Abstract
In setting out their normative account of the truth-belief relationship, Nishi Shah
and David Velleman make two claims about a feature of doxastic deliberation they
call transparency. Firstly, transparency is a feature only of doxastic deliberation.
Secondly, teleological theories of the truth-belief relationship cannot account for
both transparency and the non-evidential factors present in instances of motivated
belief. Therefore, they argue, we should abandon teleological accounts in favour of
a normative one, which is able to make sense of both descriptive features of belief. I
argue that if their first claim about transparency is correct, then their second is a non
sequitur: if transparency is a feature only of doxastic deliberation, then it is described
and explained in terms of action rather than of belief. Since theories of belief do not
have to account for features of action, teleological accounts cannot be undermined by
their inability to explain transparency.