인식적 수용과 공시적인 인식적 의무

Since the criticism against doxastic voluntarism has been provided by W. P. Alston, it seems that many agree that belief is not under our direct voluntary control. And this doxastic involuntarism, when combined with the so-called ‘ought implies can’ principle, leads to the sceptical conclusion that there is not epistemic duty. This conclusion, in turn, amounts to a paradox unless one denies the deontological character of epistemic norm. I suggest an alternative solution to this paradox by introducing a fundamentally different conception of epistemic duty. To do this, I first explore how the word 'belief' is used in different contexts and reveal that it refers, as one of its meanings, to a mental action which I call ‘epistemic acceptance’. Then I argue that epistemic duty pertains to epistemic acceptance rather than belief understood as an involuntary mental disposition, and try to articulate the conception of epistemic duty in terms of epistemic acceptance while answering some objections to it. Finally, I show how the suggestion that ‘belief’ refers to epistemic acceptance and epistemic duty pertains to it can solve the paradox introduced at the beginning.