Nice question. I suggest that cases like the one you consider do show that in some sense we can control what we believe. The important thing is the 'in some sense' qualification. Many philosophers have argued that we can't "directly" change our beliefs at will. For instance, even if you threaten me with death, I won't be able immediately and just as a matter of will to make myself believe that the Earth is flat. I'd at least have to do something more roundabout, such as surround myself with a bunch of flat-earthers, ignore contrary evidence, and so on. Similarly, I might have to go to some efforts to ignore a piece of testimony, perhaps with the aid of hypnosis or of someone who could make that testimony look specious. More generally, then, I would suggest that we can indirectly control what we believe if we are determined to do so: If for instance I am convinced by Pascal's "Wager" argument that it's reasonable to believe in God, I won't be able to become a theist just by snapping my...

Thank you for your question. I think you're right to wonder whether treating depression is always justified. After all, sometimes being upset about something is an appropriate reaction. For instance, we wouldn't feel the need to "treat" someone's grief over the death of a loved one. On the other hand, while a certain amount of grief over such a situation seems justified and appropriate, one might also suggest that it is possible to take that grief too far. If I had a friend who was grieving intensely and for a very long time over the loss of a loved one, I might start to think of ways I might try to help. Similarly, while one can be entirely justified in being depressed over the state of the world, I am not sure that being clinically depressed is the *only* appropriate reaction to the world's state. This is for a number of reasons. First of all, there are a number of things to be absolutely thrilled about: a beautiful sunrise, the smell a pine forest, being able to fully trust another person,...

Good question. I suspect that the answer is 'yes', but we need to be clear that there are some puzzles about so-called 'self-deception' that need to be avoided. It's not plausible that I could lie to myself, fully knowing that I'm doing so, and also believe what I'm telling myself. Instead, we often *shroud* lots of what we tell ourselves in such a way that its untruth is not self-evident. So here I am with a plate of oatmeal-raisin cookies. I like them a lot, and although I know on some level that I shouldn't eat very many, I'm *extremely* clever at coming up reasons why I can have just one more. (Had a rough day, will run an extra mile tomorrow, raisins are pretty good for you, you know the drill.) So I might convince myself that I can clear the plate. But to do that I have to somehow shroud the fact that I know on some level that I shouldn't. The upshot is that a direct answer to your question is: Some people (maybe most of us) believe things that we know on some level are lies (but...

Thank you for your question. For a long while in the history of philosophy it was thought that what was conceivable was a good indication of what was possible. Descartes is a good example of this way of thinking, though he was careful to require that not any old conceiving of a thing showed it to be possible. Rather he required that the conceiving had to be "clear and distinct", meaning roughly that it had to pass the most stringent standards we can muster to make sure the conceiving is coherent (i.e., not subtly self-contradictory). In the middle of the 20th century this methodology began to break down. For instance, in the Sixties Hilary Putnam distinguished between concepts and properties, making clear that our concepts of things like gold may not reveal its true properties. Similarly, Kripke's notion a decade later of "natural kinds" made room for the possibility that what is "metaphysically possible" may not correspond to that is conceivable. This issue is still a topic of intense...

You're surely right that the use of 'in' here is metaphorical. Instead a literal cashing out of the claim that something is in our memory might go like this: A fact is in my memory when I am able to call it up for purposes of reasoning and action. That is, something is "in" my memory insofar as I can activate it in such a way to use it for some cognitive or practical purpose. This suggestion for cashing out the metaphor could in turn use a great deal of further elucidation, but this is not the place for such pedantry. Again, something is "in" my imagination, either because I can form an image of it, or I can reason with the possibility it signifies in order to draw conclusions. Thus Pagasus is in my imagination because I can form a mental picture of it, and so forth. In his classic _The Concept of Mind_, Gilbert Ryle discusses various uses of the metaphorical "in" that's bothering you, and I'd recommend his discussion. (You can appreciate a lot of what he says here without having to buy...

Thank you for your provocative question. I don't feel qualified to answer it categorically, but I will try to give some reason why some people have doubted that psychoanalysis is science, and how those doubts might be met. One reason some have doubted that psychoanalysis is science is that claims made by some analysts about the reasons for people's behavior (including slips and dreams) appeal to explanations that don't seem subject to tests. To take one extreme case, Freud claims that any element of a dream that has three parts or is associated with the number three (such as a triangle or a tripod) must symbolize male genitals. Then if one asks him for his evidence to back up this claim, one sometimes finds him or his follower replying not by providing evidence, but rather by suggesting that the person asking the question is exhibiting a "defense mechanism." That does seem like cheating. After all, one could use this technique to "prove" just about anything. In the last couple of decades...

Thank you for your question. No doubt there are many situations in which it doesn't matter much whether you make a distinction between a situation in which you are fooled by something and one in which you are not. However, there are plenty of situations in which it does matter even if, "from your point of view" as you say, you can't tell the difference. If your friend is pouring kerosine on and igniting the "dog", I assume it matters a lot to you whether the thing is real or fake. Likewise, someone tempted to fall in love with an *apparent* person with whom she is communicating through a keyboard and monitor, would most likely be be very concerned whether that apparent person is a real one or a machine, and, if a machine, what kind of machine. More generally, your phrase, "from that person's point of view" seems to be at the very least a way of referring to what that person thinks: You write, " from that persons point of view the room is just as understanding as any chinese person on...

Thanks for your excellent question. The possibility of "believing at will" has received attention from philosophers on and off since at least the Victorian era when there was debate over the "ethics of belief." At this point it seems that there is a consensus that it is impossible to believe something at will "just like that", that is, simply as a result of deciding to do so. By contrast, many philosophers would agree that it is possible to form a belief in an indirect way, say by means of hypnosis or brainwashing. Thus for instance, if I want (perhaps because someone will pay me a lot of money if I do so) to bring it about that I believe that Greenland is not melting, I could hire hypnotists, ask friends to make sure I don't see newspaper articles discussing global warming, hang out with people who deny the phenomenon of global warming, and so on. It seems likely that after a while, belief (in the proposition that Greenland is not melting) will "come to stupefy my scruples", to borrow a phrase...

I'm not sure that philosophers have a uniform answer to this question, and as you may have guessed, before even proposing one they tend to spend a lot of time trying to get clear on just what the question is supposed to be. If the question is: To what extent is human behavior explicable in terms of our biological endowment, and to what extent is our behavior explicable in terms of environmental influences?--if that is the question, then one point to notice is that some current views in the philosophy of biology would deny that the question makes a lot of sense. For example, Paul Griffiths in such places as _What Emotions Really Are_ defends a "general systems theory" according to which it is part of our biological heritage to be inherently plastic, and thereby inherently capable of being importantly molded by environmental influences. That would be one thing separating our species from many (though certainly not all) others. If this view is correct, then it is hard to see what the point is of...

Philosophers have been trying to articulate rules for unobvious things like intentions for quite a while. The more careful accounts don't suppose that those rules are ones that we self-consciously follow. Rather, those rules, insofar as we are supposed to follow them, as ones that we follow implicitly or unconsciously. By analogy, linguistics who work in the area known as syntax postulate quite complicated rules that most of us master by around age five. However, the linguists who suppose this don't have to say that this mastery is one that is conscious, or even could be made conscious if we tried. Similarly, a philosopher might postulate a complicated basis for our behavior without getting hung up on the extent to which that basis is something of which we are consciously aware. Most would say that proceeding in this way still gives us a much more precise handle on the phenomena than a conditioning or associatinist model. Finally, giving a conceptual analysis does not preclude empirical...