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Tiago R Santos's avatar

You should have used a "Memento" image here where *spoiler alert* the main character chooses what he will believe in the future even though he can't control it immediately. I believe we are all subject to that kind of strategy in a less direct way that that character

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SJK's avatar

Might not doxastic voluntarism imply an existential regression problem à la Kierkegaard?

Once one admits the role of the will in belief formation in particular instances, it follows that it must also play the same role in forming beliefs about the very tools and structures one uses in choosing which beliefs to form, e.g. what constitutes a valid reason, the validity of formal systems of logic itself, etc.

At bottom, it neuters the nominal upshot of making beliefs the stuff of blameworthiness as to say "You should believe X" is really to say "I will it that you should will elsewise such that you will have chosen a chain of beliefs that will terminate in you willing X". Hardly an impassioned appeal, that.

Is this an epistemically nihilistic hell? Are them's simply the breaks? To paraphrase Hamlet, "There is nothing either good or bad, but willing makes it so."

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