Doxastic Voluntarism

In this essay, I use a thought experiment to illustrate the human predicament if determinism is true, then draw the implications of this result for human rationality. This paper was read at the Eastern Division of the Society for Christian Philosophers at Assumption College in Worcester, Massachusetts in 2009.

I discuss voluntary belief in the context of a phenomenon unique to our current political moment: self- brainwashing. Using the very public QAnon movement as a case study, I argue that, although the conditions in which QAnon beliefs are formed is highly similar to those that produce false confessions, the QAnon believer and not the false confessor is morally and epistemically responsible because the former’s beliefs are voluntary: belief is voluntary when the believer has both the capacity and the opportunity (...) to revise their belief. I conclude that this voluntariness is because of the uniquely distributed, Internet-based nature of QAnon. (shrink)

Justificationism is the epistemology that enjoins us to choose our beliefs according to this principle: choose all and only those beliefs and at an appropriate degree of confidence that one can justify, either by an intellectual certificate or empirical warrant. My article argues that most forms of justificationism require the truth of doxastic voluntarism, the doctrine that one may choose ones specific beliefs. However, since belief is involuntary, justificationism is severely undermined. Justificationism as stated couldn’t be practised; since believing is (...) not something we can do at will as a basic action. Although devastating to any subjectivist justificationism, it does not undermine our ability to cultivate, through long-term choices, the most rational attitude in the search for truth and the growth of knowledge. A major rival of subjective justiticationism (SJ) is critical rationalism (CR). CR is the doctrine that progress in the growth of knowledge occurs through the unrelenting criticism of competing unjustified conjectural attempts to solve problems. The objective methods and standards involved in CR are unaffected because following (or not) an objective method is something we can do at will. (shrink)

This is the latest draft of chapter 1 of _A New Theory of Reasons for Belief: Pragmatic Foundations and Pluralistic Reasons_ (Under Contract with OUP). It outlines the view that is the focus of the book: Welfarist Pluralism. Welfarist pluralism is the view that all normative reasons for belief are grounded in wellbeing and that being in a positive epistemic state is one of the components of wellbeing. This chapter explains how one can develop a principled version of non-derivative pluralism (...) about normative reasons for belief while still accepting that theoretical reason has a single, unified pragmatic foundation. Updated 25 January 2023. (shrink)

Doxastic voluntarism is the thesis that our beliefs are subject to voluntary control. While there’s some controversy as to what “voluntary control” amounts to (see 1.2), it’s often understood as direct control: the ability to bring about a state of affairs “just like that,” without having to do anything else. Most of us have direct control over, for instance, bringing to mind an image of a pine tree. Can one, in like fashion, voluntarily bring it about that one believes a (...) specific proposition? Doxastic voluntarists hold that, at least in some circumstances—such as when the evidence is ambiguous—we can. Doxastic involuntarists, in contrast, maintain that we cannot. Some involuntarists hold that the concept of belief itself precludes the possibility of believing voluntarily. Others hold that the impossibility of voluntary belief is a contingent psychological fact. Historically, the issue of doxastic voluntarism has been connected to how many think about religious commitment: a prominent view of faith is that it is a voluntary decision to believe. Furthermore, the issue of voluntarism has also been viewed as having bearing on fundamental questions in epistemology. For example, are epistemic norms duties to believe in certain ways? Are there practical or moral reasons to believe? If the answer to either question is “yes,” it seems some measure of voluntary doxastic control is required. -/- In section 1, we expand on the definition of doxastic voluntarism, and survey various kinds of control (e.g. direct, indirect, long-range) and the doxastic attitudes we might control (e.g. outright belief, withholding, credences). In section 2, we discuss a number of historical views on doxastic voluntarism. In section 3, we survey motivations for rejecting doxastic voluntarism. There are two general strategies: arguments that appeal to psychological considerations, and conceptual arguments regarding the nature of belief. In section 4, we survey five approaches to defending voluntarism: those that appeal to epistemic permissivism, doxastic compatibilism, skepticism, one-off considerations, and non-standard views of belief. In section 5, we cover empirical work on doxastic voluntarism. The last two sections discuss two implications of voluntarism. In section 6, we discuss voluntarism’s implications for the ethics of belief, and in section 7, we discuss issues at the intersection of voluntarism and religious faith. (shrink)

According to a traditional interpretation of Kierkegaard, he endorses a strong form of direct doxastic voluntarism on which we can, by brute force of will, make a “leap of faith” to believe propositions that we ourselves take to be improbable and absurd. Yet most leading Kierkegaard scholars now wholly reject this reading, instead interpreting Kierkegaard as holding that the will can affect what we believe only indirectly. This paper argues that Kierkegaard does in fact endorse a restricted, sophisticated, and plausible (...) version of direct doxastic voluntarism. On Kierkegaard’s view, when we take ourselves to be in an epistemically permissive situation, we have the ability to form outright beliefs (but not credences) at will in virtue of our ability to voluntarily 1) open or close inquiry and 2) determine our attitude towards epistemic risk. (shrink)

Root, branch, and blossom, attention is intertwined with epistemology. It is essential to our capacity to learn and decisive of the evidence we obtain, it influences the intellectual connections we forge and those we remember, and it is the cognitive tool whereby we enact decisions about inquiry. Moreover, because it is both an epistemic practice and a site of agency, attention is a natural locus for questions about epistemic morality. This article surveys the emerging epistemology of attention, reviewing the existing (...) literature and sketching avenues for future investigation. It also argues for a reorientation of epistemology itself. This argument is the focus of Section 1. Section 2 briefly reviews philosophical accounts of attention, Section 3 focuses on issues in traditional, individualistic epistemology, and Section 4 turns to social epistemology. (shrink)

What should we believe when epistemic and practical reasons pull in opposite directions? The traditional view states that there is something that we ought epistemically to believe and something that we ought practically to (cause ourselves to) believe, period. More recent accounts challenge this view, either by arguing that there is something that we ought simpliciter to believe, all epistemic and practical reasons considered (the weighing view), or by denying the normativity of epistemic reasons altogether (epistemic anti-normativism). I argue against (...) both accounts and defend the traditional view. An agent can be blameworthy in doxastic dilemmas for complying with their practical but not their epistemic reasons. This reveals how epistemic reasons are normative: the concept of epistemic blame helps us track epistemic normativity. (shrink)

How can we be responsible for our attitudes if we cannot normally choose what we believe, desire, feel, and intend? This problem has received much attention during the last decades, both in epistemology and in ethics. Yet its connections to discussions about reasons and rationality have been largely overlooked. Responsibility for Rationality is the first book that connects recent debates on responsibility and on rationality in a unifying dialectic. It achieves four main goals: first, it reinterprets the problem of responsibility (...) for attitudes as a problem about the normativity of rationality; second, it breaks the stalemate between rationalist and voluntarist accounts of mental responsibility by defending a hybrid view; third, it provides novel support to recent accounts of the normativity of rationality by arguing that epistemic reasons and other ‘right-kind’ reasons are genuine normative reasons; fourth, it sets the foundations and the research agenda for an ‘ethics of mind’, including an illustration of how to approach applied issues in epistemology within the presented framework. After spelling out connections between responsibility and rationality (part I), the book engages in debates in normative epistemology (part II) and brings them to bear on the broader field of an ethics of mind (part III). -/- Full draft of current version available on request, comments welcome! (shrink)

In this essay, I develop an account of belief as commitment to the truth of a proposition. On my account, to believe p is to represent p as true by way of committing to the truth of p. To commit to the truth of p, in the sense I am interested in, is to exercise the normative power to subject one’s representation of p as true to the normative standard of truth. As I argue, my account of belief as commitment (...) of the truth explains a variety of features of belief that separate it from attitudes like acceptance, supposition, and imagination. Most importantly, it explains the distinctive connection between belief and evidence. Moreover, my account helps solve three further puzzles about belief, regarding doxastic voluntarism, the aim of belief, and Moore’s paradox. (shrink)

In this article, I consider the cases of religious Moorean propositions of the form ‘d, but I don't believe that d’ and ‘d, but I believe that ~d’, where d is a religious dogma, proposition, or part of a creed. I argue that such propositions can be genuinely and rationally asserted and that this fact poses a problem for traditional analysis of religious assertion as an expression of faith and of religious faith as entailing belief. In the article, I explore (...) the possibility of undermining these commonly held assumptions and argue that the assertability of religious Moorean propositions can be justified by an account of faith as an intention to form religious beliefs. In the end, I also consider the consequences of such a stance, especially concerning the debate on the ethics of religious belief and doxastic voluntarism. (shrink)

Sometimes people posit "beliefs" to explain mundane instrumental actions (e.g., Neil believes the switch is connected to the light, so he flipped the switch to illuminate the room). Sometimes people posit "beliefs" to explain group affiliation or identity (e.g., in order to belong to the Christian Reformed Church Neil must believe that God is triune). If we set aside the commonality of the word "belief," we can pose a crucial question: Is the cognitive attitude typically involved in the first "light (...) switch" sort of case the same as the cognitive attitude typically involved in the second "Trinity" sort of case? Or: Is mundanely believing the same cognitive relation as groupishly believing? In this essay, I argue that the answer is no. Mundane Beliefs play their instrumental roles well if they are true, and their manner of processing is accordingly sensitive to evidence. Groupish Beliefs play their identity-constituting roles well if they are distinctive, and their manners of processing accordingly allow for and often support distortions of evidence and truth. The manners of processing are thus so different that--despite the common word "belief"--philosophy of mind and epistemology would do well to recognize distinct cognitive attitudes. (shrink)

What does it mean to hold a belief? Some of our ways of speaking in English suggest that to hold a belief is to have something in your mind: beliefs are things we acquire, defend, recover, and so on (Abelson, 1986). That is, believing is a matter of being in a state of having a thing. In this paper, I will argue for an alternative: believing is something we do. This is not a new suggestion. For instance, Matthew Boyle (2011) (...) defends a theory of belief as an activity, which he traces back to Aristotle. This paper, however, makes two new contributions: first, I argue for an analogy between belief and planning that fleshes out what it would mean to understand belief as an activity, and second, I aim to show how the resulting view can help sense of a variety of theories in cognitive psychology that suggest cognitive information storage is dynamic and reconstructive. (shrink)

Hilde Lindemann argues that personhood is the shared practice of recognizing and responding to one another. She calls this practice holding. Holding, however, can fail. Holding failure, by stereotyping for example, can inhibit others’ epistemic confidence and ability to recall true beliefs as well as create an environment of racism or sexism. How might we avoid holding failure? Holding failure, I argue, has many epistemic dimensions, so I argue that moral encroachment has the theoretical tools available to avoid holding failures. (...) The goal of this paper, therefore, is to articulate and understand the epistemology of holding in an attempt to remedy holding failure. I show that the virtue of wokeness emerges from an epistemic environment tainted with moral encroachment. I argue that as long as an individual is woke, she will have a tendency to avoid holding failures. Wokeness and moral encroachment, consequently, are fundamental to the epistemology of holding and consistent proper holding. (shrink)

Self-verifying judgments like _I exist_ seem rational, and self-defeating ones like _It will rain, but I don’t believe it will rain_ seem irrational_._ But one’s evidence might support a self-defeating judgment, and fail to support a self-verifying one. This paper explains how it can be rational to defy one’s evidence if judgment is construed as a mental performance or act, akin to inner assertion. The explanation comes at significant cost, however. Instead of causing or constituting beliefs, judgments turn out to (...) be mere epiphenomena, and self-verification and self-defeat lack the broader philosophical import often claimed for them. (shrink)

Descartes appears to hold that everything we believe is the product of a voluntary choice. Scholars have been reluctant to take this particularly radical version of doxastic voluntarism as Descartes’ considered position. I argue that once Descartes’ compatibilist conception of free will as well as his position on the ‘freedom of indifference’ are taken into account, the primary motivations for the rejection of the aforementioned radical version of doxastic voluntarism lose their force. Consequently, we may take Descartes at his word (...) when he maintains that everything we believe, we believe freely – even if we cannot believe anything we wish. (shrink)

Epistemic permissivism is the thesis that the evidence can rationally permit more than one attitude toward a proposition. Pascal’s wager is the idea that one ought to believe in God for practical reasons, because of what one can gain if theism is true and what one has to lose if theism is false. In this paper, I argue that if epistemic permissivism is true, then the defender of Pascal’s wager has powerful responses to two prominent objections. First, I argue that (...) if permissivism is true, then permissivism is true about theistic belief. Second, I show how epistemic permissivism about theistic belief dispels two objections to Pascal’s wager: the objection that wagering is impossible, and the objection that wagering is epistemically impermissible. (shrink)

It is tempting to think (though many deny) that epistemic agents exercise a distinctive kind of control over their belief‐like attitudes. My aim here is to sketch a “bottom‐up” model of epistemic agency, one that draws on an analogous model of practical agency, according to which an agent's conditional beliefs are reasons‐responsive planning states that initiate and sustain mental behavior so as to render controlled.

According to the pragmatic hypothesis testing theory, how much evidence we require before we believe something varies depending on the expected costs of falsely believing and disbelieving it. This theory has been used in the self-deception debate to explain our tendencies towards self-deceptive belief formation. This article argues that the application of this theory in the self-deception debate has overlooked the distinction between belief and acceptance, and that the theory in all likelihood models acceptance rather than belief, in which case (...) it is probably not relevant to the explanation of self-deception. It is suggested, however, that doxastic error costs might be relevant to explaining some types of self-deception, though they feature in an evolutionary explanation of it rather than a psychological one. (shrink)

Much of the force behind doxastic involuntarism comes from our pre-theoretical judgement that any effort to form a belief simply by intending to form it must remain unsuccessful. However, despite this, ordinary language use of locutions like “chose to believe” are common. In this article, we present new experimental data that shows that the prevalence of ordinary language talk of “chosen beliefs” is no obstacle to doxastic involuntarism in a standard sense (pace Turri et al. 2018). While we employ the (...) methods of experimental philosophy, our argument also concerns the fundamental question as to what those methods can achieve: as is typical of philosophical debates, the debate over doxastic voluntarism involves a refined theoretical concept, specifically a refined concept of voluntary belief. In such debates, we cannot determine our pre-theoretical position by conducting surveys on those who may not yet own the requisite theoretical concepts. (shrink)

The notion of belief appears frequently in cognitive science. Yet it has resisted definition of the sort that could clarify inquiry. How then might a cognitive science of belief proceed? Here we propose a form of pluralism about believing. According to this view, there are importantly different ways to "believe" an idea. These distinct psychological kinds occur within a multi-dimensional property space, with different property clusters within that space constituting distinct varieties of believing. We propose that discovering such property clusters (...) is empirically tractable, and that this approach can help sidestep merely verbal disputes about what constitutes “belief.”. (shrink)

Morality bears on what we should forget. Some aspects of our identity are meant to be forgotten and there is a distinctive harm that accompanies the permanence of some content about us, content that prompts a duty to forget. To make the case that forgetting is an integral part of our moral duties to others, the paper proceeds as follows. In §1, I make the case that forgetting is morally evaluable and I survey three kinds of forgetting: no-trace forgetting, archival (...) forgetting, and siloing. In §2, I turn to how we practice these forms of forgetting in our everyday lives and the goods these practices facilitate by drawing on examples ranging from the expunging of juvenile arrest records to the right to privacy. In §3, I turn to how my account can help us both recognize and address a heretofore neglected source of harm caused by technology and big data. In §4, I end by addressing the concern that we lack control over forgetting and thus can't be required to forget. I argue this challenge can be answered, but there’s a harder challenge that can’t. Forgetting is under threat. To address this challenge and preserve forgetting, we must change the world. (shrink)

Há pelo menos três modos pelos quais o debate sobre a conduta doxástica se relaciona com a ética. O primeiro e menos contencioso assinala que o ato de crer, analogamente às ações morais, responde a um tipo de normatividade, não necessariamente moral. Por exemplo, as normas para o ato de crer podem ser puramente epistêmicas. Nesse caso, essas normas diriam respeito a como o agente deve visar ou buscar a verdade. O segundo modo como o debate da ética da crença (...) se relaciona com a ética diz respeito à fundamentação das normas para crer. A ideia é que a adoção dessas normas se fundamenta com base em razões morais e sociais. Por fim, o modo mais substancial consiste em sustentar que o ato de crer, ao menos em alguns casos, é em parte um fenômeno essencialmente moral e que, portanto, razões morais incidem diretamente sobre a legitimidade da crença. Por razões morais, alguém poderia ser recriminado por sustentar uma crença ainda que tivesse evidência favorável para ela. Neste verbete, tangenciando o clássico debate entre Clifford e William James e reações mais contemporâneas ao debate, apresentaremos e discutiremos cada um desses aspectos da ética da crença. (shrink)

While many authors distinguish belief from acceptance, it seems almost universally agreed that no similar distinction can be drawn between degrees of belief, or credences, and degrees of acceptance. I challenge this assumption in this paper. Acceptance comes in degrees and acknowledging this helps to resolve problems in at least two philosophical domains. Degrees of acceptance play vital roles when we simplify our reasoning, and they ground the common ground of a conversation if we assume context probabilism, i.e., that the (...) common ground must be represented with probability spaces rather than possible worlds. (shrink)

This paper defends the view, put roughly, that to think that p is to guess that p is the answer to the question at hand, and that to think that p rationally is for one’s guess to that question to be in a certain sense non-arbitrary. Some theses that will be argued for along the way include: that thinking is question-sensitive and, correspondingly, that ‘thinks’ is context-sensitive; that it can be rational to think that p while having arbitrarily low credence (...) that p; that, nonetheless, rational thinking is closed under entailment; that thinking does not supervene on credence; and that in many cases what one thinks on certain matters is, in a very literal sense, a choice. Finally, since there are strong reasons to believe that thinking just is believing, there are strong reasons to think that all this goes for belief as well. (shrink)

Much of the force behind doxastic involuntarism comes from our pre-theoretical judgement that any effort to form a belief simply by intending to form it must remain unsuccessful. However, despite this, ordinary language use of locutions like “chose to believe” are common. In this article, we present new experimental data that shows that the prevalence of ordinary language talk of “chosen beliefs” is no obstacle to doxastic involuntarism in a standard sense. While we employ the methods of experimental philosophy, our (...) argument also concerns the fundamental question as to what those methods can achieve: as is typical of philosophical debates, the debate over doxastic voluntarism involves a refined theoretical concept, specifically a refined concept of voluntary belief. In such debates, we cannot determine our pre-theoretical position by conducting surveys on those who may not yet own the requisite theoretical concepts. (shrink)

According to Universal Epistemic Deontology, all of our doxastic attitudes are open to deontological evaluations of obligation and permissibility. This view thus implies that we are responsible for all of our doxastic attitudes. But many philosophers have puzzled over whether we could be so responsible. The paper explores whether this puzzle can be resolved, and Universal Epistemic Deontology defended, by appealing to a view of responsibility I call the Revelatory View. On that view, an agent is responsible for something when (...) it reveals the kind of person the agent is. I explore four ways of developing the Revelatory View and argue that none ultimately defend Universal Epistemic Deontology. (shrink)

In this paper, I offer reasons to conclude that either belief impermissivism or credal impermissivism is false. That is to say, I argue against the conjunction of belief impermissivism and credal impermissivism. I defend this conclusion in three ways. First, I show what I take to be an implausible consequence of holding that for any rational credence in p, there is only one correlating rational belief-attitude toward p, given a body of evidence. Second, I provide thought experiments designed to support (...) the intuition that there are at least a few credences in some cases for which more than one belief-attitude is rationally permissible. Third, I provide one possible theoretical grounding for my position by appeal to Jamesian values. (shrink)

It is often argued that there are no practical reasons for belief because we could not believe for such reasons. A recent reply by pragmatists is that we can often believe for practical reasons because we can often cause our beliefs for practical reasons. This paper reveals the limits of this recently popular strategy for defending pragmatism, and thereby reshapes the dialectical options for pragmatism. I argue that the strategy presupposes that reasons for being in non-intentional states are not reducible (...) to reasons to act. Pragmatists who want to preserve a motivational constraint on reasons therefore have exactly two options: either arguing that there are irreducible reasons for being in non-intentional states ; or arguing that we can believe directly for practical reasons. I argue that the prospects for the former option are dim because irreducible reasons to be in states are hard to square with the motivational constraint on reasons. Returning to the more traditional route of arguing for pragmatism by defending a version of doxastic voluntarism therefore seems to be the more promising way for pragmatists to go. (shrink)

This short paper offers a skeptical solution to Åqvist's paradox of epistemic obligation. The solution is based on the contention that in SDL/KDT logics the externalist features of knowledge, about which we cannot have obligations, are obscured.

What does it mean to have “strong beliefs”? My thesis is that it can mean two very different things. That is, there are two distinct psychological features to which “strong belief” can refer, and these often come apart. I call the first feature epistemic confidence and the second identity centrality. They are conceptually distinct and, if we take ethnographies of religion seriously, distinct in fact as well. If that’s true, it’s methodologically important for the psychological sciences to have measures that (...) tease them apart. In this paper, I critique some measures that are currently in use and propose some strategies for developing measurement tools that track the distinction in question. (shrink)

Doxastic involuntarists, as I categorize them, say that it’s impossible to form a belief as an intentional action. But what exactly is it to form a belief, as opposed to simply getting yourself to have one? This question has been insufficiently addressed, and the lacuna threatens the involuntarists’ position: if the question isn’t answered, their view will lack any clear content; but, after considering some straightforward ways of answering it, I argue that they would make involuntarism either false or insignificant. (...) I also examine several involuntarist arguments, and find them faltering at just this point: inadequate attention to belief-formation results in unsound arguments or insignificant conclusions. The viability of involuntarism as a meaningful position, I conclude, turns on whether the notion of belief-formation can be further developed. (shrink)

Epistemic agency is a crucial concept in many different areas of philosophy and the cognitive sciences. It is crucial in dual process theories of cognition as well as theories of metacognition and mindreading, self-control, and moral agency. But what is epistemic agency? The Tinkering Mind argues that epistemic agency has two distinct and incompatible definitions. It can be simply understood as intentional mental action, or as a distinct non-voluntary form of evaluative agency. The core argument of the book demonstrates that (...) both definitions lead to surprising and counterintuitive consequences. If epistemic agency is a form of intentional action, then this implies that the radical theory of extended cognition has to be true. If, on the other hand, epistemic agency is not intentional action but evaluative agency, then intentional epistemic actions like deliberation are not truly cognitive but merely catalytic. Once established, the distinction between these two options sheds new light on various and diverse philosophical and psychological debates from dual process theories to debates on choice and self-control. (shrink)

The claim that epistemic oughts stem from the “role” of believer is widely discussed in the epistemological discourse. This claim seems to stem from the common view that, in some sense, epistemic norms derive from what it is to be a believer. Against this view, I argue that there is no such thing as a “role” of believer. But there is a role of knower, and this is the role to which some epistemic norms—epistemic role oughts—are attached. Once we conceive (...) of epistemic role oughts as attaching to the role of knower (and not the “role” of believer) we can better understand the nature of epistemic obligation and doxastic control. In advancing a new epistemic role ought approach that recognizes knowers as the subjects of epistemic role oughts, I explain why many epistemic oughts—epistemic role oughts—have normative force and presuppose voluntary control. (shrink)

This paper provides a critical overview of recent work on epistemic blame. The paper identifies key features of the concept of epistemic blame and discusses two ways of motivating the importance of this concept. Four different approaches to the nature of epistemic blame are examined. Central issues surrounding the ethics and value of epistemic blame are identified and briefly explored. In addition to providing an overview of the state of the art of this growing but controversial field, the paper highlights (...) areas where future work is needed. (shrink)

Philosophers are divided on whether it is possible to intend believed-impossible outcomes. Several thought experiments in the action theory literature suggest that this is conceptually possible, though they have not been tested in ordinary social cognition. We conducted three experiments to determine whether, on the ordinary view, it is conceptually possible to intend believed-impossible outcomes. Our findings indicate that participants firmly countenance the possibility of intending believed-impossible outcomes, suggesting that it is conceptually possible to intend to do something that one (...) believes is impossible. (shrink)

According to an influential view that I call agentialism, our capacity to believe and intend directly on the basis of reasons—our rational agency—has a normative significance that distinguishes it from other kinds of agency (Bilgrami 2006, Boyle 2011, Burge 1996, Korsgaard 1996, Moran 2001). Agentialists maintain that insofar as we exercise rational agency, we bear a special kind of responsibility for our beliefs and intentions; and it is only those attitudes that represent the exercise of rational agency that are truly (...) our own. In this paper I challenge these agentialist claims. My argument centers on a case in which a thinker struggles to align her belief to her reasons, and succeeds only by resorting to non-rational methods. Because she relies on non-rational methods, this revision of her belief does not express her rational agency, in the agentialist sense. I argue that this process nevertheless expresses her capacities for rationality and agency; that she is responsible for the belief shaped through this process; and that the revised belief is truly her own. So rational agency is not distinctive in the ways that agentialists contend. (shrink)

Epistemologists often appeal to the idea that a normative theory must provide useful, usable, guidance to argue for one normative epistemology over another. I argue that this is a mistake. Guidance considerations have no role to play in theory choice in epistemology. I show how this has implications for debates about the possibility and scope of epistemic dilemmas, the legitimacy of idealisation in Bayesian epistemology, uniqueness versus permissivism, sharp versus mushy credences, and internalism versus externalism.

On some religious traditions, there are obligations to believe certain things. However, this leads to a puzzle, since many philosophers think that we cannot voluntarily control our beliefs, and, plausibly, ought implies can. How do we make sense of religious doxastic obligations? The papers in this issue present four responses to this puzzle. The first response denies that we have doxastic obligations at all; the second denies that ought implies can. The third and fourth responses maintain that we have either (...) indirect or direct control over our beliefs. This paper summarizes each response to the puzzle and argues that there are plausible ways out of this paradox. (shrink)

The literature contains a popular argument in favor of the position that conditional attitudes are not simple attitudes with conditional contents but, rather, have a more complex structure. In this paper I show that an analogous argument applies to what we might call quantificational attitudes—like an intention to follow every bit of good advice I receive or a desire to get rabies shots for each bite I incur from an infected bat. The conditions under which these attitudes are satisfied and (...) thwarted are not captured by claiming that they are simple attitudes with quantificational contents. So, the argument supports a novel position—that quantificational attitudes have a more complex structure. After sketching the form of this extra structure, I show how similar considerations count in favor of the existence of genuinely quantificational speech acts. (shrink)

On an intellectualist approach to belief, the intellectual endorsement of a proposition (such as “The working poor deserve as much respect as the handsomely paid”) is sufficient or nearly sufficient for believing it. On a pragmatic approach to belief, intellectual endorsement is not enough. Belief is behaviorally demanding. To really, fully believe, you must also “walk the walk.” This chapter argues that the pragmatic approach is preferable on pragmatic grounds: It rightly directs our attention to what matters most in thinking (...) about belief. (shrink)

Philosophers have recently argued that self-fulfilling beliefs constitute an important counter-example to the widely accepted theses that we ought not and cannot believe at will. Cases of self-fulfilling belief are thought to constitute a special class where we enjoy the epistemic freedom to permissibly believe for pragmatic reasons, because whatever we choose to believe will end up true. In this paper, I argue that this view fails to distinguish between the aim of acquiring a true belief and the aim of (...) believing what is true. While one cannot usually fail to establish that one will acquire a true belief without establishing the truth of the believed proposition, in the case self-fulfilling belief the two can come apart. I argue that insofar as the aim of belief has to do with determining whether the believed proposition is true, it will be both impossible and impermissible to believe for pragmatic reasons. (shrink)

Is there a distinctively epistemic kind of blame? It has become commonplace for epistemologists to talk about epistemic blame, and to rely on this notion for theoretical purposes. But not everyone is convinced. Some of the most compelling reasons for skepticism about epistemic blame focus on disanologies, or asymmetries, between the moral and epistemic domains. In this paper, I defend the idea that there is a distinctively epistemic kind of blame. I do so primarily by developing an account of the (...) nature of epistemic blame. My account draws on a prominent line of theorizing in moral philosophy that ties blame to our relationships with one another. I argue that with my account of epistemic blame on hand, the most compelling worries about epistemic blame can be deflated. There is a distinctively epistemic kind of blame. (shrink)

Is there an epistemic analogue of moral motivational internalism? The answer to this question has implications for our understanding of the nature of epistemic normativity. For example, some philosophers have argued from claims that epistemic judgement is not necessarily motivating to the view that epistemic judgement is not normative. This paper examines the options for spelling out an epistemic analogue of moral motivational internalism. It is argued that the most promising approach connects epistemic judgements to doxastic dispositions, which are related (...) to motivation in a fairly tenuous sense. It is also argued that this approach currently lacks a plausible and informative account of the nature and workings of these doxastic dispositions, and, hence, an explanation of the range of phenomena internalist theses typically set out to explain. The most promising route for developing such an account, based on recent expressivist work, is investigated and found inadequate for the task. (shrink)

Religious people are expected to believe in their religious creeds faithfully and firmly. How can one acquire such belief? In order to answer that question, I propose a model for all belief-like propositional attitudes. The model differentiates, firstly, between voluntary and involuntary, and, secondly, between categorical and quantitative belief-like attitudes. The whole variety of belief-like attitudes is then reduced into two main groups. The first group combines all voluntary and categorical attitudes, and the second group combines all involuntary and quantitative (...) attitudes. The resultant first-group attitude is called “judgment,” and the second-group attitude—“confidence.” Thus, judgment is the generic voluntary categorical propositional attitude, which can have only two values: “true” or “false.” Confidence is the generic involuntary quantitative attitude, which can have any value between “certainly false” and “certainly true.” A religious person can form the creedal judgment simply by her act of will, while her confidence depends upon the actual content of her doxastic system. However, a person can indirectly increase her confidence in the creedal statement via relevant factors that control her doxastic system. Such factors include corroboration, desirability, and ethicality of the proposition, and also its centrality and entrenchment in the doxastic system. I suggest several practical guidelines for increasing the relevant factors. I claim that the suggested model and the practical guidelines for acquiring the “faithful and firm belief” can be used not only within the religious context, but can also be applied to any propositional beliefs. (shrink)

In the attempt to understand the norms governing believers, epistemologists have tended to focus on individual belief as the primary object of epistemic evaluation. However, norm governance is often assumed to concern, at base, things we can do as a free exercise or manifestation of our agency. Yet believing is not plausibly conceived as something we freely do but rather as a state we are in, usually as the mostly automatic or involuntary result of cognitively processes shaped by nature, bias, (...) and ideology. In this paper, I sketch a response to this tension. This response is based on rejecting the traditional theoretical focus on an individual’s particular beliefs as the primary object of normative epistemic evaluation. If we shift our focus from the particular beliefs of individuals to the community and its information managing practices, we may lessen the tension between norm governance and automaticity and involuntariness in a way that construes autonomous cognitive agency as a resultant of rather than a precondition for our norm-governed epistemic sociality. (shrink)

Caracterizando a existência como um processo de escolha e decisão que converge para a constituição do sujeito como tal, Kierkegaard atribui à existência a condição de um projeto em uma construção que encerra três possibilidades existenciais fundamentais, a saber, o estético, o ético e o religioso. Dessa forma, o artigo assinala que, constituindo-se uma dimensão em cujo estádio a procura do sentido ou a busca do absoluto circunscreve-se à imanência, o modo existencial estético caracteriza-se como a fruição da subjetividade consigo (...) própria através do instante do prazer sensual em um movimento que implica a sedução como esforço de conquista de si que, contudo, escapa ao seu poder em uma relação que converge para o desespero, haja vista que a renovação de forma indefinida da condição originária do amor esgota-se na generalização. E se o estágio ético encerra a integração na comunidade social através da institucionalização da repetição como um modo de vida baseado na objetividade e na racionalidade, a conformação do sujeito ao modus vivendi e ao modus essendi do geral implica a harmonização da sua subjetividade com a generalidade do bem e do mal por meio de um processo que torna-se incapaz de resolver a questão da sua desordem existencial. Assim sendo, o artigo mostra que, se a virtude moral que o ético impõe converge para a impossibilidade de superação do desespero que caracteriza a busca do absoluto na imanência, a atitude religiosa, abdicando da realidade em sua totalidade finita em função da relação absoluta com o Absoluto, demanda a suspensão teleológica do ético e tende a instaurar a autenticidade existencial através de um movimento que mantém correspondência com a fé como o “salto” que implica a consciência de si em sua singularidade e a espiritualidade individual. (shrink)

How is it possible for deontic evaluations of beliefs to be appropriate if we do not have voluntary control over our beliefs? Gaultier argues that we should reject the claim that we can have indirect control over beliefs in virtue of the basic voluntary control we have over our actions. We have another kind of indirect control over beliefs: we can demonstrate doxastic strength or, on the contrary, doxastic weakness when forming our beliefs. That is, we can resist or, on (...) the contrary, fail to resist the influence of some of our conative attitudes. And in the same way that we take our actions to be open to blame when they result from having demonstrated weakness of will even though this does not consist in doing something at will, we take our beliefs to be open to blame and hence subject to deontic evaluation, when they result from having demonstrated doxastic weakness even though this does not consist in doing something at will. (shrink)