Hobartian Voluntarism: Grounding a Deontological Conceptionof Epistemic Justification

Abstract

Our concept of epistemic justification is often thought to be deontological, so that justified and unjustified are epistemic terms of praise and blame. This conception of justification requires the truth of voluntarism - the thesis that we have control over our beliefs which seems false. I attempt to present a mostly plausible version of voluntarism by disentangling our incoherent concept of voluntary control and developing a single coherent component. I build on the work of R. E. Hobart. arguing that his compatibilistic conception of voluntary control can be generalized to allow for control over most of our beliefs.