Judgment's aimless heart

Abstract

It's often thought that when we reason to new judgments in inference, we aim at believing the truth, and that this aim of ours can explain important psychological and normative features of belief. I reject this picture: the structure of aimed activity shows that inference is not guided by a truth-aim. This finding clears the way for a positive understanding of how epistemic goods feature in our doxastic lives. We can indeed make sense of many of our inquisitive and deliberative activities as undertaken in pursuit of such goods; but the evidence-guided inferences in which those activities culminate will require a different theoretical approach.