According to doxastic involuntarism, we cannot believe at will. In this paper, I argue that permissivism, the view that, at times, there is more than one way to respond rationally to a given body of evidence, is consistent with doxastic involuntarism. Rober :837–859, 2019a, Philos Phenom Res 1–17, 2019b) argues that, since permissive situations are possible, cognitively healthy agents can believe at will. However, Roeber fails to distinguish between two different arguments for voluntarism, both of which can be shown to (...) fail by proper attention to different accounts of permissivism. Roeber considers a generic treatment of permissivism, but key premises in both arguments depend on different, more particular notions of permissivism. Attending to the distinction between single-agent and inter-subjective versions of permissivism reveals that the inference from permissivism to voluntarism is unwarranted. (shrink)

Sometimes it is practically beneficial to believe what is epistemically unwarranted. Philosophers have taken these cases to raise the question are there practical reasons for belief? Evidentialists argue that there cannot be any such reasons. Putative practical reasons for belief are not reasons for belief, but reasons to manage our beliefs in a particular way. Pragmatists are not convinced. They accept that some reasons for belief are practical. The debate, it is widely thought, is at an impasse. But this debate (...) fails to address what is puzzling and interesting about the cases. By focusing on reasons for belief, the debate completely overlooks the role of action in relation to belief. We should be talking about the reasons for actions that shape our beliefs, which I will call belief management. I argue for three related theses: the interesting cases that motivate the debate are about belief management; Evidentialism is irrelevant to belief management; agents have practical reasons to manage their beliefs with the aim of forming true beliefs. These reasons are categorical in nature and result in the tension of conflict cases. (shrink)

In the First Meditation, the Cartesian meditator temporarily concludes that he cannot know anything, because he cannot discriminate dreaming from waking while he is dreaming. To resist the meditator’s conclusion, one could deploy an asymmetry argument. Following Bernard Williams, one could argue that even if the meditator cannot discriminate dreaming from waking while dreaming, it does not follow that he cannot do it while awake. In general, asymmetry arguments seek to identify an asymmetry between a bad case that is entertained (...) as a ground for doubt and a good case in which one takes oneself to know something. My aim in this paper is to consider how effective asymmetry arguments are as an anti-skeptical strategy. I conclude that although asymmetry arguments provide an effective response to dreaming skepticism, they fail as a response to brains-in-a-vat skepticism. (shrink)

Stance voluntarism highlights the role of the will in epistemic agency, claiming that agents can control the epistemic stances they assume in forming beliefs. It claims that radical belief changes are not compelled by the evidence; they are rationally permitted choices about which epistemic stances to adopt. However, terms like “will”, “choice”, and “stance” play a crucial role while being left as vague notions. This paper investigates what kind of control rational agents can have over epistemic stances. I argue that (...) whether epistemic stances are voluntary depends on what kind of stance is being assessed. Sometimes epistemic stances are taken to be evaluative attitudes about how to produce knowledge. This kind of stance is not directly controllable, since it is essentially connected to beliefs, and believing is not voluntary. But sometimes epistemic stances are taken to be styles of reasoning and modes of engagement, expressing ways of approaching the world in order to produce knowledge, which can be voluntary. Overall, this supports a formulation of stance voluntarism as a dual-systems theory of epistemic agency, where epistemic rationality is compounded by a dynamic interplay between involuntary processes of belief formation and voluntary processes of cognitive guidance. (shrink)

When, in spite of our good intentions, we fail to meet our obligations to others, it is important that we have the correct theoretical description of what has happened so that mutual understanding and the right sort of social repair can occur. Consider an agent who promises to help pick a friend up from the airport. She takes the freeway, forgetting that it is under construction. After a long wait, the friend takes an expensive taxi ride home. Most theorists and (...) non-theorists react to such cases by either judging the agent's action as a violation of her obligation to help or as having satisfied the only obligation she really had, namely to try to help. However, as I show, there are serious difficulties that arise from categorizing this agent's action as satisfying or violating her obligation – difficulties that are avoided if we instead add “mere moral failures” to the basic categories for moral evaluation. An agent merely fails when she neither satisfies nor violates her obligation. She is responsible fo.. (shrink)

This paper explores how the norms of belief relate to the norms of action. The discussion centres on addressing a challenge from positive illusions stating that the demands we face as believers aiming at the truth and the demands we face as agents aiming at success often pull in opposite directions. In response to this challenge, it is argued that the pursuits of aiming at the truth and aiming at success are fully compatible and mutually reinforcing. More specifically, the link (...) between the two takes the form of a two-way connection. In addition to succeeding in virtue of getting it right, it is normatively appropriate to get it right in virtue of succeeding. This two-way connection thesis is supported by a wide scope reading of how the truth norm of belief may be satisfied. On this reading, believing p is permissible both as a result of settling the question of whether p in light of the available evidence and as a result of engaging a believer’s agency in making it the case that p. (shrink)

_ Belief: A Pragmatic Picture _ By ZimmermanAaron Z.Oxford University Press, 2018. viii + 180 pp.

اصطلاح «اخلاق باور» برای اولین بار در مقالة معروف کلیفورد، با همین عنوان، به سال 1876 به‌کار رفت. طبق بیان کلیفورد، که بعدها به قاعده یا اصل کلیفورد مشهور شد، «همیشه، همه‌جا، و برای هرکس خطاست که بر اساس قرائن ناکافی به چیزی معتقد شود». از زمانی که کلیفورد این بحث را مطرح کرده است، تاکنون، مورد مناقشات فراوانی بوده است؛ مسئلة اصلی که در پس همة این مناقشات مطرح بوده است این است که آیا اصولاً باورهای آدمی در اختیار (...) انسان‌اند، تا مشمول ارزش‌گذاری‌های اخلاقی شوند، یا این‌که باید آن‌ها را، همچون بسیاری از حالات روانی، غیر ارادی و انفعالی و در نتیجه، معاف از ارزش‌گذاری‌های اخلاقی دانست. عده‌ای بر این باورند که باورهای ما غیر ارادی‌اند و در اختیار ما نیستند. درمقابل، عدة دیگری به تأثیر اراده بر باور یا اراده‌گروی اعتقادی معتقدند. این نوع از اراده‌گروی، بسته به میزان تأثیر اراده بر باور، به دو قسم کلی قابل تقسیم است: اراده‌گروی مستقیم و اراده‌گروی غیر مستقیم. اراده‌گروی اعتقادی از حیث دیگری، به اراده‌گروی توصیفی و اراده‌گروی هنجاری تقسیم می‌شود. در اراده‌گروی هنجاری سخن از نوعی وظیفه‌گرایی معرفتی در باب باورهاست که مستلزم اخلاق باور است. درواقع، زمانی می‌توان از اخلاق باور سخن گفت که به چیزی به نام وظیفه‌گرایی معرفتی قائل باشیم. مطهری تعقل و تفکر را افعالی نفسانی می‌داند که در دست اراده و انتخاب مستقیم انسان قرار دارند. از نظر وی، میان «عقیده» و «تفکر» تمایز وجود دارد. او عقیدة مبتنی‌بر فرایند معقول و عقلانی را تفکر می‌نامد و آن را موجِد معرفت می‌داند. توجه به فرایند شکل‌گیری معرفت از منظر مطهری به‌خوبی نشان‌ می‌دهد که وی به مسئلة توجیه باورها و قائل‌شدن به نوعی وظیفه‌گرایی معرفتی توجه خاص داشته است. بر این‌ اساس، مطهری توصیه‌هایی را در نحوة کسب معرفت بیان می‌دارد که می‌توان آن‌ها را ذیل اخلاق باور گنجاند. از جملة این توصیه‌ها می‌توان به این موارد اشاره کرد: تأثیرناپذیری از قضاوت دیگران، پیروی‌نکردن از اکثریت، پرهیز از خوش‌باوری، استماع قول مخالف، تفکیک باور از صاحب باور، و اجتناب از جمود و تعصب. (shrink)