Principal Investigator: Neri Marsili
In 2008, Wayne Riggs diagnosed a ‘value turn’ in epistemology: an increased interest in normative aspects of epistemology. A decade later, epistemology has taken a ‘factive turn’, recently sanctioned by a volume by Veli Mitova – The Factive Turn in Epistemology (2018). This turn is marked by the emergence and elaboration of the view that epistemic norms are essentially factive: truth is required for rational belief, decision, action, and cooperative assertion. To wit: one ought to believe that p only if p is true; deliberate only on the basis of true assumptions; and make only true assertions. Within a factive framework, if you form a false belief, deliberate or act on the basis of a false assumption, or make a false assertion, then you are violating an epistemic norm.
The consolidation of factive views has been determined, amongst other factors, by the emergence of the knowledge-first paradigm in epistemology, following the lead of Williamson’s Knowledge and its Limits (2000). A wave of empirical studies has since lent further support to factive views, contending that they closely track folk intuitions.
Epistemologist, however, are far from reaching consensus that all epistemic norms are factive. Factive accounts have attracted strenuous criticism. Critics of factive views contend that epistemic norms do not entail truth: it can be rational to have a false belief, and to deliberate, act or assert on its basis – as long as other epistemic standards (which vary with views) are met.
This project aims to reassess the role of truth in epistemology, providing new grounds to settle the disagreement between factive and non-factive accounts of epistemic norms. Building on previous work, it will elaborate on the idea that truth should have a teleological –rather than deontological– role in epistemology. Truth is here still central to epistemic normativity (meeting some factivist desiderata), but it determines epistemic success, rather than permissibility (satisfying the main desideratum of non-factive views).