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Choosing and refusing: doxastic voluntarism and folk psychology

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Abstract

A standard view in contemporary philosophy is that belief is involuntary, either as a matter of conceptual necessity or as a contingent fact of human psychology. We present seven experiments on patterns in ordinary folk-psychological judgments about belief. The results provide strong evidence that voluntary belief is conceptually possible and, granted minimal charitable assumptions about folk-psychological competence, provide some evidence that voluntary belief is psychologically possible. We also consider two hypotheses in an attempt to understand why many philosophers have been tempted to view belief as involuntary: that belief is a prototype concept and that belief is a dual character concept. Altogether, our findings contribute to longstanding philosophical debates about the relationship between the will and the intellect, while also advancing scientific understanding of important social judgments.

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Notes

  1. For notable exceptions see Chisholm 1964; Montmarquet 1986; Heller 2000; Winters 1979; Shah 2002; Weatherson 2008; Van Fraassen 1984; Ginet 2001; Ryan 2003; Steup 2008; Naylor 1985; Johnston 1995.

  2. Throughout we report effect sizes using partial Eta squared (η 2p ), which is the amount of variance in the dependent variable explained by a given independent variable. We follow Ellis (2010) for interpreting the magnitude of effect sizes. For η 2p , values greater than or equal to .14 are large, greater than or equal to .06 but less than .14 are medium, and greater than or equal to .01 but less than .06 are small.

  3. We excluded data from 8 participants who failed a comprehension question.

  4. Indicates a paragraph break on the participant’s screen.

  5. Thanks to an anonymous referee for proposing the concerns.

  6. The argument also assumes a principle about intention formation—“the Control Principle” (Frankish 2007, p. 534)—which is also said to be “intuitively plausible,” but which we think is dubious.

  7. We use small caps to denote concepts.

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Acknowledgements

For helpful feedback, we thank Carolyn Buckwalter, Carl Ginet, Joshua Knobe, Shaun Nichols, Jonathan Schaffer, and Angelo Turri. Thanks also to an audience at Cornell University and this journal’s anonymous referees. This research was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the Ontario Ministry of Economic Development and Innovation, and the Canada Research Chairs program.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Philosophy Department, University of Waterloo, 200 University Avenue West, Waterloo, ON, N2L3G1, Canada

    John Turri & Wesley Buckwalter

  2. Cognitive Science Program, University of Waterloo, 200 University Avenue West, Waterloo, ON, N2L3G1, Canada

    John Turri

  3. Philosophy Department, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, College Avenue Campus, 106 Somerset St, 5th Floor, New Brunswick, NJ, 08901, USA

    David Rose

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Correspondence to John Turri.

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Turri, J., Rose, D. & Buckwalter, W. Choosing and refusing: doxastic voluntarism and folk psychology. Philos Stud 175, 2507–2537 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-017-0970-x

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