Defending Evidence‐Resistant Beliefs

There is a view in the literature around beliefs that evidence responsiveness is a necessary feature of beliefs. The reasoning is that because beliefs are governed by truth they must be evidence responsive. A mental state that fails to be evidence responsive, therefore, could not be a belief as it could not be governed by truth. The implication is that even those evidence‐resistant mental states that appear to be beliefs are in fact something else. I argue that evidence resistance is a feature of at least some beliefs, so evidence responsiveness cannot be a necessary feature of belief.