The Intellectual Powers: A Study of Human Nature by Hacker P. M. S

Author:Hacker, P. M. S. [Hacker, P. M. S.]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Wiley
Published: 2013-06-30T16:00:00+00:00

14 Hume, Treatise of Human Nature [1739] (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1976), p. 624.

15 Williams, ‘Deciding to Believe’, p. 147.

16 D. Davidson, ‘Actions, Reasons, and Causes’, repr. in his Essays on Actions and Events (Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1980), p. 12.

17 Hunter, ‘Believing’, p. 246.

18 In irrational cases, one may still be haunted by thoughts (as opposed to beliefs), fantasies and phobias that force themselves upon one. For to believe something to be so is to subscribe to its being so: one cannot say ‘I believe things are so, but they aren't’. One can recognize the irrationality of an irrational desire, dissociate oneself from it and still be saddled with it. But to recognize the irrationality of a belief is already to abandon it. It may now be a haunting, obsessive thought – but not a belief. One cannot say, ‘Nevertheless, I still believe that things are so’, but only ‘I cannot help thinking (imagining) that things are so’. Then one is in the grip of a delusion or fantasy, but not of a belief.

19 For further elaboration, see S. N. Hampshire, Freedom of the Individual (Chatto & Windus, London, 1965), ch. 3, and J. Raz, ‘When We are Ourselves: The Active and the Passive’, repr. in Engaging Reason (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1999), pp. 5–21.

20 Hume, Treatise, p. 624.

21 Ibid., p. 629.

22 W. James, The Principles of Psychology (Holt, New York, 1890), vol. 2, pp. 283–7.

23 Russell, The Analysis of Mind (Allen & Unwin, London, 1921), p. 233.

24 Ibid., p. 250.

25 F. P. Ramsey, The Foundations of Mathematics and Other Papers, ed. R. B. Braithwaite (Routledge & Kegan Paul, London, 1931), p. 144. That he held belief to be a feeling no doubt made him think, wrongly, that it admits of degrees.

26 It is noteworthy that one cannot feel that 2 + 2 = 4 or that grass is green, for one cannot feel things to be so if one knows for certain that they are so. So if believing were a feeling it would be incompatible with knowing for certain.

27 He was anticipated by Alexander Bain, The Emotions and the Will (John W. Parker & Son, London, 1859), p. 568; see also R. B. Braithwaite, ‘The Nature of Believing’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 33 (1932–3), pp. 129–46.

28 P. T. Geach, Mental Acts (Routledge & Kegan Paul, London, 1957), p. 8.

29 L. J. Cohen, An Essay on Belief and Acceptance (Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1992), ch. 1.

30 Ryle, The Concept of Mind (Hutchinson, London, 1949), pp. 134f.

31 White, Misleading Cases, p. 131. See also W. V. O. Quine, Quiddities (Penguin Books, London, 1990), p. 20: ‘A belief, in the best and clearest case, is a bundle of dispositions. It may include the disposition to lip service, a disposition to accept a wager, and various dispositions to take precautions, or to book a passage, or to tidy up the front room, or the like, depending on what particular belief it may be.’

32 For detailed discussion, see Human Nature: the Categorial Framework, pp.

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