Abstract

What sorts of things can be evidence for belief? Five answers have been defended in the recent literature: 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, our only present option is the fourth view: evidence consists of known propositions. But the view comes with some fairly radical commitments. In this talk I propose a more modest view, ‘truthy psychologism’: our evidence consists of true beliefs. The view gives us everything we want from the evidence, I argue, without forcing us to go either pluralist or radical.

All are welcome!