief, and section 9.5 to the connection between epistemic justification and reflection.

Why Only Evidential Considerations Can Justify Belief

At least when we restrict our attention to the epistemic domain, it seems clear that only considerations which bear on whether p can render a subject’s belief that p epistemically justified, by constituting the reasons on the basis of which she believes that p. And we ought to expect any account of epistemic normativity to explain why this is so. Extant accounts generally appeal to the idea that belief aims at truth, in an effort to explain why there is a kind of evidential constraint on the sorts of considerations that can be epistemic reasons. However, there are grounds for doubting that belief, in fact, aims at truth in the way that these accounts propose. This chapter develops an alternative explanation of why it is that non-evidential considerations cannot be epistemic reasons by taking seriously the idea that the constitutive aim of belief is fundamentally action-oriented.

Understanding and Structure

This chapter explores two claims about metaphysical structure: that “carving nature at the joints” is a valuable intellectual achievement and that understanding is constituted by a “grasp” of explanatory structure, and the following claim about their relationship is defended: explanatory understanding requires “carving nature at the joints.” The existence of explanatory connections, to be “grasped” in understanding, requires the existence of natural “joints,” which must be represented in understanding. However, neither “carving nature at the joints” nor understanding is plausibly seen as “the aim of belief” or the “the aim of inquiry.” The chapter concludes with a discussion of the metaphysical preconditions for explanatory understanding through a discussion of the role of socially constructed properties in explanations: despite beign in some sense “non-natural,” such properties are real enough to ground the possibility of explanatory understanding. The fact that explanatory understanding requires “carving nature at the joints” therefore does not preclude the possibility of understanding in disciplines whose subject matters are plausibly understood as comprising socially constructed properties.

Fictional Persuasion, Transparency, and the Aim of Belief

This chapter argues that some beliefs from fiction present a problem for the truth-aim teleological account of belief. It outlines Nishi Shah’s teleologist’s dilemma, which challenges the teleologist to explain the focus on truth in deliberation over what to believe, but to do this in a way which does not exclude attitudes which are less regulated for truth from counting as beliefs. This chapter has responded to the dilemma by arguing that what demarcates belief from other attitudes is the descriptive characteristic of weak truth regulation, secured by the aim of truth. This chapter draws on empirical literature to give a version of the dilemma which appeals to beliefs from fiction. It argues that these beliefs are problematic for the teleological account, since they indicate that there is not a basic level of truth regulation common to all beliefs, as the account claims, and thus the teleologist’s dilemma remains.