Rycke asked:

How tenable is the proposition that we are free to believe whatever we want?

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There's a short and a long answer to this. The short answer is, you can indeed believe what you
want, but if it conflicts with reality, you and your beliefs will not enjoy a long life expectancy. For the
long answer, I commend Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations.

Jurgen Lawrenz

Sydney

Of course I am not 'free' to believe that I can fly in the sense that the world does not let me get away
with acting as if I can fly. The question is whether, through an act of will alone, I have the power to
believe something that I did not previously believe. Take for example, my belief that is now evening.
Can I, willing it to be so, change that my belief to the belief that it is still the afternoon? I cannot. It is
impossible for me to look out at the darkened sky, to be aware of the time on my computer clock
without forming the judgement that it is no longer the afternoon but the evening. Believing is not like
doing. This is a conceptual point about the concept of 'belief'.

Yet it has been claimed that certain kinds of beliefs — for example, those which relate to religious
faith — are, or can be in some sense subject to the will. Hence talk of the 'will to believe'. You can
accuse someone of 'lack of faith', implying that this the belief in question was not simply a response
to perceived evidence but was at least partly under their control. They should have made a greater
effort to 'believe'.

Even if that point (argued strongly by William James) were true, it would still not follow that we are
free to believe whateverwe want to believe.

Geoffrey Klempner