Simon Wimmer Williamson on belief: How (not) to go knowledge-first about belief

While knowledge-first accounts of a variety of phenomena, for instance the norm of assertion and justified belief, have received much attention, knowledge-first accounts of belief have received very little. This paper aims to remedy this situation. It discusses two knowledge-first accounts of belief, based on Williamson (2000, pp.46-47)’s tentative suggestion that to believe p is “to treat p as if one knew p”. Here is the plan. In §§2-4 I introduce the two accounts I focus on. Then (§5), I argue that they are subject to counterexample: given some orthodox assumptions, both imply that one believes many propositions that are metaphysically impossible to know, which we would not expect one to believe. By way of conclusion, §6 then introduces an amendment to the accounts, which helps one of them avoid the counterexample.