What does philosophy aim at

What is the best theory of the good? The best theory of the right? Does moral truth require God? Does society determine right and wrong? Is the ethically right thing to do whatever society says is the ethically right thing to do? Why do we have it? Do we need it? What happens without it? What is the difference between morality and law? How ought one to live? Should we resist all government or only some types of government? What is the best government? The worst government? What is political power and what legitimates it?

Is it ever legit? What is justice and are governments necessary to nourish and sustain justice? Is there such a thing as a good and bad society? What does that mean? How do class, race and gender create oppressive structures and also points of resistance from which one can challenge oppressive structures? What Methods Do Philosophers Use? Don't forget to follow these guidelines as you explore the enigmas of existence and as you write essays or papers in philosophy: Use reason and observation to generate and test ideas.

Listen empathically and read carefully with an open mind. Act as a fair judge; give ideas a fair trial. Think of new and foreign ideas as "innocent until proven guilty of bad logic. Don't let ego-think and group-think shut-down your free-flowing thought. Shape your raw, free-flowing ideas with logic. Really apply yourself to the learning of logic. Study fallacies faulty reasoning extensively and avoid fallacies.

Define key terms and write down your arguments. Having to write your arguments down will reveal to you, in a more detached and objective way, how your thinking unfolds and how you can improve it to be more clear, systematic, well-connected and rational. Check yourself and broaden yourself. Try to step back from yourself, try to see things from different points of view, and check the basic assumptions that underlie your thinking.

Scan your thinking for "viruses" i. Don't fixate on "THE answer"; learn to love the question; learn to simply love the philosophical journey itself regardless of where it "ends. The history of philosophy is a super-rich platinum mine of ideas that you can draw from.

Look up major figures of philosophy and the major schools of philosophy. Look up multicultural perspectives and feminist philosophy as well. Contrast and compare your arguments with those of others; ask others who are open-minded, reflective, supportive and civil to critically review and rationally challenge your own thought.

Here is a summary of some of the many things students have said about their experience with philosophy: Helps you think about your own thinking; helps you understand yourself. Helps you develop your own critically thought-out worldview.

Helps you obtain an objective perspective on the world. Helps you become an independent thinker and deep person. Gives you a new purpose in life and a life-long project--to ask the deep questions and philosophically explore things with others. Helps you learn to have mature, interesting and intelligent conversations. Helps you obtain creative and critical thinking skills. Broadens the mind and stretches the limits of thinking and imagination.

Helps you gain insight into the thinking process and how others think. Helps you gain insight into human relationships and human communication. Helps you understand different basic models that you can use to approach questions about reality, ethics and knowledge. Helps you become more intellectually humble, tolerant and global in your understanding.

Helps you think critically about other disciplines such as history and psychology. Helps you learn how to create solid arguments.

Helps you connect with others on a deep level. Some Misconceptions About Philosophy In the ancient Greek world, philosophy was seen as a "way of life.

This involved creating rational habits of thought, disciplining ""the passions and engaging in daily "exercises for the psyche. Others assert that it is to integrate scientific knowledge with that of other disciplines to achieve some kind of consistent and coherent world view. Still others maintain that philosophy's function is to investigate the principles and rules of language and to expose the problems and confusions that have resulted from the misuse of language. However philosophers may define philosophy, the discipline begins not in certainty, but in doubt; not in judgments, but in questions.

As mentioned earlier, philosophy emphasizes intellectual autonomy, for it appeals to your own ability to find out what is true and what is right through your own thinking and experiences without depending solely upon an outside authority. Before examining any philosophical theory, a few comments should be made about some misconceptions you may have about philosophy, because, as with any discipline, misconceptions about the nature of what you are about to study can hinder your ability to make progress.

One widely held misconception about philosophy is that it has no "practical value. How am I defining that? And just because I do not see a reason, does it logically follow that no such reason exists? Now, it is true that some philosophical questions are esoteric and have no practical value, if by practical value we mean "ability to make money for us" or "ability to construct a product" or "has a widespread impact on society.

That is, they ask whether abstract objects would exist if there were no human beings to think about them. Answering this question would not alter how most people go about their lives. But the fact that such philosophical questions would not immediately impact how most people govern their daily lives does not imply that philosophy has no value.

There are indirect benefits in seeking answers to philosophical questions, even those "abstract ones" such as the one just described.

An indirect benefit of studying philosophy is that it helps develop skills in problem-solving, in analyzing concepts, in formulating clear definitions, and in asking profound questions. It contributes to your capacity to avoid making unwarranted assumptions, to trace the consequences of a claim, and to look at a problem from new and surprising perspectives. Studying philosophy also helps you to improve your communication skills, for it teaches you to write and speak more carefully and cogently.

Philosophy teaches you how to present ideas through well-constructed, organized arguments. It improves your ability to explain complex information and helps you to express yourself without ambiguity or vagueness. A second misconception about philosophy is that philosophers seldom, if ever, agree with each other and cannot present irrefutable arguments in support of their positions.

In every period, philosophers have challenged their predecessor's arguments. They have not only disagreed about many of the answers given to philosophical questions, but they have often been unable to agree among themselves about the nature of philosophy. The fact that many philosophical questions are still under debate does not imply that philosophers continually disagree with one another. Contemporary philosophers are in complete agreement concerning many methods and principles of logic; the study of how to distinguish between correct and incorrect reasoning.

For instance, philosophers agree that one should not commit the fallacy of begging the question, which occurs when one uses an argument's conclusion as part of the evidence to support that very same conclusion.

They also concur that one should not argue for a conclusion with contradictory premises. Even though some philosophers have developed programs of thought that do offer a definite set of conclusions about religious belief, human knowledge, and other issues, Russell urges that such attempts are usually unwise dogmatic declarations. Consistent with the thought of his other chapters, he claims that we cannot hope for definite answers or even high degrees of certainty.

In fact, he theorizes, the value of philosophy appears in its very uncertainty. He persuasively writes, "the man who has no tincture of philosophy goes through life imprisoned in the prejudices derived from common sense, from the habitual beliefs of his age or his nation, and from convictions which have grown up in his mind without the co-operation of consent of his deliberate reason.

Philosophizing, on the other hand, allows us to see even the most ordinary things in unfamiliar light. Though such consideration diminishes our faulty certainty about the world, it suggest numerous possibilities "which enlarge our thoughts and free them from the tyranny of custom. Philosophy banishes "arrogant dogmatism" and liberates "our sense of wonder. Philosophic thought also has a value by virtue of the things it contemplates and the distinctness of those things from "personal aims" and "private interests.

Russell writes, "in one way or another, if our life is to be great and free, we must escape this prison" of our private world. Russell's belief is that everything that depends on the private world "distorts the object" of contemplation and prevents the union of the object and the intellect.

Philosophic contemplation sponsors this escape by enlarging the Self. Differently from beliefs, these attitudes imply the truth of their content. If I know that it is raining now in Paris, then it is true that it is raining now in Paris. But if I believe that, the content of my belief may be false. The relation of belief to truth is thus neither as weak as that of other attitudes like imagining, nor as strong as that of knowledge. This is why it is often conceived as an aim or a commitment toward the truth or knowledge of the believed proposition: beliefs may fail to be true to achieve that aim , not that they may fail to aim at truth.

That granted, a further question is how to interpret the claim that beliefs aim at truth. Philosophers conceive of truth-directedness in very different ways: as an intentional aim of the believer to accept a proposition if and only if it is true; as a function regulating our cognitive processes; as a norm requiring one to believe a proposition only if true; as a value attached to believing truly.

The objective of the present section is to introduce some properties commonly attributed to truth-directedness, independent of its specific interpretation. Section 1. The truth-aim is usually attributed to belief in order to explain a number of characteristics of this attitude concerning its relation with truth. When philosophers attribute an aim to belief, they conceive of this property as constitutive of this type of attitude. This means, roughly, that it is part of what a belief is that is, part of the essence or the concept of belief that it is a mental attitude directed at the truth.

Let us label this the constitutivity thesis. Depending on how we conceive truth-directedness, there will be different ways of working up to this thesis.

Part of what it is to conceal an object X is that it is a type of act involving the goal that someone will not find X. It is in virtue of this goal that an action counts as an instance of concealing.

It is in virtue of this aim of the agent who believes or this function of her cognitive system that that attitude counts as belief. Consider a specific example: chess is a game constituted by a set of rules stating which moves are legal or permissible in the game. If one plays chess, one is thereby committed by the rules of the game to perform only legal moves.

The performance of a particular act does not count as a chess-move if it cannot be assessed justified, criticized… according to the constitutive rules of the game. Similarly, if it is part of what a belief is that it is an attitude governed by a norm to believe only the truth, a mental attitude does not count as a belief if it cannot be assessed criticized, justified… on the basis of this norm, as right or correct if true and wrong or incorrect if false.

One can also conceive of the constitutivity thesis by analogy to other types of entity essentially constituted by norms or values. For example, it is constitutive of what it is to be a citizen to be subject to certain rights and commitments, and it is constitutive of murder to be an act of killing in a wicked, inhumane, or barbarous way for the latter example, see Dretske, , pp. The claim that truth-directedness is constitutive of belief can be conceived of in at least two ways, as relative to the concept of belief or to its nature.

According to the conceptual interpretation, it is a condition of understanding the concept of belief that we conceive of beliefs as mental attitudes directed toward truth Boghossian, ; Engel, ; Shah, A proper understanding of the concept of bachelor implies conceiving of a bachelor as an unmarried man. Analogously, if one has a correct grasp of the concept of belief and conceives of a mental attitude as a belief, she understands it as one that, in some sense to be specified, is directed toward truth.

Other philosophers consider truth-directedness as constitutive of the nature or essence of belief Brandom, ; Railton, ; Velleman, a; Wedgwood, , The relation between belief and truth-directedness is here conceived of as one of metaphysical dependence of the former on the latter: as it is essential to water that it has a certain chemical composition H 2 O , it is essential to belief that it is an attitude involving a commitment to or an aim at truth. A mental attitude counts as a belief at least partially in virtue of aiming at the truth.

It is simply impossible for an attitude to be a belief if it lacks this property. It is usually held that the essentialist interpretation of the thesis does not entail the conceptual one for example, Wedgwood, , ch. It is part of the essence of water, but not of its concept, that water is H 2 O—we can understand the concept of water without conceiving water as having that specific chemical composition. Similarly the truth-aim may be constitutive of the essence of belief but not of its concept see Zangwill, for a similar view.

Also, some philosophers have argued that the conceptual interpretation does not entail the essentialist one Papineau, ; Shah, , fn.

The second property commonly attributed to truth-directedness is the individuativity of belief: the aim is the feature that individuates belief as that type of mental state and distinguishes beliefs from other mental attitudes Engel, ; Lynch, ; Railton ; Velleman, a; Wedgwood, The truth-aim plays a fundamental role in sorting out beliefs from other mental attitudes, being the distinctive feature of beliefs with respect to other types of attitude like thoughts, suppositions, desires, and imagining.

Philosophers usually appeal to the individuativity of truth-directedness for belief for two main reasons: 1 singling out the aim as a peculiarly distinctive property of belief helps to achieve a better grasp of what truth-directedness is and to distinguish this property from other properties of belief a philosopher who assumes individuativity in order to define truth-directedness is Velleman, a, pp. Here is a way in which this argument may proceed: if the truth-aim were not a necessary and constitutive feature of belief, it would be possible for a belief not to aim at truth.

But then, assuming that the aim is the only feature distinguishing beliefs from other mental attitudes, it would be impossible to classify that attitude as a belief rather than as a different type of attitude. Thus, the truth-aim must be a feature that beliefs possess necessarily and essentially. The argument from individuativity is not the only one supporting the constitutivity of truth-directedness for belief.

Since other arguments partially depend on normativist interpretations of the aim, they will be considered in 2. A number of critics have pointed out that it is possible to distinguish beliefs from other types of attitude without stipulating that it involves a constitutive aim at truth.

According to many philosophers engaged in the present debate in particular those endorsing teleological and normative interpretations , truth-directedness is supposed to characterize and distinguish belief from other types of mental attitude.

This property is conceived of as unique to belief, not possessed by any other attitude. These philosophers are careful to distinguish it from other properties relating belief to truth that other attitudes also possess. In this subsection I will introduce some of these properties and explain in which respects they are supposed to differ from the aim of belief. Mentioning these other properties will provide a rough idea of what truth-directedness is not.

An obvious truth-related feature of belief is the fact that believing something is believing it to be true Velleman, a.

In other words, beliefs have propositions as content, and propositions can be true or false. This property is obviously not individuative of belief, and thus cannot be identified with truth-directedness.

All propositional attitudes share it with beliefs. For instance, believing that p is believing that p is true, hoping that p is hoping that p is true, imagining that p is imagining that p is true, and so on Engel, ; Velleman, a. It is also commonly held that beliefs involve specific causal, functional, and dispositional-motivational roles with respect to action and behavior.

Some of these roles determine another aspect under which beliefs are related to truth. Belief is an attitude involving dispositions to act and behave as if its content were true and to use it as premise in reasoning Armstrong, ; Stalnaker, In response to this challenge, it has been argued that these properties are not sufficient to set belief apart from other mental attitudes, and thus to capture the distinctive relationship between belief and truth Engel, ; Velleman, a.

Other types of attitude seem to possess these very same properties. For instance, attitudes like acceptance and pretense all seem to dispose the subject to act as if their content were true and have the same motivational role. Another property commonly attributed to belief, and concerning the way it is related to truth, is its mind-to-world direction of fit. On the one hand, some attitudes, like desires, have a world-to-mind direction of fit: if what is desired is not the case, the world should be changed in order to fit what is desired, and not vice versa.

This is only one way of fleshing out the distinction see Frost, and Humberstone, for overviews of the distinction. Another popular way is to distinguish between cognitive and conative states, where cognitive states are such that the proposition in their content is regarded as something that is true , while conative states are such that they involve regarding the proposition in the content as something to be made true Velleman, a.

It is difficult to evaluate the relation of the truth-directedness of belief with direction of fit, since this depends on which account of direction of fit one accepts, and there is no unique and undisputed account. Notice that the persuasiveness of this argument depends on whether one endorses an account of direction of fit according to which other attitudes would have the same direction of fit as belief.

It is also important to distinguish the truth-directedness of belief from the value of possessing true beliefs. It has been argued that having true beliefs is something valuable David, ; Horwich, ; Kvanvig, ; Lynch, We naturally prefer to have true rather than false beliefs, and tend to attribute some sort of value to true beliefs and disvalue to false ones. It seems to be a platitude that true beliefs are at least extrinsically and instrumentally valuable.

Some philosophers have argued that true beliefs have also epistemic value. For example, it has been argued that believing the truth is an intrinsically valuable cognitive success. Though one might expect there to be important connections between the two topics, the issue of whether true beliefs are valuable must be distinguished from the further issue of whether truth is the aim of belief. While the former is a matter of aims, goals, and evaluations extrinsic to the notion of belief for example, the goal of believing truths and not believing falsehoods , the latter is a property intrinsic and constitutive of such a mental state Vahid, , , p.

Another respect in which the two features must be distinguished is that the value of true beliefs is hardly individuative of beliefs: other types of mental state such as guesses, hypotheses, and conjectures are evaluable according to their being true or false. In spite of these important differences, some philosophers have suggested that the value of true beliefs can be at least in part related to and explained by the constitutive aim of belief, even if not identified with it Engel, ; Lynch, Railton, ; Williams, The hypothesis that beliefs involve an aim at truth has been used to explain a number of features specific to this mental attitude.

Before considering such features, it is important to stress that not everyone who endorses some version of this hypothesis thinks that it can explain all of these features. The main features supposed to be explained by truth-directedness are the following:. Believing a proposition p at will would entail believing it without regard to whether p is true. However, if beliefs constitutively involve aiming at truth, the only considerations relevant to forming and maintaining a belief would be those in conformity to its constitutive aim; that is, truth-relevant considerations.

Believing at will would thus be either impossible or very difficult. This line of argument has been widely discussed in the literature. For critical discussions see, for example, Frankish ; Hieronymi ; Setiya ; and Yamada Though these sentences are not self-contradictory, if asserted, they sound odd and infelicitous. As Moore , p. The infelicity of asserting Moorean sentences can be explained as follows: on the one hand, an assertion is an act by which the speaker commits herself to the truth of what she says; on the other hand, a belief is a mental state involving an aim at the truth of the believed proposition.

The infelicity would thus be due to a conflict between the respective constitutive commitments or aims of assertion and belief. This explanation can be easily extended to an explanation of the unreasonableness of Moorean thoughts and judgments, since a judgment, like an assertion, can be considered an act involving a commitment to the truth of what is adjudged.

This thesis is often interpreted as the claim that there are norms governing the correct use of concepts in the content of propositional mental attitudes. An example of such norms is, for instance, that the concept white is correctly applied to an object x if and only if x is white.

Some have suggested that the aim of belief can provide an explanation of the normativity of mental content. In particular, Velleman a has suggested that the normativity of content can be entirely reduced to the truth-directedness of belief: if there is a norm governing mental content, this norm applies only to the contents of attitudes that aim at truth; that is, to beliefs. Boghossian has provided an argument according to which the normativity of mental content would derive from that of belief.

First, he argues that the truth-directedness of belief has to be conceived as a norm constitutive of the concept of belief. Second, he argues that there is a constitutive connection between the notions of content and belief: our grasp of the concept of content depends on the grasp of the concept of belief.

The normativity of content would thus be inherited by the normativity of belief. One such aspect is the motivational force of evidential considerations in deliberative contexts. In particular, Shah and Shah and Velleman have argued that truth-directedness can explain doxastic transparency , the phenomenon according to which, in the context of doxastic deliberation, the question whether to believe that p is invariably settled by the answer to the further question whether p is true.

Roughly, the idea is that when an agent engages in deliberation whether to believe a given proposition, only evidential truth-regarding considerations can be treated as reasons for believing.

Other types of considerations for example, practical have no motivational force in the deliberation. This can be explained by the hypothesis that the concept of belief is constitutively governed by a norm to believe p only if p is true, and that in doxastic deliberation, the agent deploying that concept in the question whether to believe that p is motivated by the truth-norm to form a belief only if it is true.

This in turn explains why only truth-relevant considerations matter in answering the question. It is worth noting here that similar explanations of the impossibility of believing in response to non-evidential considerations can also be used to explain the impossibility of believing at will see 1 above.

Theoretical reasoning justifies a belief by adducing considerations that indicate it to be true a, p. This is the case because being true is what satisfies the aim of belief. A common explanation takes these norms as instrumentally conducive to the satisfaction of the constitutive truth-aim of belief. This approach to epistemic normativity is not new in the literature.

Many philosophers of the past have argued that epistemic standards of justification and rationality would be derivable from the fundamental goal of believing truly and avoiding falsehoods for an overview see Alston, , chs. Criticisms of this type of approach to epistemic normativity typically mirror arguments against similar approaches in the practical domain. See, for example, Berker ; Firth ; Kelly ; and Maitzen The various attempts to reduce or explain epistemic normativity in terms of a fundamental aim or norm of truth governing belief are considered by some philosophers as part of a wider project directed at providing analogous accounts for other normative domains.

In particular, some have argued that practical normativity can be tracked back to constitutive norms of action and agency, which in turn would determine derivative norms of practical rationality and justification Korsgaard, ; Shah, ; Velleman, a; Wedgwood, Philosophers endorsing teleological interpretations of the aim hold that the standard would be an instrumental assessment indicating the measure of success that a belief must attain in order to achieve its constitutive aim.

However, this thesis is the subject of major disagreements. In the contemporary debate, there is a wide disagreement on how to interpret the claim that belief aims at truth. There are two main interpretations of the aim: teleological and normativist.

According to teleological accounts, the aim of belief is an intentional purpose of subjects holding beliefs, or a functional goal of cognitive systems regulating the formation, maintenance, and revision of beliefs.

Normativist accounts hold that the claim that beliefs have an aim must be interpreted metaphorically. According to normativists, truth-directedness is better understood as a commitment, a norm governing the regulation of beliefs their formation, maintenance, and revision. Other philosophers have endorsed minimalist accounts of truth-directedness, denying that beliefs aim at truth in a substantive sense.

This aim would be realized in truth-conducive processes and practices of belief-regulation, whose role is the formation, maintenance, and revision of beliefs. An attitude would count as a belief only if it is formed and regulated by these processes and practices. An advantage commonly attributed to teleological interpretations is that these interpretations seem more compatible with a naturalistic account of belief than rival interpretations in particular, normativist ones.

The thought is that intentions, goals, or functions can be accounted for in naturalistic terms. Furthermore, this interpretation would naturally fit with broadly instrumentalist, naturalistically unproblematic conceptions of epistemic normativity and epistemic rationality note however that these conceptions have been the target of many criticisms; for example, Berker, ; Kelly, Teleological interpretations differ with respect to how they conceive the aim at truth.

Some teleologists interpret the aim of belief as an intentional goal of the subject, like an interest to accept a proposition only if it is true. For example, according to Steglich-Petersen , believing is accepting a proposition with the purpose of getting its truth-value right. According to such an interpretation, the aim is realized through deliberative practices like judgments, in which an agent accepts a proposition only if she has evidence in support of its truth, and maintains that acceptance in the absence of contrary evidence.

Steglich-Petersen recognizes that many of our beliefs are regulated in entirely sub-intentional ways. However, he argues that only beliefs considered at an intentional level are connected to a literal aim:. Other philosophers have advanced sub-intentional interpretations of the aim, conceiving it as a functional goal of the attitude or the psychological system to form true beliefs and revise false ones. This function would be regulated at a sub-personal, often unconscious level.

A similar approach has been defended by Bird and McHugh b. Some authors also interpret certain functionalist accounts such as those of Burge , Millikan , and Plantinga as teleological in this sense see, for example, McHugh, a, fn. In particular, Velleman a maintains that there is a broad spectrum of ways in which the aim can be regulated. While sometimes it is realized in the intentional aim of a subject in an act of judgment about a certain matter, at other times there are cognitive systems in charge of the regulation of belief designed to ensure the truth of such mental states.

Other philosophers who distinguish between intentional and sub-personal levels of regulation of the aim are Millar , ch. A well-known objection to teleological accounts, provided by Owens , is specifically directed at intentional and mixed interpretations of the aim for similar objections see Kelly, Owens observes that if beliefs aim at truth as argued by teleologists, believing would be similar to guessing.

Guesses are mental acts aiming at truth, in the sense that when one guesses, one strives to give the true answer to a question. As Owens writes,. The aim of a guess is to get it right: a successful guess is a true guess and a false guess is a failure as a guess. Someone who does not intend to guess truly is not really guessing. According to a teleologist perspective, similar considerations are valid for belief, which is a mental state held with the purpose of holding it only if true.

But there are at least two important disanalogies between the intentional aim involved in guessing and the aim of belief. First, the aim of belief does not interact with other aims of the subject the way the truth-aim of guesses does. The aim of guessing as well as that of other goal-directed activities can interact with other goals and objectives of the subject, it can conflict with these other goals, and it can be weighed with them. In particular, when we guess, we integrate the truth-aim constitutive of guessing with other purposes, such as the practical relevance of guessing, and we consider guessing that p reasonable when aiming at the truth by means of a guess that p would maximize expected utility Owens, , p.

If beliefs, like guesses, constitutively involve an aim at truth, then we should expect that, on at least some occasions, we would weigh the aim of belief against other aims. For example, when engaged in deliberation about whether to believe a given proposition, our pursuit of the truth-goal may be constrained by other goals and purposes of the subject in the usual way.

A large reward to believe that today it is not sunny gives me a reason to try to believe it, but, in deliberation about what to believe, these considerations do not interact and cannot be weighed with the truth-aim of belief in the way they do with other aims and purposes of the subject. The second disanalogy suggested by Owens is that, in guessing, we can exercise a kind of voluntary control that is not possible in the case of belief.

The guesser can compare different considerations and then decide whether to terminate her inquiry and guess. Nothing similar happens in deliberation about whether to believe a given proposition, where one cannot decide when to conclude her inquiry and start believing a proposition. The deliberation is concluded more or less automatically and cannot be controlled by reflection on how best to achieve the aim.

Given these disanalogies, Owens concludes that while a guess is an attitude regulated by an intentional aim at truth, belief is not. A related problem for a teleological interpretation of the aim is that sometimes we are completely indifferent to certain matters, and sometimes we even prefer have the goal or aim not to have any belief on certain matters. Nevertheless, evidence for these truths constitutes reasons for us to believe them, and if presented with such evidence in normal circumstances, we cannot refrain from forming beliefs on these matters.

This seems to show that truth-directedness, and more generally epistemic rationality, cannot be reduced to aim-directed activities in the common sense of the term Kelly, On the other hand, some belief-formation processes can be influenced by non-evidential factors for example, cases of wishful thinking.

In an attempt to explain these two types of belief formation, the teleologist is pushed in two incompatible directions: she can consider the truth-aim as a disposition so weak as to allow cases in which beliefs are caused by non-evidential processes, in which case she cannot account for the exclusive influence of evidential considerations in deliberative contexts of belief-formation; alternatively, in order to account for the exclusive role of evidence in doxastic deliberation, she can strengthen the disposition that constitutes aiming at truth so that it excludes the influence of non-truth-regarding considerations from such kinds of reasoning—but then she cannot accommodate non-deliberative cases in which non-evidential factors influence belief-formation.

In either case, the teleologist cannot explain the truth-regulation of belief in both deliberative and non-deliberative contexts. Therefore, a teleologist interpretation of the aim is not sufficient alone to provide an explanation for the truth-directedness of beliefs in all processes of belief formation. For accounts of the dilemma compatible with a teleologist perspective, see, for example, Steglich-Petersen and Toribio For other objections to the teleological account, see Engel and Zalabardo For example, if Mary forms the belief that it is now 12 a.

Many normativists identify the norm of belief with a standard of correctness:. C a belief is correct if and only if the believed proposition is true. This interpretation of the aim is probably the most popular in the early 21 st century. It has been defended by, among others, Boghossian ; Engel , ; Gibbard ; Millar ; Shah ; Wedgwood , , Let us here clarify a common confusion about the claim that belief is constitutively governed by a norm: that a truth-norm constitutively governs belief does not mean that all beliefs necessarily satisfy that norm.

What is constitutive of belief is not the satisfaction of the norm as a matter of fact, many beliefs happen to be false, and thus incorrect , but that the norm is in force and believers and their beliefs can be assessed and criticized according to it—as correct if the belief is true, and incorrect if it is false. One of the best known arguments for a normative interpretation of truth-directedness, suggested by Shah , is the argument to the best explanation of doxastic transparency.

The two questions are answerable to the same set of considerations; that is, considerations concerning the evidence for or against the truth of p. This phenomenon is specific to deliberative contexts in which an agent explicitly considers whether to believe a given proposition.

In such contexts, only evidential truth-relevant considerations can influence belief-formation. In contexts in which a subject forms a belief without passing through a deliberative process, on the contrary, non-evidential considerations could influence the belief-formation. According to Shah, only a normative interpretation of the aim of belief can explain these facts—doxastic transparency, why this phenomenon is specific to doxastic deliberation, and the exclusive role of evidential considerations in deliberative contexts.

The explanation is the following: let us assume that it is constitutive of the concept of belief that a belief is correct if and only if it is true. This is interpreted as the claim that someone believing a proposition p is under a normative commitment to believe p only if it is true.

When a subject engages in doxastic deliberation and asks herself whether to believe a given proposition, she deploys the concept of belief. Assuming she understands this concept and is aware of its application conditions, she interprets this question as whether to form a mental attitude that she should have only if the proposition is true.

This in turn determines a disposition to be moved only by considerations relevant to the truth of p. This explains transparency and the exclusive role of evidential considerations in deliberative contexts. In contrast, in non-deliberative contexts where belief-formation works at a sub-intentional level, the subject does not explicitly consider the question whether to believe p , does not deploy the concept of belief, and is not thereby motivated by the norm to regard only truth-relevant considerations as relevant in the process of belief-formation.

For this reason, non-evidential factors can influence belief-formation in these contexts. This contrasts with the ways in which, in general, norms tend to motivate agents McHugh, ; Steglich-Petersen, Another argument for a normativist account of truth-directedness, suggested by Wedgwood , is composed of two steps.

The standard thereby articulates a necessary feature of belief: necessarily , all true beliefs are correct and all false beliefs are incorrect.

Second, since the standard articulates a necessary feature of belief, it is an essential feature of beliefs. Both steps of the argument have been criticized for example, Steglich-Petersen, , pp.

Against the second step, one cannot infer from a thing necessarily possessing a certain property to the property being essential to the thing it is a property of—using a well-known example of Fine , pp. Against the first step, it has been argued that it relies on contentious assumptions about normative supervenience: it is an error to deduce from the supervenience of a normative property N over a non-normative property G the necessity of the claim that every object having property G also has property N.

The most one can conclude is that, necessarily, if some object has property N in virtue of having property G, then anything with property G also has property N where necessity here takes a wide scope on the conditional.

For similar considerations on normative relations of supervenience, see Blackburn , p. Other arguments often used in support of the normativist interpretation do not clearly favor this interpretation over alternative substantive conceptions of truth-directedness, such as teleological ones.

For example, it has been argued that unless one assumes that belief is constitutively governed by a truth-norm, one is not in a position to distinguish beliefs from other cognitive propositional attitudes, such as assuming, thinking, or imagining.

The assumption that belief is constitutively governed by a truth-norm has also been used in arguments to the best explanation of a number of features of belief such as 1 the infelicity of asserting Moorean sentences; 2 the disposition to rely on a believed proposition as a reason for action and a premise in practical reasoning Baldwin, , p.

It is also worth mentioning that the claim that belief is constitutively normative has received indirect support from views that, for independent reasons, hold that intentional attitudes in general are constitutively normative Brandom, ; Millar, ; Wedgwood, Though the normativist interpretation has been the most popular in the last two decades, it has also been the target of several criticisms.

According to the No Guidance Argument , a truth-norm is incapable of guiding an agent in the formation and revision of her beliefs.

The only way to follow this norm will thus be continuing to believe what one already believes.