Believing at Will
Canadian Journal of Philosophy, Supplementary Volume 35:149-187 (2009)
| Abstract | It has seemed to many philosophers—perhaps to most—that believing is not voluntary, that we cannot believe at will. It has seemed to many of these that this inability is not a merely contingent psychological limitation but rather is a deep fact about belief, perhaps a conceptual limitation. But it has been very difficult to say exactly why we cannot believe at will. I earlier offered an account of why we cannot believe at will. I argued that nothing could qualify both as having been done “at will,” in the relevant sense, and as a belief. Thus, no believer could believe at will. If my arguments are correct, our inability to believe at will reveals no genuine lack in our powers of mind, any more than an inability to draw a square circle reveals a lack of artistic skill. My account has been recently criticized by Kieran Setiya, who has provided an account of his own. Here I revisit and defend my account, hopefully in a way that will both make my thought clearer and illumine some of the broader differences between Setiya’s approach and my own. I then briefly consider Setiya’s own argument, in part to further develop the contrast. | |||||||||
| Keywords | doxastic voluntarism voluntary Bernard Williams | |||||||||
| Categories | ||||||||||
| Options |
|
|||||||||
Download options| PhilPapers Archive |
Upload a copy of this paper Check publisher's policy on self-archival Papers currently archived: 5,653 |
| External links |
  Try with proxy. |
| Through your library | Configure |
Similar books and articlesDanny Frederick (2013). Doxastic Voluntarism: A Sceptical Defence. International Journal for the Study of Skepticism 3 (1):24-44.
Rico Vitz, Doxastic Voluntarism. Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
Pamela Hieronymi (2006). Controlling Attitudes. Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 87 (1):45-74.
Conor McHugh (2012). Epistemic Deontology and Voluntariness. Erkenntnis 77 (1):65-94.
Pascal Engel (2002). Volitionism and Voluntarism About Belief. Croatian Journal of Philosophy 2 (3):265-281.
Adam Kovach (2006). Epistemic Virtues and the Deliberative Frame of Mind. Social Epistemology 20 (1):105 – 115.
Michael J. Shaffer (2013). Doxastic Voluntarism, Epistemic Deontology and Belief-Contravening Commitments. American Philosophical Quarterly 50:73-82.
Matthias Steup (2011). Belief, Voluntariness and Intentionality. Dialectica 65 (4):537-559.
Nikolaj Nottelmann (2006). The Analogy Argument for Doxastic Voluntarism. Philosophical Studies 131 (3):559 - 582.
Robert Audi (2008). The Ethics of Belief: Doxastic Self-Control and Intellectual Virtue. Synthese 161 (3):403 - 418.
Matthias Steup (2000). Doxastic Voluntarism and Epistemic Deontology. Acta Analytica 15 (1):25-56.
Andrei A. Buckareff (2006). Doxastic Decisions and Controlling Belief. Acta Analytica 21 (1):102-114.
James Montmarquet (2008). Virtue and Voluntarism. Synthese 161 (3):393 - 402.
Analytics
Monthly downloads |
Added to index2011-02-22Total downloads95 ( #6,850 of 548,977 )Recent downloads (6 months)5 ( #15,091 of 548,977 )How can I increase my downloads? |
My notes
Discussion
