Abstract
Sharon Ryan has recently argued that if one has compatibilist intuitions about free action, then one should reject the claim that agents cannot exercise direct voluntary control over coming to believe. In this paper I argue that the differences between beliefs and actions make the expectation of direct voluntary control over coming to believe unreasonable. So Ryan's theory of doxastic agency is untenable.
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Notes
See Buckareff (2006, forthcoming A) and Feldman (2001, 2004) for defenses of the propriety of ascribing epistemic obligations to agents even if they lack direct voluntary control over coming to believe.
In correspondence, Sharon Ryan confirmed my impression. She takes beliefs to be under our direct voluntary control and regards believing to be an action.
In correspondence, on March 16, 2005, Ryan informed me that she does not deny that beliefs can be formed on the basis of practical reasons and subject to direct voluntary control in response to such reasons.
I am not sure I know what Ryan means by ‘held’ or ‘holding a belief’. It could either mean what I mean by ‘coming to believe’ and its cognates (e.g., ‘acquiring a belief’ or ‘forming a belief’) or it could refer to some act associated with believing – e.g., holding the content of a belief to be true. In either case, Ryan's concern is clearly with one's coming to believe and even believing itself being under an agent's direct voluntary control.
In correspondence, Ryan confirmed that this is her view about belief-formation.
See Bishop (1989, chap. 5), Brand (1984), Buckareff (2005), Buckareff (forthcoming B), Buckareff and Zhu (2004), Mele (1992, chap. 10), Mossel (2005), Searle (1983, chap. 3), and Thalberg (1984) for arguments in defense of the claim that intentions must play a causally sustaining role in the etiology of action and not merely a ballistic role.
Richard Feldman raised this objection.
I apologize if this example is disgusting. But I have found that it does help illustrate my point better than other examples I have thought of in the past (many of which, I am afraid, are no less disturbing).
If we consider the complex event of bringing it about that I vomit, under one description it may be an intentional action. However, vomiting, along with some of the other components of the complex action, is itself a non-actional proper part of the complex action. This would be like what happens when someone who is a poor basketball player (such as myself) makes a basket. Making the basket may be the intentional outcome of my shooting the ball. And under a description the complex event is an intentional action. However, the event of the ball making it into the basket was not under my control in the way necessary for it to be actional. It is a non-actional proper part of the complex action just as my vomiting was. (I suppose that some ancient Romans, given their dietary practices, may have been able to induce vomiting and the vomiting would have been actional in the same way Larry Byrd's making a basket is actional.)
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Acknowledgments
I wish to thank Earl Conee, Richard Feldman, and Sharon Ryan for helpful comments on earlier drafts of this paper. None of them is responsible for any mistakes lurking in this paper.
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Buckareff, A.A. Compatibilism and Doxastic Control. Philosophia 34, 143–152 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-006-9013-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-006-9013-0