Maverick Philosopher

Limited Doxastic Voluntarism and Epoché

Are there any beliefs over which we have direct voluntary control? 

I am a limited doxastic voluntarist: I hold that there are some beliefs over the formation of which one has direct voluntary control. That is, there are some believable contents — call them propositions — that I can bring myself to believe at will, others that I can bring myself to disbelieve at will, and still others about which I can suspend judgment, thereby enacting something like the epoché (ἐποχή) of such ancient Pyrrhonian skeptics as Sextus Empiricus.

Note that the issue concerns the formation of beliefs, not their maintenance, and note the contrast between direct and indirect formation of beliefs. Roughly, I form a belief directly by just forming it, not by doing something else as a means to forming it. Suppose the year is 1950 and you are a young person, sincere and idealistic, eager to consecrate your life to some cause higher than a bourgeois existence of conspicuous consumption in suburbia. You have vibrant stimulating friends who are members of the Communist Party USA. They tell you that the Revolution is right around the corner. You don't believe it, but you want to believe it. So you go to their meetings, accept Party discipline, toe the Party line, and soon you too believe that the Revolution is right around the corner. In this example, the formation of belief is indirect. You do various things (go to the meetings, repeat the formulas, hawk the Daily Worker, toe the line, etc.) in order to acquire the belief. But then in 1956 you learn of Krushchev's denunciation of Stalin and your belief in the glorious Revolution and its imminence suddenly collapses to be replaced by an opposing belief. The formation of the opposing belief is direct.

A correspondent supplies an example of the third case, that of suspending belief:

Suspending belief. Sometimes in the face of good or strong evidence that p, I refuse to believe that p or again that not-p. I suspend any opinion on p.

This has always been my attitude on OJ and the murders he was charged with. Recently I talked with someone who had been teaching OJ knife-fighting in conjunction with a Commando-style TV show that never got launched. His evidence was excluded from the trial. Even in the face of this new evidence that OJ was competent with a knife, I do not form an opinion as to whether or not OJ killed his wife. (This is close to the classical skeptical epoche, except I do not bother to inquire and try to build a counterbalancing case for the opposite belief. Pyrrhonian skepticism says that I always can build such a case and the result will be spontaneous cessation of belief.)

In both these cases [I omitted my correspondent's first example] I think it's clear that what I believe (or don't believe ) is a function of what I will or wish to believe, trumping the evidence on hand and any reasonable induction therefrom. Hopefully, in both case it is also a principled refusal on my part to buy into beliefs that condemn other people. To believe my wife a poisoner or OJ a killer, I require evidence several parsecs beyond a reasonable doubt. You can say that that standard is too liberal [too stringent?], but I can choose to live (and die) by it and it is for several grounds an attractive ethics of belief.

This addresses my concern about the possibility of an ethics of belief.   My correspondent suspends judgment, holds no opinion, on the guilt or innocence (as charged) of O.J. Simpson. By suspending judgment, he deliberately impedes or rather prevents the formation of two beliefs, the belief that O.J is guilty and the belief that O.J. is not guilty. I find that I have the same power of doxastic abstention, except that in this particular case I assent to the proposition that O. J. is guilty since I judge the evidence that he is guilty as charged to be overwhelming, and the notion that 'racism' played any part in this case utterly absurd. (My ethics of belief is perhaps less stringent than my correspondent; but we both have an ethics of belief.)

Our question does not concern the content of an ethics of belief, but the very possibility of one whatever its content. Since 'ought' implies 'can,' if I ought to withhold judgment in some cases — and surely there are some cases in which I ought to withhold judgment — then I can withhold judgment. I have the power to withhold judgment; hence my epoché (ἐποχή) is voluntary. So here seems to be a case in which believing/disbelieving is under the direct control of the will: I decide to neither believe nor disbelieve. And from this it follows that the application of deontological categories is legitimate. For example, "You ought not believe that your neighbor Jones is a homosexual on the basis of such flimsy evidence as that he is unmarried and has a Martha Stewart-like interest in home furnishings! You ought to suspend judgment!"

My provisional conclusion is that our manifest ability to suspend judgment in some cases shows that we do have direct voluntary control over some of our believings. I have no control over my believing that a naked woman is standing in front of me if in fact such is the case (in good light, etc.) And I have no control over my believing that the Imperium Romanum no longer rules Western Europe (to adapt an example from Alston, Beyond 'Justification', p. 63). But I do have direct voluntary control over my believing that neighbor Jones is a homosexual.

I am a limited doxastic voluntarist: I hold that there are some beliefs over the formation of which one has direct voluntary control. That is, there are some believable contents — call them propositions — that I can bring myself to believe at will, others that I can bring myself to disbelieve at will, and still others about which I can suspend judgment, thereby enacting something like the epoché (ἐποχή) of such ancient Pyrrhonian skeptics as Sextus Empiricus.

Note that the issue concerns the formation of beliefs, not their maintenance, and note the contrast between direct and indirect formation of beliefs. Roughly, I form a belief directly by just forming it, not by doing something else as a means to forming it. Suppose the year is 1950 and you are a young person, sincere and idealistic, eager to consecrate your life to some cause higher than a bourgeois existence of conspicuous consumption in suburbia. You have vibrant stimulating friends who are members of the Communist Party USA. They tell you that the Revolution is right around the corner. You don't believe it, but you want to believe it. So you go to their meetings, accept Party discipline, toe the Party line, and soon you too believe that the Revolution is right around the corner. In this example, the formation of belief is indirect. You do various things (go to the meetings, repeat the formulas, hawk the Daily Worker, toe the line, etc.) in order to acquire the belief. But then in 1956 you learn of Krushchev's denunciation of Stalin and your belief in the glorious Revolution and its imminence suddenly collapses to be replaced by an opposing belief. The formation of the opposing belief is direct.

A correspondent supplies an example of the third case, that of suspending belief:

Suspending belief. Sometimes in the face of good or strong evidence that p, I refuse to believe that p or again that not-p. I suspend any opinion on p.

This has always been my attitude on OJ and the murders he was charged with. Recently I talked with someone who had been teaching OJ knife-fighting in conjunction with a Commando-style TV show that never got launched. His evidence was excluded from the trial. Even in the face of this new evidence that OJ was competent with a knife, I do not form an opinion as to whether or not OJ killed his wife. (This is close to the classical skeptical epoche, except I do not bother to inquire and try to build a counterbalancing case for the opposite belief. Pyrrhonian skepticism says that I always can build such a case and the result will be spontaneous cessation of belief.)

In both these cases [I omitted my correspondent's first example] I think it's clear that what I believe (or don't believe ) is a function of what I will or wish to believe, trumping the evidence on hand and any reasonable induction therefrom. Hopefully, in both case it is also a principled refusal on my part to buy into beliefs that condemn other people. To believe my wife a poisoner or OJ a killer, I require evidence several parsecs beyond a reasonable doubt. You can say that that standard is too liberal [too stringent?], but I can choose to live (and die) by it and it is for several grounds an attractive ethics of belief.

This addresses my concern about the possibility of an ethics of belief.   My correspondent suspends judgment, holds no opinion, on the guilt or innocence (as charged) of O.J. Simpson. By suspending judgment, he deliberately impedes or rather prevents the formation of two beliefs, the belief that O.J is guilty and the belief that O.J. is not guilty. I find that I have the same power of doxastic abstention, except that in this particular case I assent to the proposition that O. J. is guilty since I judge the evidence that he is guilty as charged to be overwhelming, and the notion that 'racism' played any part in this case utterly absurd. (My ethics of belief is perhaps less stringent than my correspondent; but we both have an ethics of belief.)

Our question does not concern the content of an ethics of belief, but the very possibility of one whatever its content. Since 'ought' implies 'can,' if I ought to withhold judgment in some cases — and surely there are some cases in which I ought to withhold judgment — then I can withhold judgment. I have the power to withhold judgment; hence my epoché (ἐποχή) is voluntary. So here seems to be a case in which believing/disbelieving is under the direct control of the will: I decide to neither believe nor disbelieve. And from this it follows that the application of deontological categories is legitimate. For example, "You ought not believe that your neighbor Jones is a homosexual on the basis of such flimsy evidence as that he is unmarried and has a Martha Stewart-like interest in home furnishings! You ought to suspend judgment!"

My provisional conclusion is that our manifest ability to suspend judgment in some cases shows that we do have direct voluntary control over some of our believings. I have no control over my believing that a naked woman is standing in front of me if in fact such is the case (in good light, etc.) And I have no control over my believing that the Imperium Romanum no longer rules Western Europe (to adapt an example from Alston, Beyond 'Justification', p. 63). But I do have direct voluntary control over my believing that neighbor Jones is a homosexual.

The Pragmatic and the Evidential

Substack latest.

On believing beyond the evidence. Immoral? Irrational?

On the Eternal in Man

Theodor Haecker, Journal in the Night (tr. Alexander Dru, Pantheon Books, 1950, p. 67, #263, written 1940):

The man who explicitly does not believe and does not will to believe (for the will to believe belongs to believing) in an eternal life, that is to say in a personal life after death, will become an animal, an animal being which among other things, man is. Man is 'planned as spirit,' as Kierkegaard puts it, but that includes the immortality of the soul. Whoever relinquishes that also gives up the spirit of man.

Man alone among the animals raises the question whether he is more than an animal.  His raising of this question does not prove  that he is more than an animal; perhaps it proves only that he is the most pretentious of all animals, a crazy animal, an evolutionary fluke who merely fancies himself more than  an animal. Such a fanciful conceit might even be accorded survival value within a naturalist scheme. Thinking himself the crown of creation, a child of God, with divine sanction to lord it over, but also cherish and protect the critters beneath him, this lofty self-conception, even if false, might enhance his chances of survival. It could be like that, or at least I cannot see a way definitively to exclude this epistemic possibility.

Or it could be like this:  Man's having a world (Welt) and not merely an environment (Umwelt) like the animals points to a higher origin, a spiritual origin,  and a higher destiny.  Elsewhere I catalog twelve meanings of 'world'; here I am using the term in my twelfth sense, the transcendental-phenomenological sense.  It remains an open question whether the world in this sense has an ontic anchor in God, whether the light of the transcendental-phenomenological Lichtung (clearing) has an onto-theological Source. We cannot know it to be the case, but we can reasonably believe it to be the case. That is as good as it gets here below.  And so I am brought around, once again, to the fact that, in the end, one must decide what to believe and how to live.

Haecker is right to point out that "the will to believe belongs to believing." Not all belief is voluntary, but religious and anti-religious belief is.  The will comes into it, as it does not in the case of some such mundane belief as that the Sun has risen. You are free to believe that you are a complex physical system slated for utter annihilation in a few years, months, days, minutes, and you are free to believe that you are "planned as spirit."  Either way reasons can be adduced, reasons that are not obviously bad reasons.

Is Belief Voluntary?

Why would it matter? Here is one reason.

If the experts are evenly divided on some question, many will urge that that the rational thing to do is to suspend belief.  To satisfy the dictates of reason, then, one ought to suspend or withhold belief in some cases. But 'ought' implies 'can.'  So, if one ought to suspend belief, then one has the ability to suspend belief, which implies that at least some beliefs or rather believings are under a person's voluntary control.  I say that some are. That makes me a limited doxastic voluntarist.  Catherine Elgin says that none are:

Belief is not voluntary. Belief aims at truth in the sense that a belief is defective if its content is not true. If believing were something we could do or refrain from doing at will, the connection to truth would be severed. If Jack could believe that Neanderthals were an evolutionary dead end just because he wanted to, then his believing that Neanderthals were a evolutionary dead end would not amount to his thinking  that 'Neanderthals were an evolutionary dead end' is true. For nothing about the fate of the Neanderthals is affected by what he wants. ("Persistent Disagreement" in Disagreement, eds. Feldman and Warfield, Oxford UP 2013, p. 60) 

This argument leaks like a sieve. Either that, or I don't understand it.

It is true that belief is connected to truth. But what exactly is the connection?  If I believe that p, then I believe it to be true that p.  That is the connection. I cannot believe that p without believing that it is true that p. But of course my believing that it is true that p is consistent with p's being false.

Now suppose that the evidence available to me for and against the existence of God is equal, and I choose to believe for prudential reasons, say, or for no reason at all, that God exists. This choosing  to believe would not sever the connection between believing and truth. For again,  the connection is just this: my believing that p entails my believing that p is true.  That connection remain in place whether or not believing is voluntary.  My believing that God exists does not make it true that God exists. Believing entails believing to be true; it does not entail being true!

The same holds if I choose to disbelieve that God exists or if I choose to suspend belief. My disbeleiving that p does not make p false. And my suspending that p does not make p indeterminate in truth value.

Elgin tells us that "a belief is defective if its content is not true."  But surely an occurrent mental state is a believing whether or not its content is true.  A false belief is just  as much a belief as a true belief.  Surely Elgin is not telling us that only true beliefs are beliefs! But then what is she saying?

Elgin writes, "If Jack could believe that Neanderthals were an evolutionary dead end just because he wanted to, then his believing that Neanderthals were an evolutionary dead end would not amount to his thinking  that 'Neanderthals were an evolutionary dead end' is true."

Elgin seems to have a 'straw man' conception of doxastic voluntarism. After all, no one holds that the fate of the Neanderthals depends on what anyone thinks or believes. If the paleontologists are evenly divided on the question and Jack chooses to believe that the Neanderthals were an evolutionary dead end, he is not thereby committing himself to the absurd notion that his so believing makes it true that the Neanderthals were an evolutionary dead end.   

With respect to a purely theoretical question like this, one the answer to which has no practical consequences for the believer, the doxastically (as opposed to practically) rational thing to do would be to suspend judgment/belief.  If so, then some believings/disbelievings/suspensions come under the control of the will.

More on Animal Suffering and the Problem of Evil with Responses to Caiati and Pollack

Vito Caiati, to whom I responded earlier, replies:

In your excellent response to my email on animal suffering and theism, you write, “If one suffers from the problem of (natural) evil, there is little a philosopher qua philosopher can do. Pastoral care is not his forte. But if one can gain some intellectual light on the philosophical problem, that light might help with the existential-psychological problem.” This is precisely the sort of help that you have provided me, and I sincerely thank you it. I have struggled with the problem of animal pain and suffering most of my life, and it has long poked into my theistic beliefs like a sharp thorn. In considering the empirical fact of the baby elephant’s atrocious death, I now see that I assumed what instinctively horrified me was objectively evil and hence pointlessly evil. I now understand that, although I continue to hate the empirical fact, this assumption is unwarranted.

I am fortunate to have attracted Dr. Caiati as a correspondent.  The attraction of the like-minded is one of the beauties of blog. The formulation in the penultimate sentence above, however, is not quite right.  If a state of affairs is objectively evil, it does not follow that it is pointlessly evil. It may or may not be. As I see it, the pointlessly evil is a proper subset of the objectively evil. Everything pointlessly evil is objectively evil, but not conversely. Evils can be justified by greater goods that they subserve. They remain evils, however,  even if justified. It could be -- it is possible for all we know -- that predation is justified by a greater good unattainable without predation.  And this is so whether or not we can know, or even imagine, what this greater good might be. The main point here is that there is reason to doubt whether an event or a state of affairs that is  objectively evil is also pointlessly evil.  

The following two propositions cannot both be true:

1) God (defined in terms of the standard omni-attributes) exists.

2) Pointless (unjustified, gratuitous) evils exist.

So if (2) is true, then (1) is false. But how do we know that (2) is true? Is (2) true? What the skeptical theist will point out is that we cannot directly and validly infer (2) from

3) Objective evils exist.

This allows the theist 'doxastic wiggle room.'   He is not rationally compelled to abandon theism in the face of (3). (1) and (3) can both be true.  And this is so even if I cannot explain how it is possible that they both be true.

Vito continues:

I had thought to place my instinctive reaction on a different plane than St. Paul’s declaration that one can see “that the universe is a divine artifact, and that God exists from the things that have been made,” in that the latter involves a two stage intellectual process, that of (1) the perception of an empirical fact, the existence and nature of the universe, and (2) the attribution of this fact to the action of some conscious cause, that is, to the action of a predefined concept of a Creator God, as understood in the Judaic and early Christian traditions. In the case of the baby elephant, I believed that the additive [additional] conceptual stage was not involved, since my emotional reaction was akin to what most of humanity feels when encountering a horrendous evil, such as a pointless cruelty or murder. In other words, I took it as an instinctive moral reaction that preceded any conceptualization. As such, I assumed that its source was inherent in my moral essence as a man and hence prior to discursive argument. From what you write, I now see that I was probably wrong in making this assumption, since the empirical event gives me only the right to my emotional reaction and not to any larger philosophical claims as to the nature of God that I would care to derive from it.

Vito understands me quite well.

To give the Pauline two-step a Kantian twist: I am filled with wonder by "the starry sky above me and the moral law within me." That is the first step.  The second step is to infer straightaway that there must be a transcendent Creator of the universe who is also the Source of the moral law within me.  One can reasonably doubt the validity of that immediate inference.  (And if you try to mediate it by the adducing of some further proposition, then the skeptic will train his sights upon that proposition.) By the same token, one can reasonably doubt that the extremely strong, pervasive, and obtrusive appearance of unjustified natural evil is a veridical appearance, and thus that the objective evil of predation is a pointless or unjustified evil.

Malcolm Pollack, responding to my first response to Caiati, and targeting my claim that in the end one must decide what to believe and how to live, writes:

"One must decide.” Well, yes — but how? Bill shows us that reason alone has insufficient grounds for a verdict; neither case is proven beyond a reasonable doubt. Upon what do we fall back, then? [. . .]

So — if reason is helpless to acquit, and conscience votes to convict, then what is left for the believer? Only the persistence of his sense of the transcendent, and the yearning to believe. If we are to let God off the hook, the problem of “pointless evil” must simply be set aside as a mystery beyond our comprehension. Can we do it? Ought we do it?

I am not sure that Malcolm understands quite what I mean when I say that "one must decide what to believe" in the final analysis and with respect to a matter like this. He wants to how one decides. Answer: You just do it after having reviewed all the considerations pro et contra.  It's a free decision. There is no algorithm.  There is no decision procedure that one can mechanically follow. The considerations pro and con do not decide the matter. What you "fall back upon" is is your own free choice to either believe that (1) or to believe that (2). You stop thinking and perform an act of will. Thought is endless and its conclusions are inconclusive. Thought goes around and around.  To take a stand one must jump of the merry-go-round.

"But isn't that arbitrary?" Of course, in one sense of 'arbitrary.' But not in the sense of being random or uninformed by rational considerations pro and con that precede the decision. The necessity of action, the necessity of an abrupt shift from the plane of thought to the plane of action, ought to dawn on one once one sees that (i) one must act, and that (ii) reasons, taken singly or collectively, do not necessitate a course of action.  This is most obvious when one is in a state of 'doxastic equipoise,' that situation in which the considerations pro and the considerations con cancel out.  But even if one set of reasons strikes one as stronger than the other, opposing, set, one still has to stop thinking and decide to act on the stronger set of reasons. For if one continues thinking, one will almost certainly modify if not reject one's initial assessment.

There are all these considerations that speak for God and all these others ones that speak against God, the loudest being those having to do with evil.  The Leibnizian "Gentlemen, let us calculate" cuts no ice in a situation like this.  As I said, there is no algorithm. There is no rational procedure that does the work  for me.   The work is done by an act of will, informed, but not necessitated, by the reasons that  the intellect surveys.  It would be nice if there were reasons the contemplation of which would force me this way or that in a matter like the one before us. The truth, however, is that I am forced, not to believe this or that, but to take responsibility for what I believe whatever it is.

Seeing as how I cannot achieve the fixation of belief by continuing to mull over reasons pro and con, I achieve said fixation by an act of will.

"Why not suspend belief?"  One is free to do that, of course. One might just take no position on the question whether God exists or not and whether there are pointless evils or not.  But the taking of no position is itself a free decision. One decides not to decide. Not to decide is to decide. Now this might be theoretically reasonable, but for beings like us, interested (inter esse)  beings,  this is practically and prudentially unreasonable.

Consider the question of the existence of the (immortal) soul. Can one prove its existence? No. Can one prove its nonexistence? No. Are there good arguments on both sides? Yes. Is the cumulative case on the one side stronger than the cumulative case on the other? Possibly. But you still have to decide what you will believe in this matter and how you will live. 

Suppose you decide to suspend judgment and forget about the whole matter. You will then live as if there is no (immortal) soul and not attend to its care or worry about its future well-being.  You will not have committed yourself theoretically, but you will have committed yourself existentially. Should the soul prove to exist, then you will have acted imprudently.  You will have acted in a prudentially irrational way.

If, on the other hand, you live as if God and the soul are real, and it turns out that they are not, what have you lost?  Nothing of any value comparable to the value of what you will gain if God and the soul turn out to be real and you lived in the belief that they are real. I put this question to an atheist a while back and he replied, "You lost your intellectual integrity."  Not so!  For both belief and unbelief are rationally acceptable.  

So I will say the following to Malcolm.  Not everyone is psychologically capable of religious belief, but if you are, and if you agree that it could be the case for all we know that God and the soul are real, and that the pro arguments have weight even f they are not rationally compelling, then I say: go ahead and believe and act in accordance with the beliefs.  What harm could it do?

And it might make you a better man.  For example, if you believe that you will be judged post-mortem for what you did and left undone in this life, then this belief might contribute to your being a better man than you would have been without this belief -- even if the belief  turns out to be false.   Religion does not have to be true to be life-enhancing and conducive to human flourishing.  If, however, you believe it not to be true, then you won't live in accordance with it, and it will not have any life-enhancing effect.

Is 'Justified Belief' a Solecism?

Panayot Butchvarov, Anthropocentrism in Philosophy: Realism, Antirealism, Semirealism, Walter de Gruyter, 2015, p. 33:

As used in epistemology, "justified" is a technical term, of obscure meaning and uncertain reference, indeed often explicitly introduced as a primitive.  In everyday talk, it is a deontic term, usually a synonym of 'just' or 'right,' and thus 'justified belief' is a solecism.  For it is actions that are justified or unjustified, and beliefs are not actions.

The argument is this, assuming that moral justification is in question:

a. Actions alone are morally either justified or unjustified.
b. No belief is an action.
Therefore
c. No belief is morally either justified or unjustified.
Therefore
d. 'Morally justified belief' is a solecism.

(b) is not evident.    Aren't some beliefs actions or at least analogous to actions?  I will argue that some beliefs are actions because they come under the direct control of the will.  As coming under the direct control of the will, they are morally evaluable.

1. It makes sense to apply deontological predicates to actions. Thus it makes sense to say of a voluntary action that it is obligatory or permissible or impermissible. But does it make sense to apply such predicates to beliefs and related propositional attitudes? If I withhold my assent to proposition p, does it make sense to say that the withholding is obligatory or permissible or impermissible? Suppose someone passes on a nasty unsubstantiated rumor concerning a mutual acquaintance. Is believing it impermissible? Is disbelieving it obligatory?  Is suspending judgment required? Or is deontological evaluation simply out of place in a case like this?

2. It makes sense to apply deontological predicates to actions because they are under voluntary control. Thus it makes sense to say that one ought to feed one's children because (apart from unusual circumstances) it is within one's power to feed one's children. So if it makes sense to apply deontological predicates to beliefs and related propositional attitudes, then they too must be under voluntary control.  If I cannot help but believe what I believe, then I cannot be morally censured for believing, disbelieving, or suspending judgment.

3. This brings us to the question of doxastic voluntarism: Are any of our (occurrent) believings under our direct voluntary control as regards their coming into existence? To introduce some terminology:

Extreme doxastic voluntarism: ALL beliefs are such that their formation is under one's direct voluntary control.
Limited doxastic voluntarism: There are only SOME beliefs over the formation of which one has direct voluntary control.
Doxastic involuntarism: There are are NO beliefs over the formation of which one has direct voluntary control.

Note that the issue concerns the formation of beliefs, not their maintenance, and note the contrast between direct and indirect formation of beliefs. Roughly, I form a belief directly by just forming it, not by doing something else as a means to forming it.

4.  I am a limited doxastic voluntarist.

a) Clearly, one cannot believe at will just anything.  One cannot believe at will what is obviously false. It is obviously false that the Third Reich continues to exercise its brutal hegemony over Europe, and  no one who is sane has the power to believe this falsehood at will, just by deciding to believe it.

b) One cannot not believe what is obviously the case. It is obviously the case that this thing in front of me is a computer monitor. Can I disbelieve this perceptual deliverance? No. Seeing is believing. It is a more subtle question whether I can suspend judgment in the manner of Husserl's phenomenological epoche. But this is a topic for a separate post. For now I am happy to concede that one cannot disbelieve at will what is obviously the case.

c) The matter becomes much more difficult when we turn to propositions from religion, philosophy, science and elsewhere that are neither obviously true nor obviously false. It is not obviously true that God exists, but neither is it obviously true that God does not exist. It is not obviously true that doxastic voluntarism is true, but neither is it obviously true that it is not true.

Suppose I am concerned with the freedom of the will, study the issue thoroughly, but am torn between libertarianism and compatibilism. It is surely not obvious that one or the other is true. If the positions strike me as equally well-supported, then nothing at the level of intellect inclines me one way or the other. Must not will come in to decide the matter, if the matter must be decided? Or consider the weightier question of the existence of God. Suppose the arguments pro et contra strike me as equally probative so that, at the level of intellect, I am not inclined one way or the other. If the issue is to be resolved, must I not simply decide to believe one way or the other? But William Alston, doxastic involuntarist, will have none of this: "How could we do that any more than, lacking any reasons at all for one alternative rather than another, we decide to believe that the number of ultimate particles in the universe is even rather than odd?" (Beyond "Justification," p. 65)

This response packaged in a rhetorical question strikes me as very weak. No one cares what the number of particles is let alone whether it is odd or even. Indeed, it is not clear that the question even makes sense. (How could one possibly count them?) The God question is toto caelo different. In Jamesian terms, the God question is live, forced, momentous, and not intellectually decidable. A live issue is one that matters to us and seems to need deciding. Whether the number of ultimate particles is odd or even is certainly not live. A forced issue is one that is compulsory in the sense that we cannot not take a stand on it: to remain agnostic or uncommitted on the God question is practically to live as an atheist. There is nothing forced about the particles question. A momentous issue is one about which it matters greatly which position we adopt. The particles question is clearly not momentous. An intellectually undecidable question is one which, if it is to be decided, must be decided by an act of will.

So what I would say to the doxastic involuntarist is that in some cases -- those that fit the Jamesian criteria are clear but not the only examples -- the will does in fact come into play in the formation of beliefs and indeed legitimately comes into play. To the extent that it does, a limited doxastic voluntarism is true.

If so, then some belief formation is under the control of the will and is morally evaluable, contra Butchvarov.

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Against Historical Relativism: Adorno on What is No Longer Believable After Auschwitz

1. It makes sense to apply deontological predicates to actions. Thus it makes sense to say of a voluntary action that it is obligatory or permissible or impermissible. But does it make sense to apply such predicates to beliefs and related propositional attitudes? If I withhold my assent to proposition p, does it make sense to say that the withholding is obligatory or permissible or impermissible? Suppose someone passes on a nasty unsubstantiated rumor concerning a mutual acquaintance. Is believing it impermissible? Is disbelieving it obligatory?  Is suspending judgment required? Or is deontological evaluation simply out of place in a case like this?

2. It makes sense to apply deontological predicates to actions because they are under voluntary control. Thus it makes sense to say that one ought to feed one's children because (apart from unusual circumstances) it is within one's power to feed one's children. So if it makes sense to apply deontological predicates to beliefs and related propositional attitudes, then they too must be under voluntary control.  If I cannot help but believe what I believe, then I cannot be morally censured for believing, disbelieving, or suspending judgment.

3. This brings us to the question of doxastic voluntarism: Are any of our (occurrent) believings under our direct voluntary control as regards their coming into existence? To introduce some terminology:

Extreme doxastic voluntarism: ALL beliefs are such that their formation is under one's direct voluntary control.
Limited doxastic voluntarism: There are only SOME beliefs over the formation of which one has direct voluntary control.
Doxastic involuntarism: There are are NO beliefs over the formation of which one has direct voluntary control.

Note that the issue concerns the formation of beliefs, not their maintenance, and note the contrast between direct and indirect formation of beliefs. Roughly, I form a belief directly by just forming it, not by doing something else as a means to forming it.

4.  I am a limited doxastic voluntarist.

a) Clearly, one cannot believe at will just anything.  One cannot believe at will what is obviously false. It is obviously false that the Third Reich continues to exercise its brutal hegemony over Europe, and  no one who is sane has the power to believe this falsehood at will, just by deciding to believe it.

b) One cannot not believe what is obviously the case. It is obviously the case that this thing in front of me is a computer monitor. Can I disbelieve this perceptual deliverance? No. Seeing is believing. It is a more subtle question whether I can suspend judgment in the manner of Husserl's phenomenological epoche. But this is a topic for a separate post. For now I am happy to concede that one cannot disbelieve at will what is obviously the case.

c) The matter becomes much more difficult when we turn to propositions from religion, philosophy, science and elsewhere that are neither obviously true nor obviously false. It is not obviously true that God exists, but neither is it obviously true that God does not exist. It is not obviously true that doxastic voluntarism is true, but neither is it obviously true that it is not true.

Suppose I am concerned with the freedom of the will, study the issue thoroughly, but am torn between libertarianism and compatibilism. It is surely not obvious that one or the other is true. If the positions strike me as equally well-supported, then nothing at the level of intellect inclines me one way or the other. Must not will come in to decide the matter, if the matter must be decided? Or consider the weightier question of the existence of God. Suppose the arguments pro et contra strike me as equally probative so that, at the level of intellect, I am not inclined one way or the other. If the issue is to be resolved, must I not simply decide to believe one way or the other? But William Alston, doxastic involuntarist, will have none of this: "How could we do that any more than, lacking any reasons at all for one alternative rather than another, we decide to believe that the number of ultimate particles in the universe is even rather than odd?" (Beyond "Justification," p. 65)

This response packaged in a rhetorical question strikes me as very weak. No one cares what the number of particles is let alone whether it is odd or even. Indeed, it is not clear that the question even makes sense. (How could one possibly count them?) The God question is toto caelo different. In Jamesian terms, the God question is live, forced, momentous, and not intellectually decidable. A live issue is one that matters to us and seems to need deciding. Whether the number of ultimate particles is odd or even is certainly not live. A forced issue is one that is compulsory in the sense that we cannot not take a stand on it: to remain agnostic or uncommitted on the God question is practically to live as an atheist. There is nothing forced about the particles question. A momentous issue is one about which it matters greatly which position we adopt. The particles question is clearly not momentous. An intellectually undecidable question is one which, if it is to be decided, must be decided by an act of will.

So what I would say to the doxastic involuntarist is that in some cases -- those that fit the Jamesian criteria are clear but not the only examples -- the will does in fact come into play in the formation of beliefs and indeed legitimately comes into play. To the extent that it does, a limited doxastic voluntarism is true.

If so, then some belief formation is under the control of the will and is morally evaluable, contra Butchvarov.

Decision and Conclusion

How much of decision is included in every conclusion?  Did you conclude that there is no God or decide that there is no God?  Some of both?  Which then is the major player here, reason or will?

Can Theistic Arguments Deliver More Than Plausibility?

James N. Anderson writes,

. . . a good theistic argument doesn’t have to be irrefutable, but surely we should expect the conclusions of our arguments to rise above the level of mere plausibility. If indeed the heavens declare the glory of God (Ps. 19:1), and God’s existence can be “clearly perceived” from the creation (Rom. 1:20), it would appear that God has given humans something stronger than “clues” about his existence.

I tend to differ with Professor Anderson on this point.  I don't believe theistic arguments can deliver more than plausibility. Here below we are pretty much in the dark.  Just as our wills are weak and our hearts divided by disordered and inordinate loves, our minds are clouded.  The existence of God is not a plain fact, but the infirmity of reason is.  The believer hopes that light will dawn, fitfully and partially in  this life, and more fully if not completely in the next.  But he doesn't know this, nor can he prove it.  That there is Divine Light remains a matter of faith, hope, and yearning.  There is light enough in this life to render rational our faith, hope, and yearning.  But there is also darkness enough to render rational doubt and perhaps despair.  The individual must decide what he will believe and how he will live.  He remains free and at risk of being wrong.  There are no compelling arguments one way or the other when it comes to God and the soul. 

If a black cat jumps on my lap in a well-lit room, I have no doxastic 'wiggle room' as to whether a cat is on my lap.  It's not the same with God.  I don't believe God's existence can be "clearly perceived" from the existence or order of the natural world.  What is "clearly perceived" leaves me quite a lot of doxastic wiggle room.

I develop this thought in Is There Any Excuse for Unbelief?  Romans 1: 18-20.

Ebeneezer Scrooge and the Limits of Doxastic Voluntarism

Here is my favorite scene from my favorite movie version of Dickens' Christmas Carol.  "There is more of gravy than of grave about you. Humbug!"

Does Knowledge Entail Belief or Exclude Belief?

A reader who says he is drawn to the view that knowledge excludes belief comments:

I am taking a philosophy class now that takes for granted that knowledge entails belief. My sense is that most philosophers now think that that condition is obvious and settled. They tend to dispute what "justification" means, or add more conditions to the Justified True Belief formula.

That knowledge is justified true belief is a piece of epistemological boilerplate that has its origin in Plato's Theaetetus.  The JTB analysis is extremely plausible.  It is first of all self-evident that there is no false knowledge.  So, necessarily, if S knows that p, then 'p' is true.  It also seems obvious that one can have a true belief without having knowledge.  Suppose I believe that at this very moment Peter (who is 60 miles away) is teaching a class on the philosophy of science, and suppose it is true that at this very moment he is teaching such a class; it doesn't follow that I know that he is teaching such a class.    Knowledge requires justification, whatever exactly that is.  Finally, if S knows that p, how can it fail to be the case that S believes that p?  It may seem obvious that knowledge entails belief.  Necessarily, whatever I know I believe, though not conversely.

So I agree with my reader that most philosophers now think that the belief condition is "obvious and settled."  But most academic philosophers are fashionistas: they follow the trends, stick to what's 'cool,'  and turn up their noses at what they deem politically incorrect.  And they read only the 'approved' journals and books.  I pronounce my 'anathema' upon them.  In any case it is not obvious that knowledge entails belief.

The Case for Saying that Knowledge Excludes Belief

Why not say this:  Necessarily, if S knows that p, then it is not the case that S believes that p?

One cannot understand belief except in relation to other mental states. So let's consider how believing and knowing are related, taking both as propositional attitudes.  They are obviously different, and yet they share a common element. Suppose we say that what is common to S's knowing that p and S's believing that p is S's acceptance of p. I cannot (occurrently) believe that Oswald acted alone unless I accept the proposition that Oswald acted alone, and I cannot (occurrently) know that he acted alone with accepting the very same proposition. To accept, of course, is to accept-as-true. It is equally obvious that what is accepted-as-true might not be true. Those who accept that the earth is flat accept-as-true what is false. Now one could analyze 'S knows that p' as follows:

a) S unconditionally accepts-as-true p
b) p is true
c) S is justified in accepting-as-true p.

This is modeled on, but diverges from, the standard justified-true-belief (JTB) analysis of 'know' the locus classicus of which is Plato's Theaetetus.

And one could perhaps analyze 'S believes that p' as follows:

a) S unconditionally accepts-as-true p
d) S does not know that p.

These analyses accommodate the fact that there is something common to believing and knowing, but without identifying this common factor as belief. The common factor is acceptance. A reason for not identifying the common element as belief is that, in ordinary language, knowledge excludes belief. Thus if I ask you whether you believe that p, you might respond, 'I don't believe it, I know it!' Do I believe the sun is shining? No, I know the sun is shining. Do I know that I will be alive tomorrow? No, but I believe it. That is, I give my firm intellectual assent to the proposition despite its not being evident to me. Roughly, belief is firm intellectual assent in the absence of compelling evidence.

Surely this is what we mean by belief in those cases that clearly count as belief. Lenny the liberal, for example, believes that anthropogenic global warming is taking place and is a dire environmental threat. Lenny doesn't know these two putative facts; he believes them: he unconditionally accepts, he firmly assents to, the two propositions in the absence of compelling evidence. And it seems clear that an element of will is involved in our boy's belief since the evidence does not compel his intellectual assent. He decides to believe what he believes. His believing is in the control of his will. This does not mean that he can believe anything he wants to believe. It means that a 'voluntative surplus' must be superadded to his evidence to bring about the formation of his belief. Without the voluntative superaddition, he would simply sit staring at his evidence, so to speak. There would be no belief and no impetus to action. Beliefs typically spill over into actions. But there would not be even a potential 'spill over' unless there were a decision on Lenny's part to go beyond his evidence by superadding to it his firm intellectual assent.

"But aren't you just using 'believes' in an idiosyncratic way?"

It is arguably the other way around. Someone who says he believes that the sun is shining when he sees that it is shining is using 'believes' in an idiosyncratic way.  He is using 'believes' in a theory-laden way, the theory being the JTB analysis of 'knows.'

"But then isn't this just a terminological quibble? You want to substitute 'accepts' or 'accepts-as-true' for 'believes' in the standard JTB analysis of 'knows' and you want to reserve 'believes' for those cases in which there is unconditional acceptance but not knowledge."

The question is not merely terminological. There is an occurrent mental state in which one accepts unconditionally propositions that are not evident. It doesn't matter whether we call this 'belief' or something else.  But calling it 'belief' comports well with ordinary language.

Let me now elaborate upon this account of belief, or, if you insist, of Aquinian-Pieperian belief.

1. Belief is a form of acceptance or intellectual assent. To believe that p is to accept *p*, and to disbelieve that p is to reject *p*. One may also do neither by abstaining from both acceptance and rejection.  (Asterisks around a sentence make of the sentence a name of the Fregean proposition expressed by the sentence.)

2. If acceptance is the genus, then knowing, believing, and supposing are species thereof. In knowing and believing the acceptance is unconditional whereas in supposing it is conditional. It follows that believing is not common to believing and knowing as on the JTB analysis. To think otherwise is to confuse the genus (acceptance) with one of its species (belief).

                                                           Genus:  Acceptance-as-true

[Species 1:  Knowledge                          Species 2:  Belief]                      [Species 3:  Supposal]

                     Unconditional Acceptance                                                   Conditional Acceptance

 

3. What distinguishes believing and knowing is that the believer qua believer does not know, and the knower qua knower does not believe. Both, however, accept.  What I just wrote appears objectionably circular. It may seem to boil down to this: what distinguishes believing and knowing is that they are distinct!  We can lay the specter of the circle by specifying the specific difference.

If believing and knowing are species of the genus acceptance, what is the specific difference whereby the one is distinguished from the other? Believing that p and knowing that p are not distinguished by the common propositional content, p. Nor are they distinguished by their both being modes of unconditional acceptance. Can we say that they differ in that the evidence is compelling in the case of knowing but less than compelling in the case of believing? That is true, but then the difference would seem to be one of degree and not of kind. But if knowing and believing are two species of the same genus, then we have a difference in kind.  Perhaps we can say that knowledge is evident acceptance while belief is non-evident acceptance.  Or perhaps the difference is that belief is based on another's testimony whereas knowledge is not.  Let's explore the latter suggestion.

4. It is essential to belief that it involve both a proposition (the content believed) and a person, the one whose testimony one trusts when one gains access to the truth via belief. To believe is to unconditionally accept a proposition on the basis of testimony. If so, then there are two reasons why it makes no sense to speak of perceptual beliefs. First, what I sense-perceive to be the case, I know to be the case, and therefore, by #3 above, I do not believe to be the case. Second, what I sense-perceive to be the case I know directly without need of testimony.

On this approach, the difference between believing and knowing is that believing is based on testimony whereas knowing is not. Suppose that p is true and that my access to *p*'s truth is via the testimony of a credible witness W. Then I have belief but not knowledge. W, we may assume, knows whereof he speaks. For example, he saw Jones stab Smith. W has knowledge but not belief.

On Belief

I have been thinking about belief and whether it is under the control of the will. This question is important since it lies at the foundation of the very possibility of an 'ethics of belief.' People believe all sorts of things, and it is quite natural to suppose that some of the things they believe they are not entitled to believe, they have no right to believe, they are not justified in believing, they ought not believe. The characteristic beliefs of Holocaust deniers, for example, are not only demonstrably false, but also such that their holding by these nimrods is morally censurable. One has the strong sense that these people are flouting their epistemic duties.

A Pieperian Argument for Doxastic Voluntarism

Josef Pieper (1904-1997) is a 20th century German Thomist. I read his Belief and Faith as an undergraduate and am now [December 2007] re-reading it very carefully. It is an excellent counterbalance to a lot of the current analytic stuff on belief and doxastic voluntarism. What follows is my reconstruction of Pieper's argument for doxastic voluntarism in Belief and Faith. His thesis, to be found in Augustine and Aquinas, is that "Belief rests upon volition." (p. 27. Augustine, De praedestinatione Sanctorum, cap. 5, 10: [Fides] quae in voluntate est . . . .) I shall first present the argument in outline, and then comment on the premises and inferences.

Against William Alston Against Doxastic Voluntarism

The following remarks are based on the first two sections of Chapter Four, "Deontological Desiderata," of William P. Alston's Beyond "Justification": Dimensions of Epistemic Evaluation (Cornell UP, 2005), pp. 58-67.

1. It makes sense to apply deontological predicates to actions. Thus it makes sense to say of a voluntary action that it is obligatory or permissible or impermissible. But does it make sense to apply such predicates to beliefs and related propositional attitudes? If I withhold my assent to proposition p, does it make sense to say that the withholding is obligatory or permissible or impermissible? Suppose someone passes on a nasty unsubstantiated rumor concerning a mutual acquaintance. Is believing it blameworthy? Is suspending judgment required? Or is deontological evaluation simply out of place in a case like this?

Are There Any Beliefs Over Which We Have Direct Voluntary Control? Doxastic Voluntarism and Epoché

I suppose I am a limited doxastic voluntarist: though I haven't thought about this question in much depth my tendency is to say that there are some beliefs over the formation of which I have direct voluntary control. That is, there are some believable contents — call them propositions — that I can bring myself to believe at will, others that I can bring myself to disbelieve at will, and still others about which I can suspend judgment, thereby enacting something like the epoché (ἐποχή) of such ancient skeptics as Sextus Empiricus.

Are Any Beliefs Acquired At Will? Any Room for an 'Ethics of Belief'?

William P. Alston boldly maintains that "no one ever acquires a belief at will." (Beyond Justification, Cornell 2005, 67) This blanket rejection of doxastic voluntarism -- the view that some belief-formation is under the  control of the will -- sounds extreme. What about beliefs that one acquires as a result of reasoning? Are not some of the beliefs acquired in this manner acquired at will? And if so, then is it not right to talk deontically of the permissibility and impermissibility of some beliefs?

Note that there are two connected questions.  One concerns whether or not any beliefs are under the control of the will.  The other concerns the legitimacy of  deontic talk in respect of beliefs.  A negative answer to the first question removes the second question, while an affirmative answer to the first question leaves the second question open.  Let's think about this.

Are You a Natural-Born Scribbler? Take the Gide Test

Here is an interesting passage from André Gide's last work, written shortly before his death in 1951, So Be It or The Chips Are Down, tr. Justin O'Brien, Alfred Knopf, 1959, pp. 145-146, bolding added, italics in original. Brief commentary follows.

It is certain that the man who wonders as he takes up his pen: what service can be performed by what I am about to write? is not a born writer, and would do better to give up producing at once. Verse or prose, one's work is born of a sort of imperative one cannot elude. It results (I am now speaking only of the authentic writer) from an artesian gushing-forth, almost unintentional, on which reason, critical spirit, and art operate only as regulators. But once the page is written, he may wonder: what's the use? . . . And when I turn to myself, I think that what above all urged me to write is an urgent need of understanding. This is the need that now prompts the ratiocinations with which I am filling this notebook and makes me banish all bombast from them. I hope the young man who may read me will feel on an equal footing with me. I don't bring any doctrine; I resist giving advice; and in a discussion I beat a hasty retreat. But I know that today many seek their way gropingly and don't know in whom to trust. To them I say: believe those who are seeking the truth; doubt those who find it; doubt everything, but don't doubt of yourself. There is more light in Christ's words than in any other human word. This is not enough, it seems, to be a Christian: in addition, one must believe. Well, I do not believe. Having said this, I am your brother.