Topics Mind

Question Do we have any control over what we believe? I can think of countless things that I hold to be true that for all the tea in China I couldn’t make myself think otherwise. When we’re presented with good grounds for believing something, is it possible to not believe it? Do we have any choice on the matter? I realize that some people can enter a state of denial over something, but isn’t this just acting as if they didn’t hold that particular belief? Is it possible in theory to be caused (perhaps through hypnosis or indoctrination) to believe or not believe something contrary to what would normally seem obvious to us?

Accepted:
May 24, 2006

Comments

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 from William James' famous essay, "The Will to Believe."

Two questions arise from this distinction beteen forming beliefs directly and forming them indirectly.

1. If it is indeed impossible to form beliefs indirectly, why is that? Many would suggest that this is due to the mechanism by which beliefs are formed, depending in many ways on perception which does not seem subject to our control. However, many of our beliefs are formed in non-perceptual ways--so shouldn't we be able to form such beliefs at will? More generally, is the alleged impossibility of forming beliefs at will a conceptual impossibility (like finding a married bachelor) or an impossibility relative to human psychology?

2. Do we have a solid grasp on the distinction itself? I borrowed the phrase "just like that" from Bernard Williams' well known essay, "Deciding to Believe", but one might have doubts that it marks out a clear phenomenon. Suppose for instance that I am considering an issue on which there is evidence going both ways--say the thesis that a certain drug reduces the risk of cancer. It seems that after a while I might decide that the drug is effective. However, I could do that without gathering *more* data; rather this is a conclusion I reach after careful consideration of the data I already had. Is this a case of decicing to believe "just like that""?