Research Group
in Analytic Philosophy

Abstract

Uncontroversially, individuals exercise agency in acting; can we say the same, though, about believing? This paper argues that subjects do indeed exercise agency over their beliefs, and provides an account by which this is possible. Drawing on work in philosophy of action, I argue that subjects exercise agency in performing mental actions that form and sustain their beliefs and in seeing these actions as part of reasoning and exercising agency over their beliefs.