Table Of ContentReason without Freedom
‘David Owens’s book is an original and important contribution to the emerging
literature of “virtue epistemology” and deserves to be widely read: it could help
jar epistemological debate out of its well-worn grooves.’
Michael J.Williams, Northwestern University
‘Owens engages with extremely basic questions about belief and knowledge in
novel and suggestive ways…. An original and liberating contribution to
epistemology.’
Adam Morton, University of Bristol
We call beliefs reasonable or unreasonable, justified or unjustified. What does this
indicate about belief? Does this imply that we are responsible for our beliefs and
that we should be blamed for our unreasonable convictions? And does it imply
that we are in control of our beliefs, that what we believe is up to us?
Reason without Freedom argues that the major problems of epistemology
have their roots in concerns about our control over and responsibility for our
beliefs. The founders of modern epistemology—Descartes, Locke and Hume—
addressed these issues but they have been largely neglected by contemporary
epistemology. Yet the issues we confront today—scepticism, the analysis of
knowledge, and the debates about epistemic justification—can be tackled only
once we have understood the moral psychology of belief. David Owens argues
that we do not control our beliefs, either by means of the will or through
reflection. Nevertheless, we are responsible for our beliefs since responsibility
does not require control. Thus, we can see where the truth lies in the debate
between Descartes, Locke and Hume over whether belief is governed by reason.
Reason without Freedom also explores how memory and testimony can
preserve justified belief without preserving the evidence which originally
justified it. This book will be essential reading for all those interested in
contemporary epistemology, philosophy of mind and action, ethics and the
history of seventeenth and eighteenth century philosophy.
David Owens is a Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Sheffield.
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Reason without Freedom
The problem of epistemic normativity
David Owens
London and New York
First published 2000 by Routledge
11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2003.
' 2000 David Owens
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced
or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means,
now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording,
or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in
writing from the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Owens, David (David J.)
Reason without freedom: the problem of epistemic normativity/David Owens.
p. cm.(cid:151)(International library of philosophy)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-415-22388-1 (hardcover)(cid:151)ISBN 0-415-22389-X (pbk.)
1. Belief and doubt. 2. Free will and determinism. 3. Reason. I. Title. II. Series.
BD215.O94 2000 99(cid:150)087518
121′.6(cid:150)dc21
ISBN 0-203-46460-5 Master e-book ISBN
ISBN 0-203-77284-9 (Adobe eReader Format)
Contents
Preface vii
Introduction: rationality, responsibility and control 1
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1 Reflection and rationality 9
2 Motivating belief 23
3 Knowledge and conclusive grounds 37
4 Scepticism, certainty and control 53
Appendix to Part 1: renouncing belief? 71
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5 Freedom and the will 77
6 Locke on freedom 89
7 A theory of freedom 101
8 The scope of responsibility 115
v
vi Contents
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9 Knowledge and its preservation 133
10 The authority of memory 147
11 The authority of testimony 163
Conclusion: epistemology as moral psychology 177
Notes 181
Bibliography 191
Index 197
Preface
An author decides, not discerns, that their book is finished. This book is no
exception. There are points that could be made more clearly, issues that ought
to be settled more definitively and opponents who should be refuted more
decisively. Readers will discover these flaws for themselves; but I can’t resist
entering two pre-emptive caveats.
First, Reason without Freedom focuses on an epistemic notion of belief
rather than on the action-explanatory notion that you find in, say, decision
theory. I explain why in the Appendix to Part 1 but this material is confined to
an appendix precisely because of its provisional character and limited scope. An
adequate treatment would involve a long excursion into the philosophy of mind
and perhaps the philosophy of science as well.
Second, if I am right, many of the issues confronting epistemologists turn
on a question which (at least nowadays) very few of them consider at all:
whether responsibility requires control. In Chapter 8 I argue that it does not,
but the matter needs a much deeper treatment than I give it there. Despite
this, I hope to have said enough to bring out the huge importance of the
issue and to establish that my rather unorthodox response to it is at least
defensible.
Many people have helped me with this book. I am particularly grateful to
a current colleague, Chris Hookway, and a former colleague, Tom Pink.
Conversations with Tom were a major source of inspiration in the early stages
of this project, while Chris provided generous criticism and sage advice
during its later stages. Michael Huema and Robert Hopkins read large parts
of the manuscript, and their responses occasioned substantial revisions. In
1998 I gave a series of talks at the University of Birmingham, and the
audience there helped me to clarify my ideas on a number of issues. I also
benefited from comments provided by Michael Martin, Johannes Roessler,
Helen Steward, Richard Holton, Paul Noordhof, Jody Azzouni, Jonathan
Adler, Peter Carruthers, Robert Stern, Leif Wenar, Jennifer Saul, Michael
Smith and Keith Frankish. Writing a book can be a desiccating experience;
without Sam Gonzales it would have been.
The first complete draft of this book was written during the academic year
1996–7 while I was a visiting scholar at the Graduate Centre of the City
vii
viii Preface
University of New York. I am grateful to the Graduate Centre for having me,
to the Fulbright Commission for granting me a senior scholarship and to
Steven Stich for arranging the visit. The University of Sheffield granted me
one semester’s sabbatical leave and the British Academy funded a second
semester.
The majority of Chapter 10 is taken from The Authority of Memory’,
which was published in the European Journal of Philosophy 7(3) in
December 1999.
Introduction
Rationality, responsibility and control
Two views of belief
Is belief governed by reason? Here is McDowell:
Judging, making up our minds what to think, is something for which we
are, in principle, responsible—something we freely do, as opposed to
something that merely happens in our lives. Of course, a belief is not
always, or even typically, a result of our exercising this freedom to decide
what to think. But even when a belief is not freely adopted, it is an
actualisation of capacities of a kind, the conceptual, whose paradigmatic
mode of actualisation is in the exercise of freedom that judging is. This
freedom, exemplified in responsible acts of judging, is essentially a matter
of being answerable to criticism in the light of rationally relevant
considerations. So the realm of freedom, at least the realm of the freedom
of judging, can be identified with the space of reasons.
(McDowell 1998a:434)
McDowell takes his cue from Kant, but he might equally have invoked
Descartes or Locke. In recent years, similar sentiments have been expressed by
Burge and Korsgaard, among others. All these writers take it that beliefs are
subject to reason, that we are responsible for them in being aware of what would
(and would not) justify them, that belief formation is something we do, not
something which happens to us—and that this implies the existence of
intellectual freedom.
But not every Enlightenment thinker followed Locke and Descartes. Hume
observed that belief ‘depends not on the will, nor can be commanded at
pleasure’ (Hume 1975:48). Rather ‘nature, by an absolute and uncontroulable
necessity has determined us to judge as well as to breath or feel’; for Hume,
‘belief is more properly an act of the sensitive, than of the cogitative part of our
natures’ (Hume 1978:183). Does this mean that belief is not governed by
reason? If we like we can call the psychological laws that govern the formation
of belief ‘laws of reason’, but in that case ‘beasts are endowed with thought and
reason as well as men’ (ibid.: 176). A dog learns how to please its master; it
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