From wikipedia:
In epistemology, ‘voluntarism’ describes the view that belief is a matter of the will rather than one of simply registering one’s cognitive attitude or degree of psychological certainty with respect to a stated proposition. If one is a voluntarist with respect to beliefs, it is coherent to simultaneously feel very certain about a particular proposition, P, and assign P a very low subjective probability.
In my Marxist days, we used “voluntarist” to describe an ultra-left tendency to substitute one’s own will and desires for objective facts, including–objectively–the will and desires of the masses of people. With time, I think most of the comrades came to see the label applied pretty consistently to all of us. The revolution wasn’t going to happen no matter how much we wanted it or sacrificed for it.
I had reason to look up “voluntarist” yesterday as I was composing a comment on this sloppy and lazy-minded article. Chris Hedges writes about the “Black Bloc” activists who have added property destruction to a “diversity of tactics” within the Occupy movement. I was looking for a more succinct and accurate way of describing the fundamental error of the “Black Bloc.”
As humans, we are all prone to violence and grandiosity; we can only seek foresight and “think it through,” and thereby convince ourselves to take a more peaceful and productive course. If we err and seek a will to believe, rather than a reason to believe, then we are immune to the leavening effects of foresight. I’m saying it’s not so much that the Black Bloc arrogantly substitutes their own beliefs for those of the larger movement, it’s that for them, their own desire and determination trumps all other forms of evidence and argument.
I came back to these thoughts today as I read the 11th District Court’s decision n Perry v. Schwarzenegger. The majority found that California voters (at least 52.3% of us) “took away from gays and lesbians the right to use the official designation of ‘marriage’–and the societal status that accompanies it–because they disapproved of these individuals as a class…” and therefore enacted a judgment about their dignity and worth.
This is, of course, the essence of bigotry. However, I was most struck by how gently the Court regarded the motivations of the electorate, holding that it was not necessary to believe they had real animus–their mere disapproval of gays and lesbians is enough to explain our discriminatory actions and violation of our Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause.
Except that it isn’t. I think it has to be more than mere disapproval. I think those who voted yes, most of them, really believed, against all reason and evidence, that they were protecting something they value.
Somewhere in there is the popular idea that belief–yours, mine, and our neighbors–is a matter of will. I’m thinking that only this idea–voluntarism–adequately explains how, for most people, prejudice triumphs easily over facts and reason. We believe what we want to believe, you and I and our neighbor, and if you don’t believe that gay marriage is a threat to society, it’s simply because you don’t want to believe it.
