False Beliefs and Misleading Evidence

Bibliographic Data

ID20143535
AuthorsMarc-Kevin Daoust (0000-0002-6710-1944, Harvard University USA, corresponding author)
Year2021
Volume87
Issue3
Pages520-541
Publication date2021-06-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueTheoria (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0040-5825 • E-ISSN: 1755-2567
PublisherWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/theo.12288
OpenAlexW3094539809
LanguageEN
Citations received1
References cited36

False beliefs and misleading evidence have striking similarities. In many regards, they are both epistemically bad or undesirable. Yet some epistemologists think that, while one's evidence is normative (i.e., one's available evidence affects the doxastic states one is epistemically permitted or required to have), one's false beliefs cannot be evidence and cannot be normative. They have offered various motivations for treating false beliefs differently from true misleading beliefs, and holding that only the latter may be evidence. I argue that this is puzzling: if misleading evidence and false beliefs share so many important similarities, why treat them differently? I also argue that, given the striking similarities between false beliefs and misleading evidence, many arguments for the factivity of evidence overgeneralize. That is, if these arguments were conclusive, they would also entail that the evidence cannot be misleading. But this is an overgeneralization, since the evidence can be misleading

Doxastic logic · Economics · Epistemology · False accusation · Normative · Positive economics · Scientific evidence · Epistemology, Ethics, and Metaphysics · Free Will and Agency · Philosophy · Philosophy and Theoretical Science · Psychology · Social Psychology

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