Should I Believe the Truth ?

1 Introduction It is a platitude that beliefs can be correct or incorrect. The most obvious candidate for belief's correctness condition is truth. This suggests that the following principle holds: (1) For any p: the belief that p is correct if and only if it is true that p Krister Bykvist and Anandi Hattiangadi (hereafter, B&H) argue that (1) might not be platitudinous when 'correct' 'is interpreted as a normative term' and when 'belief' is taken to concern 'the psychological act of believing not the proposition believed' (2007: 277). According to B&H, (1), so understood, is false. In this paper, I shall argue that their case rests on a particular way of capturing the alleged normative dimension to (1), namely as concerning what one ought to do. It is at the very least not obvious that one must formulate the normative interpretation in these terms and a certain alternative—which B&H do not consider 1 and which generally receives little attention—is available. Using B&H's discussion as a springboard, I shall articulate that neglected way of reformulating (1) and defend it against objections parallel to those that B&H offer. In closing, I shall consider in brief what bearing all of this has