Responsibility in Descartes’s Theory of Judgment

Ergo: An Open Access Journal of Philosophy 3:321-347 (2016)
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Abstract

In this paper I develop a new account of the philosophical motivations for Descartes’s theory of judgment. The theory needs explanation because the idea that judgment, or belief, is an operation of the will seems problematic at best, and Descartes does not make clear why he adopted what, at the time, was a novel view. I argue that attending to Descartes’s conception of the will as the active, free faculty of mind reveals that a general concern with responsibility motivates his theory of judgment. My account avoids some unappealing features of the standard interpretation, renders the theory more plausible than many have suggested, and explains why his theory does not fall neatly into any current-day position on the issue of the control we have over belief.

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Author's Profile

Marie Jayasekera
California State University, Long Beach

Citations of this work

Cartesian intuition.Elliot Samuel Paul - 2022 - British Journal for the History of Philosophy 31 (4):693-723.
Cartesian intuition.Elliot Samuel Paul - 2022 - British Journal for the History of Philosophy 31 (4):693-723.
Cabbage à la Descartes.Devin Sanchez Curry - 2016 - Ergo: An Open Access Journal of Philosophy 3:609-637.

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