Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-2plfb Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-30T17:33:20.478Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Good and the True (or the Bad and the False)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 March 2013

Daniel Whiting
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

It is commonplace to claim that it is good to believe the truth. In this paper, I reject that claim and argue that the considerations which might seem to support it in fact support a quite distinct though superficially similar claim, namely, that it is bad to believe the false. This claim is typically either ignored completely or lumped together with the previous claim, perhaps on the assumption that the two are equivalent, or at least that they stand or fall together. Such assumptions, I argue, are mistaken. While it is not always good to be right, it is always bad to be wrong. This is an interesting and overlooked asymmetry, which calls for further investigation.

Type
Specially commended in the 2012 Philosophy prize essay competition
Information
Philosophy , Volume 88 , Issue 2 , April 2013 , pp. 219 - 242
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 2013

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 James, William, Pragmatism (New York: Dover, 1995), 42.Google Scholar

2 DePaul, Michael, ‘Value Monism in Epistemology’, Knowledge, Truth, and Duty, ed. Steup, M. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001)Google Scholar, 177.

3 Engel, Pascal, ‘Pragmatic Encroachment and Epistemic Value’, Epistemic Value, ed. Haddock, A., Millar, A. and Pritchard, D. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009)Google Scholar, 188.

4 Horwich, Paul, Truth—Meaning—Reality (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 56.

5 Jones, Ward, ‘Why Do We Value Knowledge?’, American Philosophical Quarterly 34 (1997)Google Scholar, 423.

6 Kvanvig, Jonathan, The Value of Knowledge and the Pursuit of Understanding (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, xiv.

7 Lynch, Michael, True to Life (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2004)Google Scholar, 12.

8 Schantz, Richard, ‘Why Truth is Not an Epistemic Concept’, Truth and Speech Acts, ed. Greimann, D. and Siegwart, D. (London: Routledge, 2007)Google Scholar, 309.

9 Zagzebski, Linda, ‘The Search for the Source of Epistemic Good’, Moral and Epistemic Virtues, ed. Brady, M. and Pritchard, D. (Oxford: Blackwell, 2003)Google Scholar, 24.

10 See David, Marian, ‘Truth as the Primary Epistemic Goal’, Contemporary Debates in Epistemology, ed. Steup, M. and Sosa, E. (Oxford: Blackwell, 2005)Google Scholar; Fantl, Jeremy and McGrath, Matthew, Knowledge in an Uncertain World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 165–170CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Goldman, Alvin, Epistemology and Cognition (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1986)Google Scholar; Loewer, Barry, ‘The Value of Truth’, Philosophical Issues 4 (1993), 265–280CrossRefGoogle Scholar; McHugh, Conor, ‘The Truth Norm of Belief’, Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 93 (2012), 8–30CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Morris, Michael, The Good and the True (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Pritchard, Duncan, What is this Thing Called Knowledge?, 2nd ed. (London: Routledge, 2010), 154–155Google Scholar; Putnam, Hilary, Reason, Truth and History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Railton, Peter, ‘Truth, Reason, and the Regulation of Belief’, Philosophical Issues 5 (1994), 71–93CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Riggs, Wayne, ‘Reliability and the Value of Knowledge’, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 64 (2002), 79–96CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

11 Lynch, ‘Minimalism and the Value of Truth’, Philosophical Quarterly 54 (2004)Google Scholar, 499.

12 Not all those cited above explicitly endorse both directions of this biconditional, though many of their comments suggest that they would do so. In any event, the part of (TG) which I shall challenge, namely, its right-to-left conditional, is the part they explicitly endorse.

13 The idea that it is good to believe the truth is related to, though distinct from, the idea that the aim or goal of belief is truth. For discussion, see Whiting, Daniel, ‘Does Belief Aim (Only) at the Truth?’, Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 93 (2012), 279–300.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

The idea that it is good to believe the truth is related to, though distinct from, the idea that a norm of truth governs belief, such as that one should believe the truth. For discussion, see Whiting, Daniel, ‘Should I Believe the Truth?’, Dialectica 64 (2010), 213–224.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

14 I shall assume that, if a proposition is not true, it is false. Nothing in what follows hangs on this. To allow for truth-value gaps, one could simply replace talk of its being false that p with talk of its not being true that p. According to the account which results, it is bad to believe a proposition if and only if it is not true.

15 For example, neither Kvanvig (‘Pointless Truth’, Midwest Studies in Philosophy 32 (2008), 199–212CrossRefGoogle Scholar) nor Grimm, Stephen (‘Epistemic Goals and Epistemic Values’, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 77 (2008), 725–744CrossRefGoogle Scholar) in their discussions of the idea that true belief is valuable consider the disvalue or otherwise of false belief. Elsewhere, when defending the value of truth, Kvanvig (op. cit. note 6, 38–42), simply does not mention falsity and, in later remarks on what is of value ‘from a purely intellectual point of view’ (54), refers to ‘getting to the truth and avoiding error’ only as a package.

16 Cf. David, ‘On “Truth is Good”’, Philosophical Books 46 (2005), 292–301CrossRefGoogle Scholar; David, op. cit. note 10.

17 David (op. cit. note 16) and Piller, Christian (‘Desiring the Truth and Nothing but the Truth’, Noûs 43 (2009), 193–213CrossRefGoogle Scholar) raise versions of this point when discussing the idea that subjects want or desire to believe the truth.

18 Lynch, for example, explicitly endorses (TG1). See ‘Replies to Critics’, Philosophical Books 46 (2005), 331–342.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

19 Cf. DePaul, op. cit., 77; Feldman, Richard, ‘The Ethics of Belief’, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 60 (2000)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 683.

20 Cf. Alston, William, Epistemic Justification (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1989)Google Scholar, 81ff; Jason Baehr, ‘Credit Theories and the Value of Knowledge’, Philosophical Quarterly 62 (2012), 4.Google Scholar

21 It is consistent with (TG) that things other than true belief possess epistemic value, such as knowledge or understanding. Thus, (TG) does not entail monism about epistemic value.

22 Horwich, op. cit., 66.

23 Malebranche, Nicolas, The Search after Truth, ed. trans. Lennon, T. and Olscamp, P. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997)Google Scholar, xxxv.

24 For versions of this point, see David, op. cit. note 10; Grimm, op. cit.; Heal, Jane, ‘The Disinterested Search for Truth’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 88 (1987/88), 97–108CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Sosa, Ernest, ‘For the Love of Truth?’, Virtue Epistemology, ed. Fairweather, A. and Zagzebksi, L. (Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2001)Google Scholar.

25 Op. cit. note 7, 55.

26 To say that there are possible circumstances in which it would be good for a subject to believe a truth is, of course, not to say that in the actual circumstances it is good for her to do so (cf. Heal, op. cit.).

27 Alston, Beyond Justification (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2005)Google Scholar, 28; Goldman, ‘The Unity of the Epistemic Virtues’, Virtue Epistemology, ed. Fairweather, A. and Zagzebski, L. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001)Google Scholar.

28 (TGM) is of little use to teleologists who seek to account for the epistemic norms to which believing is subject by presenting them as specifying the means to securing the relevant value, since those norms do not appear to govern only beliefs concerning interesting or significant matters. For this point, see Grimm, ‘Epistemic Normativity’, Epistemic Value, ed. Haddock, A., Millar, A. and Pritchard, D. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009)Google Scholar. Something similar can be said of (TGC), introduced below.

29 Wedgwood, Ralph, ‘The Aim of Belief’, Philosophical Perspectives 16 (2002), 273Google Scholar. Cf. Chisholm, Roderick, Theory of Knowledge, 2nd ed. (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1977), 14.Google Scholar

30 Perhaps there are theories of value according to which this is not so. It would be a cost for the proponent of (TGC) if her defence of it were to rest upon a highly controversial theory of value.

31 See Fantl and McGrath, op. cit., 165–167; Horwich, op. cit., 59–60; Kvanvig, op. cit. note 6, 41; and Lynch, op. cit. note 11, 501.

32 Op. cit., 10.

33 See Horwich, op. cit., 59n2; Kvanvig, op. cit. note 15, 209–210.

34 Kvanvig, ‘Responses to Critics’, Epistemic Value, ed. Haddock, A., Millar, A. and Pritchard, D. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 339.Google Scholar

35 Grimm, op. cit. note 15, 726. See also Baehr, op. cit., 4.

36 Op. cit. note 6, 41. See also Lynch, op. cit. note 7, 120.

37 Replacing (TG) with (FB) has implications for the teleological approach to epistemic norms. If she accepts (FB), a teleologist should present epistemic norms as rules which specify the means, not to securing something of value, but to avoiding something of disvalue, namely, false belief. This would seem to commit her to the view that epistemic norms involve permissions or negative obligations – one may believe that p if one has evidence that p, for example, or one should not believe that p if one has evidence that not-p – but not positive obligations – for example, one should believe that p if one has evidence that p. For arguments in support of the view that there are no positive epistemic obligations, see Feldman, op. cit., §2; Nelson, Mark, ‘We Have No Positive Epistemic Duties’, Mind 473 (2010), 83–102CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Whiting, ‘Does Belief Aim?’, op. cit. note 13.

38 It is important to stress that in the previous section I did not object to the distinction between prima facie and all-things-considered value, or to bringing that distinction to bear on principles such as (TG), but only to the suggestion that appealing to that distinction saves (TG) from the objection from triviality. Hence, it is legitimate, when discussing (FB), to appeal to that distinction to account for cases like those just mentioned.

39 Cf. ‘The sole evidence it is possible to produce that anything is desirable, is that people do actually desire it’ (Mill, J. S., Utilitarianism, ed. Crisp, R. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 81Google Scholar).

40 Op. cit. note 11, 499.

41 I am indebted to David (op. cit. note 16) and Piller (op. cit.) here, who make similar points with respect to a slightly different claim (cf. note 17 above). Note that Piller discusses (op. cit., 205–206) the above remarks by Lynch but sees no satisfactory way of interpreting the alleged truism. I shall offer one such way in a moment.

42 Admittedly, this consideration supports only the claim that it is bad to believe a proposition if it is false, not the claim that it is bad to believe a proposition only if it is false. Nonetheless, some of the other considerations I discuss in due course support the latter claim.

43 Of course, Lynch's original claim (‘Nobody likes to be wrong’) establishes at most a presumption in favour of (FB); it might also turn out to be wrong. Since the focus of the present section is the considerations which motivate philosophers to advance (TG) and its kin – in the face of the objection from triviality – I shall postpone this matter until later.

44 Again, I am indebted here to David (op. cit. note 16) and Piller (op. cit.).

45 Op. cit. note 6, 39–42. To pick up on a previous issue, Kvanvig's remarks might seem to be suggesting that, on discovering that one's (empirically adequate) belief that p is false, one has a con-attitude toward its being the case that not-p. I shall assume, however, that he is suggesting that, on discovering this, one has a con-attitude toward one's believing that p.

46 Op. cit. note 11, 502–503.

47 Ibid.

48 Op. cit. note 11, 502. Cf. Williams, Bernard, Problems of the Self (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, ch. 9.

49 Pritchard, op. cit., 155.

50 Sosa is responsible for examples of this sort. See Virtue Epistemology: Apt Belief and Reflective Knowledge (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007)Google Scholar, 22.

51 This paragraph draws upon Sorensen, Roy, Blindspots (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), 36–37.Google Scholar

52 Op. cit. note 11, 499.

53 For a complementary discussion, see Whiting, ‘Should I Believe?, op. cit. note 13.

54 Thanks to Conor McHugh for detailed feedback on earlier versions of this papers. Thanks also to Jonathan Way, anonymous referees, and audiences at Aberdeen, Lund, Reading, and Southampton for comments on the material and discussion of the issues it concerns.