The Good and the True (or the Bad and the False)

Philosophy 88 (2):219-242 (2013)
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Abstract

It is commonplace to claim that it is good to believe the truth. In this paper, I reject that claim and argue that the considerations which might seem to support it in fact support a quite distinct though superficially similar claim, namely, that it is bad to believe the false. This claim is typically either ignored completely or lumped together with the previous claim, perhaps on the assumption that the two are equivalent, or at least that they stand or fall together. Such assumptions, I argue, are mistaken. While it is not always good to be right, it is always bad to be wrong. This is an interesting and overlooked asymmetry, which calls for further investigation

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Daniel Whiting
University of Southampton

Citations of this work

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Varieties of cognitive achievement.J. Adam Carter, Benjamin W. Jarvis & Katherine Rubin - 2015 - Philosophical Studies 172 (6):1603-1623.
Unfollowed Rules and the Normativity of Content.Eric V. Tracy - 2020 - Analytic Philosophy 61 (4):323-344.

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References found in this work

Epistemology and cognition.Alvin I. Goldman - 1986 - Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
Reason, truth, and history.Hilary Putnam - 1981 - New York: Cambridge University Press.
Knowledge in an uncertain world.Jeremy Fantl & Matthew McGrath - 2009 - New York: Oxford University Press. Edited by Matthew McGrath.
Reason, Truth and History.Hilary Putnam - 1981 - New York: Cambridge University Press.
Theory of knowledge.Roderick M. Chisholm - 1966 - Englewood Cliffs, N.J.,: Prentice-Hall.

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