"I can't get it out of my Mind": (Augustine's Problem)

Abstract

In his Confessions, SaintAugustine tortured himself over the significance of his lusty thoughts and impulses, which so offended his religious sensibilities and his more spiritual conception of himself. Were those thoughts truly his? Were they in any sense his responsibility? Were they in his control, or were they not? This was Augustine's problem, and it still consists of a set of questions that can be applied to the whole world of mental phenomena, from intelligent deliberation and decision making to random thoughts and feelings. In a number of journal articles and books, have tried to emphasize the voluntariness of much of what we have traditionally been taught to think of as the passive part of our mental life. In particular, have tried to argue that emotions are best construed not as physiological reactions and their consequent sensations (the Jamesian thesis) but rather in terms of judgments and, as judgments, within the realm of the voluntary. Like all philosophical theses, this is subjected to considerable qualification, most obviously concerning the central concept of judgment, but also concerning the sense in which emotions and judgments are, and are not, within our control. Needless to say, nowhere claim that one can normally have any emotion at will, but neither am willing to tolerate that too-facile view of emotions as wholly beyond our control, allowing them to function as the excuses so evident in such statements as I couldn't help it; was furious. In between those extremes, we face Augustine's problem: to what extent are one's emotions one's own? Professor Robert C. Roberts takes up Augustine's problem with a more secular set of examples, in order to challenge my view that emotions are judgments and, as such, within the realm of the voluntary. He argues, for example, that the nagging thought of my house burning down, which he takes to be an instance of fear, must be distinguished