Abstract: Miriam Schleifer McCormick argues that we should want to form true beliefs only because of the instrumental value they possess. Recently Trevor Hedberg has challenged this view. Using the method of reflective equilibrium he argues that the value of true beliefs is best understood as intrinsically valuable. He points out that people pursue bitter truths although they may be void of any benefits, so there must be something about truth we value beyond its instrumental worth. He also attempts to downplay the purely instrumental value of truth for living a flourishing life. I will address these points and will use the distinction between instrumental and ultimate desires to circumvent Hedberg’s argument.
Instrumental Account of True Belief
In this essay I will defend McCormick’s view that we should want to form true beliefs only for their instrumental value1. Truth is valuable, most people would agree that they care about
knowing the truth. Either we should care about forming true beliefs because of their instrumental value, as a means to something else, or due to their intrinsic value, as an end in of itself.
McCormick defends the former by pointing out that true beliefs are quite useful, they help us avoid collisions, create vaccines, and choose healthy lifestyles. Distilling true beliefs from the associated practical benefits to uncover some intrinsic worth is a demanding task. For one that
1 McCormick, 2015, p.43
chooses this route must show that all truth, even seemingly mundane trivial true beliefs always have some prima facie value. McCormick works to show that this path is firmly closed. She objects to the view that all true beliefs are valuable by asking us to consider the fact that the content of a true belief is a significant factor in deciding if it is good to hold. Some true beliefs are devoid of any obvious value, others distinctly possess disvalue. It’s not hard to generate dangerous true beliefs that are best not known, like knowing how to create miniature nuclear weapons, mind controlling pills, and so on. Additionally true beliefs discovered by immoral means, such as performing experiments on Auschwitz prisoners are not deemed valuable.
Those who adhere to the idea that all true beliefs have prima facie value, have to respond to the existence of these true beliefs that clearly possess disvalue. They may do this by discriminating between all things considered good and prima facie good2. A true belief may be prima facie good
though given the current variables it may not be good to believe. Being prima facie good is only defeasibly good. Analogously, all conceivable morally good actions are prima facie good, but all things considered it may not be good to do a certain action. It may be prima facie good to feed the ducks at the river, but wrong to do so when that time could’ve been spent saving a drowning child. So all true beliefs have prima facie value even if we don’t want to seek them.
McCormick thinks this response doesn’t lend support to the view that all true beliefs are of prima facie value, instead it works against it. She supposes that if one were gifted with superhuman powers, they would not hesitate to do even the smallest morally virtuous act like feeding the
2 McCormick, 2015, p.43
ducks at the river and any greater morally virtuous act like saving a drowning child without compromising on either. Would they also use these powers to work out how many grains of sand are on a beach or how many threads are in their carpet? Trivial truths are supposed to have prima facie value, but it is not at all clear where the motivation to act on knowing them will come from. They do not seem to have any value of their own. McCormick thinks this gives us good reason to doubt the intrinsic account of valuing true beliefs.
Caring for Truth as an End
Hedberg’s view is that an instrumental account is not enough to explain the value of truth. He sees our proper caring for truth as an end in of itself. His argument is based on the method of reflective equilibrium3. This involves trying to achieve a state of coherence among a set of beliefs
by a process of careful adjustments among general principles and considered judgements. He initiates his argument with a judgement that is supposed to be universal: truth is valuable. This judgement has two competing explanations, an instrumental or an intrinsic one. He then sets forth reasons to help determine that an intrinsic account is superior. Hedberg starts by challenging the interest we have in having true beliefs under an instrumental account. He contends that the indispensable utility of true beliefs isn’t as clear cut as McCormick would have us think:‘‘We certainly need some true beliefs to pursue our goals, but I am not sure that truth is really so central to their fulfillment as McCormick would suggest. Many people live successful
3 Hedberg, 2017, p. 2
and fulfilling lives despite having worldviews grounded in substantially false belief systems . . . Religious, moral, and political beliefs can radically alter the life plans that people pursue. The problem is that flourishing lives take many forms, and it is clearly possible for some people to flourish even when the worldviews that they have based their lives upon are dominantly false.4’’
Hedberg highlights the vast diversity of complex belief systems which are inconsistent. Conflicting religious, political, and moral worldviews that people hold can’t all be right, so it must follow that most people are committed to false belief systems. Additionally unreasonable behaviours such as ad hoc rationalizations, self-deception, and cognitive biases are common. We have an uncanny ability to avoid or disguise what we don’t want to believe, irrespective of its truth. These systems and behaviours have a significant impact on everything from small day to day decisions to entire life plans, and yet people are still living successful lives and fulfilling their goals. Hedberg thinks this is good reason to doubt the instrumental centrality of true beliefs which McCormick uses to ground our tenacious interest for them.
Apart from criticising McCormick’s instrumental account, Hedberg gives an argument in favour of the intrinsic value of truth. He claims that most people have a strong desire for their beliefs to accurately reflect the way the world actually is. We want to know the true state of affairs even when there is no clear benefit, and even if there is potential harm in us discovering some fact.
Classical sceptical scenarios are enough to illustrate this point. Suppose our perceptions aren’t accurate, they’re merely the clever deception of an evil demon, or we are brains in vats with sensory data feed into our minds, or we are simply part of ‘The Matrix’. Finding the truth about
4 Hedberg, 2017, p.3
the real state of affairs would be quite upsetting, and to make matters worse it’s unlikely that there will be a change to our situation. Yet Hedberg contends most people would still want to pursue the truth even in these scenarios5. Of Course some people may actively close every avenue
to finding out the bitter truth, however Hedberg doesn’t see this as a problem. The sheer fact that some deliberation is needed before one determines if truth should be pursued or abandoned is significant for him. Clearly there is something about true beliefs that make us care for them apart from their ability to help us flourish, reach our goals or fulfill our desires. We want to find the truth despite it being the cause of a lot of psychological pain, this is enough for Hedberg to determine an intrinsic value of truth: ‘‘My alternative proposal is that their non-instrumental value is tied to true beliefs accurately reflecting reality. I believe that most human beings have a strong desire for their understanding of the world to accurately reflect the way that the world actually is6’’. It is good as an end in of itself that we have a true perception of the state of affairs,
independent of truth’s lack of utility or potential for harm. Hedberg thinks that if the
instrumentalist account was correct, truth should always be avoided if it lacks utility. He concludes that an intrinsic account of our care for truth is a better explanation about our considered judgement that truth is valuable than an instrumental one.
5 Hedberg, 2017, p.5
6 Hedberg, 2017, p.4
Upsetting Hedberg’s Account
On Hedberg’s point of flourishing on false belief systems McCormick denies this is plausible: ‘‘This is an empirical question but it strikes me as highly implausible that one can have a successful and fulfilling life if most of one’s beliefs were false.’’7 She believes the value of true
beliefs is tied to their immense usefulness, this is where I agree with her. However she also thinks that if one has mostly false beliefs then this somehow diminishes the instrumental value of true beliefs, this is where I disagree. This is why she is denying that one can live a flourishing life with mostly false beliefs. She knows that there is a lot of difference between people’s moral, religious, and political beliefs and so most people might hold a large number of false beliefs. To mitigate this she denies there is a matter of fact about these: “Most of our true beliefs are mundane and unnoticed; if I step on the brakes my car will stop, if I eat breakfast I will stop being hungry etc. People’s political and religious beliefs can radically differ, but on these matters of fact they will agree.”8
I don’t see how McCormick can maintain the claim that our true beliefs are ‘mundane and unnoticed’ and at the same time argue that our care for truth is indispensable due to its utility. We consciously form true beliefs to fulfill our goals and desires, they certainly are noticeable.
McCormick’s claim would require a strong argument about there being no matter of fact about religious, political, and moral issues. She doesn’t provide any justification for there being no matter of fact about political and religious beliefs. Even if we assume she can justify this, what
7 McCormick, 2017, Reply to Trevor Hedberg
8 McCormick, 2017, Reply to Trevor Hedberg
about our disagreement on moral truths? If one prefers there is a matter of a fact about morals then McCormick doesn’t provide us with a solution, she merely accepts that one can’t live a flourishing life with mostly false moral judgements: “If one takes it that moral judgments can be true or false, then a plausible case can be made for the idea that one cannot live a successful and flourishing life with mostly false moral beliefs.”9 McCormick’s assertion that one can’t live a
flourishing life with mostly false beliefs follows too quickly and is hard to justify. There is an easier way to maintain McCormick’s position for the purely instrumental value of truth and having to deal with the fact that most people may hold false beliefs about political, religious and moral issues. It is simply to accept Hedberg’s claim that people are able to flourish despite the fact that the various worldviews that they hold are dominantly false. Hedberg thinks this undermines the instrumental value of truth, it doesn’t.
Even if most of our beliefs about political, religious, and moral issues are false, even if we desire to hold comforting false beliefs over true ones, truth still has enormous instrumental value. To see this we need to invoke Hilary Kornblith’s argument for the indispensable nature of true beliefs for anyone who has any goals or desires10. He salvages his argument from Stephen Stich’s
problematic account of epistemic evaluation11. Stich believes that epistemic evaluation is based
on desires for whatever we intrinsically value. Truth itself is not of any value according to Stich rather it is things like happiness, health, and family. Stich proposes that when evaluating cognitive systems we should select those which privilege things that we value as opposed to
9 McCormick, 2017, Reply to Trevor Hedberg
10 Kornblith, 1993
11 Stich, 1990
those which privilege truth. Consider the straightforward case of someone who has a desire for a toaster and has to choose between two toasters using the cost-benefit model. Both toasters will be analysed for their qualities, a weighting scheme and scale will then be employed, simple arithmetic will follow and the toaster with the highest value will be selected. Utilising this
cost-benefit analysis would be superfluous if our cognitive system was not generating truths. To correctly assign which toaster has the highest value, producing true beliefs about them is necessary. Since Stich proposes that we don’t value truth rather we value other things, this creates a problem for his account, because we should favour cognitive systems that privilege things that we value, rather than systems that simply generate truths. Should we expect a cognitive system that is selected based on happiness to reach the same conclusion as one that is chosen due to its truth producing ability? Uncontroversially we may assume there are no converging conclusions. Stich’s account would lead to varying cognitive systems based on our divergent goals. True beliefs, there is no reason to think, would be generated by these systems. Adopting these Stichean systems would undermine us reaching our dear goals and desires. I wouldn’t know if the toaster I desire is the one which has the highest value among competitors as my Stichean system didn’t help me compute the cost-benefit analysis correctly. If I really want to know which one of the toasters will help me reach my desire I need to have a cognitive system that produces true beliefs, not one chosen for what I value. Hedberg is wrong in claiming that we need ‘some true beliefs to pursue our goals’. Forming true beliefs is instrumentally indispensable for anyone who has any goals and desires.
Our goals and desires may be divergent, we may even want to hold comforting false political, religious, and moral beliefs. Even for the desire to hold the most comforting false beliefs to be fulfilled we need a cognitive system that produces true beliefs about what false beliefs we value and how to select the most comforting ones. People may hold a large number of false beliefs but this does not diminish the instrumental value of truth, because caring about true beliefs is in the interest of anyone who has any goals and desires, even the desire to hold false beliefs.
Therefore Hedberg’s contention doesn’t undermine the instrumental value of truth, however his argument for an intrinsic account still needs an answer. Why do we continue to pursue truth when it can cause us immense psychological distress? On first pass if we accept his claim that there is something in truth that we value beyond its utility and despite its painful potential, this alone does not show that all truth has prima facie value. His argument is hinged on true beliefs that are of significance to our lives. If one wants to pursue painful truth, such as knowing if they are in the Matrix, deceived by a evil demon, or a brain in a vat, these true beliefs are not trivial.
They have a direct immediate impact on our lives. We have an interest in having
self-understanding of our condition, even if we can’t do anything about it. His account covers non-trivial beliefs and fails to cover trivial true beliefs. All true beliefs being of equal prima facie value including the most mundane trivial ones is logically entailed by an intrinsic account of truth, so at best Hedberg’s intrinsic account is incomplete. This is a significant failure Hedberg needs to address as trivial true beliefs make up the vast majority of true beliefs that can be acquired.
Still we have a residual question that needs an answer, why do we seek truth when it has potentially detrimental consequences? Hedberg thinks the answer lies in our strong desire to have a true picture of what the world is actually like. Obviously such a desire exists, however I am going to argue this doesn’t allow Hedberg to purchase an intrinsic account. To see this it would helpful to distinguish between instrumental and ultimate desires12. If one desires something
instrumentally, they desire it as a means to something else, conversely an ultimate desire is sought as an end in of itself. Someone may desire money, fame, security, marriage and so many other things, however these are not sought as an end in of themselves. When one desires money, it’s not the money itself that they ultimately desire. Physical notes do not hold any intrinsic value, they are merely an instrument to attain happiness. Many desires can be ultimately reduced to a quest for happiness. For this reason many philosophers have argued that happiness is an ultimate desire13, we don’t desire happiness instrumentally rather we value it as an end in of itself, it is
intrinsically valuable.
The desire to know the truth may be an instrumental desire rather than an ultimate one. If the desire to seek truth is not an ultimate desire it can’t have any intrinsic value. One way of motivating the view that seeking truth is purely instrumental is to note that, the desire to know the truth is overpowered by our ultimate desire to be happy and avoid unhappiness. We are capable of ad hoc rationalization and self-deception when truth doesn’t suit us. Suppose someone is blackmailed with pictures proving their spouse has been unfaithful. Since they really want to avoid the unhappiness of knowing the truth, they can make up comforting false explanations.
12 Elliott Sober & David Sloan Wilson, 1998
13 John Lemos, 2008, p.156
They could convince themselves that the photos are forged, or that this isn’t their spouse but a long lost twin or a lookalike. They will do this because they ultimately desire happiness. Such cases unveil the desire to know the truth as a merely instrumental one. If knowing the truth for its own sake was an ultimate desire, then we should want to know the truth despite the potential painful consequences in all situations.
Hedberg may reply that this is not a problem for his account as a person may desire both happiness and truth as ultimate desires and for some people one ultimate desire is greater than another. And this he would claim makes sense when we look at the fact that people sometimes choose painful truth over happiness, while others may choose happiness over painful truth.
The issue with this response is that when we choose truth over happiness it’s done with the understanding that a bitter truth will in the long run make us happier. It’s a widespread belief that knowing the bitter truth may lead to short term pain but long term happiness. The ubiquitous association of truth with happiness is asymmetrical. When truth is sought, it is linked to happiness, but not vice versa. Happiness is sought without any reference to truth. Watching ‘The Wizard of Oz’ may cause me to be happy, but there is no part of me that desires to watch it for its truth value. Quite the opposite, we love fiction, love a good ending no matter how unrealistic. If we really desire truth as an ultimate desire then we should be averse to any types of false narratives, whether we read them in children’s books or watch them in movies. Happiness is an ultimate desire, no one actively does something to make themselves unhappy. If truth was an ultimate desire then no one should actively fill their brains with false ideas, even for entertainment. Happiness as an ultimate human desire is widely accepted and justifiable, truth
does not quite fit the bill to be an ultimate desire. Since it is not an ultimate desire, truth does not hold any intrinsic value. Hedberg’s prize horse, our desire to seek truth about the actual state of affairs is only an instrumental desire after all.
Concluding Remarks
In this essay I have defended McCormick’s instrumental account for valuing true beliefs. To motivate his account for the competing intrinsic value of truth, Hedberg employs reflective equilibrium. To explain the considered judgement that we all hold, that ‘truth is valuable’ he seeks to invoke an intrinsic account of true belief. Hedberg downplays the instrumental value of truth by claiming that truth isn’t central to living a flourishing life as McCormick thinks. He also points to the fact that we pursue truth despite it’s painful consequences and this gives us a reason to think there is something valuable about truth beyond utility. Hedberg’s attempt to minimize the instrumental value of truth can be addressed by Kornblith’s argument for the value of truth for anyone who has any goals or desires. Additionally I have appealed to the distinction between instrumental and ultimate desires to undermine his intrinsic account for valuing true beliefs. No one denies that truth has enormous instrumental value, but those who claim something beyond this have the burden of proof on their shoulders. Hedberg’s challenge to the purely utilitarian motivation to care about forming true beliefs does not work. We should want to form true beliefs only for their instrumental value.
Bibliography
- Miriam McCormick, Believing Against the Evidence, 2015, New York: Routledge.
- Trevor Hedberg, Why Do We Value True Beliefs?, 2017, Syndicate Philosophy
- Miriam McCormick, Belief, Control, and Evidence: Miriam McCormick’s Believing Against the Evidence, Syndicate, 2017, Retrieved from URL: https://syndicate.network/symposia/philosophy/believing-against-the-evidence/
- Hilary Kornblith, Epistemic Normativity, 1993, Synthese
- Stephen P. Stich, Evolution, The Fragmentation of Reason: Preface to a Pragmatic Theory of Cognitive Evaluation, 1990, Philosophical Quarterly
- Elliott Sober & David Sloan Wilson, Unto Others: The Evolution and Psychology of Unselfish Behavior, 1998, Harvard University Press
- John Lemos, Commonsense Darwinism: Evolution, Morality, and the Human Condition, 2008, Open Court Books