Scott-Kakures - On Belief & Captivity of The Will

International Phenomenological Society
On Belief and the Captivity of the Will

Author(s): Dion Scott-Kakures
Source: Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Vol. 54, No. 1 (Mar., 1994), pp. 77-103
Published by: International Phenomenological Society
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Philosophy and Phenomenological Research
Vol. LIII, No. 4, December 1993
On Belief and the Captivity

of the Will
DION SCOT1-KAKURES
Scripps College and

The Claremont Graduate School
There are many events that we cannot bring about at will. Among the limits
to the will most philosophers count the direct, non-instrumental willing of a
belief. Most theorists argue that our inability to bring about a belief just like
that is a conceptual matter.' Typically, they argue that nothing could be a
belief and be willed directly. Others claim that our inability to will a belief
directly is not a matter of conceptual impossibility but rather just a psycho-
logical fact.2 Such a theorist argues that in order to will a belief we would
have to possess a peculiar capacity, a capacity we do not, but might have,
possessed. It is only the stronger conceptual claim which, if true, might teach
us something important about the nature of belief and action and their rela-
tionship in commonsense intentional psychology. This is not to say that the
weaker psychological claim is without philosophical interest. The falsity of
doxastic voluntarism, whether conceptual or contingent, has, for example,
important consequences for the practice of epistemology.
In this essay I defend a version of the conceptual impossibility claim. It is
not a merely contingent affair that with respect to belief our wills are captive.
Believing At Will: The Problem
Anyone who denies that it is possible to believe at will is thereby denying

that a certain kind of belief state transition is possible. The claim is that there
are no transitions of the following kind: At t, an agent does not believe that p
and at t+1 the agent believes that p, and the transition from the one belief
1 Versions of this strategy are: Bernard Williams, "Deciding to Believe," in Problems of

the Self (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1973) and Brian O'Shaughnessy, The
Will: A Dual Aspect Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980), pp. 21-
28.
2 The best example of the psychological impossibility thesis is William P. Alston's
"The Deontological Conception of Epistemic Justification" in Epistemic Justification
(New York: Cornell, 1989).
ON BELIEF AND THE CAPTIVITY OF THE WILL 77
state to the other is accomplished by a direct and unmediated willing to be-
lieve that p.
One must, however, be very precise about just what is being asserted. In
strictness, what is being claimed is not that there are no cases in which a de-
sire or some other psychological state, functioning in some roguish manner,
might produce the belief that p. What is denied is something very different,
and amounts in essentials to this: I want to believe that p and so will or in-
tend to believe that p, and as a result of my willing to believe that p, I come,
in a way appropriate to intentional action, to believe that p. The emphasis
here is upon the typical and appropriate connection which we take to hold be-
tween willings and the products of the will in virtue of which the products of
the will can be said to have been produced intentionally. In brief, what we
deny when we deny that an agent can believe at will is, as Brian O'Shaugh-
nessy puts it, that "there [can] be an act that is the bringing about of a belief
as there is a basic act that is the bringing about of an arm rise".3
In consequence, it is of no probative value to assert, in answer to the
claim that believing at will is impossible, that the following can occur: I
might will to believe that p and in causal consequence of this (i.e., in causal
consequence of being in the psychological state of willing to believe that p)
come somehow to believe that p. A belief state transition, so described, is
not yet believing at will.4 This description leaves it open that the willing
caused the belief state in a non-rational, strictly Humean fashion. What must
be known before we can agree that we have an example of believing at will is
whether the connection between the willing or the intention, on the one hand,
and the coming to believe that p, on the other, is such as to make for inten-
tional basic action.5
In what follows I will argue that if there are basic actions which are the di-
rect bringing about of beliefs then those actions must be explainable in the
way that basic intentional actions are explainable. Such actions must fall
within the explanatory purview of commonsense intentional psychological
explanation. Anyone who argues that a subject can believe at will must hold
that the connection between the willing or intention and the coming to have
the belief is the sort of connection that is present in intentional basic action.
3 O'Shaughnessy, p. 22.
4 One might of course doubt that there can be such belief state transitions. Anyone
takes the rationality constraints on the ascription of beliefs to be very strong might,
for example, be skeptical about the existence of such belief state transitions. I will ar-
gue later that there's no good a priori reason for denying the possibility of such belief
state transitions.
5 At the end of what he calls his "failed" effort to show that belief is involuntary,
Jonathan Bennett draws this distinction: the distinction between coming to believe
that p in causal consequence of wanting to believe it, on the one hand, and succeeding
in directly willing a belief on the other. He does not develop his suggestion. See "Why
Is Belief Involuntary?" Analysis, 1990, p. 106.
78 DION SCOFIr-KAKURES
I will show that the connection between the willing or intention to believe
that p and the coming to believe that p cannot be such as to make for inten-
tional basic action. While a willing to raise an arm can explain an arm rise in
a way that makes for intentional basic action, a willing to believe that p can-
not so explain the coming to believe that p. Before turning to this, I want to
consider (1) why this way of posing the problem is helpful and (2) how this
conception of the problem differs from earlier ones.
Winston's Dilemma
George Orwell's 1984 provides us with a useful example of the captivity of

the will with respect to belief. Winston, our sort-of-hero, and O'Brien, our
sort-of-villain, have a chilling exchange.
O'Brien held up his left hand, its back toward Winston with the thumb hidden and the four
fingers extended. 'How many fingers am I holding up, Winston?' 'Four.' 'And if the Party
says there are not four but five-then how many?' 'Four.' The word ended in a gasp of pain.
This is repeated many times. Winston remarks, after O'Brien notes that he
is a slow learner, "How can I help it." "How can I help seeing what is in
front of my eyes? Two and two are four."
This is only a dramatic instance of the phenomenon in which I am inter-
ested. Why is it that Winston is unable to produce a belief at will? The ques-
tion can be usefully addressed only after noting a number of distinctions.
(i) Beliefs (or rather belief states) are dispositional states of the psycholog-
ical subject. You have not succeeded in believing that 2+2=5 or in believing
that you see four fingers (Orwell is a bit unclear about whether it is an arith-
metic or perceptual belief that is at issue) simply by asserting that "2+2=5."
Winston tries this, but O'Brien isn't fooled. On any remotely plausible func-
tionalist account of the "believes that" relation, it is essential to any psycho-
logical state's being a belief that it interact with other psychological states to
produce behavior in the regular and expected ways.
(ii) It might be thought that, in the 1984 case, I have picked a too handy
example. Some might claim, for example, that in cases in which belief is not
evidentially compelled-as we might plausibly think it is with perceptual or
arithmetic beliefs-we can believe at will. Perhaps, that is to say, if O'Brien
had asked "Believe that God exists!" or "Believe that you have free will!"
things might have been different. I'll argue that this does not make a differ-
ence. The case that I will make has the result that the captivity of the will
with respect to belief is fully general.
(iii) There are, however, many projects in which Winston could engage in
hopes of bringing it about that he come to believe what he wants to believe.
It is important, even if obvious, to emphasize that our wills do indirectly and
through instrumental means alter what we come to believe. We can and do al-
ter what we believe through such circuitous means. Pascal's project for bring-
ing it about that one comes to believe in the existence of God is like this.
But note that these are projects in which, when embarked upon with open
eyes, what the subject does is this: She brings about conditions under which
she comes to have reason for believing that p. These may, of course, be rea-
sons which, at the time the agent begins the project, she does not regard as
sufficient, or even very good, reason for believing that p. What the subject
intentionally does is to bring about conditions under which (with some luck)
she comes to believe that p. In such a case there is no basic action which is
the bringing about of the belief and so the subject does not believe at will.6
(iv) I have been assuming that Winston wants, just like that, to bring it
about that he come to believe that O'Brien is holding up five fingers rather
than four. O'Brien wants something else, he wants Winston to believe that
he is holding up five fingers.7 Depending upon how we read the next few
pages of the novel, it may be that O'Brien gets what he wants even though
Winston doesn't get what he wants. That is, Winston does, just like that,
come to believe that O'Brien is holding up five fingers, but he does not suc-
ceed in directly willing the belief. The distinction here is between passivity
and activity. Winston comes, just like that, to have a belief; but he does not
bring it about, just like that, that he believes that O'Brien is holding up five
fingers.
This distinction, as I've already mentioned, will loom large in what fol-
lows. In this debate it is especially important not to rule out in an a priori
fashion the following: At time t an individual does not believe that p; indeed
he may think that the evidence against p is impressive. But at t+1 the indi-
vidual does believe that p; and he has come to believe that p without first
having or coming to have other beliefs which provide reason for believing
that p. I will call these "anomalous belief state transitions."8 What is impor-
tant about these cases is that, though the belief state is caused, there are no
causes which are also reasons for coming to believe that p. But, it is equally
important to recognize that, though such belief state transitions are not ac-
6 Here we should note the importance of these remarks to what was said at (ii) above. It is
obviously true that the ease and success of such strategies does depend upon what it is
that one wishes to believe. It is much harder to contrive a strategy which would result
in one's coming to believe that 2+2=5 than it is to construct a strategy that results in
one's coming to believe that one has freewill or that UFOs exist.
7 It should be clear that these are different. O'Brien gets what he wants if, due to a blow to
the head, Winston comes to believe that p. In these circumstances Winston doesn't get
what he wants. As we shall soon see, reflection on deviant causal chains makes this
even more apparent.
8 Mark Johnston argues for the existence of anomalous belief state transitions in "Self-
Deception and the Nature of Mind," in Perspectives on Self-Deception, B. McLaughlin
and A. Rorty, eds. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988).
80 DION SCOTI-KAKURES
complished by first coming to have reason for believing that p, it might,
nonetheless, be the case that once the belief is produced it is hadfor reasons.9
Recognizing that there are such belief state transitions is, in part, just to
recognize that, e.g., affect can quite radically alter our belief states. For all we
know, there are true, law-like regularities which state that, under conditions C
(stress, fatigue, etc.) an individual of a certain psychological kind, K, will
come, just like that, to believe that p. However the rationality constraints on
belief attribution are supposed to function, a philosopher has no business rul-
ing out a priori such belief state transitions.
I have noted that a subject can alter what she believes through circuitous
or instrumental means, by bringing it about that she comes to have reason to
believe that p. I have also claimed that subjects may, just like that, come to
believe that p, without first coming to have reason for believing that p. What
Winston wants is a certain amalgam of these. He wants to come to believe
that p immediately, as a result of willing to believe it.10 Indeed, why should
Winston not have his amalgam? For if Winston has the capacity to alter what
he believes indirectly, and if it is true that beliefs can be non-rationally gener-
ated (in anomalous belief state transitions) just like that, why cannot Win-
ston, as an act of the will, bring about a belief directly and non-rationally,
i.e., without first coming to believe other propositions which rationalize the
target belief? I turn now to a consideration of two unsuccessful efforts to
show why Winston cannot accomplish this task.
The Simple Self-Defeatingness Gambit
Why then cannot Winston have his amalgam? One intuitive and popular sug-
gestion is that in virtue of the truth-directedness of belief, beliefs are not psy-
chological states which can be willed directly. Thus the effort to will to be-
lieve must be regarded as self-defeating.
Brian O' Shaughnessy appears to endorse a version of the self-defeatingness
strategy with respect to believing at will.
9 Now is not the place to raise in great detail issues relating to anomalous belief state
transitions. I discuss anomalous belief state transitions at great length in my "Belief
and the Limits of Vernacular Psychology," (in preparation). I argue there that the pos-
sibility that I might believe that p for reasons even though my coming to believe that
p was not caused by my having those reasons becomes clear once we reject a certain
atomistic conception of contentful mental states. (Such an atomistic conception re-
gards beliefs and desires as discrete, functionally isolable states of the psychological
system.)
10 It should be emphasized that there is another kind of amalgam that Winston can most
assuredly have. If Winston knew enough about the conditions under which anomalous
belief state transitions were accomplished, he might be able to bring about those con-
ditions and so come to believe that p. But this does not constitute believing at will
however fast it is accomplished. It is obviously a case of bringing about a belief
through circuitous and indirect measures.
[B]elief that occurs in self-conscious consciousness, self-consciously aims at the
true....[T]he self-conscious [believer at will] ought to be able to make such alarming utter-
ances as: 'This belief that p, this belief that the world is such that p is true, is purely and
simply engendered by a desire that is entirely insensitive to such concerns....The very mad
come near to this; though it is far from certain that all the seeming beliefs of the very mad
are to rate as genuine belief.11
In this passage O'Shaughnessy argues that nothing could count as a belief

and be produced at will; and this because to believe that p is to believe that p
is true. Yet if I succeed in self-consciously producing a belief directly, I must
also believe that I have come to believe that p independently of any truth-
considerations, and so I must not really believe that p.
What this argument neglects is the fact that not all beliefs are self-con-
sciously held. The fact that I self-consciously will to believe that p, does not
thereby entail that if I succeed, I must also believe that I believe that p. Thus
I might succeed in willing a belief, and simultaneously forget that I have
willed it. If I succeed-however we imagine that to have been accom-
plished-my inability to believe that it was produced at will is irrelevant to
an evaluation of the success or failure of my original project.12
Bernard Williams offers a more subtle version of the self-defeatingness
gambit:
If I could acquire a belief at will, I could acquire it whether is was true or not; moreover I
would know that I could acquire it whether it was true or not. If in full consciousness I could
will to acquire a 'belief' irrespective of its truth, it is unclear that before the event I could se-
riously think of it as a belief, i.e., as something purporting to represent reality.13
It is clear that we can respond to this as we did to O'Shaughnessy's argu-

ment: It is true that before I believe the target proposition, I cannot believe it
since I believe it is not true. Nonetheless, I can seek to believe that proposi-
tion. If somehow I succeed, and also forget that the belief was produced by
volitional fiat, the fact that before success I could not regard the aimed at state
as belief is irrelevant.
However, Williams has more in mind; the above cited passage continues:
[T]here must be a restriction on what is the case after the event; since I could not in full con-
sciousness, regard this as a belief of mine, and also know that I acquired it at will. But if I can
acquire beliefs at will I must know that I am able to do this; and could I know that I was ca-
pable of this feat if with regard to every feat of this kind which I had performed I necessarily
had to believe that it had not taken place?
11 "The Will," p. 25.

12 Both Bennett in "Why Is Belief Involuntary?" and Barbara Winters in "Believing
Will," Journal of Philosophy, 76, 1979, pp. 243-256, press variations of this theme.
13 "Deciding to Believe," p. 148.
82 DION SCO1T-KAKURES
Here the point is this: For any event which is produced at will, it must at
least be possible for me to believe that it was so produced. Williams argues
that if I cannot believe, even in principle, that an event was produced at will
then I cannot produce that event type at will. This is a second way in which
one might regard as self-defeating the effort to believe at will. If it is true that
I must be able to believe that I have succeeded in producing beliefs at will if I
do have that capacity then, since I can never have that belief, I cannot believe
at will.
In their criticism of Williams' arguments both Barbara Winters and
Jonathan Bennett spend a good deal of time arguing that one might have a
certain capacity and have good reason for believing that one has that capacity,
even if one never believes on any particular occasion on which one exercises
that capacity that one has exercised it on that particular occasion.14
This seems to me a fair enough point to make. However, we can show in
a more straightforward way that, in general, there cannot be the sort of prob-
lem with believing at will that Williams urges. This is because there are
cases of self-fulfilling belief. Mark Johnston describes the following case:
Someone credible approaches me and says, "I'll give you a million bucks if
you can directly will yourself to believe that you are going to be a million-
aire."15 If, somehow, I do succeed in willing this then I am obviously not
debarred from believing that I produced the belief at will; this is a case in
which, once believed, the belief is justified. So it cannot be a fully general
constraint on what is true after I have willed a belief that I cannot believe that
I produced the belief just like that. In these cases, at least, and for all that
Williams says, it would appear that I might succeed in willing a belief di-
rectly. I'll argue in the next section that this problem for the self-defeating-
ness gambit is not limited to these odd cases of self-fulfilling belief.
Functional and Rationality Constraints on Believing
If the self-defeatingness gambit stumbles, there are hints of yet another of ar-
gument in Williams' essay.16 A psychological state counts as a belief that p,
rather than say a desire or a hope or a wish that p, in virtue of the causal role
that it plays in a subject's psychological economy.17 In the commonsense
functionalist tradition, we may argue that a belief is something that has
certain typical causes, interacts with other psychological states in typical
ways, and, finally, generates certain typical behavioral events. If I am in
some psychological state which produces the utterance, "It's going to rain"
14 See "Believing at Will," pp. 254-55, and "Why Is Belief Involuntary?" p. 93.
15 In "Self-Deception and the Nature of Mind," pp. 67-69.
16 See especially pp. 148-49.
17 Here I am thinking of commonsense functionalism. The contemporary locus classicus
of this view is David Lewis' "Psychophysical and Theoretical Identifications" in The
Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 50.
but which is caused by gout, and which fails to interact with my other be-
liefs, desires, etc., in the expected ways, then whatever else we may wish to
say about that state, we may be certain that it is not the belief that it's going
to rain.
This commonsense functionalist conception of belief might be invoked to
show that one cannot immediately will a belief. If perceptual and inferential
belief have certain typical causes, then we can simply point out that the de-
sire or intention to believe that p is not a typical cause-except indirectly-
of the belief that p. Just because of the odd causal genesis, the resulting psy-
chological state cannot count as the belief that p.
As stated this argument begs the question.18 The argument has it that be-
liefs must be caused in certain ways if they are to count as beliefs. Yet the al-
leged ways in which a belief must be caused are just the ways in which the
apologist for believing at will must deny are essential to belief genesis. More
important, if someone does manage to will herself directly into a psychologi-
cal state which interacts with other psychological states and produces behav-
ior in the typical ways, that state counts as belief even if produced in some
aberrant fashion.
The argument can, however, be developed in ways which avoid the charge
of question-beggingness and which dovetail well with current thinking about
rationality constraints on the attribution of beliefs to psychological sub-
jects.19 For whether the belief is produced by perception or reasoning, it
might be argued that these kinds of causal geneses are essential to making for
the role that belief must play in practical and theoretical reasoning. The point
here is not merely that beliefs must be caused in a certain way; rather the
point is that unless beliefs are caused in these ways, the relevant psychologi-
cal states could not play the role in a creature's psychological economy that a
state must play if it is to count as belief.
This argument against believing at will would proceed by pointing out
that if a psychological state were produced at will it would thereby be unable
to interact with other contentful mental states in the ways a state must if it is
to count as belief. And this, by the way, is why such an argument would
make appeal to rationality constraints on believing. Because of its deviant
genesis the state produced would simply not engage other psychological
states in the normatively appropriate ways.
Consider a case in which a belief is produced by reasoning from other be-
liefs. For example, I believe that p and believe that p -> q, and in conse-
18 Bennett in "Why Is Belief Involuntary?", p. 95 is clear about this fact.

19 The role of rationality constraints in the attribution of beliefs is best seen in Donald
Davidson, "Radical Interpretation," Dialectica, 27, pp. 313-328; Richard Grandy,
"Reference, Meaning and Belief," Journal of Philosophy, 70, 1973, pp. 439-452;
Daniel Dennett, "Making Sense of Ourselves," and "True Believers," both reprinted in
The Intentional Stance (Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 1987).
84 DION SCOIT-KAKURES
quence come to believe that q. I take it that reasoning from beliefs held to
other beliefs is a clear arena in which what causes a belief also rationalizes it.
The proponent of the argument we are now considering will claim that this
kind of causal/rational genesis is non-accidentally related to that psychologi-
cal state's capacity to play a certain role in the subject's psychological econ-
omy. What, then, is being urged here is that it is the fact that what causes a
belief also rationalizes it that explains why it is that a belief that p can as-
sume its appropriate role in the creature's theoretical and practical reasoning.20
Thus someone who argues that believing at will is impossible can point
out that where causation and rationalization diverge, as they will do with
immediately willed beliefs, it is not at all obvious how the resulting state
could assume anything like its normatively appropriate role in reasoning. If I
come to believe that p immediately as a direct result of willing to believe it,
then, since that state isn't the product of rational causation, it fails to be
bound in the inferential network of other beliefs. One cannot, according to
this reasoning, will a belief since whatever one succeeds in producing could-
n't play the role a belief must play in order to count as a belief.
This argument assumes that unless a belief is caused by other beliefs
which rationalize it, that state cannot play its normal role in the creature's
reasoning. I agree that by and large this is a plausible assumption. Consider a
slightly altered version of Daniel Dennett's picturesque case.21 I manage to
induce immediately in myself a state which results in my sincerely uttering,
"I have an older brother in Cleveland." But when asked about him I can an-
swer no questions, when faced with the possibility of visiting him, I do not
make the relevant plans, etc. This is a clear case in which we may say that in
virtue of the deviant genesis the "belief' cannot play its appropriate role, and
so does not count as belief.
But however plausible this assumption is in particular cases, it is to be re-
jected as a general constraint. I think there is no good reason for rejecting the
existence of, what I have termed, "anomalous belief state transitions." These
will be cases in which a belief state is caused in a non-rational way, but once
produced is held for reasons. If this can be so then some psychological state
might well be produced in a deviant fashion and yet play a role appropriate to
belief.
More to the point, and however unlikely one takes anomalous belief state
transitions to be, it should be clear that anyone who seeks to argue that di-
rectly willing a belief is impossible rejects such a possibility at his peril. For
just as the argument from the typical causes of belief begged the question
20 It should be clear that there is no commitment here to anything like ideal rationality as
a constraint on belief attribution. For these distinctions see Christopher Cherniak,
Minimal Rationality (Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 1986.
21 See p. 168 of "Mechanism and Responsibility," in Free Will, Gary Watson, ed.
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982).
against believing at will, so the rejection of anomalous belief state transi-
tions without lengthy argument also begs the question. The apologist for be-
lieving at will asserts that one can come to believe that p as a direct result of
the will. But everyone should recognize that believing that p, entails believ-
ing many other things as well. If this is so, then the claim that one can be-
lieve at will amounts to the supposition that there can be anomalous belief
state transitions.
Thus if an argument against believing at will is to be compelling it can-
not directly appeal to rationality constraints on believing in order to show
that one cannot believe at will. Any case of an anomalous belief state transi-
tion will be one in which a belief, though not caused in a rationalizing way,
is, once believed, believed for reasons. In this way, meditation upon the pos-
sibility of anomalous belief state transitions deepens our understanding of the
lessons of the earlier self-fulfilling belief case. Indeed we may conclude by
saying that wherever the causation and rationalization of beliefs part paths,
the belief may be generated, and once believed, be believed for reasons-by
the lights of the subject. In cases of self-fulfilling belief there are, in fact,
good reasons for the belief; in other cases of anomalous belief state transi-
tions (e a. cases of hypnosis, bumps to the head, or perhaps, beliefs generated
by severe anxiety) it will be true that the subject believes that there are good
reasons for the belief. What is clear is that in the self-fulfilling and anoma-
lous belief transition cases one might also believe that the belief was pro-
duced at will. This will be possible because, from one's current cognitive
perspective there are good reasons for the belief. In such circumstances one
might even regard one's prior belief as the result of blindness or small-mind-
edness, etc.
What our rejection of the argument from constraints of rationality demon-
strates, however, is not that rationality constraints are wholly toothless when
it comes to the business of belief attribution. What the possibility of anoma-
lous belief state transitions has allowed us to see is that the rationality con-
straints ought not to be appealed to diachronically in order to rule out in an a
priori fashion certain alterations in belief states. That is, one cannot appeal to
the rationality constraints in order to justify refusing to attribute the belief
that p to a subject at t+1 because the subject did not at t, or at any time be-
tween t and t+1, come to have beliefs which would rationalize the subject's
coming to believe that p at t+1. As I have been insisting, where causation
and rationalization part paths invocation of diachronic rationality constraints
is not sanctioned. They rule out as incoherent what is possible.
What I have, however, continued to endorse, at least indirectly, is a syn-
chronic use of the rationality constraints. In anomalous belief state transi-
tions, although the belief state is produced non-rationally, once believed, it is
86 DION SCOTfl-KAKURES
believed for reasons.22 If, for example, in the earlier noted Dennett case, the
individual could say something about his brother in Cleveland, this, along
with other such evidence, might make it reasonable for us to conclude that he
really does-and against all odds-believe that he has a brother in Cleveland.
This is of some importance to the argument to follow, so it is worth empha-
sizing that the claim is reasonably uncontroversial. In her criticism of
Williams' argument, Barbara Winters notes that while one can (contra
Williams) believe that p and believe that it was produced at will, one cannot
believe that p and believe that what is believed is sustained solely as a matter
of the will.23 And this in virtue of the familiar fact that to believe is to be-
lieve true. Winters' claim, then, amounts to the use of the synchronic ratio-
nality constraints. If someone believes that p then it must not be the case
that the subject also believes that that very belief is held only because of fac-
tors unrelated to truth of p.
I want to emphasize that for purposes of my argument in the sections to
follow the synchronic rationality constraints do not need to be very strong at
all. All their use needs to rule out-and what surely should be ruled out on
any account of belief attribution that is not crazy-is that no one believes
that p if she also believes that the belief that p is unsupported by any consid-
eration having to do with the truth of p.
Some Lessons
We have now examined two arguments against the possibility of believing at

will. The arguments share a certain emphasis on the retrospective which, in
part, serves to explain their failure. According to both, after willing to be-
lieve that p, and producing some belief-like state, there would be something
about the subject's consequent psychological condition which would make it
the case that the psychological state so produced wouldn't count as belief.
This cleaves closely to my earlier characterization of the conceptual impossi-
bility theorists' claim: Nothing could be a belief and be produced at will,
since something about the resulting psychological state would debar that state
from counting as a belief. What I have argued is that there is no good a priori
reasoning to support the claim that anomalous belief state transitions are im-
possible. And if these are possible, then such ex post facto worries must
limp. What is remarkable about such transitions is precisely that one might
just like that, and without first coming to have reasons, enter a belief state.
22 Of course, the reasons for the belief can be quite slim. Indeed, ceteris paribus, the fact
that I believe that p is a reason for believing that p. See William Lycan, "Conservatism
and the Data Base," in Judgment and Justification (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1988). What is important is that synchronic rationality rules out a subject's be-
lieving that p when the subject also believes that there's overwhelming positive rea-
son for disbelieving that p.
23 This is her principle (GC), p. 195 of "Believing at Will."
I should also add that there is something else peculiarly not to the point
with such retrospective arguments. As Jonathan Bennett neatly points out, if
such retrospective arguments worked they would show more than merely that
one couldn't believe at will; such arguments would also show that nothing
could be a belief and be generated without epistemic reason and quite indepen-
dently of the will.24 Given what we know about the foibles of human beings
as cognizers this seems exceptionally optimistic. But whether or not you
think that such anomalous belief state transitions are possible my point now
is that the arguments we have been canvassing would seem to have nothing
in particular to do with the impossibility of willing a belief.
One way of characterizing our progress is this: If up until now we've wor-
ried about the impossibility of willing a belief, I want now to turn to an ar-
gument which shows why it is that you cannot will a belief. I've agreed that
we should grant that someone can come to believe something just like that.
This is what happens in anomalous belief state transitions. So someone who
argues that it is possible for one to will a belief just like that must distin-
guish this voluntary activity from the process in which one comes to have a
belief involuntarily just like that. Everything hinges on distinguishing be-
tween these two processes. Anomalous belief states transitions are processes
one undergoes, while willing beliefs directly are actions that one performs.
Intentional Activity: Some Remarks
The intentional activity at issue is presumed to proceed along familiar lines: I

have compelling prudential reason to be a p-believer. I desire to believe that
p. So I will or intend (or whatever) to believe that p; and I succeed just like
that. Such a case is one in which I am meant to be understood as having
willed to believe that p. My acquisition of that belief (or my entering that be-
lief state) would, then, count as an intentional basic action. If this is so, it
will seem an easy matter to distinguish between believing at will and anoma-
lous belief state transitions. In fact, it is at just this point that the case for
believing at will founders. I will argue that believing at will cannot in prin-
ciple be distinguished from non-intentional anomalous belief state transi-
tions. Thus, though I may desire to believe that p, and in causal consequence
may come to believe that p, in no case will this count as succeeding in di-
rectly willing a belief. My case for this claim will hinge on worries about
causal theories of action and deviant causal chains.
These worries are familiar:
Case A: I desire to raise my arm; and in the typical and appropriate way, I
succeed in raising my arm. In this case we have a basic intentional action.
24 "Why Is Belief Involuntary?" p. 95.
Case B: I desire to raise my arm; but the circumstances are such that the
having of the desire so unnerves me (or whatever) that in causal consequence
(of my having the desire) my arm rises just like that.
In case A we have an intentional action in case B we do not. My aim here
is not to resolve these vexed issues. Rather, I want only to note that some-
thing like a consensus has emerged about what a solution to this problem
will look like. Working within the rough outlines of this consensus, I will
argue that nothing could count as willing a belief directly; i.e., what distin-
guishes intentional action from mere bodily movement cannot be present in
alleged cases of willing a belief. This will suffice to show that there cannot
be an action which is the direct bringing about of belief.
Let us press the analogy between believing at will and raising one's arm. I
claim that nothing rules out the possibility of the following:
Case C: I want to believe that p, and the circumstances are such that, in
causal consequence of the having of the desire (or, for that matter, the inten-
tion), I come to believe that p just like that.
However, there are good reasons for denying the possibility of believing at
will.
In case C, just as in case B, we do not have an action. Cases like B and C
are the result of the fact that if beliefs and desires are physical states, they
will have all manner of causal consequences unrelated to their functional roles
qua belief and desire. In certain circumstances, some desires may unnerve me,
or make me blush, or as we are imagining now, generate a belief the content
of which matches that of the desire. In all these deviant cases contentful men-
tal states cause behavior, but the behavior does not count as intentional ac-
tion just because of the inappropriate connections between the contentful
mental states and behavior. In consequence, such behavior is only spuriously
explained by commonsense intentional psychology. What is absent is the le-
gitimate rationalizing connection between the mental states and the behavior
in virtue of which the behavior counts as intentional and by which common-
sense intentional psychology earns its explanatory keep.
By and large, contemporary philosophers have responded to the challenge
of making for the appropriate rationalizing connection in one of two ways.
What is important for my argument is that both routes make crucial appeal to
the guidance, or control, and monitoring of intentional behavior.
The first route introduces some other contentful mental state which medi-
ates between mental states like belief and desire and intentional action. Some-
times these states are called "immediate intentions," "volitions," "choices," or
"willings." Very often they are conceived of as themselves actions or doings;
they are frequently taken to be the immediate mental antecedent to those bod-
ily movements which count as basic intentional actions. Most of the particu-
lars of these various accounts do not matter for my purposes. What does mat-
ter is that the mediating mental state is itself contentful; its content looks
forward to the intended state of affairs in the sense of providing satisfaction
conditions for the intention or willing. Thus, I count as succeeding in realiz-
ing my willing just in case I bring about the state of affairs which matches
the content of the willing.
Important, as well, to such accounts is the claim that such intentions are
self-referring; i.e., the content of each intention or willing makes reference to
the intention whose content it is.25 If I intend to raise my arm, the intentional
content of my intention, John Searle argues, "must be at least (that I perform
the action of raising my arm by way of carrying out this intention)."26 This
is necessary because the appeal to an intention by itself does nothing to solve
our problem. The residual problem, we might politely say, is that I might
formulate the intention and yet the relation between intention and action
might still be the deviant one.27 In Davidson's timorous mountaineer case,28
for example, the formulation of the intention might so unnerve the subject
that he loosens his grip on the rope. In this case, the formulation of the
intention causally explains the behavior but without the rationalizing
connection. In answer, Alan Donagan writes: "When he loosened it, what his
[intention] presupposed had ceased to be true. He had lost control over
whether he loosened it or not. And so his loosening it, although explained by
his [intention], is not explained in the way he [intended]."29 Thus, such
accounts have it that the content of the intention or willing must specify the
fashion in which the intention will produce the action.
Present, at least implicitly, in all these discussions is the claim that the
intention guides or governs the relevant activity that it causes and in such a
way as to permit the monitoring of the relevant behavior. It is this that is be-
ing claimed when it is asserted that it is part of the content of the intention
that "that very intention will lead" me to perform the intended action. As we
have seen, if this were not so, we would not have even the barest outline of a
solution to the deviant cases. Basic intentional actions are, on these views,
guided and controlled and so monitored by the intentions by which they are
caused. So, if we do have the beginnings of a response to the deviant cases it
is this: The content of the intention specifies its satisfaction conditions in
25 John Searle Intentionality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), J. David

Velleman, Practical Reflection (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989), Gilbert
Harman, "Practical Reasoning," Review of Metaphysics, 29, 1976, and Alan Donagan,
Choice: The Essential Element in Human Action (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul,
1987) argue that intentions are self-referential. (I should note here that Velleman
thinks that one can believe at will.)
26 Intentionality, p. 85.
27 See Christopher Peacocke, "Deviant Causal Chains," in Midwest Studies in Philoso-
phy, no. 4, P. French, T. Uehling, and H. Wettstein, eds. (Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press, 1979).
28 In "Freedom to Act," Essays on Actions and Events (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1980).
29 Choice, p. 93.
90 DION SCOT7F-KAKURES
such a way as to guarantee that the intention guides the behavior. And if this
is so it should be apparent that intentions play an important monitoring role
in the generation of intentional action. 30 To say that an intention directs ac-
tivity is just to say that I monitor and guide my activity against the back-
ground of the intention. Thus, when I intend to raise my arm and I succeed, I
know when to stop trying. It is this guiding and monitoring of the agent's by
appeal to the content of the intention that serves to distinguish the brute
humean causes of the deviant cases from the rationalizing causes essential to
intentional psychological explanation.
I have been arguing that talk of intentions as self-referring can be usefully
understood as a claim concerning the essential guiding and monitoring roles
of intentions in the generation of basic intentional actions. It is, however,
important to point out that the claim that intentions are self-referring has
been much criticized.31 Still, even those who are skeptical about the self-re-
ferring hypothesis, typically are so, at least in part, because they are con-
vinced that one can make good sense of the notions of guidance and monitor-
ing quite independently of an appeal to self-referential content.32
This family of responses to the deviance problem has it that intentional
action is planned action.33 What goes awry in the deviant cases in that the
behavior does not occur as planned. The chief difference between these views
and those considered above is simply that such plans do not typically include
intention-referring elements. What is crucial to my efforts here is that, as a
solution to the deviance problem, it must be the case not merely that the
agent acts in accord with a plan, she must actually must follow it.34 But to
follow a plan is to be guided by that plan; furthermore, if one is to guide
one's behavior by the plan-component of an intention one must be able to
monitor one' s behavior in ways familiar from our earlier discussion.
There is, I think, no reason to belabor the point. The two most promising
responses to the problem of deviant causal chains involve appeal to the claim
that behavior must be guided and monitored by intentions (or plan-compo-
nents of intentions) if it is to count as intentional basic action.
1( This conception of monitoring is parasitic on guidance; one monitors, in the relevant

sense, only behavior that one guides.
A1 Alfred Mele argues against the self-referring hypothesis in "Are Intentions Self-Refer-
ential?" Philosophical Studies, 52, 1987. See also Jennifer Hornsby's review of Dona-
gan, "Reasoned Choice," Inquiry, 32, 1988. Now is not the place to attempt a consid-
eration of these criticisms. I remain convinced, however, that only by appeal to the
self-referential nature of intentional content can one give substance to talk of guidance.
32 See especially Mele's "Are Intentions Self-Referential?" pp. 316-17.
33 This route is taken by Mele in "Are Intentions Self-Referential?" The notion that in-
tentional action is planned action, as well as the claim that intentional action is guided
and monitored (without self-referential content), are taken up in great detail by Myles
Brand in Intending and Acting (Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 1984).
34 See Brand, Intending and Acting, p. 25, and Mele, "Are Intentions Self-Referenti
pp. 312-13.
Some will object to the claim that it is a necessary condition of some-
thing's counting as basic intentional activity that it be monitored. I think
that we can easily dispatch with this objection. We must certainly distinguish
between conscious and unconscious monitoring of activity. And surely it is
likely that most of the processes which result in basic action are uncon-
sciously monitored. In a familiar way my raising my arm in order to open the
window, or my grasping a key in order to start the car are actions which are
intentional, but which are, at least typically, unconsciously guided and moni-
tored.35 So the point is not that all intentional behavior is consciously guided
or monitored but rather that behavior, if it is to count as basic intentional
action must be guided and monitored.36
If an event is to count as an intentional basic action it must be produced
by some contentful mental state(s) which guides the activity. It is this guid-
ance which makes for the obvious way in which we may say that intentional
activity is monitored activity. I argue in what follows that the reason I cannot
succeed in directly willing to believe that p is that the process which results
in the generation of the belief would have to be unmonitored or ungoverned
by the content of the intention or the plan. Unlike the arguments we can-
vassed earlier, which pointed to retrospective difficulties associated with di-
rectly willing a belief, the worry I am now raising might be termed a
"prospective" worry. My intention to believe that p just like that cannot ini-
tiate a process whereby that very intention directs or guides activity the result
of which is the coming to believe that p. No one can will a belief that p, be-
cause nothing could count as willing a belief; viz., nothing could count as
initiating a guided and monitored process which succeeded in producing a be-
lief.
The arguments we earlier considered and rejected, falsely assumed that one
could not believe that p and believe that that belief was produced solely by a
fiat of the will. But what is true, we noted, is that I cannot believe that p and
believe that that belief is sustained solely as a matter of the will. This fact
about belief can be developed in ways which, in combination with our re-
marks about the fact that intentional activity is guided and monitored activity,
make clear that the process leading to the installation of a belief must, at
some point or other, be unguided and so unmonitored. In that respect it must
be like the deviant case. It is to the details of this argument that I now turn.
35 See Brand, Intending and Acting, p. 153.

36 However, I must say that I suspect that this objection is more deeply wrong-headed
than I suggest in the text. These are after all cases in which a subject intendsfully con-
sciously, "I will believe that p." But if someone must lose sight of this intention, if
the intention must, that is, first become unconscious before it can be pursued, then that
is enough to show that one can't directly will a belief. Rather something else must first
occur-the pushing into unconsciousness of the intention-before it can be pursued.
Thus one comes to believe only as a by-product and not as a direct result of the will.
These issues are pursued in great detail below.
92 DION SCOTf-KAKURES
The Basic Argument
If at some time I wish or desire or intend to believe that p and then at some
later time do believe that p what, in addition, must be true if we are to con-
clude that I have succeeded in directly willing a belief? Presumably, what
must be true is not merely that what I wanted has come to pass, but also that
I have done what I wanted to do.
Take the case which should be most congenial to the advocate of believing
at will: self-fulfilling belief. Someone credibly offers me a million dollars if I
can get myself to believe that I will be a millionaire. I am powerfully moti-
vated to come to believe this. I will to believe this and-poof-shortly there-
after I do believe it. (And as we've seen I perfectly well can believe that I pro-
duced the belief at will.)
But now from my current cognitive perspective I can ask myself: "Did I
succeed in producing this belief at will, or was it just the case that I wanted
to believe that p and somehow or other, quite involuntarily, came to believe
that p?" At the moment I said to myself, "Now I will believe that p!" I did
not currently believe that p. I wouldn't, of course, have willed to believe it if
I had believed it. From my cognitive perspective at that time (prior to the in-
stallation of the belief) I believe that believing that I will be a millionaire is
unjustified. The proposition, I will be a millionaire, is the content of a desire
and not of a belief, and I believe this. Our question, then, amounts to this:
Can I have good reason for believing that I have succeeded in willing myself,
as a basic action, from the cognitive perspective I inhabited at t to the cogni-
tive perspective I inhabit at t+1? This is our question. It is a relatively easy
matter to see why the answer is no.
We know one thing about this transition; we know that there is no expla-
nation of the transition from the cognitive perspective I inhabit at t to the
one that I inhabit at t+1 which also demonstrates that that transition is epis-
temically rationalizable. My point is that nothing I believe at t or come to
believe between t and t+1 renders it epistemically rational to believe that p. If
I had, first, come to believe something else which rendered rational my be-
lieving that p then I would not have succeeded in willing the belief directly;
rather I would have come to believe that p indirectly by coming to believe
something else first. Indeed, in urging that I can directly will a belief that p,
the advocate for believing at will should agree that I do not, between t and
t+1, first come to believe things that make rational my coming to believe
that p.
We may illuminate the nature of the transition from t to t+1 by means of
a consideration of my cognitive perspective at these two times.
At t: I believe: I want to believe that p
I desire: I believe that p
I believe: I do not currently believe that p
I believe: Believing that p is not currently justified
In the self-fulfilling belief case my cognitive perspective at t+1 looks like

this:
I believe: p
I believe: I produced p directly in an act of will
I believe: My belief that p is justified
In cases in which self-fulfilling belief is not at issue, the relevant aspects of

my cognitive perspective at t+1 are likely to be quite simple:
I believe: p
I do not believe anything that rules out my currently believing

that p; e.g., I do not believe that my belief that p is sustained
solely by the will; I do not believe that it is very likely false that
p, etc.37
There is an important contrast between bringing about beliefs and bring-

ing about arm-rises. Beliefs, unlike arm-rises are, we might say, constitutive
of my cognitive perspective. However we put it, whether we say that beliefs
are maps by which we make our way about the world, or whether, with a cer-
tain je ne sais quoi, we say that I "look through" my beliefs, what is certain
is that beliefs constitute my vision of how things stand in the world. They
along with desires, etc., are the background against which I formulate my
plans, intentions, etc.
So when I do formulate my here-and-now intention, "Now I will believe
that p," my current cognitive perspective, the one from which that intention
is generated, includes the beliefs that I do not now believe that p and that
nothing I do currently believe is sufficient epistemic justification for my be-
lieving that p. These two beliefs are importantly related. I do not believe that
p because it is the case that I also believe that nothing I currently believe
epistemically justifies the belief that p. We are granting that I cannot believe
that p, and also believe that belief is sustained solely as a matter of the will.
And note that when I formulate my intention to believe that p I must regard
my current cognitive perspective as not sanctioning the belief that p. That is
37 This, of course, does not attribute a belief to the subject. It does however serve to de-
scribe important facts about the subject's cognitive perspective at t+1.
why I do and must formulate the intention to believe that p if I am to believe
it.
Once I have-somehow or other-produced the belief that p, my current
cognitive perspective contains the belief that p. My cognitive perspective at
t+1 contains nothing immediately available which rules out the belief that p.
Recall that the belief that p is ruled out, at t, by other beliefs and that the
transition from t to t+1 is meant to be one which is accomplished directly by
an act of will.
If the above descriptions of the belief state transition and the relevant as-
pects of my cognitive perspectives are correct, then there must be a cognitive
blind spot, or fissure, between t and t+1. I cannot, from my cognitive per-
spective at t, see my way through to my altered cognitive perspective at t+1.
If this is so, then the intention that I formulate at t cannot be one by which I
govern or monitor my behavior through to t+1. And this means that, since
the arrival at the belief state at t+1 is ungoverned or unmonitored, my arrival
at that belief state cannot count as something I succeed in willing directly, as
I do when I succeed in directly willing an arm rise.
This cognitive blind spot was at least dimly present in our earlier discus-
sion of anomalous belief state transitions. For the only way of making sense
of those transactions was to imagine a cognitive rift between the two states, a
more or less dramatic alteration of the agent's cognitive perspective. It is just
this fissure or blind spot which allows us to comprehend the source of the
unwillability of belief.
If behavior must be unguided and so, in the relevant way, unmonitored,
then it does not count as basic intentional action.38 As we saw before, we
can, at least in part, understand this guidance and monitoring as a matter of an
intention or plan specifying the manner in which the intention itself or action
will count as being fulfilled or performed. I formulate this intention because I
want to believe that p and do not currently believe it. But a content like the
one possessed by this intention cannot carry me to the belief state of believ-
ing that p-and this because there must be a cognitive fissure between the in-
tention and the state I am aiming at. For if I aim directly at believing that p,
38 An anonymous referee suggests the following play on William James' famous case as a
problem: A blindfolded patient with an anesthetized arm is told to raise his arm. He
formulates the intention to raise his arm; it seems that, even though guidance and mon-
itoring are not present (since there is no feedback), the agent might still intentionally
raise his arm. Here we have at least two alternatives: First we might insist that some
sort of guidance remains; James, in fact, tells us that if the arm had been held down the
patient would be astonished to learn that he had not raised it (Principles of Psychology
(New York: Dover, 1950), vol. II, p. 105). It seems that he lacks kinesthetic and visual
awareness but that some other sort of (in this case, misleading) guidance and monitor-
ing persists. Alternatively, if all such guidance and so monitoring are absent, we can
say that the agent does perform an intentional basic action: he tries to raise his arm,
and this causes his arm to rise. He raises his arm intentionally, but as a non-basic and
not a basic action.
then I must leave behind the intention to believe that p before I am to believe
that p.
In a standard case of successful intentional basic action (e.g., raising one's
arm), the intention is abandoned once its satisfaction conditions are realized
(or rather once the agent believes they are realized). But if the above argument
is correct the intention to believe that p must be abandoned before one could
believe that p. This is why the behavior must be unguided and thus, unmoni-
tored.39
Nonetheless, although there is a temporal aspect to my argument, it is
important to emphasize that the existence of the cognitive fissure does not
depend on matters temporal. This is a conceptual matter. The cognitive per-
spective which generates or grounds this intention includes the fact that be-
lieving that p is not currently sanctioned by what I believe. Invoking our
synchronic rationality constraints: I cannot now believe that p because I also
believe that nothing I currently believe justifies my believing that p. So I
must somehow bring about my believing that p.
The brief investigation of an analogous case may help. Consider the pro-
ject of willing to forget that p just like that. In this case, as well, it seems as
though the intention to forget that p must be abandoned before I do forget
that p (since, in this case, the fact that p is a constituent of the intention).40
Here, as in the belief case, the intention must be abandoned before its satis-
faction conditions are realized. And, as in the belief case, the existence of the
fissure is a conceptual and not a temporal matter.
As long as I intend to believe that p (i.e., so long as I inhabit the cogni-
tive perspective which generates that intention), I cannot believe that p. This
is because the beliefs which generate the intention are incompatible with my
believing that p. Thus the intention must be abandoned before its satisfaction
conditions are realized. If the intention that I formulate must be abandoned be-
fore I succeed in bringing about the state of affairs it represents, then that in-
tention cannot be one by which I direct and monitor my activity until suc-
cess. There must be a cognitive fissure between the intention or willing to
believe and the arrival at the belief state.
39 The analogy with the arm raising case is instructive in another regard as well. My here-
and-now intention to raise my arm is generated from a cognitive perspective which in-
cludes the belief that my arm is not now raised. But that belief is not incompatible with
the successful completion of the intention. I might succeed in raising my arm, but be-
lieve that I have failed. Again, arm-rises are independent of my cognitive perspective,
but belief transitions are not.
40 Jon Elster argues this in Sour Grapes (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983),
pp. 148-50.
96 DION SCOFTF-KAKURES
Objections Considered4 1
The argument just presented relies upon the fact that the intention or willing
to believe that p must be grounded in an agent's cognitive perspective. In par-
ticular, that cognitive perspective is one which does not sanction believing
that p. From this fact we are able to conclude that, since that cognitive per-
spective is incompatible with the belief that p, the intention must be aban-
doned before its satisfaction conditions are realized.
Certain puzzling cases present an apparent difficulty for the analysis.
Cases of akratic belief would seem to be cases in which a cognitive perspec-
tive which might generate the intention (or plan-component of the intention)
need not be incompatible with believing that p.42 Thus, there need be no
cognitive fissure between the intention and the installation of the belief state.
If this is so, then for all I have said, in an important class of cases I might
succeed in believing at will.
The most familiar characterization of akratic belief is given by Alfred
Mele:
In believing that p during t, S exhibits strict doxastic incontinence if and only if the belief
is motivated and free* and, during t, S consciously holds a judgment to the effect there there
is good and sufficient reason for his not believing that p.43
It should be noted that, so formulated, this is a claim about already believ-

ing what one judges one should not believe. Still it would seem to be easy
enough to formulate the claim in a way directly relevant to our purposes:
In failing to believe that p during t, S exhibits strict doxastic incontinence if and only if,
the failure to believe is motivated and free* and, during t, S consciously holds a judgment to
the effect that there is good and sufficient reason for his believing that p.
It should be clear that some sorts of akratic believing, strictly so-called,

are no threat at all to the proposed account. On Mele's view, the judgment
that there is good and sufficient reason for belief can include prudential as
well as epistemic reasons. For example, Pascal might judge that, from an
epistemic point of view, he should be agnostic. But he might judge that all
things considered he has most reason to believe that God exists. Yet he might
remain agnostic. This will count as an akratic belief, but the cognitive fissure
remains.
41 I had hoped to avoid a discussion of akratic belief in this essay. Jim Bogen and an
anonymous referee convinced me that this hope was in vain.
42 Discussions of akratic belief are found in Alfred Mele's Irrationality (Oxford: Oxfo
University Press, 1987), chapter eight; John Heil's "Doxastic Incontinence" Mind,
93, 1984. Donald Davidson considers what he terms "weakness of warrant," in
"Deception and Division," in Actions and Events: Perspectives on the Philosophy of
Donald Davidson, E. LePore and B. McLaughlin, eds. (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1985).
43 Irrationality, p. 112.
The cases that will make for trouble will be cases in which the judgment
is based on solely epistemic matters.44 Thus, at t, the akratic believer's cog-
nitive perspective will approximate the following:
I believe: I do not currently believe that p.
I believe: I have good and sufficient epistemic reason to believe

that p.
I intend: I believe that p.
In such a case, since the cognitive perspective which generates the intention
is not incompatible with believing that p there need be no cognitive fissure.
Before turning to this possibility, note that if we are to have a case of akratic
belief of the problematic sort the relevant epistemic judgment must be (as
Mele notes) decisive. To so judge is not merely to judge that the evidence
available supports p. If there is to be no cognitive fissure the judgment must
be decisive in the sense that epistemic considerations make it the case that I
judge that it is settled that I ought to believe that p. Thus, such a case will be
one in which though I judge decisively that, from an epistemic point of view,
I ought to believe that p, I do not believe that p because of non-epistemic, af-
fective/motivational features of my psychological constitution.
A consideration of this possibility demands that we be extremely sensitive
to the nuances of various cases. For example, we must take care to distin-
guish such cases from those in which up until t the agent has not believed
that p; but, at t, as a result of a consideration of the evidence, she comes to
believe that p.
It is also possible for an agent to judge, "I really ought (epistemically) to
believe that p," while it remains the case that, as a matter of fact, her current
cognitive perspective fails to sanction that belief. For though an agent may
judge or believe that given her evidentiary beliefs she should believe that p, it
might nonetheless be true that she has beliefs-no doubt affect-induced-
which make it the case that believing that p is not sanctioned. Perhaps in
such cases we will wish to say that the agent is of "two minds" about the
truth of p; or we might characterize the situation as one which involves a
conflict between first order and second order beliefs.45 Such cases will be ones
in which there is a failure of self-knowledge. But what is important is that in
44 John Heil's notion of "believing in the teeth of the evidence," is a characterization of

this. See "Doxastic Incontinence," pp. 65-69.
45 For many insightful variations on this theme with respect to an agent's values see
Harry G. Frankfurt's "Identification and Wholeheartedness," in The Importance of What
We Care About (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988). My point is that there
seems no good reason to refuse to apply Frankfurt's reasoning to more straightfor-
wardly epistemic matters.
98 DION SCO7T-KAKURES
such cases the agent judges that she has good and sufficient reason to believe
that p and yet it is nonetheless the case that the agent's cognitive perspective
does not sanction that belief. These cases are a testament to the fact that we
do not have direct and immediate control over our beliefs. At any rate, such
cases might be properly called "akratic believing," and they are no threat to
the proposed argument.
I have so far been urging that many forms of akratic belief pose no threat
to my argument. Still, what of the case in which the decisive judgment does
reflect the fact that the agent's current cognitive perspective sanctions the be-
lief that p, and yet the agent does not believe that p? Here, the agent's judg-
ment is purely epistemic; and granting what we said earlier about the nature
of the decisive judgment, it amounts to the judgment that given the evidence
(in the form of agent's other beliefs) believing that p is demanded. Can such a
judgment be anything other than an expression of the agent's belief that p?
Mele considers a version of this objection to this form of akratic belief:
It may be suggested that 'S consciously holds a judgment that there is good and sufficient
reason for his not believing that p' entails 'S does not believe that p,' and that strict incon-
tinent believing consequently is impossible. The underlying assumption would seem to be
this: That to judge that there is good and sufficient reason for believing that p is to believe
that p.... The assumption paints an attractive picture no doubt, but one that is overly opti-
mistic about human rationality.46
But if, after a survey of the evidence, S's decisive epistemic judgment is
that she has good and sufficient reason to believe that p, how could she fail at
the very time she so judges to believe that p? To say that the judgment is
strictly epistemic is to agree that the agent believes that considerations hav-
ing to do with the truth of p, render it the case that p is more likely to be true
than not. But if she judges that p is more likely true than not, then she be-
lieves that more likely p than not. And if her judgment is decisive in the way
I have claimed it must be if there is to be no cognitive fissure, then her
judgment is not merely that the evidence makes it the case that p is more
likely true than not, it is that p is true. And to affirm that p is true, is to
affirm that p.
I want to emphasize that my claim is the relatively modest one that at the
very time she judges the agent thereby expresses her belief that p. But, as is
clear from many cases of self-deception, when not actively so judging a sub-
ject may fail to believe that p; she may even believe that not-p. So even here
there is room for a kind of-indirect-akratic belief. It is worth considering
two such cases:
First, I might believe that p. But it might just be too painful to act in ac-
cord with this belief. On the occasions in which p is in question, I might find
46 Irrationality, pp. 113-14.
myself acting and speaking in ways which would indicate that I do not be-
lieve that p. I might regard this as a kind of bad faith, and say to myself:
"Believe that p!" And straightaway I might begin to act and reason like a typ-
ical p-believer. Clearly, all I succeed in doing in such a case is this: I intend
to act in accord with my belief and I succeed. Nothing I want to claim rules
this out.
Second, I might believe that p. And I might also believe that not-p. If this
is so, the beliefs must somehow be held apart. Donald Davidson writes of
this possibility:
[P]eople can and do sometimes keep closely related but opposed beliefs apart. To this extent
we must accept the idea that there can be boundaries between parts of the
mind.... Contradictory beliefs... must each belong to a vast and identical network of be-
liefs...Although they must belong to strongly overlapping territories, the contradictory
beliefs do not belong to the same territory; to erase the line between them would destroy one
of the beliefs.47
Davidson here points out that we must admit that beliefs can be inaccessi-
ble to agents. Thus at some time, I may believe that not-p and my belief that
not-p may be accessible to me. At some later time I may find myself acting
on my belief that p (perhaps, in this case, not-p is hard to bear). And here I
may say to myself "Believe that p!" And straightway I might. But this would
not be a case of directly willing a belief. In this case I already believe that p.
What I have done directly in this: I have brought into accessibility my belief
that p (or perhaps I have willed away the boundary between the two beliefs). I
am not interested in denying that this is possible.
In these cases there is no cognitive fissure because one already believes
that p. What one succeeds in directly willing is not the bringing about of the
belief but something else.
Our recent discussion of Davidson's partitioning hypothesis might sug-
gest another worry for the proposed argument.48 The argument hinges on the
claim that so long as an agent inhabits the cognitive perspective which gen-
erates the intention she cannot come to believe what she intends to believe.
The possibility of mental partitioning appears to present a barrier to this rea-
soning. For example, one might argue that the relevant portions of the cogni-
tive perspective and the intention might exist in one part of the mind, and yet
produce the belief in another. In fact, this suggestion reinforces our earlier
remarks concerning the non-intentional nature of anomalous belief state tran-
sitions. For, according to Davidson, such partitions mark boundaries across
which, though the mental states in one portion of the mind may cause mental
47 "Deception and Division," p. 147 in Actions and Events: Perspectives on the Philos-
ophy of Donald Davidson, E. LePore and B. McLaughlin, eds. (Oxford: Basil Blackwell,
1985).
48 The connection here was suggested by an anonymous referee.
100 DION SCOIT-KAKURES
effects in another, there are no rationalizing relations. This insures that the re-
lation between the cognitive perspective and intention, on the one hand, and
the generated belief, on the other, will not make for basic intentional action.
The relation may be causal-as it is with anomalous belief state transi-
tions-but it cannot be intentional.
Conclusion
My argument makes it clear why it is that my will is captive with respect to

belief and not with respect to contentful mental states like desires. Thus, and
pace Jonathan Bennett, it seems that I might well succeed in directly willing,
just like that, to desire that p.49 Just in virtue of the fact that there are no
synchronic rationality constraints on desiring, I might certainly believe that I
desire that p and that this desire is sustained solely as a matter of the will.
And if this is so, recognizing, of course, the real oddity of such cases, there
need be no relevant cognitive fissure between intending to desire that p and
the state in which I desire that p. Even though my intention to desire that p
is formulated against the background of a cognitive perspective in which I be-
lieve I do not now desire that p, since the state aimed at is not a belief I can,
at least possibly, govern my behavior by the intention and succeed in enter-
ing that desire-state. Unlike the case of willing to believe, the intention to
desire that p is not grounded in psychological facts incompatible with desir-
ing that p.50
The same is true for more familiar cases. So I might intend to imagine
Mt. Hood at sunset, and straightaway I do. Here as well, and just because the
mental state aimed at is not a belief, there need be no cognitive fissure. Vi-
sual imaginings, like desires, are not states the contents of which I regard as
true, not part of the way I take the world to be.
Of course, I might well, as we have emphasized throughout, will to be-
lieve that p, and this might carry me to the cognitive fissure, and then, once
blind, stripped of the intention, I might come to believe that p, just like that.
This cannot be ruled out by the above argument (and a good thing too, since
it is just an anomalous belief transition). This does not count as succeeding
in willing a belief directly. What we have in such a case, and straightfor-
wardly so, is coming to believe that p indirectly. This is a familiar matter.
This explains why it is that, though my beliefs may alter in ways which
are not rationalizable, the process by which beliefs do alter is not one which
one I can will to alter just like that. The causal mechanisms at work here
cannot be distinguished from those at work in the deviant cases.
49 "Why Is Belief Involuntary?" pp. 97-100.

50 That is, I can see no good reason to claim that it is conceptually impossible to bring
about a desire just like that. For all I have said it may well be psychologically impos-
sible.
I can now make good on my earlier remarks about why it is that believing
at will is not something that falls within the purview of commonsense inten-
tional psychology. In virtue of the cognitive fissure between the willing or
intention and the intended belief state, contentful mental states cannot be un-
derstood to explain the arrival at the belief state except in a non-rationalizing
manner. In the relevant respects the behavior is like the deviant cases. There,
too, contentful mental states initiate a causal chain which ends in behavior,
but, because we do not have the appropriate connection which is secured by
guidance, we do not have intentional action. In such cases, there is no action
which is to be explained by intentional psychology. In the deviant cases we
should expect an explanation of the behavior from mechanistic psychology
(neurology perhaps) not from intentional psychology. For the same reasons,
alleged cases of bringing about a belief directly are to be explained by mecha-
nistic psychology. The existence of the cognitive fissure means that the be-
havior cannot be governed and so cannot be rationalized. This is unsurprising,
since this is also true of anomalous belief state transitions.
We've come full circle. Recall that we rejected the simple self-defeating-
ness ploy because it just is not true that an agent cannot believe that p and
believe that the belief was the product of the will. But what we have seen is,
in a more complex fashion, that the effort to believe at will is, in fact, self-
defeating. For in all such cases, the intention or willing to believe that p
must be abandoned before that intention can be realized.5'
Return to our earlier worries about poor Winston. He wants to will a be-
lief directly and he cannot. His failure we understand now would be no less
certain were O'Brien to have been less demanding, and asked Winston to be-
lieve something easier to believe. Winston cannot get his amalgam. He may
of course come to believe-just like that-what he wants to believe. Or, per-
haps, if he had more time, he might somehow try to arrange things in such a
way that he might increase the odds that he come to believe the target belief.
But in no case can Winston succeed in directly willing himself into the de-
sired belief state. As I've argued, the Winston who does the willing must be
51 I should say that it strikes me that Williams sees something like this difficulty but fails
to articulate it. He writes, recall, that no one can be said to possess an ability if, neces-
sarily, he can never believe that he has exercised that ability. We noted that this
formulation fails to rule out believing at will.
But if we formulate Williams' worry, not as a retrospective concern about what I
can believe ex post actu, but rather as a worry about how it is that one could ever moni-
tor the behavior in the relevant ways, then I do think we can understand why it is that
the thought that I can believe at will attributes to me an ability I could never possess.
The problem isn't that I could never believe that I exercised this ability; it is rather that
I could never believe it truly.
102 DION SCOTT-KAKURES
separated by a cognitive fissure from the Winston who counts as satisfying
O'Brien's demands.52
52 I am grateful to Hugh Benson, Jim Bogen, Hilary Bok, John Vickers, Paul Hurley,
Stephen Davis and Charles Young for helpful discussion. The comments of two
anonymous referees much improved the essay. I am especially indebted to William
Taschek with whom I've talked much about these matters over the years.

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On Belief and the Captivity of the Will

International Phenomenological Society is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve

On Belief and the Captivity

Scripps College and

Believing At Will: The Problem

Anyone who denies that it is possible to believe at will is thereby denying

1 Versions of this strategy are: Bernard Williams, "Deciding to Believe," in Problems of

ON BELIEF AND THE CAPTIVITY OF THE WILL 77

George Orwell's 1984 provides us with a useful example of the captivity of

ON BELIEF AND THE CAPTIVITY OF THE WILL 79

The Simple Self-Defeatingness Gambit

ON BELIEF AND THE CAPTIVITY OF THE WILL 81

In this passage O'Shaughnessy argues that nothing could count as a belief

It is clear that we can respond to this as we did to O'Shaughnessy's argu-

11 "The Will," p. 25.

Functional and Rationality Constraints on Believing

ON BELIEF AND THE CAPTIVITY OF THE WILL 83

18 Bennett in "Why Is Belief Involuntary?", p. 95 is clear about this fact.

ON BELIEF AND THE CAPTIVITY OF THE WILL 85

We have now examined two arguments against the possibility of believing at

ON BELIEF AND THE CAPTIVITY OF THE WILL 87

Intentional Activity: Some Remarks

The intentional activity at issue is presumed to proceed along familiar lines: I

24 "Why Is Belief Involuntary?" p. 95.

ON BELIEF AND THE CAPTIVITY OF THE WILL 89

25 John Searle Intentionality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), J. David

1( This conception of monitoring is parasitic on guidance; one monitors, in the relevant

ON BELIEF AND THE CAPTIVITY OF THE WILL 91

35 See Brand, Intending and Acting, p. 153.

At t: I believe: I want to believe that p

I desire: I believe that p

ON BELIEF AND THE CAPTIVITY OF THE WILL 93

I believe: Believing that p is not currently justified

In the self-fulfilling belief case my cognitive perspective at t+1 looks like

I believe: I produced p directly in an act of will

I believe: My belief that p is justified

In cases in which self-fulfilling belief is not at issue, the relevant aspects of

I do not believe anything that rules out my currently believing

There is an important contrast between bringing about beliefs and bring-

ON BELIEF AND THE CAPTIVITY OF THE WILL 95

It should be noted that, so formulated, this is a claim about already believ-

It should be clear that some sorts of akratic believing, strictly so-called,

ON BELIEF AND THE CAPTIVITY OF THE WILL 97

I believe: I do not currently believe that p.

I believe: I have good and sufficient epistemic reason to believe

I intend: I believe that p.

44 John Heil's notion of "believing in the teeth of the evidence," is a characterization of

46 Irrationality, pp. 113-14.

ON BELIEF AND THE CAPTIVITY OF THE WILL 99

100 DION SCOIT-KAKURES

My argument makes it clear why it is that my will is captive with respect to

49 "Why Is Belief Involuntary?" pp. 97-100.

ON BELIEF AND THE CAPTIVITY OF THE WILL 101

102 DION SCOTT-KAKURES

ON BELIEF AND THE CAPTIVITY OF THE WILL 103

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