We argue that the debate about the normativity of belief thesis has been hampered by the slogan, ‘belief aims at truth’. We show that the slogan provides no content to the normativity of belief. The slogan encourages formulations of the norm as a prescriptive norm. There are well-known problems with such formulations. We provide a new formulation of the thesis as a prohibitive norm. This captures the key intuition most normativists about belief want to endorse.

According to many philosophers, the notion of belief is constitutively normative ; Shah ; Shah and Velleman (); Gibbard (); Wedgwood ). In a series of widely discussed papers, Terence Horgan and Mark Timmons have developed an ingenious ‘Moral Twin Earth’ argument against ‘Cornell Realist’ metaethical views which hold that moral terms have synthetic natural definitions in the manner of natural kind terms. In this paper we shall suggest that an adaptation of the Moral Twin Earth argument to the doxastic (...) case – Doxastic Twin Earth – provides new evidence for the normativity of belief. (shrink)

Much of the recent literature on the normativity of belief has focused on undermining or defending narrow scope readings of doxastic norms. Wide scope readings are largely assumed to have been decisively refuted. This paper will oppose this trend by defending a wide scope reading of the norm of belief. We shall argue for the modest claim that if it is plausible to regard belief as constitutively normative (in the minimal sense that false belief is eo ipso defective), then a (...) modified version of the wide scope reading of the norm of belief should be preferred to the narrow scope reading. (This is subject to certain attractive conditions relating to the holism involved in the fixation and confirmation of belief.). (shrink)

The normativity of mental content thesis appears to have been the most influential in contemporary philosophy of mind. Paul Boghossian (2003, 2005) has developed an argument for the normativity of mental content on the basis of two premises, i.e. firstly, the normativity of the notion of belief and secondly, the priority of the notion of belief to the notion of desire. In his recent article Alexander Miller (2008) has criticised Boghossian’s argument for the normativity of mental content. To make the (...) objection against the normativity of content, Miller has argued that the second premise of Boghossian’s argument is since belief and desire are conceptually interdependent. My purpose in this paper is to show that content normativity thesis prevails Miller's attack. In order to establish the claim I will argue that content is normative even if belief and desire are conceptually interdependent. (shrink)

Kripke uses a fictional skeptical character in order to review and refuses “cognitive meaning” theory. According to this theory, the propositions which contain reference to the meaning show the state of mind of belief which is a correct state of mind. In order to challenge this theory, Kripke uses another theory which is known as “Normativity of meaning” in philosophic literature. According to the latter theory, meaning of a word limits its application in a normative way; for example, if I (...) use ‘table’, I mean table, then I should use this word for the things which are really table. On the other hand, in meta-ethics, there is a famous argument named “motivational introversion argument”, presented by Michael Smith, whose purpose is to reject “moral cognitivism”, the sentences which include references to moral concepts in an action show state of mind of belief which is a correct state of mind. The following article is going to discuss the possibility of the developing of Michael Smith’s motivational introversion argument into the sphere of meaning. In other words, this paper is a comparative study of fields of meta-ethics and philosophy of language, i.e. it examines whether there can be an argument similar to Michael Smith’s so that one can come to reject meaningful cognitivism. (shrink)

My dissertation concerns post Kripkean debates which locate normativity not as a feature of linguistic meaning but as applicable to mental content. My aim is to identify a clear sense in which the thesis is plausible and to defend the thesis against recent criticisms. In order to do this, I will consider the two main premises that the normativity thesis is based upon, namely, (a) that belief is conceptually priority to desire and (b) that belief is a normative concept. Most (...) criticisms of the normativity thesis in the literature argue against the latter premise, namely, the normativity of belief thesis. I first argue that recent objections against the priority of belief to desire do not undermine the normativity thesis in the case of mental content. I then concentrate on the normativity of belief to defend the thesis. I will consider the logic of the normativity of belief thesis and suggest viable formulations of the thesis. I will also defuse recent objections against the normativity of belief thesis and I establish a new argument for the thesis. (shrink)