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Believing and Willing

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Louis P. Pojman
Louis P. Pojman*
Affiliation:
The University of Mississippi UniversityMS38677U.S.A.
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Extract

It is widely held that we can obtain beliefs and withhold believing propositions directly by performing an act of will. This thesis is sometimes identified with the view that believing is a basic act, an act which is under our direct control. Descartes holds that the will is limitless in relation to belief acquisition and that we must be directly responsible for our beliefs, especially our false beliefs, for otherwise we could draw the blasphemous conclusion that God is responsible for them. For Descartes and his followers judgment and assent are acts of the will which may be made both when they ought and when they ought not to be made. They are expressions of freedom of the will and as such we are directly responsible for the beliefs we acquire. Other philosophers who seem to espouse volitionalism include Aquinas, Locke, Kierkegaard, Newman, James, Pieper, Chisholm and Meiland.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy , Volume 15 , Issue 1 , March 1985 , pp. 37 - 55
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 1985

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References

1 Cf. Aqunias, Thomas Summa Theologica (New York: McGraw-Hill 1964)Google Scholar Part II, Q 4, Art. 2; Descartes, Meditations (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill 1960),Google Scholar tr. Laurence Lafleur, Fourth Meditation; Kierkegaard, Søren Philosophical Fragments, tr. Swenson, D. (Princeton: Princeton University Press 1962) 104;Google Scholar Newman, John Henry Cardinal An Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent (Westminster, MD: Christian Classics 1973) 232;Google Scholar James, William The Will to Believe; in Essays in Pragmatism (New York: Hafner 1969);Google Scholar Pieper, Joseph Belief and Faith (New York: Pantheon Press 1956) 25ff.Google Scholar Chisholm, Roderick ‘Lewis's Ethics of Belief’ The Philosophy of C.I. Lewis, ed. Schlipp, A. (LaSalle: Open Court);Google Scholar and Meiland, Jack ‘What Ought We to Believe or the Ethics of Belief Revisited’ American Philosophical Quarterly, vol. 17, no. 1, Jan. 1980.Google Scholar

2 James, 88f; Cf. Kierkegaard, SØren Concluding Unscientific Postscript, tr. Swenson, David and Lowry, Walter (Princeton: Princeton University Press 1941) 109Google Scholar

3 Cf. John Heil, ‘Seeing is Believing,’ forthcoming in the American Philosophical Quarterly for a defense of the position that perception is epistemic

4 Williams, Bernard ‘Deciding to Believe’ Problems of the Self (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1972)Google Scholar

5 Winters, Barbara ‘Believing at Will,’ Journal of Philosophy, LXXVI (1979).Google Scholar The present article is indebted to Winter's article.

6 An earlier draft of this paper was presented to the Philosophy Colloquium of the University of Notre Dame, February, 1979. The present version was written at the University of Nebraska/Lincoln during the Summer Seminar for College Teachers (‘Reasons, Justification, and Knowledge’) under the direction of Prof. Robert Audi, July, 1981. I am indebted to Gary Gutting, John King-Farlow, Alvin Plantinga, Wayne Davis, an anonymous reader, and, most especially, Robert Audi for helpful criticisms of a shorter version of this paper, delivered at the Western Division Meeting of the American Philosophical Association in Chicago, April30, 1983.