TRUTH,PERMANENCE, AND THE REGULATION OF BELIEF: LOEB'S CARTESIAN ARGUMENT1

In this paper I outline an argument which Louis Loeb attributes to Descartes, which attempts to ground the epistemic priority of reason over sense-perception in the brute psychological irresistibility of the former. I claim that the position thus ascribed to Descartes collapses into a crude form of idealism, and attempt to pinpoint precisely the flaw in the argument which gives rise to this collapse. I finish by suggesting that the same flaw might be apparent in Philip Pettit's recent development of the notion of response-dependent concepts.