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Abstract
Belief normativism is roughly the view that judgments about beliefs are normative judgments. Kathrin Glüer and Åsa Wikforss (G&W) suggest that there are two ways one could defend this view: by appeal to what might be called ‘truth-norms’, or by appeal to what might be called ‘norms of rationality’ or ‘epistemic norms’. According to G&W, whichever way the normativist takes, she ends up being unable to account for the idea that the norms in question would guide belief formation. Plausibly, if belief normativism were true, the relevant norms would have to offer such guidance. I argue that G&W’s case against belief normativism is not successful. In section 1, I defend the idea that truth-norms can guide belief formation indirectly via epistemic norms. In section 2, I outline an account of how the epistemic norms might guide belief. Interestingly, this account may involve a commitment to a certain kind of expressivist view concerning judgments about epistemic norms.
Acknowledgements
I thank two anonymous reviewers for very helpful comments that helped to improve the paper in various ways. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 2014 CWAP (Cracow Workshops in Analytical Philosophy) as well as at ECAP 8 (European Congress for Analytic Philosophy) in Bucharest. I should (and I do) thank at least Pedro Rui Abreu, Marianna Bergamaschi Ganapini, Gunnar Björnsson, Terence Cuneo, Anandi Hattiangadi, Ulf Hlobil, and Alex Miller for their helpful questions and suggestions. I have also benefited from feedback on a yet earlier talk on the topic given in the philosophy research seminar at the University of Tampere – I especially seem to recall the comments from Antti Keskinen and Arto Laitinen – and from a pair of discussions on the 2009 Mind paper by Glüer and Wikforss with Hanne Appelqvist, Ilmari Hirvonen and Severi Hämäri.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1 A truth-norm roughly along the lines of TN is defended in Wedgwood, Citation2002. For alternative formulations, see, e.g., Boghossian, Citation2005; Shah and Velleman, Citation2005; Whiting, Citation2010; Gibbard, Citation2012, Ch. 4; Engel, Citation2013. For more suggestions as well as for criticisms, see Bykvist and Hattiangadi, Citation2013.
2 See also, e.g., Wedgwood, Citation2002; Shah and Velleman, Citation2005; Papineau, Citation2013.
3 For discussion as well as for references to the relevant literature, see, e.g., Julia Driver’s (Citation2012a, Chs 5–6; Citation2012b) recent work on the topic. For a classic defense of going indirect in this context, see Railton, Citation2003 (1984).
4 For discussion of how to draw the distinction between the objective and subjective oughts (and reasons), and of which ones (if any) have explanatory primacy, see, e.g., Schroeder, Citation2007, Ch. 1.3; Parfit, Citation2011, pp. 162–4; Dorsey, Citation2012; Driver, Citation2012a, Ch. 5; Gibbard, Citation2012, Ch. 4; Gibbons, Citation2013, Ch. 2; Whiting, Citation2014. I do not think that I need to fuss about these issues in the present context.
5 For different responses to this argument, see also, e.g., Steglich-Petersen, Citation2010, Citation2013; Engel, Citation2013.
6 This suggestion is inspired by Jacob Ross’s (Citation2009, pp. 270–71) discussion of the sense in which intentions should be taken to be based on practical reasoning.
7 The attitude types are in small caps; the contents of the relevant attitudes are given in brackets. So, for instance, ‘Desire(I believe what is in accordance with R)’ represents my desire that I believe what is in accordance with R. The arrow represents a relation of rational explanation.
8 There are other problems, too, with this model of understanding the way that norms of rationality guide belief formation. For instance, it is not clear, at all, how a desire that one believes that p would rationally explain forming a belief that p. (This desire might contribute to rationally explaining causing oneself to have a belief that p, but that is a different matter.) I shall set any such problems to one side here.
9 Perhaps the relevant norms would be best formulated in terms of permissions rather than oughts. For reasons of simplicity, I will conduct the discussion in terms of oughts, but I believe that the same points could be made within a framework of permissive norms.
10 For proposals along these lines, see Gibbard, Citation2012, pp. 172–3, and Broome, Citation2014.
11 I am greatly simplifying here. Of course inferring in accordance with modus ponens does not actually always require believing that p when you believe that q and that if q then p. One might as well reject one of the prior beliefs.
12 Of course, if belief normativism is, independently, plausible enough, and if the relevant kind of expressivist view is the only kind of metanormative view which allows for escaping G&W’s criticisms, this would also offer somewhat surprising support for the expressivist view in question. That thought, however, contains two very big ifs.