Natural Selection and Indexical Representation

Abstract

The claim that true belief is a useful commodity should strike no one as perverse. If I am to eat that red berry on that shrub it had better be the case that its consumption will not terminate my life. There may be exceptions to the above claim, cases where ‘ignorance is bliss’ or ‘a little knowledge is a dangerous thing,’ but a generally false belief set just cannot, by and large, be an advantage for humans. In fact, I am almost embarrassed to have to defend the claim that true belief is a useful commodity: so entirely preposterous does its negation seem to me. But defend it I will, in what follows.