True for me/Good for me

Recall your irritation at hearing a student say "Well: P might not be true -- since nothing is -- but it is, at least, true for me." The problem is something like this: "true for me" doesn't pick out a kind of truth. Plausibly, then, the content of the student's assertion is just this: I believe P. And this is not news. Moreover, that they believe that P makes them bound by the norm of truth and so insofar as their claim that something is true for them is meant to be part of a package of views denying either the existence of truth or the normative force of truth their position is incoherent.

Merely believing that P, does not somehow make it so. Or, belief does not by itself create truth -- excepting the obvious truths about what is believed. The values in light of which epistemic norms are generated are not realized in the very act of believing.

The student supposes that his belief, independently of any relation to the facts (for there are none), realizes a kind of epistemic value. Because the belief is true for him he is permitted to do the normal things one does with belief: rely on it for inference, act on the basis of it, assert it publicly, not seek justifications for it, etc. I think that this would explain the intent behind claiming that P is true for him. But these practices are only intelligible (permitted) on the supposition that the belief in P is actually regulated by the aim of truth.

My hunch is that someone who claims that pleasure is intrinsically good is doing something like the student who claims -- as part of a nihilistic package of claims -- that P is true for him. And so we ought to be equally irritated... well that is a little strong. There are mitigating circumstances: like a long tradition of this kind of relativism.