This study examines the tension between voluntariness and involuntariness in human cognition. The book seeks to counter the widespread tendency for analytic epistemology to be dominated by the concept of belief. Is scientific knowledge properly conceived as being embodied at its best in a passive feeling of belief or in an active policy of acceptance? Should a jury's verdict declare what its members involuntarily accept? And should statements and assertions be presumed to express what their authors believe or what they accept? Does such a distinction between belief and acceptance help to resol ... More

This study examines the tension between voluntariness and involuntariness in human cognition. The book seeks to counter the widespread tendency for analytic epistemology to be dominated by the concept of belief. Is scientific knowledge properly conceived as being embodied at its best in a passive feeling of belief or in an active policy of acceptance? Should a jury's verdict declare what its members involuntarily accept? And should statements and assertions be presumed to express what their authors believe or what they accept? Does such a distinction between belief and acceptance help to resolve the paradoxes of self-deception and akrasia? Must people be taken to believe everything entailed by what they believe, or merely to accept everything entailed by what they accept? Through a systematic examination of these problems, this book examines issues in contemporary epistemology, philosophy of mind, and cognitive science.