Aim of Belief: David Papineau- 'There are No Norms of Belief'
Here you can listen to and download David Papineau's talk'There are No Norms of Belief' at the CSMN conference the Aim of Belief, 12th of June 2009.
Handout of the talk
Abstract
I shall argue that there are no sui generis norms attaching to beliefs, only familiar moral and prudential prescriptions. I shall first rehearse the reasons for denying that the contents of beliefs are constituted by specific sui generis norms governing their formation. I shall then turn to the idea that the attitude of belief constitutively involves a kind of normativity (cf the ‘aim of belief’). I shall consider exactly how this idea might best be formulated, and then argue that no real prescription can possibly follow from any such normative constitution of the attitude of belief, since there will always remain a further question of why we should embrace that attitude rather than some non-normative alternative.
For programme, abstracts and information about the the Aim
of Belief, go to the conference webpage
