Doxastic compatibilism and the ethics of belief

Philosophical Studies

Volumn 114, Issue 1-2, 2003, Pages 47-79

  Ryan, Sharon ^a  

^a WEST VIRGINIA UNIVERSITY   (United States)

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EID: 33746162589     PISSN: 00318116     EISSN: 15730883     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1023/a:1024409201289     Document Type: Article

References (69)

1. This conclusion has also been argued for by Richard Feldman, Carl Ginet, Matthias Steup, and Bruce Russell. See Feldman, 'Voluntary Belief and Epistemic Evaluation', in Matthias Steup, Knowledge, Truth, and Duty (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), pp. 77-92,
2. 'Epistemic Obligations', Philosophical Perspectives 2 (1988), pp. 235-256,
3. and 'The Ethics of Belief', Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 60 (2000).
4. See Ginet, 'Deciding to Believe', in Steup, Knowledge, Truth, and Duty (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), pp. 63-76.
5. See Steup, 'Doxastic Voluntarism and Epistemic Deontology', Acta Analytica, 15 (2000), 25-56.
6. See Russell, 'Epistemic and Moral Duty', in Steup, pp. 34-48.
7. William Alston defends a version of this argument against epistemic deontologism in 'The Deontological Conception of Epistemic Justification', Philosophical Perspectives 2 (1988)
8. and Alvin Plantinga defends a version of this argument in Warrant: The Current Debate (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993).
9. As I mentioned, I think deontologism entails the view that we have epistemic obligations. So, if the argument shows that we don't have epistemic obligations, then it shows that epistemic deontologism is false. I do not think internalism entails the view that we have epistemic obligations. Alston and Plantinga clearly believe that internalism does entail epistemic obligations. Defending my claim about the independence of internalism is a topic of another paper. Nothing I say in this paper depends on this claim.
10. See William Alston, 'The Deontological Conception of Epistemic Justification', Philosophical Perspectives 2 (1988), 258-259.
11. Alston, 'Concepts of Epistemic Justification', in his Epistemic Justification: Essays in the Theory of Knowledge (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1989), pp. 91-92.
12. Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, ''Ought' Conversationally Implies 'Can'' Philosophical Review XCIII(2) (April 1984), 249-261.
13. Michael Stocker, ''Ought and 'Can'', Australasian Journal of Philosophy 49(3) (December 1971), 306-316.
14. Sinnott-Armstrong, p. 252.
15. Stocker, p. 312.
16. This criticism was suggested to me by several people, including Ted Drange, Michael Huemer, and an anonymous referee for Philosophical Studies.
17. This criticism was suggested to me by Michael Huemer, Michael McKenna, and Matthias Steup.
18. An alternative response to this case is to modify the 'ought' implies 'can' principle as follows: "If S has an obligation to do A at time t, then S is able, at some time t*, to do A voluntarily at t". This is an interesting way to respond to the Sinnott-Armstrong case under consideration here. It preserves 'ought' implies 'can' while also granting that the guy does, at 6 p.m., still have an obligation to pick up his friend. As interesting as this modification is, it will not help in the cases I discuss later in this paper where a person has an obligation that they are never able to satisfy. This modification was suggested by an anonymous referee for Philosophical Studies.
19. Alston, 'The Deontological Conception of Epistemic Justification', Philosophical Perspectives 2 (1988), footnote 6, p. 295.
20. One might be tempted to say she should not have gone into your house in the first place and that is where the blame traces back to. If you are tempted to make this objection, assume that she is taken to a party at your house against her will.
21. Comments from the 2002 Bellingham Summer Philosophy Conference.
22. Richard Feldman raised this objection in a discussion we had about this topic.
23. Sarah McGrath raised this point at the 2002 Bellingham Summer Philosophy Conference. Mark Heller seconded her point. Although I did not appreciate their help at first, I do now.
24. This job comes with enough obligations I cannot always fulfill. For example, sometimes I am unable to be an excellent teacher. I do the best I can, but I fall short of teaching the way I ought to be teaching. Do you think my chair would be impressed if I explained that I had no obligation to teach well since I couldn't teach well during a particularly bad semester?
25. Of course, in all of these cases, if the tasks could be accomplished without special training, one would, according to my view, have the obligation to do the task. For example suppose all it took to put out a fire was pouring a cup of water on a small flame. Then everyone has the obligation to do that - even those who are tied to trees and are unable to do so.
26. This is the sort of obligation Richard Feldman calls "role oughts". I discuss Feldman's ideas about role oughts in section 4 of this paper.
27. Bruce Russell proposed the following objection. Any day now, it will be my birthday. Suppose my friend Bruce, who lives in Detroit, promises that he will fly with his arms to Morgantown, WV, to attend my birthday party. It is physically impossible for him to fly this way. It looks like according to my view, he has this obligation despite the fact that the act is physically impossible for him to perform. This is a tricky objection. On an ordinary understanding of the example, I don't think he has the obligation to fly like a bird to visit me. This is because I don't think his "promise" would really be a promise. I would not believe him or expect him to come to my party. If the example is told in such a way that the "promise" is a legitimate promise, then I do think he has the obligation.
28. See Feldman, "Voluntary Belief and Epistemic Evaluation",
29. See Feldman, "Epistemic Obligations",
30. and See Feldman, "The Ethics of Belief".
31. Bruce Russell also defends this claim in 'Epistemic and Moral Duty', in Steup, pp. 34-48.
32. Feldman, 'Voluntary Belief and Epistemic Evaluation', p. 88.
33. I am assuming that evidentialism is true. For a careful articulation and defense of evidentialism see Richard Feldman and Earl Conee, 'Evidentialism', Philosophical Studies (1985), 15-34.
34. Theodore Drange, Nonbelief and Evil (Amherst, NY:Prometheus Press, 1998).
35. Alston's work is an exception.
36. Feldman, 'Voluntary Belief and Epistemic Evaluation', p. 83.
37. Alston gives the same kind of example on p. 263 of 'The Deontological Conception of Epistemic Justification'.
38. Plantinga, Warrant: The Current Debate, p. 24.
39. Feldman, 'Voluntary Belief and Epistemic Evaluation', p. 80.
40. Alston, 'The Deontological Conception of Epistemic Evaluation', p. 263.
41. Another problem with this defense of involuntarism is that is seems to assume that one does A freely only if one does x because one decided to do A. I will challenge this assumption in the last paragraph of this section and discuss it further in sections 6, 7, and 8 of this paper. Basically, I think a free act must be done intentionally and that need not include any explicit decision or intention to do the act.
42. It is worth noting that Alston clearly believes that being able to do otherwise is a necessary condition for a free action.
43. On my view, S's doing A intentionally does not imply that S has any beliefs about the likelihood of success at doing A.
44. See part I of Louis P. Pojman's Religious Belief and the Will (London and New York: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1986) for a discussion of doxastic voluntarism in the history of philosophy.
45. L. Lafleur, Descartes' Meditations on First Philosophy (New York: 1951), p. 17.
46. Elizabeth Haldane and G.R.T. Ross, The Philosophical Works of Descartes (New York: 1911), xxxix.
47. Ginet, 'Deciding to Believe'.
48. Steup, 'Doxastic Voluntarism and Epistemic Deontologism'.
49. VanFrassen, 'Belief and the Will', Journal of Philosophy (1984).
50. Mark Heller, 'Hobartian Voluntarism: Grounding a Deontological Conception of Epistemic Justification', Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, vol. 81, no. 2 (June 2000), pp. 130-141.
51. Roderick Chisholm, 'Lewis' Ethics of Belief', in P.A. Schilpp (ed.), The Philosophy of C.I. Lewis (LaSalle, IL: Open Court, 1968),
52. Theory of Knowledge, 2nd edition (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1977).
53. Chisholm, 'Lewis' Ethics of Belief', p. 224.
54. Ginet, 'Deciding to Believe'.
55. Steup, 'Doxastic Voluntarism and Epistemic Deontologism'.
56. Steup, p. 33.
57. Steup, p. 33.
58. Steup, p. 34.
59. Steup, p. 35.
60. Feldman, 'Voluntary Belief and Epistemic Evaluation', p. 86.
61. In Richard Feldman's written comments on my paper. April 22, 2002.
62. This criticism applies to Ginet's view as well.
63. Although I am not putting this forward as an analysis of freedom, I do think I am giving a necessary condition for a free action.
64. Again, I do not think doing x intentionally involves beliefs. Thus, I can avoid a regress of beliefs about beliefs.
65. Except for in cases like the Case of the Human Cannonball. See section 8.
66. See Feldman's example about believing the lights are on to save his graduate students on p. 82 in 'Voluntary Belief and Epistemic Evaluation'.
67. Bernard Williams, 'Deciding to Believe', Problems of the Self (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1973).
68. Similar problems arise for Robert Audi's comparison of the forming of a belief to the formation of a wet ring left from a glass of water and Alston's comparison of believing to the secretion of gastric juices. See Audi 'Doxastic Voluntarism and the Ethics of Belief', in Steup and Alston's 'The Deontological Conception of Epistemic Justification'.
69. A lot of people have given me excellent comments on this paper and I am grateful to all of them. Theodore Drange, Adam Elga, Richard Feldman, Michael Huemer, Ned Markosian, Michael McKenna, Bruce Russell, David Sosa, and Matthias Steup gave me written comments on my paper. I have had many enjoyable and helpful discussions about the issues in this paper. For those discussions, I'd like to thank all of the people who gave me written comments and the participants at the 2002 Bellingham Summer Philosophy Conference, Craig Duncan, Kristin Kuntz, James Lynch, Al Mele, and Heidi Payne. I am grateful to have had the opportunity to present a few of these ideas at the 1999 Rutgers Epistemology Conference.