The role of truth in the nature of belief according to Shah and Vellman

Authors
Hossein Ali Nasrollahi
Abbas Yazdani
Tehran University
Abstract
What is the role of truth in the nature of belief? In a common article, Nishi Shah and David Vellman present an explanation for belief in which the role of truth is based on a normative standard. In doing this, they exploit a relationship which they call transparency. The outcome of their explanation, to believe some proposition, after a quasi-ethical judgment, can be the subject of rightness or wrongness. The purpose of this article is to show that the need on the base of which they require to include a normative aspect in the nature of belief has no base, and it is possible to present a perfectly descriptive and aim-oriented approach which explains the responsibility about truth at the same time. In order to do this, based on library research method, we first will try to provide a panorama of each of two approaches, aim-oriented and normative, so then can compare the strengths and weaknesses. In the end, with some criticism regarding the normative point of view, we show that the aim-oriented approach has more consistency with our common sense from belief instances, and can be explained in a way that avoids the problem which Shah and Velman insist on.
Keywords
“truth”
“aim of belief”
“transparency”
“normative standard”
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