Abstract
Does belief have an aim? According to the claim of exclusivity, non-truth-directed considerations cannot motivate belief within doxastic deliberation. This claim has been used to argue that, far from aiming at truth, belief is not aim-directed at all, because the regulation of belief fails to exhibit a kind of interaction among aims that is characteristic of ordinary aim-directed behaviour. The most prominent reply to this objection has been offered by Steglich-Petersen (Philos Stud 145:395–405, 2009), who claims that exclusivity is in fact compatible with belief’s genuinely having an aim. I argue, based on consideration of what is involved in pursuing an aim, that Steglich-Petersen’s reply fails. I suggest that the defender of the idea that belief has an aim should instead reject the claim of exclusivity, and I sketch how this can be done.
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Notes
Such regulation can involve the subject taking up the aim in her conscious intentions, where these intentions play a role in bringing about or affecting the state. But it need not involve the agent's conscious intentions. Belief-regulation is often carried out automatically (which is not to say subpersonally), by cognitive systems which have the relevant aim or function (Velleman 2000).
These processes regulate not only beliefs, but doxastic states generally, which also include states of withholding belief. (I focus here on outright attitudes.) Thus, this account of belief can be construed as a more general account of doxastic states or doxastic attitudes. For simplicity I will talk only about belief.
My view is that the aim is knowledge (McHugh under review a). This is also the view of Bird (2007). For the purposes of this paper I will focus on the claim that belief aims at truth; all of the essential points apply, mutatis mutandis, to a view on which belief aims at knowledge.
Sometimes it is taken that the aim is: that S believe p only if p. That is how Owens (2003) construes the teleological account. This difference is important but will not make a difference to what I have to say.
This is emphasised by Velleman (2000, p. 252).
For various ways of developing teleological claims about belief, see Millikan (1986), Plantinga (1988, 1993), Sosa (1991), Velleman (2000), Burge (2003), Steglich-Petersen (2006) and Bird (2007). See also (McHugh 2011).
For an alternative account of belief, see Shah (2003) and Shah and Velleman (2005). According to these authors, truth is not an aim of belief, but rather a sui generis conceptual norm of belief.
Many philosophers have wished to describe the nature of belief in terms of its functional role (see Levin 2009, for an overview of functionalism in philosophy of mind). The teleological account is congenial to some versions of this approach, in so far as the claim that belief aims at truth, or at anything else, is a claim about the input side of belief’s functional role. Some functionalists think that the role that individuates belief is only on the output side. For more on the relation between the teleological account and functionalism, see Velleman (2000).
This point is emphasised by Owens (2003, e.g. p. 295).
Including Bennett (1991), Walker (1996, 2001), Owens (2000, 2003), Kelly (2002), Shah (2003), Shah and Velleman (2005), Steglich-Petersen (2006), and Hieronymi (2008). Something like this claim is assumed or suggested in many other works. It is denied by Frankish (2007).
This is a claim about how beliefs can be motivated from the perspective of the deliberating subject. As Shah (2003) and Owens (2003) have emphasised, beliefs can be and often are causally influenced by non-evidential factors. But this influence does not go via the content of deliberation.
The terms ‘exclusivity’ and ‘exclusivity objection’ were introduced by Steglich-Petersen (2009).
Of course, the prospect of a reward could be a reason for which you form a belief about whether it will rain today. But, the claim is, it could not be a reason for which, directly, you form the particular belief that it will indeed rain today.
Owens’s exclusivity-based objection is in fact two-pronged. I have considered the prong that focuses on control/regulation of belief. The other prong focuses on rationality: roughly, the claim is that the rationality of belief isn’t determined by the interaction of the subject’s aims, as in ordinary instrumental rationality, and thus the rationality of belief should not be thought of as something that derives from an aim (see also Kelly 2003).
It might be said that these other considerations can be taken into account in deciding whether to go ahead and make a decision about whether to go to the restaurant, but cannot be taken into account in determining the content of the decision—whether to go to the restaurant or not.
That does not seem to me to be true, however. If you wish to avoid pointless travel and expenditure, say, that will count against making a decision with a particular content—to go to the restaurant—in the absence of further information. It will not count against making a decision simpliciter.
In any case, even if the claim is true, it is no comfort to the defender of the teleological account. The claim of exclusivity is that non-evidential considerations cannot be effective at all in the deliberative fixation of belief. It is not merely that they cannot determine what you believe, but also that they cannot determine whether you go ahead and form a belief, or refrain from doing so. Owens (2003) is very clear about this.
I am not suggesting that Steglich-Petersen endorses such a principle. I think, however, that some such principle would be required for his argument to go through.
I noted above (footnote 4) that the content of the aim of belief is sometimes construed as: that you believe p only if p. A conditional aim of this form will no more give rise to exclusivity than will a biconditional aim (that you believe p iff p). If you aim to try out a new restaurant only if it receives good reviews, you might nonetheless try it, if you do, partly on the basis of considerations besides the quality of its reviews (it’s close, and cheap, etc.), provided you have some assurance that it did get good reviews. Indeed, some other aim will have to play a role in motivating you to try it, since the aim of trying it only if it gets good reviews is best served by not trying it.
See footnote 8 above.
I offer more details, and counterexamples to exclusivity in my (McHugh under review b). A somewhat similar argument is made by Frankish (2007).
We are dealing with outright belief, not subjective probabilities.
I offer such an argument, and further examples, in (McHugh under review b).
Of course this doesn’t show that there might not be other objections. In (McHugh under review a) I argue that demandingness is in tension with the claim that the aim of belief is merely truth, but that it is compatible with, and indeed neatly explained by, a teleological account on which the aim of belief is knowledge. (Note that exclusivity, if genuine, would still be a problem for this ‘knowledge aim’ account, since a knowledge aim should be able to interact with other aims just as much as a truth aim should.)
Although it might suggest that the aim of belief is not merely truth. See footnote 21 above.
I would argue that similar points apply to the role of non-evidential considerations in contributing to the rationality of belief (see footnote 12 above). A belief based on insufficient evidence is (typically) irrational, but that does not show that non-evidential considerations can make no difference to the rationality of beliefs for which the subject has sufficient evidence. This is a point about all-things-considered rationality, or rationality simpliciter; the suggestion is not that non-evidential considerations contribute to epistemic rationality.
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Acknowledgments
I am very grateful to Asbjørn Steglich-Petersen, Tony Booth, Daniel Whiting and an anonymous referee for comments on earlier drafts of this material, and to an audience at the University of Århus for discussion. The preparation of this article was supported by the Agence Nationale de la Recherche, under the contract ANR-08.BLAN-0205-01.
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McHugh, C. Belief and aims. Philos Stud 160, 425–439 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-011-9728-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-011-9728-z