Belief-Truth Norms

Abstract

This chapter focuses on the principle, ‘We ought to want our beliefs to be true and ought not-want them to be false’. Horwich aims (a) to confirm that this candidate for our directly instructive belief-truth norm is preferable to certain tempting alternatives; (b) to argue for its being conceptually more basic than (but equivalent to) the norm of correctness; (c) to show that it’s also prior to the desirability of knowledge; (d) to address the question of why it holds; (e) to suggest that it not be construed as a pragmatic principle; (f) to propose instead that it be given a moral interpretation; (g) to resist the idea that it helps constitute either our concept of truth or our concept of belief; (h) to examine its place in epistemology—specifically, its relationship to norms of justification; and (i) to answer the surprisingly difficult question of how a respect for it is manifested in epistemic behaviour.

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