ABSTRACT
This chapter looks critically at John Locke’s answer to three closely related questions: (1) Are there any circumstances whatsoever in which we can properly be described as ‘choosing’, or ‘deciding’, whether or not to believe p? (2) If there are such circumstances, does our decision to believe p rather than to disbelieve it ever make us liable to moral censure? and (3) If there are no such circumstances, are there any other circumstances in which we can properly be praised or blamed for believing p? A passage in Locke’s A Letter on Toleration lays it down quite explicitly that ‘to believe this or that to be true is not within the scope of our will’. This is by no means the only occasion on which he so definitely denies that men can ever choose what they shall believe.
