Abstract:Can you rationally double-check what you already know? In this paper, I argue that you can. Agents can know that something is true and rationally double-check it at the very same time. I defend my position by considering a wide variety of cases where agents double-check their beliefs to gain epistemic improvements beyond knowledge. These include certainty, epistemic resilience, and sensitivity to error. Although this phenomenon is widespread, my proposal faces two types of challenges. First, some have defended… Show more
“…This view is also suggested in Friedman (2017). Also see, for example, Falbo (2021Falbo ( , 2022; Archer (2021); Woodard (2022) for defenses of the view that inquiry aims at epistemic improvement, and Goodman and Holguín (Forthcoming) who argue that inquiry aims at being sure, as well as Beddor (Manuscript), who argues that inquiry aims maximizing epistemic value (and on the view Beddor favors you only get maximal epistemic value if you have credence 1). For a critical discussion which casts doubt upon whether inquiry has a constitutive aim see Friedman (Forthcoming).…”
What is the relationship between inquiry and epistemology? Are epistemic norms the norms that guide us as inquirers-as agents in the pursuit of knowledge and understanding? Recently, there has been growing support for what I, following Friedman (2020), will call the zetetic turn in epistemology, the view that all epistemic norms are norms of inquiry. This paper investigates the prospects of an inquiry-centered approach to epistemology and develops several motivations for resisting it. First, I argue that the norms of inquiry are most plausibly seen as practical, not as distinctively epistemic. Second, I argue that a zetetically-grounded epistemology is unable to properly account for the rationality of belief. It fails to account for cases where intuitively irrational beliefs promote inquiry, or where intuitively rational beliefs are zetetically useless or counterproductive to inquiry. The main upshot is this: there must be a source of epistemic normativity that isn't ultimately zetetic.
“…This view is also suggested in Friedman (2017). Also see, for example, Falbo (2021Falbo ( , 2022; Archer (2021); Woodard (2022) for defenses of the view that inquiry aims at epistemic improvement, and Goodman and Holguín (Forthcoming) who argue that inquiry aims at being sure, as well as Beddor (Manuscript), who argues that inquiry aims maximizing epistemic value (and on the view Beddor favors you only get maximal epistemic value if you have credence 1). For a critical discussion which casts doubt upon whether inquiry has a constitutive aim see Friedman (Forthcoming).…”
What is the relationship between inquiry and epistemology? Are epistemic norms the norms that guide us as inquirers-as agents in the pursuit of knowledge and understanding? Recently, there has been growing support for what I, following Friedman (2020), will call the zetetic turn in epistemology, the view that all epistemic norms are norms of inquiry. This paper investigates the prospects of an inquiry-centered approach to epistemology and develops several motivations for resisting it. First, I argue that the norms of inquiry are most plausibly seen as practical, not as distinctively epistemic. Second, I argue that a zetetically-grounded epistemology is unable to properly account for the rationality of belief. It fails to account for cases where intuitively irrational beliefs promote inquiry, or where intuitively rational beliefs are zetetically useless or counterproductive to inquiry. The main upshot is this: there must be a source of epistemic normativity that isn't ultimately zetetic.
“…Defenders of permissible double‐checking, such as Falbo (2023a) and Woodard (forthcoming), further motivate this idea as follows. Plausibly, knowledge isn't the strongest possible epistemic state: higher‐order knowledge, knowing with a higher degree of certainty, and knowing with stronger justification are examples of stronger epistemic states.…”
Section: The Ignorance Normmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…Willard‐Kyle (forthcoming) has argued for the following norm: Knowledge Norm One ought: inquire into Q only if one knows that Q has a true answer 29 …”
Section: Positive Normsmentioning
confidence: 99%
“… See Archer (2021), Falbo (2023a), and Woodard (forthcoming). See Beddor (ms) for a related view. …”
This article provides an overview of recent work on norms of inquiry. After some preliminaries about inquiry in §1, I discuss in §2 the ignorance norm for inquiry, presenting arguments for and against, as well as some alternatives. In §3, I consider its relation to the aim of inquiry. In §4, I discuss positive norms on inquiry: norms that require having rather than lacking certain states. Finally, in §5, I look at questions about the place of norms of inquiry within normative epistemology.
The speech act of inquiry is generally treated as a default kind of asking questions. The widespread norm states that one inquires whether p only if one does not know that p. However, the fact that inquiring is just one kind of asking questions has received little to no attention. Just as in the declarative mood we can perform not only assertions, but various other speech acts, like guesses or predictions, so in the interrogative mood we can also make various speech act types. I propose a speech-act-theoretic account of a distinct kind of question that I label exam questions. According to the proposed account, one performs an exam question p only if (i) one has access to the answer to p, and (ii) one does not officially know whether the hearer knows the answer to p. Exam questions satisfy all the necessary requirements of being a distinct kind of speech act. Additionally, my proposal contributes to the recent expansion of the normative approach to a variety of speech acts.
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