Abstract
In this paper, I examine whether doxastic voluntarism should be taken seriously within normative doxastic ethics. First, I show that currently the psychological evidence does not positively support doxastic voluntarism, even if I accept recent conclusions by Matthias Steup that the relevant evidence does not decisively undermine voluntarism either. Thus, it would seem that normative doxastic ethics could not justifiedly appeal directly to voluntarist assumptions. Second, I attempt to bring out how doxastic voluntarists may nevertheless hope to stir methodological worries within normative doxastic ethics, should they demonstrate that our typical practices of deontically evaluating doxastic states crucially rely on voluntarist assumptions. I also argue that some of the key arguments thought positively to support voluntarism as a psychological thesis may be put to better effect in the context of this kind of descriptive vindication. However, a closer examination reveals that nothing obviously suggests that voluntarism provides a better regimentation of our ascription practices as compared to rival theses concerning human powers of doxastic control.
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Notes
Clifford (1999, p. 77).
James (1956, p. 11).
Clifford (1999, p. 77).
James (1956, p. 31).
In this paper I shall conceive of normative doxastic ethics as the discipline treating on the question when, and under which conditions, agents are blame- or praiseworthy on account of their doxastic states. The literature here is comprehensive. One representative sample is Steup (1988) arguing, pace the seminal Alston (1989), that medieval witchcraft believers may rightfully be blamed for their irrational beliefs under the relevant historical circumstances. Nottelmann (2007) is strongly rooted in that tradition of normative debate.
A notable exception is Woudenberg (2009), presenting comprehensive empirical evidence that talk about epistemic obligations and equivalent notions is fairly widespread in our practices.
Below I shall talk of doxastic blame and praise ascription practices, without discussing whether asymmetric concerns apply here. Debating whether e.g. praise ascription makes underlying control assumptions different from blame ascription would take me too far off track in the present context. Thus, sometimes, for ease of presentation, I shall talk of doxastic blame ascription only, tacitly supposing that parallel concerns apply to praise ascription.
Steup (2012, p. 145).
See e.g. Steup (1988).
See Audi (2001, p. 94).
Or so I shall presume here. Of course, certain patterns of prolonged action may be characteristic of certain beliefs. If, e.g., I am a ship-wrecked swimmer believing that I may find safety on a beach in front of me, I will be disposed to swim towards that beach, if nothing prevents me from doing it. Also, beliefs may often bear on my patterns of evidence-gathering behavior etc. But this does not show in any way that beliefs themselves should be understood as prolonged action patterns. Recently, Matthew Boyle has argued that in a rational subject belief is an “active condition”, involving an “actualization of his power to be persuaded by reasons” (Boyle 2011, p. 22). However, Boyle also makes clear that this kind of activity is not to be understood on a par with ordinary patterns of action.
James (1981) has sometimes been taken a proponent of behavioral DV. See e.g. Gale (1999, p. 71). Also, in some writings Steup has offered characterizations of DV, which in isolation would naturally be read in the behavioral way, e.g. “...there are positive reasons for the view that having beliefs is a form of agency” (1988, p. 76). However, saddling Steup with behavioral DV would be uncharitable, insofar as clearly all his published arguments have been concerned with genetic DV. See also Nottelmann (2007) for extended and more detailed discussion of DV in its various versions.
Thus, even if Steup (2012) takes great care not to mix ethical assumptions into his defense of DV, not surprisingly he refers heavily to the modern literature on doxastic ethics, not least Alston (1989) and its purported debunking of any attempt at analyzing epistemic justification as belief blameless on a DV account. See also Nottelmann (2013).
“Belief-formation” here is really a dummy for an entire range of doxastic events, which could be claimed to be under direct voluntary control. See Nottelmann (2007, Chapt. 7.3.). For ease of presentation, I follow the convention here and focus on belief-formation.
It should be noted that Steup’s DV is not “super-strong” in the sense that he endorses “ultimate control” over belief-formations, e.g. the kind of control we would have if our beliefs are not only under the control of our wills, but the direction of our wills is also subject to our control. Steup is agnostic w.r.t. such ultimate control. I owe this point to personal correspondence with Steup.
In the literature, a few authors have presented arguments against weak possibilist genetic DV. For this DV version, a distinction between psychological and conceptual possibility claims becomes salient. Famous defenses of the conceptual impossibility of DV include Williams (1973) and O’Shaugnessy (1980). Dion Scott-Kakures has even contended that it is part of belief’s essence not to be subject to direct voluntary influence: “Nothing could be a belief and be willed directly” (Scott-Kakures 1993, p. 77). Those arguments raise many contentious issues. If successful, obviously they would take down all versions of DV in their wake. However, as I argue at length in Nottelmann (2007, Chapt 8.2.1), it is far from clear that individually or collectively they manage to establish the case for the necessary falsehood of DV.
Alston (1989, p. 122)
Alston (1989, p. 129)
Ginet (2001, p. 70)
See Steup (2012, p. 154)
Steup (2012, pp. 154–155). Steup calls such actions “automatic”. This, however, seems unfortunate. Unconscious gear-changes and the like are still part of larger plans, e.g. driving to work, whether or not those plans are entirely conscious. Not so for the mindless movements of an automaton.
Steup (2012, p. 156).
Here, I owe much to private correspondence and conversation with Steup on the relevant matters. See also McCormick (2005) on the phenomenon of “compelled belief”.
Steup (2012, p. 157).
Steup (2012, p. 157)
Steup (2012, p. 157). I find my wording superior here, since it clearly brings out that it is the doxastic event of changing from suspension of judgment to belief w.r.t. Theft, which is thought to be the object of my decision, not the belief-state itself. Steup’s worries about “deviant causation” arise from concerns that arguably some relations between intentions and events are too deviant to establish the event’s intentionality (see. e.g. Chisholm (1966, p. 37). Those complications need not concern us here, since they are not relevant to the evaluation of Steup’s argument. Also Steup makes no systematic effort toward accounting for the difference between deviant and non-deviant causation.
Steup (2012, p. 158).
I thank an anonymous reviewer for this journal for urging me to make this clear. Another strategy would be to deny the truth of any expression of the form “he decided to believe that his car was stolen” as applying to Steup’s example. However, I do not think this price is worth paying: Such expressions quite naturally apply to (Car Theft) and similar cases, and there seems to be no easy way of pragmatically explaining away their assertability. Arguably, here we typically mean either something like “his deliberations about whether his car was stolen terminated in his forming a belief that his car was stolen” or “he chose to adopt the assumption that his car was stolen as a premise for his further conscious reasoning”. In any case the burden is on the voluntarist to show that accepting as true “he decided to believe that his car was stolen” brings with it any degree of commitment to DV.
Steup (2012, p. 158).
Anscombe (1957, 54)
Alston (1989, p. 92)
See Nottelmann (2007, Chapts. 10–11)
Thus Clifford (1999, p. 70): “What shall we say of him? Surely this, that he was verily guilty of the death of those men. It is admitted that he did sincerely believe in the soundness of his ship; but the sincerity of his conviction can in no wise help him, because he had no right to believe on such evidence as was before him. He had acquired his belief not by honestly earning it in patient investigation, but by stifling his doubts.”
Galen Strawson stresses that he does not claim to have precisely identified the argument offered by Strawson (1962). Arguably this is wise, since in Strawson’s original text the argument is not altogether easy to follow in detail. Notice that this reading of Strawson differs from a reading, which was at least at some time explicitly endorsed by Steup. Here Steup construes Strawson as a so-called “reactive attitude compatibilist” along the following lines: “P.F. Strawson suggested that what’s constitutive of an action’s being free is its being a fit object for reactive attitudes such as blame, resentment, indignation, approval, admiration, forgiveness and the like”. Steup (2008, p. 376). This interpretation is too strong, if we follow Galen Strawson’s reading: Here, freedom is not (at least in any metaphysical sense) constituted by our attitudes and practices, only those practices non-rationally commit us to the affirmation of freedom. In the present context, however, it is more important to notice that in Steup’s preferred interpretation, Strawson offers no assistance to DV, whereas in Galen Strawson’s reading at least Strawson’s general strategy offers DV the hope of descriptive vindication. Steup is right to insist that “while reactive attitude compatibilism lends itself nicely to supporting the thesis of doxastic freedom, it does not explain a lot” (2008, 378). Not least this type of compatibilism lends no obvious support to the view that “doxastic freedom” should be construed in a DV manner.
Strawson (1993, p. 69).
See Clifford (1999, p. 70).
Steup (2012, p. 157). Similarly for the rest of this passage.
Clifford (1999, p. 70). Similarly for the rest of this passage.
Clifford vehemently stresses the severity of doxastic blame in such cases. E.g. he talks of a doxastic transgression “leaving its stamp upon our character for ever“ (1999, p. 73), or as involving “a defiance of our duty to mankind” (1999, p. 75).
Clifford (1999, p. 70).
Clifford (1999, p. 70).
Clifford (1999, p. 72).
See also Nottelmann (2006).
As nicely pointed out by an anonymous reviewer for this journal, blame retractions are also part of our ascription practices. Hence, in order for the suggested strategy to be successful, it must be the case that the relevant disproportionality persists, even after “harsh blamers” have been given opportunity to revise and mollify their initial verdicts. I concede that often in cases of severe harm-doing cries for revenge and bitter resentment tends to recede as time passes and a more fair-minded perspective is gained. However, arguably a stark disproportionality persists. E.g. a truck driver’s killing of an innocent child may well cast a lasting shadow over her public image and self-esteem, even if she could just as well have hit only a trash can, in which case nobody would have devoted the accident any lasting attention.
I phrase my conclusions conditionally here, since some have claimed that deontic evaluations of doxastic states are entirely unrelated to doxastic control suppositions. See. e.g. Owens (2000). I have no space to discuss such views here.
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Acknowledgments
Work on this article was supported by the Danish Council for Independent Research—Humanities. Anthony Booth, Søren Harnow Klausen, Miriam McCormick, Rik Peels, Matthias Steup, and two anonymous referees for this journal each offered indispensable comments and advice on previous versions of this article. I also wish to thank the audience at the conference Doxastic Agency & Epistemic Responsibility at Ruhr-University Bochum 2.-4. June 2014. Special thanks extend to Heinrich Wansing and Andrea Kruse, organizers of that conference and editors of the present special issue.
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Nottelmann, N. Against a descriptive vindication of doxastic voluntarism. Synthese 194, 2721–2744 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-015-0768-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-015-0768-3