An alleged problem for possible worlds semantics
regarding anything as true? Might there not be representations that promote the satisfaction of the subject's desires just if their content is true but which are more primitive than beliefs? This is not the place to answer these questions. Nevertheless, it seems that to regard something as true, no less than to believe it, is to adopt an attitude which makes us responsive to norms of rationality. Being in a representational state with the right motivational powers does not obviously imply being subject in the same way to the relevant norms, and so does not obviously imply being in a state of regarding as true. In assessing the motivational theory of belief, we might do better to consider, not whether the motivational theory fails to distinguish one kind of regarding-as-true attitude from another, but rather whether it fails to rule out the possibility of states which share the motivational role of beliefs, but which cannot be considered even as attitudes in which the subject regards something as true.4