Belief Without Evidence

There's no denying that there's a very tight connection between belief and conscious assessment of evidence or truth. Shah sees this in terms of the phenomenon of transparency, whereby "the deliberative question whether to believe that p inevitably gives way to the factual question whether p". But I previously argued that this only holds if we artificially restrict what is to count as "doxastic deliberation". To avoid this problem, I think a better way to look at the issue is to build on the neutral description offered in my first sentence. In particular, the phenomenon in need of explanation is what I will call the subjective evidence principle:

(SEP) When one attends to one's belief that p, one must believe that one has adequate evidence that p is true.

Or, as Adler puts it ('The Ethics of Belief: Off the Wrong Track', p.273):

Necessarily, if one regards one's evidence or reasons as adequate to the truth of p then one believes that p; and if one attends to one's believing that p, then one regards one's evidence or reasons as adequate to the truth of p.

Note that this principle is sufficient to explain transparency in all and only those contexts where it actually occurs. In particular, it explains why "one cannot arrive at a belief that p just by deliberating on whether it would be beneficial to believe that p." So long as one holds the evidence for p to be inadequate, one is incapable of consciously believing p. But it doesn't, for example, prejudge the question of whether one can take account of practical reasons when deliberating about whether one ought (all things considered) to believe that p.

So, how are we to explain SEP? One option (and Adler's own, I should add) is to agree with Shah that the normative hegemony of truth is built into the very concept of belief. An alternative, that I prefer, is to appeal to the internal logic of belief. To quote Foley (The Theory of Epistemic Rationality, p.215):

Just as it may be impossible for a person S to believe p and also to believe its contradictory not-p, so too it may be impossible for him to have "near contradictory" beliefs, such that he believes p while also believing that his evidence indicates that p is likely to be false.

What's the difference? Well, this latter standard of coherence is entirely internal to the person's belief set. In contrast, evidentialists like Shah and Adler want to hold that it's part of the concept of belief that belief aims at truth -- a standard external to the person's set of beliefs.

A problem for these evidentialists is that their account over-reaches. If the normative hegemony of truth were intrinsic to the concept of belief, then "I ought to have a false belief" would be a necessary falsehood. But it obviously isn't. If a demon will torture your family unless you believe the Earth is flat, then by damn, you ought to believe it! Reflecting on your situation, you may think "p is false but I ought to believe it", and there is nothing incoherent about this thought. You can think "the welfare of my family is a reason for me to believe that the Earth is flat", and this is not just coherent, but true!

My coherence account has no problem with these cases. While you cannot simultaneously believe that p and believe that the evidence is against p, there are two ways to remedy this. You can change your belief about p, or you can change your belief about the evidence. You are not rationally compelled to follow the evidence, contrary to the evidentialist's suggestion. You can instead conclude "I ought to have a false belief", and thereby resolve to manipulate your evidential situation (perhaps by taking a magic pill) in such a way as to enable you to form this false belief.

Thus the pragmatist can provide an account of SEP and transparency to rival the evidentialist's.