Abstract
People ordinarily suppose that there are certain things they ought to believe and certain things they ought not to believe. In supposing this to be so, they make corresponding assumptions about their belief-forming capacities. They assume that they are generally responsive to what they think they ought to believe in the things they actually come to believe. In much the same sense, people ordinarily suppose that there are certain things they ought to desire and do and they make corresponding assumptions about their capacities to form desires and act on them. We chart these assumptions in this paper and argue that they entail that people are responsible and free on two fronts. They are free and responsible believers, and free and responsible desirers.
We would like to thank John O’Leary-Hawthorne, Galen Strawson and Susan Wolf for their very helpful comments. We are also grateful for comments received when the paper was presented to the annual Australasian Association of Philosophy conference at the University of New England in 1995, to Human Action and Causality, a conference held at Utrecht University in 1996, and, as well, when it was read to staff seminars at the Australian National University, the University of Hong Kong and the University of Caen.
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Pettit, P., Smith, M. (1998). Freedom in Belief and Desire. In: Bransen, J., Cuypers, S.E. (eds) Human Action, Deliberation and Causation. Philosophical Studies Series, vol 77. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-5082-8_5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-5082-8_5
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