Xintong Wei

When we deliberate about what to do morally, we often run two types of risk. One type of risk results from having incomplete or false information about empirical facts, such as the effectiveness of donating to a particular charity. Another type of risk results from having incomplete or false information about normative facts, such as whether animals have moral status. According to the Symmetry Thesis, empirical risk matters for what one should do morally, and so does normative risk. In this paper, I defend the Symmetry Thesis by offering a novel account of how we should understand normative risk in moral deliberation on a reason-based normative framework. On this normative framework, what one should do morally is determined by the balance of one’s moral reasons. I argue that risks play the role of modifiers: they attenuate the weight of the relevant moral reasons. Both empirical and normative risks therefore matter for what we should do morally.

Belief is said to be subject to a norm of truth. A norm, intuitively, tells us what we ought to or may do. What sort of claim can truth make on us? On one standard view, the truth norm of belief is obliging. One ought to believe the truth and truth only. On another view, the truth norm of belief is permissive. One may believe the truth and truth only. Recently, it has been argued that the truth norm plays no interesting role in our normative theorizing for it issues excessive, unsatisfiable claims. This paper defends the truth norm of belief and proposes a novel answer to the question concerning its normative force on a reason-based framework. I argue that the normative force of the truth norm depends on the weight of truth as a normative reason for belief, which, just like that of any other normative reason, may vary across different contexts. I develop the idea that the weight of truth as a reason for belief is conditioned by what an epistemic agent can or cannot believe and modified by epistemic risk, among other things.

It is a platitude that belief is subject to a standard of correctness: a belief is correct if and only if it is true. But not all standards of correctness are authoritative or binding. Some standards of correctness may be arbitrary, unjustified or outrightly wrong. Given this, one challenge to proponents of the truth norm of belief, is to answer what Korsgaard (1996) calls ‘the normative question’. Is the truth norm of belief authoritative or binding regarding what one ought to or may believe? If so, what grounds its authority? The aim of this paper is to offer a novel answer to the grounding challenge on a reason-based normative framework. I develop and defend a practice-based account of the truth norm, according to which, the authority of the truth norm of belief is grounded in what I call the T-practice, a justified social practice that functions to facilitate knowledge production, maintenance, and social cooperation.

Belief is said to be essentially subject to a norm of truth. This view has been challenged on the ground that the truth norm cannot provide guidance on an intuitive inferentialist model of guidance and thus cannot be genuinely normative. One response to the No Guidance argument is to show how the truth norm can guide belief-formation on the inferentialist model of guidance. In this paper, I argue that this response is inadequate in light of emerging empirical evidence about our system of belief-formation. I will then motivate an alternative response and present, in rough outline, a viable, reason-responsive model of epistemic guidance on which the truth norm can guide.

Many philosophers hold that a norm of truth governs the propositional attitude of belief. According to one popular construal of normativity, normativity is prescriptive in nature. The prescriptive norm can be formulated either in terms of obligation or permission: one ought to or may believe that p just in case p is true. It has been argued that the obligation norm is jointly incompatible with the maxim ought implies can and the assumption that there exists some truth that we cannot believe. The problem of the incompatible triad has motivated some to adopt the permissible norm of truth. I argue that the permissible norm faces an analogous problem of the incompatible triad.