Q&A: Two Comments Regarding Authority in Matters of Fact / Voluntary Belief
Two Comments Regarding Authority in Matters of Fact / Voluntary Belief
Question
Hello and blessings,
Regarding what you usually say about “authority in matters of fact” and that one cannot be commanded, I wanted to note something from two philosophers who dealt with this:
[A] David Hume held that one cannot choose or believe by force of will, because empirically a person can decide to move his leg, but he cannot adopt a belief or accept a fact by decision. We can want to believe, or want to lose a belief, but belief itself does not derive from the faculty of will.
[B] A sharper version—not merely an empirical one—was formulated by the philosopher Bernard Williams: one cannot believe voluntarily because this is a conceptual limitation. That is: (a) to believe X means that X is true. (b) A belief or fact in the world is true because it does not depend on me (that is, truth is not a product of will). Therefore, if we could control our beliefs by will, then in effect we could change the facts of the world by our will. And if that were so, the very concept of truth outside our imagination would of course collapse. In other words, if it were possible to believe voluntarily, then we could not really believe at all, because to believe something means to believe it is true, and “true” means that it is not dependent on will.
I thought you might find this relevant in connection with your position on the matter.
Answer
In my view these are equivalent arguments, and that is also my reasoning. Many thanks.
Discussion on Answer
The above was written about at length in his book (in English), Problems of the Self.
Thanks.
I’ve always wondered about this claim—after all, even if you can’t literally believe by force of will, you certainly can influence belief through will—for example, you can choose to expose yourself to certain views and certain cultures, and obviously that directly affects belief.
But if you don’t believe it, why would you expose yourself to it in order to believe it? You could also hypnotize yourself.
For example, when it is worthwhile for you to believe it (Pascal’s wager). And yet the Rabbi agreed with Dawkins’s objection to Pascal’s wager:
“Dawkins is apparently basically correct. A person who does not believe cannot bring himself to believe by means of a utilitarian decision” (Column 408).
But you can’t be commanded to do that. Whether it pays off or not—decide for yourself. At most, if it pays off for me, then I have motivation to examine it, but even in that situation there is no logic in putting myself into a state where I’ll believe. It’s just nonsense.
“But even in that situation there is no logic in putting myself into a state where I’ll believe.”
I didn’t understand. If I think it’s worthwhile for me to believe, why is there no logic in hypnotizing myself into believing?
Shlomo’s whole discussion here isn’t relevant to the original question.
In the end, when it is worthwhile to believe, a person may indeed take all sorts of steps in order to believe (exposure to views and culture, etc.), but the final act of accepting the belief is not a product of will. Either I was convinced or I wasn’t. Period.
As for hypnosis, I assume that taking control of a person’s thoughts, where they are not truly the product of the person himself, has no value. That isn’t really persuasion.
Persuasion itself is indeed not subject to a person’s will, but it is greatly influenced by it, since people tend to adopt beliefs that fit their personality traits or other ideals that attract them, and a person does have the ability to limit this influence of will on persuasion.
For example, psychological studies have shown that people with a tendency toward a sense of stability and security, and an aversion to threats, tend to adopt conservative positions, whereas people with a tendency toward innovation and change tend to adopt liberal positions. Likewise, people with a tendency toward mathematical-logical thinking tend to reject various intuitions (spiritual, emotional, etc.), while those with a tendency toward emotion and intuitive thinking tend to adopt them.
The person can, however, choose to allow various arguments and the reality on the ground to limit the influence of his personal inclination on his intellectual conclusion.
There is room to discuss what you said, but let’s leave it aside, because for this discussion it has almost no significance. Whether God has a body, hears prayers, whether there are miracles, and so on—these are not really questions of faith-based attitudes (connected to conservatism and the like), but simply questions of fact. On those issues, your remarks are hardly on point.
Indeed. I thought perhaps because of this you might want to look into his remarks more generally.