Truthy psychologism about evidence

Truthy psychologism about evidence

Veli Mitova

� Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2014

Abstract What sorts of things can be evidence for belief? Five answers have been

defended in the recent literature on the ontology of evidence: propositions, facts,

psychological states, factive psychological states, all of the above. Each of the first

three views privileges a single role that the evidence plays in our doxastic lives, at

the cost of occluding other important roles. The fifth view, pluralism, is a natural

response to such dubious favouritism. If we want to be monists about evidence and

accommodate all roles for the concept, we need to think of evidence as proposi-

tional, psychological and factive. Our only present option along these lines is the

fourth view, which holds that evidence consists of all and only known propositions.

But the view comes with some fairly radical commitments. This paper proposes a

more modest view—‘truthy psychologism’. According to this view, evidence is also

propositional, psychological and factive; but we don’t need the stronger claim that

only knowledge can fill this role; true beliefs are enough. I first argue for truthy

psychologism by appeal to some standard metaethical considerations. I then show

that the view can accommodate all of the roles epistemologists have envisaged for

the concept of evidence. Truthy psychologism thus gives us everything we want

from the evidence, without forcing us to go either pluralist or radical.

Keywords Ontology of evidence � Reasons for belief � Normative and motivating

reasons � Psychologism versus anti-psychologism

What sorts of things can be evidence for belief? Five answers have been defended in

the recent literature:

V. Mitova (&)

Institute for Philosophy, Vienna University, Universitatsstraße 7, 1010 Vienna, Austria

e-mail: [email protected]

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Philos Stud

DOI 10.1007/s11098-014-0339-3

Propositionalism: propositions (Dougherty 2011; Neta 2008),

Factualism: facts (Dancy 2002),

Psychologism: psychological states (Conee and Feldman 2004, 2008; Turri

2009),

Factive-state psychologism: factive psychological states (Williamson 2000),

Pluralism: all of the above (Kelly 2008; Rysiew 2011).1

The arguments for each of the first three views are typically anchored in different

roles philosophers have envisaged for the concept of evidence. Thus, for instance,

some propositionalists appeal to the fact that the evidence for a belief stands in

logical and probabilistic relations to the believed proposition; such relations obtain

only amongst propositions, they say; so only propositions can be evidence.

Factualists, on the other hand, typically focus on the idea that the evidence is a

reason for belief; a reason is something that speaks in favour of the belief; since

beliefs represent how things are, the thinking goes, only facts can favour belief.

Finally, psychologists emphasise the fact that the evidence is something to which

we appeal in order to make sense of why someone believes a particular proposition;

since the belief to be explained is a psychological item, further psychological items

seem in the best position to make sense of the belief.

Whatever one might think of the merits of these rationales, it is obvious that the

roles to which they appeal are central roles evidence plays in both our doxastic lives

and epistemic theorising. It is equally obvious that each rationale privileges one of

the three roles at the cost of occluding the others. What is not so obvious is why we

need to go along with such favouritism. All three roles for evidence seem equally

real and important. So, an account of evidence would be the better for reflecting all

three. This is the thought that kindles pluralism. We needn’t privilege any one role,

the pluralist says; but since it is unlikely that a single thing can play all of these

roles, all of the above things fall under the extension of ‘evidence’.

But what if we could develop a monist account of evidence which accommodates

all of these roles? Such an account would render pluralism superfluous, insofar as

the main motivation for pluralism is the inability of any one thing to play all of these

roles. Factive-state psychologism can be seen as such an account. Williamson

(2000), for example, argues that one’s evidence consists in all and only the

propositions one knows. Although he motivates the view primarily by appeal to the

first role for evidence, the view clearly honours all three, since evidence here is

propositional, psychological, and factive.2

In this paper I argue for a more modest, but more readily defensible, view—

‘truthy psychologism’.3 The view, like Williamson’s, insists that evidence is

propositional, psychological, and factive. But, unlike his view, it holds that we do

1 The only label which is mine here is ’factive-state psychologism’. Thanks to an anonymous referee for

making me take seriously pluralism as a theoretical option.2 Arguably, Littlejohn (2012) is another—and equally radical—factive-state psychologist. According to

him, one’s evidence consists of one’s justified beliefs, where justification entails truth.3 ‘Truthy’ comes from Littlejohn’s ‘truthers’ who think that only true propositions are evidence

(Littlejohn 2013).

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not need the radical claim that only factive mental state types—such as

knowledge—count as evidence. According to truthy psychologism, veridical tokens

of mental states—such as true beliefs—are enough.

I defend here the factive and psychological bits of truthy psychologism. I first set

the scene (§1). I then argue for what I call ‘The Beast of Two Burdens Thesis’: a

reason must be able to be both a good reason and a motive (§2). In §3, I show that

taking this thesis seriously means that one needs to adopt either thoroughgoing anti-

psychologism or thoroughgoing psychologism about reasons. In §4, I review some

of the less agreeable costs of thoroughgoing anti-psychologism. In §5, I provide a

positive argument for thoroughgoing psychologism. In §§6 and 7, I develop a

positive argument for truthy psychologism: I first argue that evidence is factive (§6);

I then show that truthy psychologism accommodates all of the roles that

epistemologists have expected the concept of evidence to play (§7).

Thus, truthy psychologism provides a viable alternative to existing views on the

ontology of evidence: it does justice to the anti-psychologist’s intuition that the

evidence connects us appropriately to the world, without getting bogged down with

his less salutary commitments; and it allows us to accommodate all the roles

canvassed for evidence, without going either pluralist or radical.

1 Setting it up

1.1 The dialectic

If we are to be monists about evidence, how do we adjudicate amongst

propositionalism, factualism, psychologism, and factive-state psychologism?

Unhappily, the dialectic here is far from clear. One might ask at least three

questions about the ontology of evidence, each of which polarises the positions’

allegiances differently.

If we start with the question of whether evidence consists of psychological items,

factualism and propositionalism end up in the same camp—anti-psychologism

(since facts and propositions are not psychological items). But if we ask whether

evidence is propositional, the troops get re-deployed: factualism and proposition-

alism end up in opposing camps (since facts, on the most common view, are not

propositions4), while psychologists can flit between camps depending on whether

they think of the relevant psychological items as propositional states (Williamson

2000, Littlejohn 2012), or as perceptual experiences (Conee and Feldman 2004,

2008; Dougherty and Rysiew 2014). Finally, if we ask whether evidence is factive,

the factualist and factive-state psychologist are clearly on one side, the psychologist

on the opposite, while the propositionalist can switch sides depending on whether he

thinks that only true propositions count as evidence (Littlejohn 2013).

4 But see Littlejohn (2012, p. 95) and Williamson (2000, p. 43), who assume that facts are (true)

propositions.


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1.2 Why be modest?

One natural way to approach this fairly muddled dialectic is to look for an arbiter

from outside of the debate on the ontology of evidence. I go to metaethics for such

an arbiter. I appeal to some fairly standard arguments there to get us to the view that

only psychological states can be evidence (§§2–5). The factivity of evidence then

naturally falls out of this kind of defence of psychologism (§6).

This strategy will have two limitations. First, it won’t get us all the way to the

claim that only factive mental-state types—e.g., knowledge—count as evidence.

Although truthy psychologism is compatible with this stronger view, the argument I

develop here will only establish that veridical tokens of (not necessarily factive)

mental states—e.g., true beliefs or veridical perceptual experiences—count as

evidence.

Second, although truthy psychologism is committed to the propositional nature of

evidence, the argument here will not get us that far. Doing justice to the increasingly

sophisticated debate between propositionalists and friends of non-doxastic evidence

would take a paper of its own, and a very different (and long) one at that. At a

minimum, it would have to address the question of how propositional doxastic

evidence is to stop the justification regress that many argue only non-doxastic

evidence can stop (Conee and Feldman 2008, §3.1, Huemer 2001, pp. 175–178).

This is an intricate epistemological issue which will not be settled by appeal to the

metaethical considerations I adduce here. So it is best left for another occasion.5

In light of these limitations, one might wonder why we should bother with such a

half-way position as truthy psychologism, given that we already have Williamson’s

(2000), which gets us all the way to both factive mental state types and propositions.

A proper answer to this question would require a full examination of Williamson’s

view, which is beyond the scope of this paper. But let me say three things in favour

of going for the more modest truthy psychologism.

First, although I have some sympathy for Williamson’s position, the fact of the

matter is that its keystone—his ‘knowledge-first epistemology’—has not met with

the sort of irenic reception calculated to ground securely his account of evidence

(e.g., Greenough and Pritchard 2009). This reception is understandable. Knowledge-

first epistemology comes with some fairly radical commitments: knowledge is not

analysable in terms of other concepts, it is purely a mental state, it is necessary for

justification, it is what belief aims at, it is the norm of assertion, and so on.

5 Thanks to an anonymous referee for raising the regress problem. As a quick demonstration that it would

take us too far afield, let me mention two solutions that are available to the truthy psychologist. One is to

insist that all evidence is doxastic and that the truth of a certain class of beliefs stops the regress. Another

option is to argue that there are non-doxastic forms of basic evidence which are nonetheless propositional

(e.g., Huemer’s (2007) ‘appearances’). Each of these strategies faces challenges. The first needs to

explain how we non-arbitrarily isolate the relevant class of beliefs without construing experiences as

more justificatorily basic. The second needs to defend direct realism about perception. Such realism may

threaten the Beast of Two Burdens Thesis, unless we block the move from realism to metaphysical

disjunctivism (e.g., McDowell 1986). Thanks to John Gibbons and Ram Neta for convincing me that

disjunctivism is a threat to the Beast of Two Burdens thesis.

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Second, Williamson muddies both the dialectical and metaphysical waters by

maintaining that evidence is identical to both true propositions (2000, pp. 193–194)

and knowledge (2000, p. 191). This has the unhappy effect of construing

propositions as mental states (since knowledge, recall, is a mental state). A strange

result in itself, but it gets even stranger in conjunction with Williamson’s claim that

facts are (true) propositions (2000, p. 43).

Finally, Williamson does not address standard, and as we will see pressing,

worries about conceiving of evidence and reasons for belief in psychological terms

in the first place.

These considerations are, of course, hardly decisive, and are certainly not offered

as such here. All that they are meant to suggest is that if we can find a more modest

view that accommodates all the roles that evidence is expected to play, it might be

wiser to settle for the modest view. Happily, there is such a view. The arguments I

offer here secure psychologism independently of the knowledge-first story, and tie

the factivity of evidence essentially to both psychologism and the notion of a good

reason.

1.3 The assumptions

As already mentioned, I will use considerable help from metaethics in what follows.

The thinking is that since the fight between psychologists and anti-psychologists has

been going on there for much longer than it has in epistemology, the terms of the

debate and costs of commitments are clearer there. For this to work I will need three

assumptions:

(1) The evidence for a belief can be a good reason for the belief.

(2) Therefore, much of what we can say about the ontology of good reasons

for belief we can say about the ontology of evidence.

(3) The relation in which a reason for a belief stands to the belief, is

analogous to the relation in which a reason for an action stands to the

action.

Not buying these assumptions is a deal-breaker, so let me explain why they are

fairly innocuous when heard in the right way.

The first assumption is extremely modest. Most people think not only that the

evidence can be a good reason for belief, but that it is the best reason there is.

Assumption (1) is entailed by this stronger claim.

Assumption (2) is, likewise, fairly unexciting. If the evidence can be identical

with a good reason, then the two had better be of the same ontological kind.

Assumption (3) may grate a bit: after all, our reasons for action are

traditionally assumed to be conative states, which make for pretty shabby reasons

for belief. But all I mean here is that both kinds of reasons stand in a relevantly

similar relation to the thing they are reasons for—they favour it, support it,

rationalise it, and so on. The assumption is neutral on the nature of the relata in

each case.


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2 The Beast of Two Burdens

2.1 The standard story

According to the standard metaethical story, there are two kinds of reasons for

action: the normative reason, the thing which in fact favours the action; and the

motivating reason, the reason for which the agent acted as he did. The normative

reason is a good reason, something we cite to justify your action, to show what

there is to be said in favour of it; the motivating reason is something we cite to

explain your action, to show what it was you thought there was to be said in

favour of it.6 On this picture, the normative reason to help you is the fact that

you are in distress, whereas my reason for helping you (in the ideal case) is my

belief that you are in distress and my desire to alleviate your distress. Normative

reasons are facts and motivating reasons are psychological items (e.g., Parfit

2011; Raz 1999).

2.2 The Beast of Two Burdens Thesis

What is the relationship between these two kinds of reason? There are two options:

(1) they are two distinct things, as the above story suggests, or

(2) it is the same thing doing double duty.

I am going to defend the second view here. Call it ‘The Beast of Two Burdens

Thesis’, or BTB for short:

BTB: There is one kind of reason for /-ing (acting, or believing, or emoting,

etc.), which can play both the role of a normative reason to / and of a

motivating reason for /-ing.

Interestingly, BTB can be defended through two arguments coming from, and going

in, exactly opposite directions. (I take this to bode well for BTB.) The one is

inspired by Bernard Williams, the other is developed by Jonathan Dancy. The

Williams-inspired argument works to the conclusion that a normative reason must

be of the same ontological kind as a motivating one, while Dancy’s goes to the

conclusion that a motivating reason must be of the same kind as a normative one.

The two arguments support BTB from opposite directions and then part company

again: Williams’s is naturally extended to psychologism, while Dancy’s continues

to anti-psychologism. I will have more to say about these extensions of the

arguments later (§§5 and 3, respectively). For the moment, I will just look at the

premises relevant to BTB.

6 Hence, the distinction is sometimes drawn in terms of ‘justifying‘ and ‘explanatory‘ reasons (Dancy

2002, pp. 20–25).

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2.3 The Williams-inspired argument for BTB

Here is the Williams-inspired argument in a nutshell (1981, pp. 106–107)7:

(P1)WILLIAMS A normative reason to / must be able to be someone’s reason

for /-ing on a particular occasion, and so must be able to

explain his /-ing.

(P2)WILLIAMS But no reason could explain an agent’s /-ing unless it could

motivate him to /.

(C)WILLIAMS So, a normative reason to / must be of the same ontological

kind as a motivating reason for /-ing.

This is the first leg of my support for BTB: whatever it is that favours an action or

belief must also be the sort of thing that can move agents to act or believe. Why?

Because otherwise we cannot explain actions and beliefs as done and had for

reasons. Suppose I don’t enjoy jogging. (Not Williams’s example.) You cannot

explain my jogging by citing my desire to do something pleasurable. Your

explanation must, rather, appeal to something that could have in fact moved me to

go jogging, say health considerations. The desire to do something pleasurable is an

example of something that is psychologically incapable of moving me (to go

jogging). If the example is compelling, surely things that are in principle incapable

of motivating anyone would have no hope of explaining anyone’s actions. So, a

normative reason must be the sort of thing that can at least in principle motivate

agents.

Notice the modesty of this conclusion. It says nothing about what sorts of things

can motivate, and so is compatible, at this stage, with both psychologism and anti-

psychologism about both kinds of reasons.

2.4 Dancy’s argument for BTB

Dancy’s argument comes from the opposite direction (2002, pp. 103–108):

(P1)DANCY If a motivating reason for /-ing were of a different kind from a

normative reason to /, then no one could / for a good reason.

(P2)DANCY People can act, believe, etc. for good reasons.

(C)DANCY So a motivating reason for /-ing must be of the same ontological

kind as a normative reason to /.

I take it that (P2)DANCY needs no defence. The idea behind (P1)DANCY is that a

normative reason is a good reason—something that actually favours the action or

belief. Although this identification has not gone unquestioned (e.g., Turri 2009), it

enjoys considerable intuitive plausibility. No bad reason could genuinely favour an

action, so only good reasons can be normative. Conversely, what is a good reason

7 For a justification of this way of reading Williams, see fn. 17.


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for jogging or for believing that people who jog are martyrs, if not something that

actually favours jogging or the belief? But ‘something that favours /-ing’ just is a

normative reason to /. The equally plausible thought, then, is that since when I act

for a reason I act in light of what I take to be things that favour the action, there had

better be at least some cases when I get things right and act for a good reason.

Notice, again, the argument’s neutrality: it still tells us nothing about the nature

of either motivating or normative reasons, and so begs no questions in the fight

between psychologists and anti-psychologists.

3 Taking BTB seriously

We have, then, at least prima facie grounds for accepting BTB: since normative

reasons must be the same sort of thing as motivating reasons, and motivating

reasons must be the same sort of thing as normative, chances are that there is one

sort of thing here doing double duty. If that is right, we need to decide whether this

thing is psychological or non-psychological.

I said earlier that Dancy’s argument goes to anti-psychologism, while the

Williams-inspired argument can be extended to psychologism. Let me start with

Dancy’s, because it makes vivid what it means to take BTB seriously.

Dancy distinguishes three possible views on normative and motivating reasons:

[1] both normative and motivating reasons [are] psychological states of the

agent…[2] all reasons [are] what the agents believe, rather than … their believings

of those things…[3] motivating reasons are psychological states of the agent, while

normative reasons are what agents (we hope) believe (2002,

pp. 99–100, my italics).8

Dancy blithely dismisses the first view as ‘clearly implausible… because it is so

extreme’ (2002, p. 100). His preferred view—anti-psychologism—is the second:

both normative and motivating reasons are facts.9 Psychologism, on his reading, is

the third view: normative reasons are facts while motivating reasons are

psychological states. This, as we saw (§2.1), is the standard story.

Once we read psychologism in this way and accept (what I am calling) BTB,

however, it is plain how Dancy’s argument is going to go: this form of

psychologism violates BTB (2002, p. 106), so it is no good.10 What taking BTB

8 He takes beliefs to be the most eligible psychological candidates, since he has already argued desires

out (2002, Chap. 2). Whatever one might think about that argument, certainly for our purposes of getting

at evidence, it is plausible to assume that if evidence is psychological, it must be cognitive.9 With some charity. Strictly, what is believed are propositions, but Dancy means facts here (2002,

p. 104) and rejects propositionalism (2002, pp. 115–118).10 Dancy argues against two further versions of psychologism (2002, pp. 112–126). One of them

breaches BTB, so no need to go into it. I argue that the other is a misconstrual of psychologism in §6.

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seriously does, then, is to put pressure on any self-respecting psychologist to do two

things—go extreme and truthy:

EXTREME: Both normative and motivating reasons are psychological items.

TRUTHY: Normative reasons for belief are factive: they are veridical

(tokens of) psychological states.

EXTREME allows us to honour the plausible BTB thesis. TRUTHY allows us to

show how psychological states can genuinely favour beliefs, since it salvages the

link to how things are in the world and so to what actually favours what. I argue for

EXTREME in §5 and for TRUTHY in §§6, 7.

4 Anti-psychologism’s costs

But why go to all this trouble? Why not just plump for anti-psychologism? The short

answer is that if we do, we incur some fairly abstruse commitments. I will again use

Dancy as the totem for anti-psychologism here because he is most explicit about

these commitments. But it is hard to see how any anti-psychologist who also

endorses BTB, can avoid them (e.g., Collins 1997). Here are the three most striking

ones:

(1) Explanations are not factive (2002, Chap. 6).

(2) Reasons are not causes (2002, Chap. 8).

(3) Beliefs about my reasons and the world are not part of the explanation

proper of my action or belief; they are enabling conditions for the action

or belief (2002, Chap. 6).

(1) means that in cases when you act on the basis of a false belief, we explain

your action by appeal to ‘facts’ that don’t obtain. Suppose I shot my partner because

I falsely believed that he was an intruder.11 Your explanation of my action by appeal

to the fact that there was an intruder in the house, does not entail that there was an

intruder. Here is Dancy:

I suggest that locutions such as

His reason for doing it was that it would increase his pension [and]

The ground on which he acted was that she had lied to him

are not factive (2002, p. 132, my italics).

And his rationale:

The point of all this is, of course, that if reasons-explanations are not factive

there is no need to turn to ‘that he believed that p’ as the agent’s reason

wherever it is not the case that p (2003, p. 427).

11 I use this drastic example because it dramatises the strangeness of the view. Dancy’s own examples

downplay the strangeness, because they don’t involve the non-existence of the explanans.


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The rationale for the non-factivity of explanation, in other words, is to avoid citing

mental states as motivating reasons in cases in which the agent acts on the basis of a

false belief. But this has the weird result that, even though the motivation for anti-

psychologism is to hook up reasons to how things are in the world, the locus of my

explanation of your action can be something that does not exist.12

Any anti-psychologist who also buys BTB is saddled with this commitment

because:

(a) we explain action in terms of motivating reasons;

(b) but motivating reasons are facts, since (i) they must be capable of being

good reasons and (ii) good reasons are facts.

The claim that reasons are not causes (2) is a direct consequence of (1): Since

there was no intruder, the ‘fact’ of there being one could hardly have caused anyone

to do anything.

The claim that beliefs are enabling conditions (3) is necessary to make sense of

the truism—which the anti-psychologist concedes—that I act and believe based on

the facts as I take them to be. The only way for the anti-psychologist to make room

for the agent’s perspective is to treat beliefs as extrinsic to reasons-explanations;

else, he collapses into psychologism. Since they are nonetheless necessary for the

explanation to go through, he demotes them to enabling conditions.

But wherefore all these metaphysical contortions? Why not just be truthy

psychologists? We then have the following far homelier picture:

(1)TP Explanations entail the existence of their explanans: your explanation of

my shooting my partner by appeal to my belief that there was an intruder

in the house, entails that I believed that there was an intruder in the house.

(2)TP Reasons are (non-deviant) causes: My belief that there was an intruder

caused me to shoot. What else?

(3)TP My beliefs about the world are not some explanatory danglers. They are

the things that move me to action and belief. (See also §5.3 below.) When

the beliefs are true, they are good reasons for my actions and beliefs.

If you agree that this way of seeing things chimes better with our intuitions about

reasons and explanations, then we have established a presumption against anti-

psychologism.

5 The argument for extreme psychologism

So far, I have argued for the Beast of Two Burdens Thesis(§2) and shown that

taking it seriously means that we must go either for anti-psychologism or for

12 Why not retain the factivity of explanation by saying that the motivating reason is the fact that the

agent (falsely) believed such and such? Dancy thinks of this view as a version of psychologism and

rejects it (2002, p. 124). See fn. 19 below.

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extreme psychologism (§3). I have just listed some anti-psychologist commitments

that hopefully take the shine off anti-psychologism (§4). In this section, I develop a

positive argument for extreme psychologism.

5.1 The argument

The argument is this:

(P1)EXTREME Only psychological states can motivate on their own.

(P2)EXTREME Motivating reasons can motivate on their own.

(C1)EXTREME So, only psychological states can be motivating reasons.

(P3)EXTREME Normative and motivating reasons are of the same ontological

kind.

(C)EXTREME So, extreme psychologism: only psychological states can be

normative and motivating reasons.

(P3)EXTREME is entailed by BTB which I have already defended. That leaves

(P1)EXTREME and (P2)EXTREME.

5.2 (P1)EXTREME

(P1)EXTREME seems to obtain simply in virtue of the concept of a motive. The idea

that motives are psychological states is stock in trade in philosophy of action: it is

accepted by philosophers as widely disagreeing on pretty much everything else as

(Davison 1980), Frankfurt (1988), Velleman (2000) and Wallace (2006), to mention

but a handful. Indeed, it seems such an obvious idea that I am not even sure whether

it can be really defended. But let me try.

Motives are the quintessential springs of action. A bit of unmotivated behaviour

is just that—behaviour, not something done by an agent at all. But if a motive is

what distinguishes action from mere behaviour, it must be the thing that represents,

so to speak, the agent in his action.13 But then this thing that represents the agent

must be his own. Facts are not his own, so they are the wrong thing to represent him.

His mental states, by contrast, seem exactly the right thing.

This argument—if argument it be—speaks strongly against a view on which

motives are entirely non-psychological. What of a hybrid view, though, on which

motives consist in a psychological state plus some non-psychological thing, a fact,

say?

To begin with, notice that it is hard to make much sense of this view for many

cases of ordinary motivation. The class of motives is really large, much larger than

that of motivating reasons. It includes anything that one can be said to act ‘out of’

(Kenny 1963/2003, p. 60). Thus, for example, I can buy you flowers out of love or

lust, spend the evening at home out of laziness or paranoia, try to ruin your life out

13 I borrow this way of speaking from Velleman (2000, Chap. 6).


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of envy or curiosity, and so on. The emotions and dispositions move me to do these

things. It isn’t obvious what motivation-relevant14 fact needs to obtain here,

especially for pathological motivations such as paranoia.

But we can set aside the hard cases, and focus on cases which are more congenial

to the hybrid view, cases where we can easily think of a motivation-relevant fact

obtaining. Say that my motive for helping you is my belief that you are in distress

plus your actually being in distress. The hybrid suggestion can then be heard in one

of two ways:

(1) Motives are sometimes this mixture of a psychological state plus a fact.

(2) Motives are always this mixture of a psychological state plus a fact.

It should be clear that (1), even if true, can’t threaten (P1)EXTREME. (1) says that

there are cases in which psychological states can’t motivate on their own. But

(P1)EXTREME does not claim that all psychological states can always motivate on

their own. It says, rather, that only psychological states can motivate on their own.

Suggestion (1) does not threaten this claim, because it doesn’t show that something

other than a psychological state can motivate on its own.

That leaves (2): a non-psychological state is always a constituent of a motive. If

(2) is true, then (P1)EXTREME is clearly false. For then psychological states can never

motivate on their own, and a fortiori it is false that only psychological states can

motivate on their own. But (2), grievous as it would be for (P1)EXTREME, is also

eminently implausible even for the hybrid-friendly class of motives. It’s a platitude

that we can be moved to action by completely misreading a situation. I can be

moved to help someone even though he is not in the slightest distress. In fact, in

some (admittedly, rather sad) cases, I might be moved to help him even though he is

no more (he passed away unbeknownst to me), or never was (I have gradually

forgotten that he is my imaginary friend). So, no motive-relevant fact is required for

motivation in some hybrid-auspicious cases. (2) is false.

So, there is no way of hearing the hybrid view such that it is both plausible and

threatens (P1)EXTREME. The premise goes through.

5.3 (P2)EXTREME

Why should we think that motivating reasons can motivate on their own? Because if

they couldn’t, I now argue, we face a dilemma.

Suppose I helped you. Suppose, for the purposes of a reductio, that my

motivating reason was the fact that you were in distress.15 By (P1)EXTREME (only

psychological states can motivate on their own), this fact cannot motivate me on its

14 I say ‘motivation-relevant fact’ here and throughout this section because for me to be moved to do

anything at all, all sorts of facts need to obtain—I have to have a head, for starters. But we don’t think of

these as my motives.15 To suppose that they are not facts here would beg the question, since that is what the argument for

EXTREME aims to establish.

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own. We need to posit a suitable mental state which does the motivation work.

Suppose this state is a belief.16 What is its content? There are two options: (1) that

you are in distress and (2) that the fact that you are in distress is a reason to help

you. The two options spell a dilemma.

5.3.1 Horn 1

The belief that you are in distress, recall, is not my reason for helping you. My

reason was the fact that you are in distress. The belief is just the motivator. But if so,

when we explain my action by citing my belief, we have not explained the action in

terms of my reason at all. We’ve explained it in terms of a belief about you. The

belief is mine, yes, but

(i) it is not itself the reason, and

(ii) its content: (a) neither says anything about reasons,

(b) nor is itself the reason (reasons are facts; the content is a

proposition).

Of course, we can say that the explanation implicitly cited a reason, but what we

cannot say is that it cited my reason. So, no explanation in terms of my reasons has

been given. But hang on! The whole point of introducing motivating reasons was to

be able to explain action in terms of the agent’s reasons.

5.3.2 Horn 2

The alternative—the belief that your distress is a reason to help—is at least in the right

ballpark for capturing my reason. The trouble, now, however, is that this suggestion rules

out unreflective motivation by reasons. When I get unreflectively moved by a motivating

reason, there are no beliefs about what reasons I have. Rather, the reason itself moves me

to action. The above belief, by contrast, is typical of the result of deliberation—it is a

judgement about what reasons I have. Take the epistemic case. Sometimes I just

unreflectively get moved by the evidence. It is only as a result of deliberation that I get

moved by judgements that something is evidence for a proposition.

(P2)EXTREME is true then: motivating reasons must be able to motivate on their

own. If they couldn’t, then—by (P1)EXTREME—they move us through a psycho-

logical state. But there is no way to cash out this state, such that we preserve both

the intuition that explanations feature the agent’s reasons and the idea that we can

sometimes be unreflectively moved by our reasons.

If this argument is on the right track, it also provides a neat explanation of the

intuition that mental states can’t be merely enabling conditions for our reasons (§4).

For if the content of the relevant mental state concerns simply the object of the

action, then we cannot explain the action in terms of the agent’s reasons (horn 1);

16 The argument will work equally for desire. I use belief here because I am ultimately after the notion of

a reason for belief.


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but if the content concerns a reason, then we rule out unreflective motivation

(horn 2).17

5.4 Back to evidence

Would these considerations establish psychologism about reasons for belief, given

that they hinged on the notion of a motive, a notion which does not find an easy

home in epistemology?

The first thing to note here is that epistemologists are getting increasingly

comfortable with talk of motives (Owens 2000; Shah 2006). But less

gratuitously, although talk of motivating reasons in the epistemic case sounds

strange, thinking about the basing relation should dispel the strangeness. The

basing relation is, of course, the subject of plenty of dispute in its own right

(e.g., Neta 2011). But on its most common construal, it is the requirement that

for a belief to be had for a good reason is for the belief to be non-deviantly

caused by that reason (e.g., Turri 2011). The good reason is, straightforwardly,

the normative reason—the thing that favours the belief. And it is natural to think

of the thing that non-deviantly causes the belief as the motivating reason, since

motivating reasons in the action case are (when things go well) precisely the

non-deviant causes of the action.

If so, we may transpose the above argument for extreme psychologism to

epistemic reasons:

(P1)EVIDENCE By BTB, a reason for belief must be a single thing doing double

duty.

(P2)EVIDENCE One of these duties is to move belief.

(P3)EVIDENCE But only psychological states can move belief.

(C)EVIDENCE So, only psychological states can be normative and motivating

reasons for belief.

If both kinds of reasons are psychological states, then it is going to be the relevant

properties of these states that determine when the reason is a good one. If

evidence is ever a good reason for belief, it will be a psychological state with

these properties.

17 This argument also justifies my reading of Williams as claiming that a reason, R, must itself be able to

motivate. The two standard readings are that what must be capable of motivating is:

(1) my belief that R (Finlay 2009, p. 12), or

(2) my belief that R is a reason to / (Shah 2006, pp. 485–486).

Clearly, (1) falls against Horn 1, and (2) falls against Horn 2 of the present dilemma. More generally, the

dilemma faces anyone who thinks that the motivation requirement is a requirement on having reasons

rather than on something’s being a reason (e.g., Comesana and McGrath 2014).

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6 From extreme-to truthy psychologism

In Sect. 3, I said that the psychologist worth his salt should go extreme and truthy:

EXTREME: Both normative and motivating reasons are psychological items.

TRUTHY: Normative reasons for belief are factive: they are veridical

(tokens of) psychological states.

So far I have tried to make plausible EXTREME. I promised that TRUTHY will fall

out of EXTREME, thus giving the notion of evidence the right connections to both

the world and good reasons for belief (§1.2). Here is the intuitive argument for

TRUTHY:

(P1)TRUTHY Only psychological states can be normative reasons for belief.

(P2)TRUTHY Normative reasons for a belief speak in favour of the belief.

(P3)TRUTHY Non-veridical psychological states—false beliefs and non-

veridical perceptual experiences—do not genuinely speak in

favour of a belief.

(C)TRUTHY So, only veridical psychological states are normative reasons for

belief.

(P1)TRUTHY is entailed by EXTREME which has already been defended at

length. (P2)TRUTHY is simply the widely accepted definition of a normative

reason. (P3)TRUTHY is a near platitude. How could a false belief really speak in

favour of anything? Suppose I once again think I should help you. If I have a

false belief that you are in distress, then you are not in distress, and it is not the

case that I should help you. So my false belief patently cannot favour helping you.

Or suppose I falsely believe that the butler did it, and that if he did it then you

didn’t. Clearly, my false belief that the butler did it cannot favour believing that you

didn’t.18 This is why, after all, we needed motivating reasons—to make room for

cases when the agent takes X to favour a belief or an action without that entailing

that X in fact favours the belief or action. If this is correct, then so is TRUTHY.

On the assumption that the evidence for a belief can be a good reason for the belief,

it follows that evidence is factive.

This is the intuitive thinking behind truthy psychologism. In the next section I

bolster it by showing how the view can accommodate all roles that evidence has

been asked to play. But before I do that, I wish to stress that according to truthy

psychologism, the veridical states themselves are the evidence. This claim needs

distinguishing from a different one with which psychologism is sometimes saddled:

18 This is one of the reasons that epistemic normative requirements are understood to take wide scope

(e.g., Broome 2000).


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the evidence for a belief is the fact that I am in a particular mental state.19 This is

decidedly not what truthy psychologism claims. Indeed, it can’t be. On this different

view the evidence—or good reason—would be a fact (about my mental states) and

the motivating reason would be the mental state itself. The view violates the Beast

of Two Burdens Thesis.

I think that it is the conflation of psychologism with this fact-view that accounts

for much of the animosity to psychologism. For, intuitively, facts about what is

going on in my head are in no position to favour either belief or action. The view is

like saying that what fries an egg is not the oil in the pan, but the fact that there is oil

in the pan. Happily, truthy psychologism is committed to no such view: the oil and

belief themselves do the relevant job; and they only do the job well when the oil is

hot and the belief is true.

7 Truthy psychologism gives us everything we want from the evidence

I began this paper by pointing out that three of the monist views on the market—

propositionalism, factualism, and standard psychologism—privilege one role

evidence has been expected to play, at the expense of the others. I said that

pluralism was a natural response to such dubious favouritism, and that our only

egalitarian monist option—only known propositions are evidence—is fairly radical

(§1.2). In this section I show that truthy psychologism is up to all the standard roles

required of evidence. So we don’t need to go either pluralist or radical.20

Truthy psychologism can plainly accommodate the three roles with which I

started. First, evidence is propositional, and so can enter into logical and

probabilistic relations (although this is the one aspect of truthy psychologism that

I have not defended here—see §1.2 and fn. 5).21 Second, evidence is factive, so it

can genuinely favour belief (see also §§7.3 and 7.4 below). Finally, evidence is

psychological, so it is in a good position to make sense of our beliefs (see also §7.2

below). That truthy psychologism can accommodate all of these roles should hardly

come as a surprise: it was designed to do so.

19 Dancy (2002), for example, thinks that this is the most promising version of psychologism. But, he

argues, it is vulnerable to a major objection (2002, p. 124). Suppose I believe that there are pink rats in my

shoes. The fact that I have this belief seems to be a good reason to see a doctor. But (a) we only have such

reasons in weird cases, so reasons aren’t typically facts about our mental states; and (b) such reasons are

good reasons regardless of whether the state is veridical or not. Truthy psychologism is not vulnerable to

this objection, since it does not concern facts about mental states.20 In arguing for truthy psychologism by showing how it can accommodate all of these roles, I take my

cue from Rysiew (2011). This is dialectically fitting, since he is the most explicit current pluralist, and he

defends the view precisely by appeal to these roles.21 The claim that only propositions can enter in such relations is rejected by opponents of

propositionalism (e.g., Conee and Feldman 2008, 2011) as well as by some of its friends (e.g., Neta

2008). This doesn’t matter in the current context, as long as it is allowed that propositions can enter in

such relations.

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What about other roles that have been historically envisaged for the notion of

evidence? Four such roles are nowadays distinguished in the literature, after Kelly

(2008)22:

(1) that which justifies belief,

(2) that which rational thinkers respect,

(3) a guide to truth—a sign, symptom, or mark,

(4) a neutral arbiter.

It should be obvious at a first glance that this is a lot to expect from a single concept.

Crudely put, the first two roles tug in the direction of psychologism, since they

involve the believer’s perspective; the second two roles push towards factualism,

since they presuppose objectivity. Given these competing demands on the concept

of evidence, some have doubted whether there is a unified concept here in the first

place (Kelly 2008), and others have despaired of finding one single thing that falls

under its extension (Rysiew 2011).23

Truthy psychologism is a monist refuge from both of these forms of pluralism.

Whether we want such a refuge would, of course, depend on what other advantages

the two kinds of pluralism enjoy. But, I now argue, they enjoy no advantage when it

comes to accommodating these roles at any rate: truthy psychologism can

accommodate roles (1) and (2) in virtue of its psychologism, and (3) and (4) in

virtue of its truthiness. So, if the main motivation for pluralism is the failure of

current accounts of evidence to accommodate all important roles the concept plays,

we don’t need to be pluralists.

7.1 Evidence as that which justifies belief

The first role the concept of evidence has been expected to play is the near-truism

that one’s evidence concerning p makes a difference to whether one’s belief that p is

justified (Kelly 2008, §1).

Now, if this role is kindled by a purely internalist notion of justification

(justification supervenes on one’s mental states) then the truthy psychologist will

not accommodate it as smoothly as a pure psychologist would.24 According to

truthy psychologism, the truth-value of the mental state makes a difference to

whether the state constitutes evidence. So, two subjects in the same mental states

can have different evidence. If we take justification to be a purely internal affair,

truthy psychologism can only accommodate the intuition that if something is

evidence for p, then it makes a difference to the justificatory status of the belief that

22 See, e.g., Dougherty and Rysiew (2014), Littlejohn (2012, §3.1), and Rysiew (2011).23 Kelly argues that one concept—‘normative evidence’—drives the first two roles, and another —

‘indicator evidence’—the third and fourth (Kelly 2008, §3). Rysiew (2011) argues for the unity of the

concept by showing, with Thomas Reid, that what makes many different things evidence is that they all

make the believed proposition ‘evident’. But the unity of the concept notwithstanding, he thinks that we

should be pluralists about its extension.24 This is the so-called ‘mentalist’ conception of internalism. Truthy psychologism will also be at a

disadvantage on the ‘accessibilist’ view. (See Conee and Feldman 2004, Chap. 3.)


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p. The view cannot go in the opposite direction and accept that if something makes a

difference to the (purely internalistically construed) justificatory status of a belief,

then it is evidence.

This may seem like a disadvantage, until we notice that the justificatory role for

evidence is supposed to be uncontroversial, and so cannot assume a substantive

account of justification. An account of evidence that accommodates this role, is

therefore not required to do so on a purely internalist (or any other substantive)

conception of justification. It is only required to accommodate the role on the

uncontroversial view that our mental states make some difference to justificatory

status, since this is the only tenet that opposing views of justification accept. (The

tenet is accepted even by externalists: my belief that you are a pathological liar, for

instance, is a defeater for my beliefs based on your testimony. See Kelly 2008, §1.)

Insofar as there is an uncontroversial psychological core to the notion of

justification, then, truthy psychologism can readily explain how the evidence—in

virtue of being a psychological thing—can make a difference to one’s justification.

7.2 Evidence as that which rational thinkers respect

The second, and related, role for evidence is the one informing the idea that rational

thinkers respect their evidence. This role again tugs in the direction of psychol-

ogism, because what is rational or reasonable for you to believe obviously depends

on what other things you believe. Thus psychologism fits more naturally with this

role than does factualism (Kelly 2008, §2).

But truthy psychologism fits better than both. Because the plain psychologist

identifies the evidence for p with that which makes it reasonable to believe that p, he

is forced to think that my evidence in a skeptical scenario is the same as my

evidence in the normal case. I am, intuitively, equally rational or reasonable in the

two cases, the thought goes, so my evidence is the same. This has familiar

consequences: if my evidence is the same in the two cases, then my evidence is no

indicator of whether I am in the good or bad case. But if it is no indicator, then it is

no indicator of truth, so it becomes unclear why following it is something a rational

person should want to do.

Truthy psychologism has no such consequences: my evidence is different in the

two cases, since only veridical states can be evidence. I am equally reasonable in the

two cases in so far as I equally respect what I take to be evidence. Such respect is a

rational thing to do because the evidence is something that indicates truth. All this

point requires, as in the justification case, is that we don’t posit a biconditional link

between the evidence and that which makes belief reasonable. But we can still think

that if something is evidence for p then it makes believing p reasonable.

7.3 Evidence as a guide to truth—a sign, symptom, or mark

The third role evidence is supposed to play is that of a guide to, or reliable indicator

of, truth (Kelly 2008, §3). To use Kelly’s example, Koplik spots are a reliable

indicator of measles; so the presence of such spots is evidence for my belief that I

have measles.

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The idea here is that ‘attending to evidence constitute[s] a promising way of

pursuing an accurate view of the world’ (ibid.). And here factualism has its natural

home, for the best sort of indicator of the truth of a proposition are facts relevant to

that proposition. Kelly summarises the point neatly:

Given that no true proposition is inconsistent with any fact, one has an

immediate rationale for not believing any proposition that is inconsistent with

one’s evidence [understood as facts], for only propositions that are consistent

with one’s evidence are even candidates for being true (ibid.).

Kelly rightly notes that Williamson’s view is equally felicitous for this role, since no

true proposition would be inconsistent with any known proposition. But, one might

add, Williamson’s view is superior to factualism here. For it not only secures the

right connection between evidence and truth, but also, in virtue of its psychologism,

enables the evidence to play the justificatory and rationalising roles just discussed.

Patently, truthy psychologism is equally up to all of these jobs, since it also

construes evidence as both factive and psychological.

7.4 Evidence as a neutral arbiter

The final role that the concept of evidence has been asked to play is that of neutral

arbiter. On this conception, the evidence is something essentially public, to which

we can point as the final court of appeal in disagreement (Kelly 2008, §4). The most

eligible candidates for this role are again facts. Mental states, being essentially

private, seem to have no place here. It is not as though I can literally point to my

belief as the final arbiter in the way I can point to the Koplik spots to convince you

that I have measles.

We might try to evade this thought by emphasising that truthy psychologism is a

view about evidence for belief, and that it is not clear that this public conception of

evidence concerns belief. Indeed, Kelly notes that it is more the scientist’s

conception of evidence than the epistemologist’s. Still, presumably we don’t want

our epistemic notion to be entirely unmoored from less recondite notions of

evidence, so it would be good to be able to accommodate this role. And we can, by

appeal to three considerations.

First, the idea of evidence as ‘a kind of ultimate court of appeal, uniquely

qualified to generate agreement among those who hold rival theories’ (ibid.) is

highly naıve. All we need to note is that the evidence resolves disagreement only if

the disputants have the same background theory, since whether something is taken

as evidence depends on this theory (Kelly 2008, §4). Suppose we disagree over

whether I have measles. We both see the Koplik spots. But you know they are a sign

of measles, while I don’t. Clearly you will take them as evidence for measles while I

won’t. Just pointing to the spots, in other words, won’t do the trick. Both parties

need to have true background beliefs, for the court-of-appeal trick to work.

Second, truthy psychologism, unlike plain psychologism, is not motivated by the

privacy of mental states. Its impetus is, rather, the thought that the veridical nature

of certain mental state tokens is what suits those states for being evidence. The


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view, therefore, doesn’t threaten the objectivity and publicity of evidence in the way

that plain psychologism does.

Finally, there is a perfectly respectable way for me to ‘point to’ my mental states

as arbiter, as long as the pointing is understood to carry a claim to their being

veridical. Here, for instance, is Sherlock Holmes doing just that, in citing his

evidence for the belief that Watson has just been to the post office and dispatched a

telegram:

[1] Observation tells me that you have a little reddish mould adhering to

your instep.

[2] Just opposite the Seymour Street Office they have taken up the pavement

and thrown up some earth which lies in such a way that it is difficult to

avoid treading in it in entering.

[3] The earth is of this peculiar reddish tint which is found, as far as I know,

nowhere else in the neighbourhood…[4] of course I knew that you had not written a letter, since I sat opposite to

you all morning.

[5] I see also in your open desk there that you have a sheet of stamps and a

thick bundle of post-cards.

[6] What could you go into the post-office for, then, but to send a wire?

(Doyle 2008, p. 6, my italics).

[2] is the only point at which Sherlock cites a fact as evidence. The rest of the time

he cites perceptual experiences (1 and 5), belief (3), knowledge (4), and the act of

drawing an inference (6). So, five out of the six things to which Sherlock is

‘pointing’ as evidence are psychological items.25 Detective work is usually taken to

be congenial to factualism and to the present neutral-arbiter conception of evidence.

Yet, here is the arch-detective citing his mental states as evidence. Does that strike

us as odd? I take it not. And if not, then we can point to our mental states as a final

court of appeal. If these states are veridical, they are indeed such a final court of

appeal.

The truthy psychologist, then, can accommodate all of the central roles the

concept of evidence has been asked to play. Unlike pluralism, the very same thing—

a mental state—plays each of the four roles. For sure, in some cases it plays it

primarily in virtue of its psychological nature, and in others in virtue of its veridical

nature, but it is still the same beast doing the work. The pluralist, by contrast, must

accommodate some of the roles by appeal to one bunch of things that fall under the

extension of ‘evidence’, and the rest of the roles by appeal to a different bunch of

things. Thus, what would justify and rationalise my belief that I have measles,

would be a belief about, or experience of, Koplik spots. But what would count as an

indicator of measles, or as an arbiter in a dispute, will be the spots themselves. This

25 This example also speaks strongly against a popular anti-psychologism argument (e.g., Collins 1997):

We deliberate in light of what we take to be good reasons; We do not deliberate in light of our

psychological states; So, good reasons are not psychological states. But here is Sherlock deliberating in

light of both. So, the deliberation-argument is inconclusive. (Thanks to an anonymous referee for making

me see this.) For the stronger claim that the argument is unsound, see Turri (2009).

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story, as Dancy rightly cautioned, drives an insuperable wedge between the good

reasons there are for believing something and my reasons for believing it. Perhaps

there are good reasons to be pluralists, which outweigh the costs of this wedge. But

the inability of a single thing to play all evidence-roles is not one of them.

8 Conclusion

I trust that these arguments, rough as they are, show that truthy psychologism is a

viable alternative to existing views on evidence. I argued, first, for the Beast of Two

Burdens Thesis (§2). Once we go that road, traditional psychologism is discredited

(§3). So, we need to decide between extreme psychologism and anti-psychologism.

I suggested that anti-psychologism is too costly (§4). That was the negative

argument. The positive argument was that we should be extreme psychologists in

virtue of taking seriously the idea that motivating reasons can motivate on their

own, and that only psychological states can motivate on their own (§5). This way of

looking at things ensures that we do not do violence to our basic intuitions:

explanations entail that their explanans exist; motivating reasons are causes; beliefs

are an essential part of explanations of action and other beliefs (§4). Add the truthy

bit—good reasons are factive—and we can have all of our ontological cake and eat

it: we hook up our reasons to the world without any of the anti-psychologist’s more

suspect commitments (§6). If evidence can ever be a good reason for belief, then,

evidence is factive and psychological. The psychological bit allows it to feature in

rationalising explanations and to justify belief. The factive bit allows us to believe

for good reasons which are genuine indicators of how things stand in the world (§7).

What more (or less) could we want from the evidence?

Acknowledgments Thanks to Alexandra Couto, Christoph Hanisch, Katherina Kinzel, Sebastian

Kletzl, Martin Kusch, Dejan Makovec, Herlinde Pauer-Studer, Martha Rossler, and an anonymous referee

for Philosophical Studies, for really helpful comments on earlier drafts. Thanks also to Santiago Echeverri

and Pascal Engel for inviting me to the Ontology of Evidence Workshop (Geneva, 2013), and to Florian

Steinberger for asking me to give a talk on truthy psychologism at the Munich Center for Mathematical

Philosophy (LMU, 2013). The audiences at these events helped a lot with this paper.

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Documents

Truthy psychologism about evidence