In this dissertation, I wish to answer the two following questions. First, what is it for something—in particular for a mental state—to be correct or incorrect? And, secondly, what is the normative import of correctness and incorrectness; that is, what follows, normatively speaking, from the fact that it would be correct or incorrect to be in a certain mental state? These questions are often thought to be significant because many hope to understand facts about belief and value in terms of facts about correctness, and whether we can truly do so ultimately depends—at least in part—on what correctness is. This, in turn, requires that we answer the two questions above. In the first part of this dissertation, I will argue against many of the views which have been advanced as possible answers to the two questions above. More specifically, I will argue against accounts according to which correctness reduces to (a) a non-normative property, truth and accuracy in particular, to (b) a directive property, especially obligation, permission, merit, and reasons, or to (c) an evaluative property, in particular intrinsic or attributive goodness. I will argue that none of these views proves entirely satisfactory, and so that they should be resisted. I will also argue that we should resist the temptation to think of correctness as an unanalysable property. In the second part of my dissertation, I will argue that we can make sense of correctness in terms of conformity or deviation from a rule. In short: for one to φ correctly is for one to φ by the rules of φ. So, for example, just like one can play tennis correctly or incorrectly depending on whether one plays according the rules of tennis, one believes, desires, or fears correctly if and only if one one believes, desires, or fears something according to the rules that govern belief, desire, and fear. I will argue that this view, suitably understood, can accommodate many familiar intuitions about correctness and incorrectness, and that it can overcome the difficulties which are often thought to beset it.
