Controlling attitudes

Pacific Philosophical Quarterly

Volumn 87, Issue 1, 2006, Pages 45-74

  Hieronymi, Pamela ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA   (United States)

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EID: 34748926777     PISSN: 02790750     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/j.1468-0114.2006.00247.x     Document Type: Article

References (59)

1. Bernard Williams (1973). "Deciding to Believe," in Problems of the Self. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 148. Originally published (1970) in H. Kiefer and M. Munitz (eds. ) Language, Belief, and Metaphysics. Albany: State University of New York Press.
2. In fact, Williams argument makes use of a premise about needing knowledge of one's ability, a detail picked up by Bennett. As this detail is unimportant for my discussion, I have suppressed it.
3. Jonathan Bennett (1990). "Why Is Belief Involuntary?," Analysis 50, p. 93.
4. The resources for this response were put forward by Barbara Winters (1979) in "Willing to Believe," Journal of Philosophy 76, pp. 243-256.
5. A further argument was developed by Dion Scott-Kakures (1993) in "On Belief and the Captivity of the Will," Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 53, 4, pp. 77-103.
6. Scott-Kakures' account is criticized by Dana Radcliffe (1997) in "Scott-Kakures on Believing at Will," Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 57, 1, pp. 145-151.
7. Joseph Raz (1999) has a helpful discussion in "When We are Ourselves," Engaging Reason, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 5-21. Williams has another argument to the same conclusion, which Bennett also seems to counter successfully. However, considering that argument is not necessary for my purposes.
8. It is worth noting that Williams' claim that "belief aims at truth" has been interestingly developed by both J. David Velleman and Ralph Wedgwood. However, the claim that belief is involuntary because it aims at truth does not fare any better on either development. Velleman understands the aim of belief in terms of the functioning of the psychological systems that regulate it: belief aims at truth because it is a state that is regulated to track truth. (See his (2000) "On the Aim of Belief" and his "Introduction," both in his The Possibility of Practical Reason, Oxford: Oxford University Press. ) However, it is unclear why the Credamites could not bring themselves to have a state that is thereafter regulated for truth, and so bring themselves to believe. Wedgwood has suggested that the aim of belief is a normative one: a belief is correct only if its content is true. Again, it is unclear why a normative "aim" such as this would prevent the Credamites from turning their trick. (See his (2002) "The Aim of Belief," Philosophical Perspectives 16, pp. 267-297. ). In a recent paper Nishi Shah has sided with Wedgwood, against Velleman, suggesting that the normative aim of truth, together with a necessary disposition to believe what one ought, will explain the "transparency" of first personal deliberation.
9. See his (2003) "How Truth Governs Belief," The Philosophical Review 112, pp. 447-482. If Shah were right, it would be impossible to believe at will due to this disposition. Having the disposition, Shah suggests, is required for having the concept of belief. This seems to me both too strong - I don't see why some creature (like a Credamite) couldn't have the concept of belief (perhaps noticing that most believers have this disposition) without itself possessing the disposition - and therefore too weak - it would still render the inability to believe for practical reasons a merely psychological fact.
10. Bennett, p. 90.
11. Bennett treats "practical reasons" as equivalent to what he calls with "inducements. " Of inducements he says, "Quite generally, inducements should be thought of as inducements to make it the case that p for various values of p" (p. 89).
12. It is worth noting the inclusiveness of this claim: an activity is voluntary if it can be done immediately for practical reasons. Perhaps we sometimes act without reason, and do so voluntarily. Still, the action could have been done immediately for practical reasons.
13. This example comes from Richard Feldman (2000) "The Ethics of Belief," Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 60, 3, pp. 671-2.
14. Davidson considers similar cases in which one is caused to do something for a practical reason without doing it intentionally, for those reasons. In Davidson's example, a climber thinks he has a reason to loosen his hold on the rope by which he supports the weight of another - because doing so will free him from danger - and this thought so unnerves him that he in fact loosens his hold. But, though he here "responded to reasons," he did not do so in a way that amounts to responding intentionally, or actively, or "at will. " Donald Davidson (1973). "Freedom to Act" in Ted Honderich (ed. ) Essays on Freedom of Action, New York: Routledge and Kegan Paul, pp. 153-4.
15. Bennett wants to show that belief can't be what he calls "motivationally" immediate to practical reasons, in the way that actions are. He allows that even actions are what he calls " ontologically" mediated: when you respond to practical reasons by, say, immediately raising your hand, there are events that mediate between your appreciation of the reasons and your action (certain neurons firing and muscles contracting). The relationship between your reasons and your action is thus ontologically mediated. However, there is no further thing that you are motivated to do, to bring it about that you raise your hand. So, the relationship between your reasons and your action is motivationally immediate. In contrast, Bennett wants to show that practical reasons cannot immediately motivate belief. They must motivate you to do something else, which in turn results in your believing. I will suggest that practical reasons are "motivationally immediate" to intending, rather than believing, as a conceptual matter. So practical reasons for a belief will always require some mediating intention. Moreover, the intention they might motivate, I will argue, should not be understood as an "intention to believe," where believing has become an action, but rather an "intention to make oneself believe. " This is so even if one can execute that intention as a basic action.
16. See J. David Velleman's "On the Aim of Belief. " My thinking on this subject is indebted both to Velleman's article and to further helpful correspondence with him.
17. I do not here mean to suggest that the inability to answer a request for justification will necessarily leave a believer unwarranted, or even unjustified, in her belief.
18. Of course, a creature needn't itself have the concept of belief in order to be a believer. Consider small children. Still, if one does have that concept (as one must, if one is to ascribe beliefs), then one sees the applicability, in principle, of a certain sort of question. Thanks to Tyler Burge and Gavin Lawrence for help on these matters.
19. I am not here attempting to offer an analysis of believing. Rather, I am taking for granted our commonsense understanding of the standards to which a believer is subject, and inter-defining a number of terms. Cf. Wedgwood, who suggests that "types of mental state are individuated by the conditions under which they satisfy normative concepts" and that "primitive norms," such as the norm of truth, "articulate [the] essence or nature of belief. They . . . articulate, as we might put it, constitutive features of belief - that is, features that make belief the type of mental state that it is" (pp. 270-1).
20. I am here partly following T. M. Scanlon, who takes a reason to be a consideration that counts in favor of a judgment-sensitive attitude. See his (1998) What We Owe to Each Other. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, pp. 17-22. I wholly agree with the thought that a reason is a consideration. I further agree with the thought that a consideration becomes a reason only when it stands (or is taken to stand) in a certain relation. However, I understand a reason, most fundamentally, to be a consideration that bears on a question, rather than one that counts in favor of an attitude, because the latter formulation is ambiguous, in the way I am about to explain. To avoid the ambiguity, one must avoid saying that a reason counts in favor of a judgment-sensitive psychological state, or even, for that matter, a mental activity like believing or intending. Rather, a reason can be thought of as a component in a piece of reasoning. Thus my formulation: a reason is a consideration that bears on a question.
21. See my (2005) "The Wrong Kind of Reason," Journal of Philosophy 102, 9, pp. 1-21.
22. In common usage, "belief" is ambiguous between the attitude (or activity) of believing and the content believed. I will standardly refer to belief as the attitude or activity; when I need to refer to the content, I will make that explicit.
23. Christian Piller (2001) "Normative Practical Reasoning," Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supplementary Vol. 75, 1, pp. 195-216. I believe Piller is making the same distinction introduced to me by Derek Parfit, using the labels "object-given" and "state-given. "
24. See his (2001) "Rationality and Reasons" in Dan Egonsson, et al. (eds. ) Exploring Practical Philosophy. Burlington, VT: Ashgate Press, pp. 17-39. Neither author says precisely how the distinction is to be drawn.
25. Though, as we will soon see, by finding the content-related reasons convincing one has already believed, so the fact that the belief is good to have will be, in such a case, inert - a happy fact, but nothing to act upon. (In cases of irrationality, you may have to bring yourself to fully believe something you already think true, because believing the truth fully would be good to do. )
26. In addition to the peculiar, "This belief is good to have," consider the following case: Suppose you are interviewing people to run your ad campaign, and you find yourself thinking it would be good to believe that a certain person would be best for the job - you find yourself thinking you'd seem younger and sexier if only you could believe that she was the best person to hire. These considerations show something good about believing she is the person to hire, but such considerations do not usually bear on whether this person is most qualified candidate. Yet, if you find yourself thinking the belief would be good to have as a result of the candidate's own doing, then the fact that it would be good to believe that she will be an effective leader of your ad campaign might, itself, be a reason that shows that she will. Here, p is a proposition whose truth you think is made more likely by the fact that you have a reason for wanting to believe it.
27. I take these to be equivalent and find it noteworthy that the active and passive voice apply equally.
28. This is a substantive claim, though I think an obvious one. It is substantive, rather than tautologous, because finding these reasons convincing isn't just the same thing as believing p. Perhaps the Credamites bring themselves to believe p - perhaps they bring themselves to take p to be true in a way that leaves them answerable to the belief-relevant questions - without finding convincing any reasons that bear on whether p. Indeed, I don't think we need to appeal to the Credamitean ability for this point. Sometimes we find ourselves with beliefs for which we, at least at the moment, lack convincing reasons - we find ourselves taking something to be true in the relevant way. (Perhaps a belief cannot sustain reflection upon the fact that you lack reasons for it. Still, one might unreflectively sustain a belief for which one now lacks convincing reasons, a belief which might inform one's actions, and that should be enough to show that there is a difference between being committed to p as true and finding convincing reasons that bear on whether p. ) Some might want to add: "insofar as you are rational. " While this might be an important addition for intention, I don't think it necessary for belief. If I find the reasons truly convincing, I will believe. If I don't believe, then I haven't found them convincing. I might, of course, find myself with conflicting or incoherent sets of beliefs, and so be subject to a charge of irrationality.
29. As noted in this paragraph, constitutive reasons for a belief that p are those taken to bear on whether p. It does not matter whether they "really" bear on whether p - so long as the believer takes them so to bear, she will believe by finding them convincing, and they will be what grounds her commitment to p as true. I will sometimes take this point for granted, as constantly making note of it generates considerable clutter. Note, too, that the constitutive reasons are not themselves constitutive of the belief. One can maintain a belief while forgetting one's reasons for it. They earn the title by supporting the commitment that is constitutive of the belief.
30. The relation between these distinctions is described, in this paragraph, from a single point of view: those considerations taken to be content-related reasons will also be constitutive reasons, the remaining reasons, the extrinsic ones, will be taken to be attitude-related. People may of course disagree about whether a particular consideration is a content- or only an attitude-related reason, and so disagree about whether that consideration should provide a constitutive or only an extrinsic reason for the belief.
31. One might think that extrinsic reasons are not "really" reasons for the belief, that the only real reasons are the constitutive ones (or, to be precise, the reasons that would be constitutive for someone who was correct about them). While there is no doubt truth to this, I think it unhelpful to restrict the word "reason" to the constitutive ones. I address this in my "The Wrong Kind of Reason. " (For a nice discussion of surrounding issues, see Thomas P. Kelly (2003) "Epistemic Rationality as Instrumental Rationality: A Critique," Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 66, 3, pp. 612-640. )
32. This distinction is, I think, a development of points made by Richard Moran. See his (2001) Authority and Estrangement: An Essay on Self-Knowledge. Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, pp. 116-19.
33. I do not think that these two forms of control exhaust of all possible forms of control. More needs to be said about the kind of control we exercise over our own bodies, for example, or over other people. These two forms do seem to me to exhaust the forms of control that we exercise over our beliefs and intentions. In an interesting recent book, David Owens discusses our control over our beliefs and its relation to our responsibility for our beliefs. I hope to take up issues of responsibility and what he calls "reflective control" in subsequent work. See David Owens (2000). Reason without Freedom: The Problem of Epistemic Normativity. Tondon: Routledge.
34. One might object that whether a person believes p is determined, in part, by how that person goes on to act. I agree. But this is only to say that whether that person has answered for herself the question of whether p depends on how she goes on to act.
35. The point about indirection, while useful for introducing the distinction, may not be a distinguishing feature of exercises of evaluative control. The immediacy of evaluative control is the deeper feature, as it is a direct consequence of the commitment-constitution of belief. My claims about the commitment-constitution of belief and the immediacy of evaluative control should not be confused with Moran's observations about what he calls "transparency" when discussing first-personal knowledge of beliefs (in Authority and Estrangement). Rather, what I have to say might be understood as explaining Moran's observations. Transparency, for Moran, is a relation between questions. The "theoretical" (psychological) question "do I believe p?" is transparent to the "deliberative" question "is p true?," in that, in the normal case, one answers the first question by answering the second. In fact, Moran claims that part of what it is to be rational is to answer the first question by answering the second - i. e. , to meet the "transparency condition" when avowing one's beliefs. (This, in turn, is to explain how we can know our own beliefs "immediately," i. e. , without evidence about our own psychology. ) The immediacy of evaluative control, in contrast, does not concern the relation between two questions (nor one's "immediate" knowledge of one's own beliefs), but rather concerns the relation between answering a question and having an attitude: if you answer for yourself positively the question of whether p, you immediately - therein, ipso facto - believe p. Immediacy, as a relation between answering a question and having an attitude, can explain how transparency could be a rational relation between a theoretical and a deliberative question: the immediacy of evaluative control ensures that answering the second, deliberative question, "is p true?," will make true an answer to the first, theoretical question "do I believe p?" The immediacy of evaluative control, in turn, must be explained by a fact about the attitude itself. How is it that, by answering a question about the world, you make true the answer to a question about yourself - that is, how is it that, by answering the question about whether p, you ipso facto believe p? This is so because to believe p is to be committed to p as true - to take p to be true in such a way as to be answerable to certain questions and criticisms. By answering the question of whether p, you take p to be true in precisely the way that leaves you thus answerable, i. e. , you believe. So I take Moran's observations to reveal something about the nature of belief. How could it be true that we can rationally answer a question about our psychology by answering a question about the world? This would be so if, by answering the second question, we make true an answer to the first question. Answering the second question would make true an answer to the first if belief is commitment-constituted, because then, by answering the second question, one would, therein, believe. My explanation of transparency thus differs sharply from that offered by Shah in "How Truth Governs Belief. " Shah hopes to explain a transparency quite different from that which concerns Moran. Shah hopes to explain why, "in asking oneself whether to believe p, one is forced to recognize that this question is answered by settling the question of p's truth" (p. 16). His answer is that "possessing the concept of belief involves being disposed [to be moved only by truth-sensitive considerations] when one applies the concept to one's own thinking" (p. 34). I think the invocation of this motivational disposition is unnecessary to explain the phenomena at which Shah is pointing. If we allow that competent English speakers understand that to say a person believes something is to say that that person thinks that thing true, the phenomena has a rather boring, but otherwise entirely satisfactory answer: as a speaker of English, you know that, in your own case, to ask whether to believe p just is to ask whether to think p is true, and so considerations that bear on whether p is true have obvious relevance. Shah makes the overstrong assumption that, in asking whether to believe p, one is forced to appeal to considerations that bear on whether p, and he invokes his disposition to explain this supposed fact. But, to my mind, he is explaining something that isn't so. In asking whether to believe p, I am not forced to appeal to considerations that bear on whether p. I may take up that question in an altogether different spirit, asking whether it would be useful to believe p. Of course, as I am about to explain, it will turn out that I will not believe simply as a result of answering this question. But this is not due to any special motivational disposition that comes with the concept of belief
36. I owe this helpful example to Tom Kelly, who uses it in his discussion of the rationality of belief. See note 24. It is worth noting the somewhat odd character of this investigation. Not all investigations are prompted by extrinsic reasons. Simple concern for your friends, for example, might prompt the call. However, this concern doesn't seem to be grounded in the desirability of having a certain belief. I'm not sure what to say about the relation between concern and placing the call. Alternatively, one might object to the example by saying, "I don't just want to believe my friends are home, I want to know it!" I take this to mean that, you don't just want to believe that they are home, you also want it to be true that they are home. Still, a part of what you want is to have the belief, perhaps on the condition of its truth. And that should be enough to make the point at hand. For an alternative example, suppose you are anxious about the strength of the housing market, even though you have already decided to make a purchase. You might do some research, just to quell your anxiety.
37. While one can, of course, exercise self-management aimed at arriving at some true belief about whether p, I mean for the management I am discussing to aim at a particular belief, that p. One might object, thinking that you can only intend to do things you think you are able to do, and so, if you don't know whether there is good evidence that p, then you can't intend to believe p, in particular, but only to arrive at some belief about whether or not p. But if I can intend to shoot a free-throw, given what I know of my chances (and not just to try to shoot a free-throw), then it seems that I can, at least in many cases, intend to bring myself to believe that p. At any rate, once we introduce the science-fictional possibilities, our ability to intend to bring ourselves to a particular belief should be clear.
38. The term "manipulative control" is more apt for those cases in which you bring yourself to a belief without providing yourself with good constitutive reasons, while "managerial control" is more apt for those cases in which you bring yourself to belief by providing for yourself good constitutive reasons. For the purposes of this paper, however, we need not distinguish between these cases - however you do it, you are exercising manipulative/managerial, as opposed to evaluative, control.
39. Nor do I claim that it is possible. I do not claim that imagination is a reliable guide to possibility. Perhaps a thing cannot be a belief if it is brought about in these ways, or perhaps such a process could not secure the requisite form of answerability. I have nothing to say about these questions.
40. Cf. Gilbert Harman (1986). Change in View. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, pp. 32-35.
41. The caveats from earlier apply here as well. One cannot actually be open to requests and questions without being a self-reflective, language-using creature. However, the applicability of the concept depends on the questions being, in principle, in place. This is because having the attitude leaves one vulnerable to criticism under certain standards.
42. For an extended discussion of intention, including some discussion of the commitment involved in intending, see Michael Bratman's (1987) Intention, Plans, and Practical Reason, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Some of his subsequent development can be found in his (1999) Faces of Intention, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
43. Cf. G. E. M. Anscombe (1957). Intention. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. As we will see, Anscombe notes that any intentional action leaves one open to a certain sort of "why-question. " Of course, one way that I can do something intentionally is by intending to do some larger action of which it is a part. In this case, I will say that the intention to do the larger action included an intention to do the part. (Sometimes I unintentionally do something -in ignorance, say - in the course of doing something else intentionally. In such a case. I intend the larger action, but not the piece I do unintentionally. )
44. In saying one "answer[s] for oneself (however implicitly) the question of whether to Φ," I do not mean to imply that we should be able to find, by psychological experiment, some underlying process that corresponds to this answering of a question. Rather, we can posit the "'implicit" answering on the basis of the answerability. If one intends, one is answerable in just the way one would be if one had explicitly answered the question of whether to Φ.
45. Pleasing my boss both bears on whether to do the job and, I am supposing, is reason enough to do it. In other cases, reasons for having the intention will bear on whether to act but will not be reason enough to act. If, in the barroom, you offer me five dollars to intend to down some whiskey, I can decide to down the whiskey, thus have the intention and win the money. But if you offer me five dollars to jump from the second story window, I cannot then decide to jump, and so cannot win. Although the offered money is certainly reason enough to (merely) intend to jump, and though the offered money seems also to bear on the question of whether to jump, it is not reason enough to jump. The overall reasons against jumping far outweigh the reasons for jumping. These cases contrast with Gregory Kavka's toxin puzzle ((1983) "The Toxin Puzzle," Analysis 43, pp. 33-36). In the toxin puzzle, you are offered a very large sum of money to intend, at midnight, to drink a non-lethal but temporarily very unpleasant toxin tomorrow afternoon. If you intend tonight, you will be paid the money tomorrow morning, and you will be permitted to keep the money regardless of whether you follow through on your intention and drink. You are being paid to intend, not to actually drink. Further, you are prohibited from taking steps to give yourself other reasons for drinking tomorrow (such as establishing side-bets with friends about whether you will drink), and it is stipulated that you are not "one of those strange people who take pride in never releasing oneself from a promise to oneself, no matter what the circumstances" (p. 35). The toxin case is like the case of downing whiskey and unlike the case of jumping out the window in that the reasons for having an intention are much stronger than the reasons against acting. Yet it seems that, in the toxin case, you cannot decide to act in order to have the intention. I think the puzzle has this form because the strong reasons for having the intention do not even bear on the question of whether to act. Kavka carefully builds his toxin puzzle so that, when the time comes to drink, you will no longer have any reason even to have the intention to drink, and you know this now. Thus, in Kavka's puzzle, the fact that you have reasons showing the intention useful does not provide you with reason to act - and so it seems not even to bear on the question of whether to act - due to the delay between when the intention is useful and when the action is to be performed. The fact that the reasons for intending are not reasons for acting explains why, even though the rewards of intending to drink are much greater than the penalty for drinking, you cannot decide to drink. This interpretation of the toxin case explains the inability to decide to drink the toxin by appeal to a lack of reasons for drinking, and explains that lack by appeal to the delay between the time at which the intention is useful and the time at which the action is to be performed. If this interpretation is correct, it should apply equally well to what John Broome has called the "non-toxin case. " In this alternative case, you are offered money to intend to drink a glass of water at noon tomorrow. It might seem that you can decide to drink the water tomorrow, and so win the money. But on the interpretation that I have provided, you should have no reason to drink at noon: after all, by noon, you will no longer have reason for intending to drink the water, and you know this now. On my interpretation, whether you can win the money in the non-toxin case would have to turn on whether you can decide, now, to do something, tomorrow, that you will have no reason, tomorrow, to do. I allow that one can decide to perform certain actions with very little justification - so long as there are no reasons against doing them, they can be performed on whim, or just because it occurs to you. Drinking a glass of water is presumably among these. Perhaps, then, you can decide, now, to drink tomorrow, simply to suit your fancy, and so win the money. To be honest, though, my confidence that I can decide to drink the water tomorrow seems subject to the same slow erosion by reflection that undermined my initial confidence that I could decide to drink the toxin tomorrow. I will win the money now only if I truly intend to drink tomorrow. Suppose I decide, now, to drink tomorrow, just to suit my fancy. I cannot appeal to reasons of consistency or loyalty or guilt to ensure that I will follow through on this decision - such reasons are ruled out of the original toxin case. So I should know, now, that the slightest reason against drinking, or even a change in the winds of my fancy, will prevent me from drinking tomorrow. How strong, then, must the intention be, for me to win? If a very weak intention will do, perhaps I can succeed. But I am not sure that I can decide, tonight, to do anything on a whim tomorrow
46. This account of intentional action is, of course, just a skeleton. I have simplified in many ways and am overlooking many complications. However, for the purposes at hand, I believe it will serve. With this account in place, we can characterize acting immediately in response to practical reasons: to act immediately in response to practical reasons would be to form, in response to such reasons, by an exercise of evaluative control, an intention to do a basic action right now, and then, right now, to execute that intention and perform the action. But it is unclear why immediacy of this sort should render an action more or less voluntary.
47. Intention, p. 9. We could just as readily say that, in acting, one is vulnerable to criticism or critique under certain standards, and that, in reflective, language using creatures, this leaves us open to certain questions. Of course, the standards to which one is vulnerable, in acting, are less clear than those to which one is vulnerable, in believing. Are the standards set by one's own ends and beliefs? Do moral standards always apply? We needn't answer these questions here. It is enough that in acting intentionally, as in believing, I commit myself in a way that leaves me answerable to a certain sort of why-question.
48. One is "in a position to answer" a question, here, even if one's answer is poor - a poor answer is still an answer; likewise, as Anscombe notes, the answer "for no particular reason," it is still an answer to, rather than a rejection of, the relevant why-question (p. 9). Both my account of why one is in a position to answer Anscombe's why-question and the account I would give of Anscombe's second mark of intention action - that one knows what it is that one is intentionally doing - thus differ from the account offered by Kieran Setiya (2003) in his "Explaining Action," The Philosophical Review 112, 3, pp. 339-393. Setiya starts his paper with a terrific question: why should Anscombe's two marks of intentional action show up together? As with my earlier difference with Shah, my own answer to this question seems to me more boring, but otherwise entirely satisfactory: if to intend just is to have answered positively the question of whether to Φ, then Anscombe's why-question is "given application
49. This is the sense in which we can intend "at will": we can intend in response to practical reasons without having to act upon ourselves to make ourselves intend. We can find convincing reasons that bear on whether to Φ and therein, ipso facto, intend to Φ. We "intend at will" by exercising evaluative control.
50. Though this argument has not, to my knowledge, been previously advanced, the point has been acknowledged by some. Cf. , e. g. , John Broome: "Reasoning is validated by its contents, and the mental states have to go along willy-nilly" ((2001) "Normative Practical Reasoning," Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 75, 1, p. 186).
51. Joseph Raz makes a related point about action: "I cannot choose to have coffee because I love Sophocles" ((1999) "When We are Ourselves" in Engaging Reason, Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. 8).
52. I take it as a premise that, if one does not believe by evaluative control nor intentionally, one did not believe by an exercise of control of any kind. This seems to me both true and interesting: if you find convincing the reasons which you take to bear on whether p, and, thus, straightaway (therein), believe, you have, yourself, believed - by evaluative control. But if you find convincing other reasons and, straightaway, believe, you have simply been caused to believe by some psychological mechanism.
53. This point was helpfully pressed by Mark Greenberg.
54. Blushing could easily be an ordinary intentional action for a creature differently constituted. Were we rightly wired, we might sometimes take ourselves to have reason enough to blush, intend to blush, blush, and so be answerable to the question, "why did you blush?" (or, if one happened to be unsuccessful, answerable to the question "why did you intend to blush?"), where that question is looking for constitutive reasons for the intention to blush.
55. I don't mean to deny that this question might need to take into account the likelihood of p, such that reasons which bear on whether p also bear on whether to bring yourself to believe. In fact, one could accept my point while insisting that a person is never justified in bringing herself to believe something false (and so self-management would be appropriate only in cases of irrationality - only when you find yourself not fully believing something you think is true). My point is simply that the truth of p bears on the managerial intention and action only insofar as it bears on the question of whether to make yourself believe.
56. The constitutive reasons for believing p - those that bear on whether p - might be taken to bear on the question of whether to believe p. However, one would not, for constitutive reasons, form an intention to believe. One would simply believe straightaway, by evaluative control. The only reasons for which one would form an intention to believe p would be extrinsic reasons - reasons showing something to be said for believing p without showing p to be true. But for these one can at most make oneself believe.
57. In fact, I think the same distinction in agency and limitation of "willing" can be established for any "commitment-constituted attitude" - any attitude for which there are both constitutive and extrinsic reasons. I would argue, e. g. , that you cannot resent or forgive at will, either. (See my (2001) "Articulating an Uncompromising Forgiveness," Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 62, 3, pp. 529-55
58. and (2004) "The Force and Fairness of Blame," Philosophical Perspectives 18, 1, pp. 115-148. ) Further, a similar point can be made for virtuous or vicious intentions. You cannot form a kind or generous or spiteful intention for reasons extrinsic to those virtues or vices. See my (in progress) "Extrinsic Reasons, Alienation, and Moral Philosophy".
59. I am grateful for the help of many. I received on-going input from Tyler Burge, Barbara Herman, Thomas P. Kelly, Sean Kelsey, Gavin Lawrence, Richard Moran, Seana Valentine Shiffrin, and Gary Watson. I had helpful conversation and/or written comments from many others, including Jonathan Adler, John Broome, Luca Ferrero, Harry Frankfurt, Mark Greenberg, Gilbert Harman, Paul Hoffman, Andrew Hsu, Aaron James, Mark Johnson, David Kaplan, Aimée Koeplin, Matthew Lockard, Brad McHose, David Merli, Elijah Millgram, Anselm Mülier, Calvin G. Normore, Nikolaj Nottelmann, Thi Nyguen, Charles Otwell, Derek Parfit, Terrence Parsons, Andrew Reisner, Abraham Sessliu Roth, T. M. Scanlon, Nicholas Silins, Rebecca Slayton, Sheldon R. Smith, Christopher Smeenk, Frederick Stoutland, Julie Tannenbaum, J. David Velleman, R. Jay Wallace, anonymous reviewers, members of the Southern California Law and Philosophy Discussion Group, my graduate seminar at UCLA in 2001, the autonomy workshop at UC Riverside, an audience at the Princeton Philosophy Department, and an audience at the Southern California Philosophy Conference. Work on this paper was generously supported by the NEH and the American Council of Learned Societies. Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this paper do not necessarily reflect those of the National Endowment for the Humanities or the ACLS.