It is a pervasive practice for us to assess one another’s beliefs, decrying some as unjustified while commending others as justified. We find something amiss in a belief formed by wishful thinking, and deem proper a belief at which one arrived as a result of the meticulous consideration of one’s evidence. Although beliefs that we call rational or justified in this way may not always be true, it is natural to think that there is a close connection between justification and truth. Furthermore, it is natural to think that we care about whether our own and others’ beliefs are justified because true beliefs are, in some sense, valuable.
These considerations raise a series of questions. In what sense does truth matter? and how does the way in which truth matters constrain the norms we ought to follow when forming and revising our beliefs? These are the central questions that structure my research. In my current work, I develop a conception of epistemic normativity organized around two key components: (i) on the one hand, a plausible account of the value of truth, capable of explaining the authority of epistemic norms while doing justice to the rich entanglement of social, moral, practical, and other norms within which agents are situated; (ii) on the other hand, a conception of epistemic norms that is informed by, and compatible with, this account of the value of truth.
It may be tempting to treat these two sets of questions separately — why truth matters, on the one hand, and which epistemic norms we ought to conform to, on the other — while tacitly presupposing that how one answers the former has no bearing on how one answers the latter. My research challenges this presupposition. I argue that, for many central debates in epistemology, the way one understands the value of truth places substantive constraints on what one can take to be epistemic norms, and conversely.
I develop a conception of epistemic normativity that does justice to the idea that truth matters, while avoiding the difficulties faced by other value-based conceptions of epistemic normativity. The central idea of this conception is that our identity as agents who form and revise beliefs, and who are thereby subject to epistemic norms, is inextricably linked to the broader network of normative commitments — social, moral, prudential — that shape our lives. When we ask the question “What should I believe?”, we always do so in circumstances in which social roles, moral requirements, practical interests, and other normative considerations are already in play. I argue that whether and how a particular truth matters cannot be determined without taking into account this broader normative web within which each of us is situated.
I show how this conception of the value of truth can explain significant features of epistemic normativity and yield plausible verdicts about what we ought to believe in several cases that create difficulties for other value-based accounts. I argue, however, that no plausible account of the value of truth can explain all the normative phenomena grouped under the label “epistemic normativity.” I distinguish between substantive epistemic norms, which are explained by the value of truth, and basal epistemic norms, which arise from the proper functioning of belief-formation and belief-revision mechanisms independently of the value of truth.
[draft available upon request]
I examine the thesis that what we ought to believe is explained by the fact that true beliefs are useful for the communities of which we are members. I argue that such a thesis faces serious difficulties, and I put forward a way of recognizing that epistemic normativity has an important social dimension without incurring these difficulties. I show that if what we ought to believe were explained in terms of the usefulness of truth for the communities of which we are members, we should expect our epistemic norms to be radically different from what they in fact are. First, they could permit clearly unjustified beliefs when holding such beliefs would lead to a greater number of beliefs that are useful for the community. Second, in cases where the epistemic aims of the community would be equally well served by belief and by other doxastic attitudes such as acceptance, epistemic norms would not prescribe believing—even in cases in which failing to form a belief would nevertheless be impermissible. Finally, such a conception cannot account for what isolated individuals ought to believe.
The way forward, I argue, is twofold. On the one hand, we should limit the scope of the dimension of epistemic normativity grounded in facts about our social contexts. Although this dimension constitutes an essential aspect of epistemic normativity, but it does not exhaust it. On the other hand, it is more plausible to ground the social dimensions of epistemic normativity in the non-instrumental value that truth possesses for agents in virtue of the social roles they occupy.
[under review] [draft available upon request]
According to the teleological conception of justification, justification must be understood in terms of conduciveness to the truth. This conception occupies a central place in epistemology. In recent years, however, it has been the target of vigorous objections. According to these obections, because of its similarities with consequentialism in ethics, the teleological conception faces problems parallel to those confronting consequentialism.
I argue that these objections fail in an instructive way. They rest on the idea that the analogy with consequentialism in ethics reveals essential features of the teleological conception of epistemic justification, whereas it in fact highlights only superficial similarities; this amounts to imposing on the teleological conception of justification a theoretical framework that is foreign to it. I argue that the teleologist should not let the opponent decide on the terms of the debate. Instead, the teleologist should reject the claim that there are deep structural similarities between understanding justification in terms of truth-conduciveness and understanding right action in terms of promoting the good. Once this claim is set aside, we are left with a teleological conception of epistemic justification that is immune to these objections. On the teleological conception of justification, justification is a guide to truth, but not a guide to the good.
I formulate and defend a solution to a puzzle concerning two aspects of our practice of artistic evaluation that appear to be in tension. On the one hand, we praise works of art for their capacity to help us understand both the world and ourselves; on the other hand, we often regard the didactic character of a work as an artistic defect. Yet if a work’s artistic merit is enhanced by its capacity to convey cognitive value, and if didacticism is an effective means of doing so, then being didactic should not count as an artistic defect.
I argue that, despite the apparent tension between the view that imparting cognitive values constitutes an artistic merit and the view that didacticism constitutes an artistic defect, we can accept both claims. The problem with didactic works is that they rule out, from the outset, the possibility that the knowledge and understanding they convey might amount to a collective achievement; by contrast, works that illuminate us without being didactic make such collective achievement possible. Insofar as didactic works preclude such achievement, they are artistically defective. I show that this account is superior to the available alternatives.
[handout available upon request]