Abstract
The theory of belief, according to which believing that p essentially involves having as an aim or purpose to believe that p truly, has recently been criticised on the grounds that the putative aim of belief does not interact with the wider aims of believers in the ways we should expect of genuine aims. I argue that this objection to the aim theory fails. When we consider a wider range of deliberative contexts concerning beliefs, it becomes obvious that the aim of belief can interact with and be weighed against the wider aims of agents in the ways required for it to be a genuine aim.
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Notes
I provide a more detailed answer to Shah’s version of the exclusivity objection in Steglich-Petersen (2006).
For more on the teleological explanation of the exclusive focus on truth in deliberation over belief, see Steglich-Petersen (2006).
If ‘taking up the aim of belief about p’ sounds artificial, replace it with the equivalent, but more familiar sounding and straightforwardly aim-describing ‘deciding to find out about p’, ‘deciding to form an opinion as to whether p’, or ‘deciding to arrive at a conclusion as to whether p’.
This version of the teleological account of belief was first proposed by Velleman (2000).
For more on this possibility, see Vahid (2006).
An interesting account of how pragmatic reasons for belief might be weighed against evidential reasons has recently been suggested by Reisner (2008).
Shah and Velleman (2005) argue that the teleological account is unable to explain the exclusive focus on truth in deliberation of belief, in a way that is compatible with the fact that sub-personal processes of belief formation that are not truth-guided. However, as argued I argue in Steglich-Petersen (2006), this is no problem for the teleological account.
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Acknowledgements
I am grateful to Jane Heal, Nicolas Espinoza, Veli Mitova, Johanna Seibt, Carl Erik Kuhl, Katrine Krause-Jensen, Raffaele Rodogno, and an anonymous referee for valuable criticisms and suggestions.
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Steglich-Petersen, A. Weighing the aim of belief. Philos Stud 145, 395–405 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-008-9239-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-008-9239-8