Abstract
Compatibilist methods borrowed from the free will debate are often used to establish doxastic freedom and epistemic responsibility. Certain analogies between the formation of intention and belief make this approach especially promising. Despite being a compatibilist myself in the practical debate, I will argue that compatibilist methods fail to establish doxastic freedom. My rejection is not based on an argument against the analogy of free will and free belief. Rather, I aim at showing that compatibilist free will and free belief are equally misguided because freedom is a concept that only applies to an agent’s actions and not to her mental attitudes. Compatibilist strategies that seek to define control by reason-responsiveness merely weaken the conditions for freedom such that arbitrary forms of control can be defined. I will demonstrate that these methods also commit to freedom of fear, freedom of hope and freedom of anger. However, I accept the compatibilist challenge to account for the addict’s and the paranoid’s unfreedom. I will sketch a unified approach to compatibilist free agency that does justice to these phenomena without the help of free will or free belief.
Highlights
Doubts concerning the existence of a freedom that concerns an agent’s doxastic life focus on dis-analogies of actions and doxastic states
The first way was most prominently pursued by Sharon Ryan and Matthias Steup who argue for belief formation to be intentional though not governed by intentions; the second way was pursued by Conor McHugh and Pamela Hieronymi who base their position on the analogy of intention and belief while accepting doxastic involuntarism to be true
I will subsume Steup’s and Ryan’s approach under ‘doxastic compatibilism’ as well, because Steup and Ryan borrow the methods from practical compatibilism in order to argue for doxastic voluntarism and additional conditions that they take to be jointly sufficient for doxastic freedom
Summary
Doubts concerning the existence of a freedom that concerns an agent’s doxastic life focus on dis-analogies of actions and doxastic states. Doxastic states like beliefs are usually not controlled by the agent’s intentions; it is said that they are held or formed involuntarily This position of doxastic involuntarism was held, among others, by Williams (1973), Alston (1988) and Bennett (1990). The first way was most prominently pursued by Sharon Ryan and Matthias Steup who argue for belief formation to be intentional though not governed by intentions; the second way was pursued by Conor McHugh and Pamela Hieronymi who base their position on the analogy of intention (formation) and belief (formation) while accepting doxastic involuntarism to be true Despite their diverging positions towards the truth or falsity of doxastic voluntarism, the proponents of both ways make heavy use of compatibilist methods borrowed from the free will debate.
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