Olav Gjelsvik

This paper inquires into some problems for a thesis about the aim of belief, expressed in normative terms along the lines that we ought to have correct or true beliefs. In particular, the paper aims to disarm the important blind-spot objections to such a view. What these objections seek to establish is that there are pretty simple truths we cannot have beliefs about, and since ought implies can, we ought not to have beliefs about these truths. It follows that there cannot be a correct normative property of the sort indicated that characterizes belief. The paper questions this conclusion without questioning the general thesis that ‘ought’ implies ‘can’. It is hoped that the way we disarm the blind-spot objections will exhibit an attractive view on epistemic normativity, as well as a normative property belief might indeed have. It will be the task of another paper to argue that this normative property thus identified characterizes belief essentially.

ABSTRACT This introductory paper raises, partly as a preparation for the other papers in this issue, questions about how philosophy ought to proceed in the light of knowledge we have in surrounding disciplines, with a focus on the case of addiction. It also raises issues about how addiction research might be enlightened by philosophical work. In the background for the paper are two competing approaches to the evidential grounding of philosophical insight. According to a widespread view, philosophical knowledge rests on a set of intuitions. According to another, philosophy has no special evidential grounding. This paper resists the attractions of the first picture, and argues against the separateness of philosophy that it lends support. I try to make plausible that such a picture is harmful both for philosophy and for empirical science. We should replace it with a mild form of unity of science or unity of inquiry, in the spirit of the founder of this journal