Right Belief and True Belief

Abstract

Right Belief and True Belief is about what we should believe, and it defends a deeply truth-centric answer to that question. The book starts by laying out an approach to the question of what we should believe, one that mirrors how normative ethicists approach the question of what we should do. The rest of the book uses that approach to defend a truth-loving consequentialist conception of right belief. The central claim of truth-loving epistemic consequentialism is that what we should believe (and what credences we should have) can be understood in a simple consequentialist way in terms of what conduces to us having the most accurate beliefs (credences). This view straight-forwardly vindicates the popular intuition that epistemic norms are about getting true beliefs and avoiding false beliefs, and it coheres well with how scientists, engineers, and statisticians (i.e. those who are particularly rigorous in regulating their beliefs) think about what we should believe. Many previous works in epistemology have flirted with similar truth-based consequentialist approaches to epistemic norms, but most reject the view in response to one of several persuasive objections, most famously including trade-off and counting-blades-of-grass objections. Right Belief and True Belief shows how a simple truth-based consequentialist account of epistemic norms can avoid these objections and argues that truth-loving epistemic consequentialism can undergird a compelling general approach to epistemic questions.