NO ˆ US 43:2 (2009) 193–213 Desiring the Truth and Nothing But the Truth CHRISTIAN PILLER University of York What is it to be interested in truth? According to what I call the Standard View, the lover of truth wants to believe that p if and only if it is the case that p. In this paper, I argue that the Standard View is incorrect. In section 1, I explain the Standard View, which builds on William James’s insight that our interest in truth has two aspects—we want to acquire true beliefs and we want to avoid false beliefs. I criticize the Standard View in sections 2–4 by rejecting the idea that wanting to believe p only if p is the case is part of what, intuitively, is being interested in truth. Wanting to believe that p if it is the case that p, however, is central to our idea of being interested in truth. This leaves me with the problem of how to accommodate James’s insight of the dual nature of our interest in truth and I deal with this problem in sections 5 and 6. I suggest that a desire not to believe inconsistencies is a separate aspect of our interest in truth. I find support for my view in considering Chisholm’s remarks on the interest in truth but I will end up disagreeing with Ernest Sosa on these matters. 1. The Interest in Truth: James’s Insight and the Standard View Our interest in truth is an interest in being believers of truths. William James—and I will refer to this in what follows as James’s Insight—claims that there are two sides to this interest. 1 “There are two ways of looking at our duty in the matter of opinions,—ways entirely different, and yet ways about whose difference the theory of knowledge seems hitherto to have shown very little concern. We must know the truth; and we must avoid error,—these are our first and great commandments as would-be-knowers; but they are not two ways of stating an identical commandment, they are separable laws.” C  2009, Copyright the Authors Journal compilation C  2009, Wiley Periodicals, Inc. 193