The previous chapters have developed the thesis that all beliefs about matters of fact are the outcome of belief-policies, ways in which, for a truth-centred cognizer, believing is related to evidence. The belief-policies themselves are not determined by evidence alone. So there is a significant sense in which belief is subject to non-evidential grounds. Independently of this, it has been argued that there is a strong parallelism between believing and action such as to make it reasonable to treat the adoption of a belief-policy as an action.

If believing is a willed activity in either or both of these two senses, then perhaps we are no less or more accountable for our believings than we are for our actings. Perhaps an ethics of belief is not only possible, but inevitable. If belief is in no sense voluntary, and believing that p is, say, a necessary and sufficient condition for performing some action A rather than B, then the agent is not responsible for that action. Yet some philosophers have expressed dismay at the consequences of such a prospect, holding that if people are responsible for their believings, intolerance and persecution are justified.

BELIEF, PERSECUTION AND TOLERATION

As we have seen H. H. Price held that in some sense belief depends upon the will, but he has this to say about the idea that a person may be held responsible for what he believes, and therefore may be obliged to believe certain propositions.