Normative Truths Research Articles

Desires and Normative Truths: A Holist's Response to the Sceptics

Desires and Normative Truths: A Holist's Response to the Sceptics

THE TRUTH NORM OF BELIEF

AbstractI argue that, if belief is subject to a norm of truth, then that norm is evaluative rather than prescriptive in character. No prescriptive norm of truth is both plausible as a norm that we are subject to, and also capable of explaining what the truth norm of belief is supposed to explain. Candidate prescriptive norms also have implausible consequences for the normative status of withholding belief. An evaluative norm fares better in all of these respects. I propose an evaluative account according to which the goodness of true belief is, in Geach's sense, attributive rather than predicative.

Against Normative Naturalism

This paper considers normative naturalism, understood as the view that (i) normative sentences are descriptive of the way things are, and (ii) their truth/falsity does not require ontology beyond the ontology of the natural world. Assuming (i) for the sake of argument, I here show that (ii) is false not only as applied to ethics, but more generally as applied to practical and epistemic normativity across the board. The argument is a descendant of Moore's Open Question Argument and Hume's Is-Ought Gap. It goes roughly as follows: to ensure that natural ontology suffices for normative truth, there must be semantically grounded entailments from the natural truths to the normative truths. There are none. So natural ontology does not suffice for normative truth.

Misrecognition, Misrecognition, and Fallibility

Misrecognition from other individuals and social institutions is by its dynamic or ‘logic’ such that it can lead to distorted relations-to-self, such as self-hatred, and can truncate the development of the central capabilities of persons. Thus it is worth trying to shed light on how misrecognition differs from adequate recognition, and on how misrecognition might differ from other kinds of mistreatment and disregard. This paper suggests that misrecognition (including nonrecognition) is a matter of inadequate responsiveness to the normatively relevant features of someone (their personhood, merits, needs etc.), and that if the kind of mistreatment in question obeys the general dynamic or ‘logic’ of mutual recognition and relations-to-self, then it may be called ‘misrecognition’. Further, this article considers the multiple connections between misrecognition and human fallibility. The capacity to get things wrong or make mistakes (that is, fallibility) is first of all a condition of misrecognition. Furthermore, there are two lessons that we can draw from fallibility. The first one points towards minimal objectivism: if something is to count as a mistake or incorrect response, there must accordingly exist a fact of the matter or a correct response. The other lesson points towards public equality: if our capacity to get things right on our own is limited, then public, shared norms will probably help. Such norms are easier to know and follow than objective normative truths, and they may contain collective cumulative wisdom; and of course the process of creating public norms embodies in itself an important form of mutual recognition between citizens.

Missed It By That Much: Austin on Norms of Truth

A principal challenge for a deflationary theory is to explain the value of truth: why we aim for true beliefs, abhor dishonesty, and so on. The problem arises because deflationism sees truth as a mere logical property and the truth predicate as serving primarily as a device of generalization. Paul Horwich, attempts to show how deflationism can account for the value of truth. Drawing on the work of J. L. Austin, I argue that his account, which focuses on belief, cannot adequately accommodate the complex role that truth plays in the norms governing assertion and similar speech acts.

The unity of the normative

Two questions that puzzle me about normativity, the subject of Judy Thomson's excellent book, concern the scope of the normative domain and its degree of unity. I am tempted to characterize the normative domain as consisting simply of truths about reasons, including reasons for action and reasons for belief and other attitudes. But there seem to be truths about attributive goodness that are not, at least on the surface, claims about reasons. If such claims are normative, then the characterization of the normative I have just mentioned is too narrow. An alternative, to which I have also sometimes been drawn, is a (not very satisfying) dualism, or even pluralism, about the normative, according to which there at least two kinds of normative truths truths about reasons and truths about attributive goodness, and perhaps even other kinds if a wider pluralism is correct. This view might also involve a dualism, or pluralism, about 'ought' judgments: some 'ought' judgments are clams about what people have all things considered reason to do while others are of a different kind, such as the judgment that a root ought to deliver water and nutrients to the plant of which it is a part. Thomson argues with characteristic clarity and trenchancy for a thesis of unity of the opposite kind to the one I find appealing: the thesis that the basic truths of the normative domain are all truths about

The love of truth

It is frequently said that belief aims at truth, in an explicitly normative sense—that is, that one ought to believe the proposition that p if, and only if, p is true. This truth norm is frequently invoked to explain why we should seek evidential justification in our beliefs, or why we should try to be rational in our belief formation—it is because we ought to believe the truth that we ought to follow the evidence in belief revision. In this paper, I argue that this view is untenable. The truth norm clashes with plausible evidential norms in a wide range of cases, such as when we have excellent but misleading evidence for a falsehood or no evidence for a truth. I will consider various ways to resolve this conflict and argue that none of them work. However, I will ultimately attempt to vindicate the love of truth, by arguing that knowledge is the proper epistemic goal. The upshot is that we should not aim merely to believe the truth; we should aim to know it.

XV-The Limits of Normative Detachment

The Kantian strategy in ethics is to demonstrate that the acceptance of certain norms is inescapable for practical agents. I investigate whether there is an interpretation of this strategy that can answer or at least mollify the worry pressed by error theorists that our normative judgements are systematically false. The first section explores a tempting line of thought that leads to a constructivist interpretation of the Kantian strategy. I will argue, though, that a constructivist interpretation is of dubious coherence. In the second section I describe an argument that attempts to show that, even absent a demonstration that it is a method for arriving at normative truths, the Kantian strategy is invulnerable to any completely general argument that all of our normative judgements are false.

The Truth Norm and Guidance: a Reply to Steglich-Petersen

We have claimed that truth norms cannot provide genuine guidance for belief formation (Gluer and Wikforss 2009, pp. 43–4). Asbjorn Steglich-Petersen argues that our ‘no guidance argument’ fails because it conflates certain psychological states an agent must have in order to apply the truth norm with the condition under which the norm prescribes forming certain beliefs. We spell out the no guidance argument in more detail and show that there is no such conflation.

The Truth Norm and Guidance: a Reply to Gluer and Wikforss

The Truth Norm and Guidance: a Reply to Gluer and Wikforss

Should I Believe the Truth?

Many philosophers hold that a general norm of truth governs the attitude of believing. In a recent and influential discussion, Krister Bykvist and Anandi Hattiangadi raise a number of serious objections to this view. In this paper, I concede that Bykvist and Hattiangadi's criticisms might be effective against the formulation of the norm of truth that they consider, but suggest that an alternative is available. After outlining that alternative, I argue that it is not vulnerable to objections parallel to those Bykvist and Hattiangadi advance, although it might initially appear to be. In closing, I consider what bearing the preceding discussion has on important questions concerning the natures of believing and of truth.

The Nature of Normativity: Précis

This book presents a comprehensive theory about the nature of normative thought that is, the sort of thought that is concerned with what ought to be the case, or what we ought to do or think. This theory implies a kind of metanormative realism, according to which normative truths or facts are genuinely part of reality. At the same time, the theory aims to provide a substantive account of the nature of these normative facts, and of how it is possible for us to know these facts and to refer to them in language or thought. In providing this account, the theory relies on a version of the idea (which has been much discussed in recent work in the philosophy of mind) of "the normativity of the intentional". This is the idea that there is no way to explain the nature of the various sorts of mental states that have intentionality or representational content (such as beliefs, judgments, desires, decisions, and so on) without stating normative facts. It is suggested that this idea captures a kind of Platonism about the normative. (i) The first part of the book is concerned with the semantic issues: how are we to give an account of the meaning of normative statements, and of the nature of the normative judgments that such statements express? To answer these questions adequately, a theory does not need to be reductive it may use normative terms in the metalanguage in which the theory is given. But it should still be in a sense noncircular: it should not help itself to the idea of a term's meaning "ought" , or the idea of a thought's including the concept ought since that is precisely what has to be explained. In the first chapter, it is argued that normative judgments have a very special feature: they have an essential or "internal" connection to motivation and practical reasoning. Any adequate account of the meaning of normative statement and of the nature of normative judgments must somehow explain why this sort of "internalism" is true.

Doxastic Transparency and Prescriptivity

Nishi Shah has argued that the norm of truth is a prescriptive norm which regulates doxastic deliberation. Also, the acceptance of the norm of truth explains why belief is subject to norms of evidence. Steglich-Petersen pointed out that the norm of truth cannot be prescriptive because it cannot be broken deliberatively. More recently, Pascal Engel suggested that both the norms of truth and evidence are deliberately violated in cases of epistemic akrasia. The akratic agent accepts these norms but in some cases he is not motivated by them. In this paper I will argue that Shah cannot use Engel's suggestion because, given his definition of doxastic deliberation, epistemic akrasia is impossible in the context of deliberation about belief. Furthermore, epistemic akrasia is in conflict with the phenomenon of doxastic transparency that Shah tries to explain.

The epistemological challenge to metanormative realism: how best to understand it, and how to cope with it

Metaethical—or, more generally, metanormative—realism faces a serious epistemological challenge. Realists owe us—very roughly speaking—an account of how it is that we can have epistemic access to the normative truths about which they are realists. This much is, it seems, uncontroversial among metaethicists, myself included. But this is as far as the agreement goes, for it is not clear—nor uncontroversial—how best to understand the challenge, what the best realist way of coping with it is, and how successful this attempt is. In this paper I try, first, to present the challenge in its strongest version, and second, to show how realists—indeed, robust realists—can cope with it. The strongest version of the challenge is, I argue, that of explaining the correlation between our normative beliefs and the independent normative truths. And I suggest an evolutionary explanation (of a pre-established harmony kind) as a way of solving it.

On Democracy's Epistemic Value

On Friday, April 15, at 8:45 p.m., Great Britain sat down to dinner. So began an article I wrote in 1994 on the world's first deliberative poll. nation sat at tables covered in white linen in the dining room of the Piccadilly Hotel in Manchester. How does a whole nation fit in one room? With a bit of twentieth century sleight of hand; with the science of polling and random sampling. Standing in for 55 million Britons were 300 who in their attitudes, incomes, educations, and manners perfectly mir rored the larger populace.1 Fifteen years later, in the context of this special issue of The Good Society on democratic epistemology, it seems instructive to return to this and subsequent deliberative polls designed to show that deliberation could improve public opinion. The ques tions on the table now are these: What kind of value is there, if any, to a well-designed deliberative procedure? If it produces a better public opinion, in what sense is this opinion better? Are the outcomes better because they get to the normative truth of the matter or are the norms they articulate standards that are produced by the deliberation itself? In this article I will concur with the Utopians that think that a deliberative public might indeed be able to produce judgments that seem in their own right to be sound and productive. But I will take issue with the idea that these outcomes can be judged independently of the procedure itself or that it makes sense to say that these outcomes track or map onto any independent truth.2 Apart from deliberations that are simply prudential procedures for ascertaining what are the best means to given and undisputed ends, the truth of the matter is produced in the procedure itself, in the discursive and pragmatic discussions of members of a political community as they try to decide what are the best ends for their community. To make my case, I will consider three cases of deliberative polling, which are useful because they come as close as possible to reflecting how a large-scale public might deliberate, and in the course I will tease apart the differences between sorts of deliberations and the ways of knowing that are at work.3

The Scholarship of Elegance and Significance

In this article, the authors examine the importance of expressive and aesthetic truth claims to public administration scholars, and present a model to aid them in making and evaluating such claims. Sincere expression adds credibility to an argument, and quality of expression can lend elegance to a truth claim. Expressive or aesthetic truth claims are not merely used to heighten emotions or enhance sensory experience; more importantly, they can also contribute to the efficacy of an empirical or normative truth claim. Through the judicious use of these truth claims, significance and meaning can be attached to the bare facts of empirical inquiry or a recommendation to act.

Covering the Qana ‘Massacre’ 1996: A Case of Contextual Objectivity

AbstractThis article is part of a larger qualitative study that investigates the Lebanese journalism culture and performance in relation to the Israeli forces' operations against Lebanon and their encounters with the Lebanese resistance between 1996 and 2000. News values and objectivity are key aspects of the culture that this paper explores. It is a story about journalism told by a journalist, yet one who uses academic tools to narrate her story and the story of her fellow journalists. The article presents part of the author's own story - an ethnographic account of Tele Liban's coverage during the 1996 ‘Grapes of Wrath’ operation, as Israel then called it. The performance of Tele Liban journalists during this period will be presented and examined in relation to journalistic norms of objectivity, neutrality, balance and truth. This paper examines what might be identified as alternative ways of understanding reporting wars and conflicts and argues that in this particular situation, reporting was a case of contextual objectivity.

Belief and normativity

Abstract The thesis that mental content is normative is ambiguous and has many forms. This article deals only with the thesis that normativity is connected to our mental attitudes rather than with the content of the attitudes, and more specifically with the view that it is connected to belief. A number of writers have proposed various versions of a ‘norm of truth’ attached to belief. I examine various versions of this claim, and defend it against recent criticisms according to which this norm lacks normative force, that it violates the principle that ‘ought implies can,’ and that it is viciously circular. I defend the view that we should distinguish the statement of the objective norm and the way it is regulated, and that this distinction can answer most of the criticisms of the norm of truth for belief.

A New Argument for Evidentialism

When we deliberate whether to believe some proposition, we feel immediately compelled to look for evidence of its truth. Philosophers have labelled this feature of doxastic deliberation ‘transparency’. I argue that resolving the disagreement in the ethics of belief between evidentialists and pragmatists turns on the correct explanation of transparency. My hypothesis is that it reflects a conceptual truth about belief: a belief that p is correct if and only if p. This normative truth entails that only evidence can be a reason for belief. Although evidentialism does not follow directly from the mere psychological truth that we cannot believe for non-evidential reasons, it does follow directly from the normative conceptual truth about belief which explains why we cannot do so.

Prescriptive Thinking

This article presents a conceptual model related to normative truth claims and is advanced as part of a larger project involving the development of a logical taxonomy of options available to public administration scholars as they assess projects of various kinds. The model differentiates among five types of truth claims, two paradigmatic options, various theoretical perspectives, four forms of argumentation, and several kinds of evidence, creating a roadmap that can be used by scholars—particularly those just entering the field—to conceptualize and articulate their projects. It also provides a framework against which normative truth claims can be evaluated.