Bel Aim Public 2010

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BELIEFS AIM AND ITS JUSTIFICATION

Clayton Littlejohn

[email protected]

Abstract: In this paper, I argue that a widely accepted claim about the ontology of practical reasons

is incompatible with a widely accepted claim about the justification of belief. Epistemologists dontthink that justification is factive. They think that there can be false, justified belief. Reasons foraction, were told, are facts about the external situation. It cannot be that reasons are facts ifjustification isnt factive, so someone is getting things horribly wrong.

INTRODUCTION

A widely held view is that belief aims at the truth.1 No one thinks that could literally be true, so I

suppose that the widely held view is that this talk of beliefs aim is a useful metaphor for thinking

about belief. A natural way to unpack this metaphor is in functionalist terms. True beliefs can do

what beliefs are supposed to do. False beliefs cannot.

Why are false beliefs constitutionally incapable of doing what beliefs are supposed to do?

Heres a hypothesis. Beliefs are supposed to provide us with reasons from which we can then reason

to some conclusion about what to do. Reasons for action are facts.2 False beliefs can provide no

reason from which we might then deliberate. True beliefs, however, can provide us with reasons.

They make us cognizant of something that is (at least potentially) a reason. It is true that the true

beliefs that sometimes figure in deliberation give us no reason to do the things we decide to do or

believe the things we end up believing. We sometimes reason from correct beliefs to decisionsabout what to do when the things we know to be true do not count in favor of what we decide to

do. I dont think that there is anything wrong with these beliefs,per se. Whats wrong is the way

that we use these beliefs. Beliefs that ought never be included in any piece of practical reasoning,

not even when we know that the truth of the belief is relevant to the choice at hand, are a different

kettle of fish. If the belief thatp cannot give a reason to deliberate from even when the subject

knows that the deliberative process concerns a p-dependent choice, this belief cannot do what

beliefs are supposed to do.3 False beliefs, I say, are such beliefs because only facts are reasons and

1 See Velleman (2000), Wedgwood (2002), and Williams (1973).2 See Collins (1997), Dancy (2000), Hyman (1999), Scanlon (1999), and Williams (1981).3 Following Hawthorne and Stanley (2008), lets say that a choice between options x1 xn is p-dependent if and only if the option most preferable of x1 xn conditional on the propositionp isnot the same as the option most preferable of x1 xn conditional on the proposition that not-p.


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false beliefs pass off spurious facts as if they are real and thereby pass off non-reasons as if they were

reasons.

This explanation of the aim of belief works only if we work from the assumption that

reasons for action are facts. Are they? Maybe motivating reasons are not facts. Maybe motivating

reasons are mental states or the contents of those mental states. Motivating reasons are not the

reasons I have in mind when I say that beliefs are supposed to provide us with reasons. The kind of

reasons that beliefs are supposed to provide, that beliefs can provide, but beliefs might fail to

provide are normative or justifying reasons. These are the reasons that apply to us, make demands

on us, and count in favor of the things we do. A widely held view is that these reasons are facts. I

cannot argue for that view here. I shall assume that normative reasons are facts. I shall assume that

beliefs are supposed to provide us with normative reasons from which we can then reason. I shall

argue that if these assumptions are correct, epistemologists are getting things wrong. Ifepistemologists are not getting things badly wrong, thats fine, but then the ethicists who think that

reasons are facts are getting things horribly wrong. If Im right, someone is getting something

badly wrong. This is what I hope to show in this paper. I hope to show that it cannot be that the

epistemologists are right about justification and the ethicists are right about the ontology of

practical reasons. If there are false, justified beliefs, reasons for action arent facts. If reasons for

action are facts, epistemologists are wrong to suggest that the truth of a belief is not necessary for

that beliefs justification.

THE ARGUMENT

A simple argument suggests that there can be no false, justified beliefs if reasons for action are facts:

(1) The belief that p could contribute a normative reason to

practical deliberation only ifp is true. (Ifp is false, the

belief thatp could only pass off a non-reason as a reason if

included in deliberation.)

(2) There will not be a normative reason to include the belief

that p in practical or theoretical deliberation if the belief

thatp would merely pass off a non-reason as a normative

reason if included in deliberation because it would not


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give you something to properly reason from for the

purposes of deliberation.

(3) There is, however, a normative reason to exclude the

belief thatp from practical and theoretical deliberation if

the belief thatp would pass off a non-reason as if it were a

genuine normative reason if included in deliberation.

(4) An action or attitude can be justified when there are

normative reasons not to perform that action or to

maintain/acquire that attitude only if there are

sufficiently strong normative reasons to perform the

action or to maintain/acquire the attitude.

(C1) Thus, only true beliefs can be justifiably included inpractical deliberation.

(5) A belief is justified only if it can justifiably be included in

some process of practical deliberation.

(C2) Thus, only true beliefs can be justified.

With two exceptions, every extant account of justified belief allows for the possibility of false,

justified beliefs.4 Internalists often say that it is possible to justifiably believe something on the basis

of non-entailing evidence and that two subjects beliefs will be equally justified whenever their

beliefs are based on the same evidence and these two subjects have the same evidence. If someone

can justifiably believep on the basis of non-entailing evidence and anyone who believes on the basis

of that evidence will have sufficient justification for believing p provided that they do not have

defeating evidence that the first subject does not have, someone can justifiably believep even if ~p.

Since everyone but the skeptic thinks that we can justifiably believe without having beliefs based on

entailing evidence, it seems every non-skeptical internalist will reject (C2). Externalists often say

that it is possible to justifiably believe something when that belief is based on a reliable but

imperfect process. If the process is sufficiently reliable, it will produce beliefs that are justified

4 Sutton (2007) is one exception. He thinks that justified beliefs are just items of knowledge.Thats because he thinks that the norm of belief is the knowledge norm and thinks that there cannotbe justified beliefs that fail to conform to the norm that governs belief. He is not alone in thinkingthat justified beliefs have to conform to the norms that govern belief and that no false justifiedbeliefs conform to those norms. See [omit]. He is not alone in thinking that knowledge is the normof belief. See Williamson (2000).


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even some of those beliefs happen to be false. The possibility of false, justified beliefs is one of the

few things that internalists and externalists do not disagree about.

If the arguments conclusion is intolerable, which premise should we reject? We could

reject the arguments first premise, but it seems we can do this only if we reject the view that says

that reasons for action are facts rather than propositions or states of mind. Because Im primarily

interested in showing that there could be no false, justified beliefs if reasons for action are facts, Im

not interested in showing that (1) is true. Still, if (1) were not at all plausible, it wouldnt matter

so much what the consequences of (1) were so let me say something on behalf of the arguments

first premise.

This claim about the ontology of normative reasons is by no means universally accepted,

but it is widely accepted and seems to follow from a widely held view about reasons for action. It

seems that in the typical case, something gets to be a reason because it counts in favor of an action.5

It seems to the deliberating agent that the things that favor a course of action are facts or worldly

states of affairs, not states of mind or the contents of those states. In some cases, these might be

facts about the agents state of mind. The fact that you believe that your head is made of glass might

be a good reason to seek help. Typically, however, reasons are facts about the situation. A

persons needs might give you reason to lend a hand. That you believe someone to need help is no

indication of a need on their part and the judgment that one ought to help will likely be taken by

the subject to be correct only if the intended beneficiary is really in need of help. If what makes a

reason to help a reason to help rather than perform some alternative course of action is that the

relevant consideration favors lending a hand, unless we are just really confused about what would

make the helping favorable the reason to help is a fact about the beneficiary of which you are aware

and not some state of mind necessary for making you aware.

If you ask ordinary agents what it is that favors -ing, they will often point to facts about

the situation rather than facts about themselves. The reason to give someone a lift when they are

stuck walking in the rain is that it is really unpleasant to have to hoof it through the rain. It is not

that you believe that they could use your help. If, however, normative reasons are states of mind

rather than facts about the situation, ordinary agents are either systematically confused about the

kinds of things that favor the choices that they make or confused about what reasons are doing in

the course of reasoning towards a conclusion. I think it would be implausible to charge ordinary

5 See Dancy (2000) and Scanlon (1999).


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subjects with such systematic error and confusion. (Call this the implausible error objection to

views that identify normative reasons with psychological states or the contents of those states.)

Even when ordinary subjects make mistakes as to matters of fact, they still have a decent sense of

what the facts would have to be like for some decision to be for the best. Ordinary subjects might

not have worked out theories of reasons much less a concept of a normative reason, but they still

know how to use the reasons available to them. In the hopes of making room for the possibility of

false, justified belief, I do not think we will make much headway by telling the ethicists and

ordinary rational subjects that they do not know what reasons are.

The second premise says that there cannot be a reason to include the belief that p in

practical deliberation in the way that the belief would be included ifp were treated as a premise in

practical deliberation ifp is not a reason at all and so the belief thatp would pass off a non-reason as

if it were the real thing. To show that (2) is false, someone might offer a counterexample.Someone might say that we dont know whether the number of stars is (a) an even number or (b)

infinite or odd. Suppose someone offers you a large sum of money to assert sincerely that the

number of stars is an even number. You cannot sincerely assert what you do not believe, so it

seems that the pile of money is not just a reason to utter some words, it is also a reason to believe

that the words uttered are true. So, it seems you have a reason to get yourself to believe by any

means sufficient. If joining a cult would do the trick, join. If banging your head against the wall

would do the trick, go bang.

There are two problems with this objection to (2). First, the money is not a reason to

believe that the number of stars is even. At best, it is a reason to perform actions that might

produce the belief you need to sincerely assert that the number of stars is even. This is a practical

reason, not a theoretical reason. It is not a reason that might help justify a belief that is in need of

an epistemic justification. Second, even if we say that the practical considerations can do double

duty, it seems we could rewrite (2) to deal with these sorts of cases and still use (2) to show that

theres something wrong with every extant account of justified belief (save one). Even if we

concede that there can be overriding reason to include false beliefs in deliberation when the effects

of including this belief are sufficiently good, this concession should give no comfort to the epistemic

purists who do not think that we need to point to such reasons to show how it is that false beliefs

could be justified. Reliabilists dont say that a belief is justified if true and produced by a

sufficiently reliable process or false and accompanied by good effects that would be lost if that belief


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were not formed.6 Evidentialists dont say that a belief is justified if supported by adequate

evidence and true or false and accompanied by good effects that would be lost if that belief were

not formed.7

What about (3)? If there were no reason, not to treat non-reasons as if they were reasons,

treating non-reasons as reasons would be all the reason you would need to do this permissibly.

However, it seems that there is some reason to exclude non-reasons from deliberation and to refrain

from treating non-reasons as if they were premises in deliberating about what to do. To say that

there is just no reason to refrain from treating non-reasons as if they were reasons is to suggest that

deciding to treat something as a premise for the purposes of practical deliberation is not the sort

of thing that calls for justification. That doesnt seem right. At the very least, it seems that there is

an instrumental reason to refrain from treating non-reasons as if they were reasons. Treating non-

reasons as if they were reasons seems to be the sort of thing that makes it more likely that youll failto identify the thing to do as the thing to do.

Someone could say that there are only instrumental reasons to refrain from treating non-

reasons as reasons. The idea might be that so long as you somehow manage to do what you got to

do, it does not matter what reasons you reasoned from to get your body to move in the way it

ought to. I think there could be these sorts of instrumental reasons, but I doubt that thats all there

is to it. When you judge that you ought to, it seems that you are motivated to and so long as

-ing isnt wrongful, you might think that reasoning from whatever it is that led you to isnt

wrongful. That might be if the kind of wrong were talking about is practical, but the judgment

that you ought to looks a lot like the belief that you ought to . Speaking just for myself, the

deliberation that leads me to by means of the judgment that I should is not a deliberative

process that I undertake in addition to the deliberative process that leads me to form the belief that

I should . Im not saying that the conclusion of practical and theoretical deliberation is the same.

The intention to is not the belief that I should . The action that is my -ing is not the belief

that I should . Arguably, it is either the action or the intention that is the conclusion of practical

deliberation and the belief that is the conclusion of theoretical deliberation. Still, it seems that

when I do what I judge I ought to do, it is one piece of reasoning that I undertake that leads to these

two conclusions. When the reasons I reason from are no reasons at all, I might succeed in doing

6 Goldman (1986).7 Conee and Feldman (2004).


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what I ought to do without knowing that Ive managed to do what I ought to do. I take it that when

I when I ought to without knowing that I ought to , there is something wrong with the

justification I have for believing that I ought to . If you shouldnt epistemically believe p when

there is something wrong with the justification I have for believing that p, there will always be a

theoretical reason not to include the belief that p in deliberation that just is the theoretical reason

not to believep. That suggests that wheneverp is not a reason and the belief thatp will pass off a

non-reason as if it were a reason if included in deliberation, there is a reason of a certain kind to

exclude that belief from deliberation, an epistemic reason.

It seems to me that (4) is a plausible claim about justification and defeating reasons. There

can be somejustification for -ing even when there are stronger reasons to refrain from -ing than

those that favor -ing, but the crucial question is not whether there is somejustification for -ing.

The crucial question is whether there is sufficient justification for -ing. I doubt that there can be

sufficient justification for -ing under the very conditions where the reasons against -ing defeat

the reasons that favor it. Perhaps the point is obvious, but surely when we ask whether someones

shooting at an innocent aggressor could ever be justified the reason that this question is hard is that

we are not just asking if there could ever be some reason to shoot at an innocent aggressor. There

could be all manner of trivial reasons to do so. Doing so can make one a better shot. Doing so

might be a way of killing the spider crawling on the innocent aggressors shirt. These questions

about justification are hard because in asking these questions we are asking whether the case in favorof an action can defeat the case against that actions performance. At any rate, until someone shows

that (2) is false, we are not in the situation of someone who has to consider the respective merits of

the reasons that favor a beliefs inclusion in deliberation and reasons that favor its exclusion. We

have only a reason for its exclusion when the belief is false. There is a reason for the beliefs

exclusion because it passes a non-reason off as a reason. We have never seen a reason that favors

including those beliefs in deliberation that cannot fulfill their assigned role. It would seem

recognizing such reasons would force us to recognize a new role and we have no idea what that

would be.

Someone might say that the reasons that count in favor of an action or attitude can be

defeated only by those reasons to which the subject has access. Facts that are obscure to the agent

would be reasons, but reasons that only bear on whether the subject ought to believe or act once

they are apparent to the subject. While (3) and (4) might seem initially plausible, we might be wise


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to remember that a condition necessary for a reasons functioning as a reason that contributes

towards determining whether an action or attitude is wrongful, justifiable, or permissible is that the

subject has access to it or is culpable for the failure to take note of it.

This objection needs to be treated with some care. I shall say more about the accessibility

of reasons later, but I shall first explain why this response is problematic. This response goes

against our ordinary moral intuitions insofar as it will force us to classify cases of excusable

wrongdoing as regrettable right action. Consider cases of imperfect self-defense.8 In such cases, a

subject reasonably, but mistakenly, believes herself to be in a situation in which she could justly use

violence to defend herself. To make this somewhat concrete, we imagine a case in which Plum

reasonably, but mistakenly, identifies Mustard as a mugger when in fact he is a jogger. Plum sprays

Mustard with mace. She acted on the (non-culpably) mistaken belief that doing so is necessary for

her self-defense. Unless we say that the fact that Mustard was harmless was not only a reason forher to refrain from making him but also a reason that bore on whether her particular actions were

right or wrong, it is most unclear how we could classify such a case as excusable wrongdoing. The

excuse depends crucially upon her non-culpable ignorance. It depends upon whether she could have

reasonably thought that she would avoid engaging in wrongdoing.9 That there is wrongdoing to

8 The expression is taken from Moore (1997) as is the jogger-mistaken-for-a-mugger example.9 If we classify cases of ignorance or mistaken belief as cases of excusable wrongdoing rather than

regrettable right action, it seems we should distinguish between the permissible and the reasonablytaken to be permissible. If the role of justification is to identify that which is permissible, we haveto distinguish the justified action from the reasonable action. If we can draw this distinction foractions, I cant see why we cant draw this distinction for beliefs. Justified beliefs, say, are beliefsthat conform to the norms that govern belief but reasonable beliefs are beliefs that seem to conformto the norms that govern belief given how things seem to the subject. In cases of excusablewrongdoing, the excuse for the wrongful action depends (in part) upon the fact that the subject isreasonable in believing that the action was permissible. It does not follow that the excuse dependsupon whether the belief that the action was permissible is itself permissible unless there is nodistinction between a reasonably held belief and permissibly held belief. But, there should be sucha distinction. If someone fails to refrain from believing something they should not believe, theycannot believe with justification but perhaps they can be excused for their epistemic failure.Perhaps the (epistemic) excuse depends upon whether the subject could have reasonably assumedthat the belief was epistemically permissible. Following Gardner (2007), I think that the point ofoffering an excuse is to show the agent in a positive light in spite of the fact that the agent actedagainst an undefeated reason whereas the point of a justification is to show that there was noundefeated reason that the agent acted against. The former does not involve showing that the agentconformed to the relevant norms, but the latter requires that there was either no norm that theagent violates or no norm that the agent violates without overriding reason that required doingwhat violated that norm.


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excuse requires us to recognize that there is a reason to which she does not have the right sort of

access. That we ought to classify this as wrongdoing is supported by the following observations.

First, Plum has lost the right to non-interference but would not have lost it had the man been a

mugger rather than a jogger. Second, in the wake of her action, Plum ought to apologize and seek

forgiveness. This would not be the case if Mustard had been a mugger rather than a jogger. This

would not be the case if this fact were not itself a reason that went towards determining whether

her action was wrongful. Third, in the wake of her action if she were to help Mustard, that action

would not be merely beneficent. If she were to help him, that action would be a way of discharging

a duty of reparation. Such duties can only arise in the wake of wrongdoing. Had Plum acted

rightly, it seems her action would be merely beneficent as she would have no more responsibility

for taking care of Mustards injuries than you or I would have and we cannot help Mustard in such a

way as to discharge a reparative duty. The upshot is this. To classify cases of imperfect self-defenseas cases of excusable wrongdoing, a reason must be able to constitute a wrong that threatens the

justificatory status of an action even if the subject is unaware of it. It might be that only reasons of

which the subject is aware can go towards justifying her conduct, but that is a different matter.

Once weve established (C1), we can establish (C2) if we can say that justified beliefs are

beliefs that can justifiably be included in deliberation. If we think of justification in deontic terms

and say that p is justifiably believed iffp is permissibly believed, we can try to provide intuitive

motivation for this premise as follows. If it is permissible to believep but not permissible to treatp

as a reason for action when, say, deliberating about some choice known to be ap-dependent choice,

then there could be decisive reason to excludep from deliberation that was not, inter alia, a decisive

reason to refrain from believingp. Since the choice we are considering is known by the agent to be

ap-dependent choice, the reason for excluding the belief that p could not be that p is irrelevant to

the matter at hand. Could it be that the reason to exclude the belief thatp from deliberation is a

reason to refrain from believingp, but a reason that is defeated? Perhaps, but then why wouldnt

the defeating reasons that give overriding reason to believe fail to give overriding reason to

deliberate fromp? I cant think of any good answer to this question, so it seems the way to reject

this premise is either to argue that there are some cases where the subject can justifiably believe p

without there being some deliberative process where the subject justifiably includes p as a premise

because there are no deliberative processes that should includep or to argue that there are some

cases where there is overriding reason to exclude the belief that p from deliberation that gives no


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reason at all to refrain from believing p. There may be cases of beliefs that could never make a

difference to any deliberative process, but I cant think of such cases and I dont think many

epistemologists will want to defend their accounts of justified belief by saying that those accounts

apply only to this small (possibly empty) class of beliefs. Most epistemic purists think that

epistemic standards apply to beliefs regardless of the practical significance of those beliefs. If it can

be shown that those standards exclude, say, practically significant beliefs formed without evidence,

we should be able to generalize across all beliefs formed without evidence. If someone says that the

reason not to include the belief that p in deliberation concerning somep-dependent choice gave no

reason not to believep, they would be hard pressed to explain the apparent irrationality of someone

who takesp to be permissibly believed, takesp to be the consideration that determines whether to

, but then thinks that it is an open question what to do about -ing because there is some reason

to exclude p from consideration. The subject that takes themselves to both permissibly believep

and believep to be the thing that, say, shows that -ing is the thing to do but then takes themselves

to be obliged to exclude the belief thatp from deliberation is inscrutable. Whatever it is that gives

them reason to exclude the belief from deliberation (e.g., the thought that there is insufficient

evidence to settle the matter) seems to give a further reason to drop the belief, suspend judgment,

or perhaps believe the beliefs negation.

OBJECTIONS

Epistemologists might reject the idea that reasons are facts about things external to us. Perhaps

they will say that normative reasons are just states of mind or facts about such states. 10 This sort of

psychologism about normative reasons faces serious difficulties. If this is the epistemologists best

line of response, the epistemologists are in serious trouble.

As we saw earlier, the implausible error objection is supposed to show thatpracticalreasons

can be facts and that any view that denies this is in trouble. I can imagine someone saying that the

10 For a defense of psychologism about normative and explanatory reasons for belief, see Turri(forthcoming). His defense depends on an assumption he takes from Dancy, which is thatexplanatory reasons and normative reasons must belong to the same ontological category.Otherwise, it wouldnt be possible to act for good reasons. This seems like an odd assumption anda weak rationale for accepting that assumption. As Stratton-Lake (2000: 22) observes, it seemsacting for good reasons could simply be a matter of acting for a reason that corresponds to agenuine normative reason. The reasons for which we act and believe are mental states. Thereasons that are normative reasons are facts that correspond to our beliefs if all goes well.


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problem with the argument is that it assumes that the fact that a belief passes off a non-reason as if it

were a reason for the purpose of practical deliberation is what prevents that belief from being

justified. True, they might say, for any such belief there will be a reason to refrain from holding

that belief. However, it is a moral reason or practical reason rather than an epistemic one. Hence,

holding such a belief might be wrongful, but it is not epistemicallywrongful. While epistemic wrongs

threaten epistemic justification, non-epistemic wrongs do not. In offering this response, it seems

that our objector is forced to adopt a view on which epistemic normative reasons (i.e., the reasons

that bear on whether to believe) are psychological states whereas practicalnormative reasons (i.e.,

the reasons that bear on whether to act) can be facts about matters external to a subjects mental

states.11 Here is why. If rightness and wrongness depends on what sorts of normative reasons there

are, the objector has conceded that the rightness or wrongness of an action will depend (in part)

upon the facts. (This is what they must say to avoid the implausible error objection.) However, bydenying that the rightness or wrongness of a belief could depend on anything beyond the subjects

states of mind, she is in effect saying that epistemic reasons either belong to a different ontological

category than practical reasons or she limits the range of possible epistemic reasons in ways that

practical reasons are not limited.

To get a feel for what such a view would look like, consider a case in which S knows she

morally ought to iffp. She comes to believe mistakenly thatp and, in judging that she ought to

, she s straightaway. The -ing, we are to assume, is morally wrongful. We might allow that

there is something wrong with the belief that inevitably leads to the commission of wrongdoing

when combined with further beliefs known to be true. However, as that is moralwrongfulness that

attaches to Ss -ing, what reason is there to think that the beliefs that led one to were

epistemicallywrongful? In the absence of epistemic wrongfulness, there is no reason to think there is

a threat to the epistemic justification of the belief. In the absence of any reason to think that there

is a threat to the epistemic justification of the belief, there is no reason to say that the belief is not

justified. To be sure, if there were epistemic reasons to refrain from believingp in virtue of an

epistemic wrong, we ought to worry about the beliefs epistemic status. But, in the absence of any

11 More cautiously, it forces them to either adopt the view that these are facts about theirpsychological states or the states themselves. The objections we consider below would causetrouble for any view that denies that the reasons that bear on whether to act (and, hence, whetherto act in accordance with ones judgment) do not coincide with the reasons that bear on whether tobelieve that one should act.


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such wrong and any such epistemic reasons for refraining from having that belief, its justificatory

status is unthreatened. The epistemic status of the belief is determined by facts about the agents

state of mind. The moral status of the action the agent must perform insofar as she is rational

depends upon further facts about states of affairs that obtain in the subjects environment.

If this response is correct, we have to say that the kind of wrong that attaches to a false

belief in virtue of how it passes off a non-reason as a reason is the wrong sort of thing to threaten its

epistemic status. Lets say that someone pursues the factoring strategy if they say that epistemic

reasons are states of mind while practical reasons are the facts represented by these states of mind.

I think the factoring strategy fails. First, and with apologies to Judith Thomson, consider an

example.12 Suppose a pilot comes to us with a request for advice: See, were at war with a

villainous country called Bad, and my superiors have ordered me to drop some bombs at Placetown

in Bad. Now there is a munitions factory at Placetown, but there is a children hospital there too.Some people tell me that I should drop the bombs to help with the war effort but some tell me that

we should avoid killing innocents. I am so confused, I just do not know who to believe. Now,

suppose we say, Look, given what you have said, it is clear that you should appreciate that

dropping the bombs is a necessary evil. The pilot drops the bombs. We confront him and say,

That was a terrible thing to do! Confused the pilot says But you toldme that dropping the bombs

was a necessary evil. No, we say, We only said that believing you should drop the bombs is what

you should believe. You never asked us what you should do. That is an entirely different matter.

What a queer performance this would be! Can anyone really think that what the pilot should

believe about what he should do depends on considerations other than those that determine

whether the pilot should drop the bombs?

One lesson to take from this example is that we ought to accept the following principle:

(Link) If you believe you should and its not the case that you

should not believe this, its not the case that you

shouldnt.13

12 This is inspired by a passage from Thomson (1991).13 [Omit] argues that this principle by appeal to some very weak assumptions about the connection between practical judgment and motivation. We can extend the lesson of the toxin puzzle, forexample, and say that just as the reasons that bear on whether to are the reasons that bear onwhether to intend to , the reasons that bear on whether to intend to bear on whether to judgethat you should . If practical judgment necessarily implies belief in the way the cognitivistsmaintain, we can give a demonstration of the principle given further assumptions defended by Raz


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(Or, if you permissibly believe that you ought to , you are permitted to .) Note that this

principle does not assume that for any proposition,p, Ss belief thatp is justified only ifp. It only

assumes that for some propositions it is impossible for Ss belief to be justified if ~p and that ifp is

the proposition that S ought to , we cannot say that Ss belief that p is justified if ~p. If you

believe that you ought to , you either ought to or ought not believe this. It seems plausible to

me to say that there is a normative requirement or wide-scope ought that links judgments about

what one ought to do to the doing of what one judges one ought to do or the intention to do so. At

least, there is if you think that it would be irrational to judge that you ought to without thereby

-ing or intending to and think that we ought not have combinations of attitudes (e.g., beliefs

and intentions) that violate these rational requirements.14 If this much is right, we have a neat little

argument against the view that takes epistemic normative reasons to be logically independent from

practical normative reasons. If the considerations that bore on whether to believe that one ought to

did not entail that the considerations that bore on whether to act were also true, it would be

possible for there to be circumstances under which it is not wrong for S to judge that she ought to

even though she ought not. But, as there is a rational requirement according to which S ought

not both judge that she ought to and refrain from intending to and from-ing. So, either the

considerations that bear on whether to act and believe consist entirely of considerations pertaining

to a subjects mental states or they can include facts that pertain to matters external to such states.

Insofar as the view that treats epistemic reasons as states of a subjects mind while allowing that

practical reasons are the facts such states represent, this view is untenable.

Here is a different rationale for Link. Consider a case in which a subject knows that she

shouldnt . She knows all of the relevant internal and external facts in virtue of which she

shouldnt. Suppose she also knows that she shouldnt judge that she should. If this subject is

anything like me, she will also think that the reasons in virtue of which she morally shouldnt are

reasons in virtue of which she epistemically shouldnt judge that she should . This is in the good

case, the case where the subject knows pretty much everything there is to know that matters.

Consider a second subject in the bad case, a case where the subject is mistaken about the external

surroundings. Her mistaken beliefs are all about non-normative matters and all her beliefs about

(1990) about the connection between duties and reasons. For further arguments for this principle,see Gibbons (2009).14 Broome (1999) thinks that the demands of rationality can be understood in terms of wide-scopeought statements or normative requirements.


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non-normative matters are mistaken. It might be that owing to such factual ignorance the subject

doesn't know what reasons bear on whether to act or not, but it doesnt seem to follow from the

fact that the subject suffers from factual ignorance that the relations between the reasons that bear

on whether to act and whether to believe she should act differ from the relations that these reasons

stand in had this subject been in the good case. If these relations varied between the good case and

bad, the subjects knowledge of the relations between the reasons in these cases would not be

apriori knowledge, but knowledge that depended, inter alia, upon knowledge of those contingent

matters of fact that bear on whether to act. I take it, however, that the subjects knowledge of the

relations between the reasons that bear on whether to and whether to judge that she should is

independent from this empirical knowledge. If these points are both correct (i.e., that in the good

case the reasons that bear on whether to are just the reasons that bear on whether to believe to

and that in bad cases the relation between the reasons that bear on whether to believe and

whether to act dont change), then it seems whether the subject is in the good or bad case the

subject knows that the reasons that bear on whether to act and whether to believe she should act are

just the same thing. If one is inaccessible in the bad case, so is the other. If one is accessible in the

bad case, so is the other. To deny Link, it seems youd either have to (i) say that in the case of full

information the subject doesnt know that the reasons that bear on action and belief are the same or

(ii) say that an agents ignorance changes that relations between the reasons that bear on whether to

act or believe. As (i) seems to be something that seems intuitively correct the denial of (ii) seems

to suggest that we could not know apriori how the reasons bear on whether to and whether to

believe that you should , it seems that Link must be true. Moreover, it seems to show that Link

must be true when we read the ought in the consequent as the ought of an all things considered

judgment of practical reason and the ought in the antecedent as the epistemic ought that governs

belief.

There is a second objection to the factoring strategy to consider. According to this

strategy, the considerations would bear on whether to believe we ought to were considerations

about our perspective whereas an entirely different set of considerations would bear on whether to

. The considerations that would bear on whether to would be those that figured in our

perspective. This is a strange view because it seems that the very same mental states would provide

the very same reasons in the course of reasoning to a conclusion about whether to believe we ought

to and in reasoning to a conclusion about whether to . This observation seems hard to


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reconcile with a view on which, say, facts about beliefs are ultimately what determines whether it

would be wrong to believe we ought to but facts represented by those beliefs are ultimately what

determines whether it would be wrong to . It would be as if epistemic reasons never figured in

reasoning. Moreover, if you were to say that the considerations that constituted reasons to believe

were facts about our mental states while saying that the considerations that constituted reasons to

act were the facts represented by those states you would have to say that we rarely if ever manage

judge that we ought to because of the considerations that made it right to .

Here is the third and final objection to consider. An evil villain issues a threat. He

declares, If the cops believe I am a criminal I will continue to perform villainous acts, but if they

believe I am innocent I will behave. The cops ought to stop this villain. Do the cops have any

reason to refrain from believing him to be a villain in order to achieve this end? It seems that this is

the wrong kind of reason to serve as a reason for belief. The reason is a reason for action only. It is

a reason for the cops to try to modify their psychological profiles in such a way that they no longer

believe the villain to be a villain. There is a world of difference between cases where a subjects

reasonable but mistaken belief leads her to engage in wrongdoing (e.g., the case of imperfect self-

defense) and a case such as this one. In saying that the reason there is to refrain from including the

mistaken belief thatp in deliberation is merelya moral reason or practical reason, we have lost sight

of the distinction between what seems to be two very different cases. This case is very different

from the case in which a false belief leads an agent to engage in wrongdoing.

We can distinguish the wrong kind of reasons from the right ones by means of a test. R is

the right kind of reason for -ing when a subject settle the question as to whether to and thereby

in finding R convincing.15 When we are thinking about action, the relevant question is a

question about what the subject ought to do. R is the right kind of a reason for action when in

finding R convincing the subject will settle the question about what to do and thereby or intend

to . When we are thinking about belief, the relevant question is a question about what the

subject ought to believe, a question that is transparent to a question about whether the relevant

proposition is true. R is the right kind of reason for belief when in finding R convincing the subject

will settle the question as to whether to believep by settling to her satisfaction the question as to

whetherp thereby coming to believep. In the first case, the considerations that speak against-ing

are considerations such that in being convinced of them the subject would be motivated to refrain

15 See Hieronymi (2005).


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from-ing because she would settle the question about whether to by saying that she ought not

. These very same considerations bear on the question as to whether to believe to , so they are

not the wrong kinds of reasons to go towards making that belief wrongful. They seem to be the

right kinds of reasons for belief. And, as the subject knows that if that belief is wrongful but would

not be wrongful if the beliefs that obviously entail it were not wrongful in turn, it seems we have

the right kind of reason for an epistemic wrong. Either that wrong would attach to the belief that

the subject ought to iffp or the belief thatp. As the former belief is known to be true, the very

same conditions that determined that the subject ought to refrain from -ing counted as epistemic

reasons for refraining from believingp. To say otherwise, one would have to reformulate the test

for distinguishing the wrong kind of reasons from the right ones or deny that there is any such

distinction.

CONCLUSION

Ifp is not a reason, there is a reason not to treat it as a reason. Ifp is not a reason and there is a

reason not to treatp as a reason for action, it could be permissible to treatp as a reason only if there

is an overriding reason that demands that p is treated as a reason for action. (This is because the

permissibility of doing something does not require that there is no reason not to, but only that

there is no undefeated reason not to.) There are no reasons like that. So far as I can tell, there are

not reasons that demand that you treat anything at all as a reason for action much less one that

demands that you treat some specific thing as a reason for action in spite of a reason not to treat it

as a reason for action. Thus, ifp is not a reason, you ought not treatp as a reason for action. If ~p,

p is not a reason for action. If S justifiably or permissibly believesp, S is permitted to treatp as a

reason. This last point seems to me to be plausible and it is something that seems to be gaining

popularity.16 Denying it seems to require recognizing purely epistemic reasons to keep the belief

that p out of all deliberative processes (including those known to pertain to some p-dependent

choice) where those reasons are not reasons not to believe p in the first place. I dont think that

there are different norms that apply to beliefs when they are idle and beliefs when they are active.

16 Fantl and McGrath (forthcoming) defend this claim. Gibbons (2009) defends the claim. Theyseem to think that it is obvious. Neta (forthcoming) says that it is permissible to treatp as a reasonfor action if you justifiably believe that you knowp, but the differences between his view and theirviews do not seem to matter for our purposes. If the argument shows that there are no false,justified beliefs it should show that someone can have the justified belief that they know p only ifpsince knowledge is factive and the argument would show that justified is factive as well.


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Im certain that there are not two levels of epistemic evaluation, one that determines whether it is

permissible to putp into the belief box and then a second that determines whether it is permissible

to putp into a premise slot. Thus, if Ss belief thatp is justified,p must be true.

Essentially, this is my argument. Whether we should treat this as a reductio and a reason to

say that reasons arent facts or say that this is the surprising discovery that there are no justified

beliefs that dont fit the facts is not something I want to settle here. It seems to me that these are

the options. First, you can say that the belief thatp can contribute a reason to deliberation even if

~p. You can say this only if you say that reasons for action arent facts. I think that the implausible

error objection causes serious trouble for this view, but if someone thinks that this is the right

response perhaps they accept my thesis and accept that this has to go in order to make room for

false, justified beliefs. Second, you can say that there is no norm that enjoins us to refrain from

believing p when the belief that p would only pass off a non-reason as if it were a reason. Theproblem with this is that it seems to deny something obvious. Among the norms that govern belief

and determine its epistemic status are norms that determine the epistemic status of reasoning from

a belief when one knows that the truth of the belief would make a difference to the deliberative

question one faces. Third, you can admit that there is such a norm but say that there is some other

norm that gives us overriding reason to include those beliefs that our previous norm tells us ought

to be excluded from deliberation. The problem with this is that no one knows what this norm

would be. It would have to give overriding reason to believe something that it seems the subject

could know is not something that she should reason from even when faced with a choice that the

subject knows turns on whether the proposition believed is true. Finally, someone could say that

the justification of a belief depends, in part, upon whether the belief is constitutionally capable of

providing a reason for the purposes of practical deliberation. Someone who says that this is the way

to go is going to have to say that there cannot be false, justified beliefs.

There are various reasons to think that there can be false, justified beliefs. It seems

intuitive, some say.17 While some say this, it seems that some have shown how the intuitions that

are supposed to show that there can be false, justified beliefs can be accommodated by views that

dont allow for this possibility.18 This view leads to skepticism, some say.19 While some say this, it

17 See Cohen (1984) and Wedgwood (2002).18 Bach (1985) and Engel (1992) do not say that truth is necessary for justified belief, but they dothink that our ordinary intuitions about justification ascriptions are consistent with externalistaccounts of justified belief and argue that the common internalist charge that externalist accounts of


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seems that their arguments are easily dispensed with. If justified beliefs are just items of

knowledge, you cannot derive any skeptical consequences from (C2) without first demonstrating

that none of our beliefs constitute knowledge. I dont think anyone will produce a convincing

argument that this is so. However, any such demonstration would seem to make the alleged

skeptical consequences of (C2) palatable. Someone could say that to accept the conclusion of these

arguments at face value is to accept the absurd consequence that none of the false beliefs we hold

are held rationally, since they are not capable of any justification whatsoever. 20 Wrong on three

counts. First, the conclusion of this paper is that you cannot have it both ways. Either reasons are

not facts or justification is factive. Second, anyone who thinks that mistaken beliefs that lead the

agent to bring about bad outcomes excuse rather than obviate the need for justification thinks that

theres a difference between rationally/reasonably responding to the reasons and responding to the

reasons in a way that is justified. That there are no false, justified beliefs is perfectly consistent withthe further claim that there are plenty of rationally held false beliefs. Third, if we say that what

justifies consists of facts, say because we agree with Williamson that our evidence includes only

what we know, we can say that false beliefs are justified to various degrees where those degrees are

understood as the probability of the propositions believed conditional on the subjects evidence.

Someone could say that if reasons for belief are facts, we can have no false reasons and we have no

reasons for any of our false beliefs.21 While I would say that if reasons are facts, we could have

motivating reasons that arent true, but no normative reasons that consist of falsehoods. Here, Im in

good company.22 It doesnt follow from this that we have no reasons for any of our false beliefs.

justified belief clash with intuition stems from the internalists failure to heed the distinction between a person who is justified in believingp and a persons belief being justified. (Thisdistinction between personal and doxastic justification first appeared in the literature in Lowys(1978) paper where she argues that critics of Gettier failed to show that there was something wrongwith Gettiers cases because they failed to appreciate this distinction.) If we say that a belief isjustified only if it conforms to the norms that govern belief and say that belief is governed either bythe truth or knowledge norm, we can say that there are no false, justified beliefs. If we say that aperson is justified in believing when they reasonably take themselves to conform to the normsgoverning belief, we can say that there are false beliefs someone is justified in forming. Thedistinction between personal and doxastic justification is similar to the distinction between excusesand permissions.19 See Cohen (1984) and Conee and Feldman (2004).20 [omit] raised this objection.21 [omit] raised this objection.22 Williamson (2000) is obviously on my side and arguably Conee and Feldman (2008: 90) agreewith me on this point. Conee and Feldman seem to say that contents such as that this is a tree cannot


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We can clearly have motivating reasons for them and it doesnt take a ton of logic to appreciate that

there can be false propositions supported by true ones.

Buried in this is, I think, a reasonable criticism. Ive conceded that there can be false,

rational beliefs even if there cannot be false, justified beliefs. Someone could say that when

epistemologists speak of justified beliefs they really only have in mind rational beliefs. Thats

probably true of some of them.23 I doubt thats true of the externalists who think (wrongly, on my

view) that a beliefs justification is a matter of that belief being produced by a reliable process. Ive

argued that this cant the attitude of someone who thinks of justification in deontological terms.

Suppose the deontologist says that:

(DJ) Ss belief thatp is justified only if S violates none of her epistemic

duties in believingp.

Ive argued that theres an epistemic duty to refrain from believing p when the belief that p couldnot contribute a genuine reason to deliberation when that deliberation concerns some choice that

the subject knows to be p-dependent. Ive argued that a subject violates that duty whenever the

subject believesp and yetp is false. That argument rests on the assumption that reasons for action

are facts. So, while I think someone can be perfectly reasonable while failing to live up to her

obligations or do what duty requires of her, I side with the deontologists who think that you cannot

fail to do what duty requires with justification. Not with sufficient justification, at any rate.

Suppose the deontologist says instead:

(DJ2) Ss belief that p is justified only if S does not violate some

epistemic duty unless some overriding epistemic duty demands it.

Someone could say that there is an overriding reason to believe false propositions when those

beliefs are supported by the evidence. I think that cannot be right. First, this assumes that

someone fails to fulfill her epistemic duties if she fails to believe what she has sufficient evidence to

believe. If you think that epistemic sins tend to be sins ofcommission, you probably wont think that

the norms of evidence demandbelief from those who shouldnt act on their beliefs but ratherforbid

beliefs that are not backed by adequate evidence. Second, suppose this is wrong. Even if the norms

be part of the content of our experience because someone could have an experienceindistinguishable from ours without seeing a tree. It seems that they are implicitly assuming thatthat this is a tree cannot be the subjects evidence for believing because it could seem that there is atree before someone when that proposition is false. See also [omit] for arguments for the claim thatevidence consists only of true propositions.23 See Cohen (1984), Foley (1993), and Wedgwood (2002).


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of evidence and norm of truth come into conflict, it would be odd to think that the evidential norm

is the overriding one since it seems to derive its status as a norm from either the truth norm or the

knowledge norm. Moreover, its odd to think that anyone who appreciates that Ss belief is

supported by evidence but is false does not then say that what S should believe is the false thing

supported by the evidence. So, even if the norms of evidence and truth conflict, why do we never

think the truth norm can be rightly violated in full awareness?

Some deontologists would cry foul. They will say that you cannot fail to do your duty if

you are reasonable, responsible, or rational in trying to do what duty requires. One response is the

hard-lined response. Once we distinguish justifications from excuses and denials of responsibility,

we see that rationality, responsibility, and reasonableness are a necessary condition for excusability

but that someone should be excused does not entail that what they believed or did was justified.24

One response is more concessive. If you really want to insist that no one can fail to do what dutyrequires when they are reasonable, responsible, or rational, then you probably dont really think

that the reasons that bear on our actions will be facts about our external situation. Such facts are

facts we can fail to take account of without being anything less than fully rational, fully reasonable,

or fully responsible. Ive argued that ifthere can be false, justified beliefs, reasons for action cannot

be facts. If I can offer the concessive response, the objection accuses of me of affirming the

antecedent.

Suppose we take the argument at face value and say that there are no false, justified beliefs.

We can say that this view is a consequence of what seems to me to be a plausible view, which is that

there is a norm that governs belief that enjoins us to refrain from believing those things that ought

to be excluded from all deliberative processes. If reasons are facts, there is a reason this norm gives

us to refrain from including beliefs that dont fit the facts in deliberation and so including that belief

in our belief set. If going against the reasons requires some reason to justify going against the

reason to refrain from believing and we cannot think of an overriding reason that we could cite in

full awareness to justify believing something when we know that the belief could give us no reason

to deliberate from, it seems for this reason that there cannot be false, justified beliefs. It seems that

anyone who denies this will inevitably have to say that the demands that theoretical reason and

practical reason place upon us cannot jointly be satisfied as situations will arise where we have made

a reasonable mistake about some matter, well know that we ought to ifp is the case, and while

24 For discussion, see Gardner (2007: 88).


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practical reason would demand that we refrain from -ing and so refrain from concluding practical

deliberation by -ing, theoretical reason would encourage us to continue to believe p and to draw

the theoretical consequences from this belief such as the belief that we ought to. Id like to think

that the demands of theoretical reason and practical reason will never come apart in this way,

telling us that there is nothing wrong with concluding that we should but demanding that we

avoid-ing. It seems that the best view that avoids this just denies that there can be false, justified

beliefs of the sort of that would cause this rift.

REFERENCES

Bach, K. 1985. A Rationale for Reliabilism. The Monist 68: 246-63.

Broome, J. 1999. Normative Requirements. Ratio 12: 398-419.

Cohen, S. 1984. Justification and Truth. Philosophical Studies 46: 279-95.

Collins, A. 1997. The Psychological Reality of Reasons. Ratio 10: 108-23.

Conee, E. and R. Feldman. 2004. Evidentialism. New York: Oxford University Press.

____. 2008. Evidence. InEpistemology: New Essays, ed. Quentin Smith: 83-104.

Dancy, J. 2000. Practical Reality. New York: Oxford University Press.

Engel, M. 1992. Personal and Doxastic Justification in Epistemology. Philosophical Studies 67:

133-50.

Fantl, J. and M. McGrath. Forthcoming. Knowledge in an Uncertain World. New York: Oxford

University Press.

Foley, R. 1993. Working Without a Net. New York: Oxford University Press.

Gardner, J. 2007. Offences and Defenses. New York: Oxford University Press.

Gibbons, J. 2009. You Gotta Do What You Gotta Do. Nous 43: 157-77.

Goldman, A. 1986. Epistemology and Cognition. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Hawthorne, J. and J. Stanley. 2008. Knowledge and Action. Journal of Philosophy105: 571-90.

Hieronymi, P. 2005. The Wrong Kind of Reasons. Journal of Philosophy102: 37-57.

Hyman, J. 1999. How Knowledge Works. Philosophical Quarterly49: 433-51.

Lowy, C. 1978. Gettiers Notion of Justification. Mind87: 105-08.

Moore, M. 1997. Placing Blame. New York: Oxford University Press.

Neta, R. forthcoming. Treating Something as a Reason for Action. Nous.

Raz, J. 1990. Practical Reason and Norms. New York: Oxford University Press.


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Scanlon, T. 1999. What We Owe to Each Other. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Stratton-Lake, P. 2000. Kant, Duty, and Moral Worth. New York: Routledge.

Sutton, J. 2007. Without Justification. Cambridge, MA: MIT University Press.

Thomson, J. 1991. Self-Defense. Philosophy and Public Affairs 20: 283-310.

Turri, J. Forthcoming. The Ontology of Epistemic Reasons. Nous.

Unger, P. 1975. Ignorance. New York: Oxford University Press.

Velleman, D. 2000. The Possibility of Practical Reason. New York: Oxford University Press.

Wedgwood, R. 2002a. The Aim of Belief. Philosophical Perspectives 16: 267-97.

____. 2002b. Internalism Explained. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 65: 349-69.

Williams, B. 1973. Problems of the Self. New York: Cambridge University Press.

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