Aiming at Truth: On The Role of Belief

Abstract

We explore the possibility of characterizing belief wholly in terms of its firstorder functional role, its input (evidence) and output (further beliefs and actions), by addressing some common challenges to the view. One challenge concerns the fact that not all belief is evidence-sensitive. In response to this, normativists and teleofunctionalists have concluded that something over and above functional role is needed, a norm or a telos. We argue that both allow for implausibly much divergence between belief and evidence. Others have suggested that belief should be saved as the evidence-sensitive attitude, by making it share its motivational role with an hitherto unrecognized state: alief. We argue that the appeal to alief faces a dilemma: Either explanation of intentional action by means of alief is a species of intentional explanation, in which case it becomes hard to distinguish alief from (irrational) belief, or alief

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