Belief

This chapter argues that belief is interest-relative for the following reason. A big part of what it is to believe that p is to be willing to use p as a starting point in inquiries. But for most people, for most of their beliefs, there will be some inquiry where they won’t start with that belief. For example, the inquiry into whether they might have made a mistake in forming that very belief. There is a tension here, and the best way to resolve it is to say that when they are going about ordinary life, they have the belief, but they lose it when they turn to more unusual inquiries about their own reliability.