Voluntary Belief on a Strictly Epistemic Basis?

• Autores: Sergi Rosell
• Localización: VII Conference of the Spanish Society for Logic, Methodology and Philosophy of Science: Santiago de Compostela, Spain, 18-20 July 2012 / Sociedad de Lógica, Metodología y Filosofía de la Ciencia en España (aut.), Concepción Martínez Vidal (dir. congr.), José L. Falguera López (dir. congr.), José Miguel Sagüillo Fernández-Vega (dir. congr.), Víctor Martín Verdejo Aparicio (dir. congr.), Martín Pereira Fariña (dir. congr.), 2012, ISBN 978-84-9887-939-1, págs. 295-299
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • This paper discusses a recent proposal by Philip Nickel [2010], according to which we believe voluntarily— in cases of non-conclusive but adequate evidence—when the conditions of reason-responsiveness, alternative possibilities and self-expression are satisfied. I counter-argue, on the one hand, that Nickel’s argument unjustifiedly conflates two different issues—the rationality of belief and the voluntariness of belief—of a quite distinct nature. Moreover, Nickel’s interpretation of these cases is ad hoc, insofar as he assigns a role to epistemic character only for that kind of cases. Instead, I propose an alternative integrated explanation for those cases in the context of a general account of belief, which I sketch, which denies the possibility of voluntary belief of any sort.