“相信”、“相信为真”与极小主义的困难

“Believe that p” and “Believe that p is true”——A Difficulty of Minimalism

本文试图从规范性问题出发,延续赖特、林奇等学者对极小主义的批评。在本文看来,“真”这一谓词具有规范性的含义,我们的信念常常以“真”作为自身的目标。然而以“真”作为信念的目标需要我们能够区分出“相信”与“相信为真”两种信念状态,但极小主义目前却还无法为这种区分提供一个可靠的说明。在这一意义上,极小主义并未提供一个优于传统符合论的真理论方案,其核心的理论主张也需要进一步的澄清。

This essay is intended to serve as a refutation of minimalism with respect to the normativity,as what C.Wright and M.P.Lynch have done before.It has been widely admitted that the concept“truth”involves a sense of normativity,which makes it one of the goals for our beliefs.In this essay,I shall argue that the sense of normativity requires us to distinguish between“believe that p”and“believe that p is true”.However,the defense for the minimalism from Paul Horwich has failed to meet this requirement.As a result,the minimalism has proposed no better explanation for our daily instinct of the“truth”than the traditional theory of correspondence.