Errol Lord explores the boundaries of epistemic normativity. He argues that we can understand these better by thinking about which mental states are competitors in rationality’s competition. He argues that belief, disbelief, and two kinds of suspension of judgment are competitors. Lord shows that there are non-evidential reasons for suspension of judgment. One upshot is an independent motivation for a certain sort of pragmatist view of epistemic rationality.

This Element offers a systematic outline of ancient conceptions and uses of suspension of belief (understood broadly) while engaging with contemporary philosophy. It discusses the notion of epochē ('suspension of judgement') and other related terms, like aporia, aphasia, paradox, hypothesis, agnosticism, and Socratic wisdom. It examines the Academic and Pyrrhonian sceptics and some of their arguments and strategies for suspension. It also includes the use and conditions for suspension of belief in other philosophers like Socrates, Plato, (...) Aristotle, the Stoics, Plotinus, Protagoras, and Democritus. The Element is divided into four thematic sections, each addressing one of the following questions: What is suspension of belief? When does it arise? What could its scope be? And what are its practical and moral implications? (shrink)

The article argues that there are different ways of justifying suspension of judgement. We suspend judgement not only privatively, that is, because we lack evidence, but also positively, that is, because there is evidence that provides reasons for suspending judgement: suspension is more than the rational fallback position in cases of insufficient evidence. The article applies the distinction to recent discussions about the role of suspension for inquiry, Turri's puzzle about withholding, and formal representations of suspension.

This paper defends three theses on the normativity of the suspension of judgment. First, even if beliefs have to fit the truth and disbelief the false, suspension can still have satisfiable fittingness conditions. Second, combining this view with specific theses on the link between fittingness and normative reasons in favour of attitudes commits one to the existence of reasons to suspend judgement, which are neither reasons to believe nor reasons to disbelieve. These independent reasons, in turn, generate a (...) form of epistemic permissivism. Finally, I argue that there are different routes to derive this commitment to independent reasons for suspending judgement. Not only fittingness-centred approaches to epistemic normativity but also many analyses in terms of reasons are committed to this form of epistemic permissivism. (shrink)

I focus here on the teleological suspension of the ethical as it appears in Fear and Trembling. A common reading of Fear and Trembling is that it explores whether there are religious reasons for action that settle that one must do an action even when all the moral reasons for action tell against doing it. This interpretation has been contested. But I defend it by showing how the explicit teleological suspension of the ethical mirrors implicit teleological suspensions of (...) the epistemological and prudential, and by articulating how it might be necessary for God to suspend the ethical in order to forgive us for our wrongdoings to others. I also discuss whether God’s commands are implicitly conditional, whether religious reasons to act, believe, and forgive are in each case grounded in divine commands, and what role love plays in each type of teleological suspension. (shrink)

Introduction -- Suspension -- Hegel and Schelling -- Outline of the whole -- The surge of reason : faculty epistemology in Kant and Fichte -- The first critique's basic distinction -- The third critique -- Fichte's Wissenschaftslehre -- Ascendant reason : the early Schelling -- Of the I -- The treatises -- Metastatic reason : Schelling's nature philosophy -- Organic reason : ideas for a philosophy of nature -- Rational nature : on the world-soul -- Inhibition of nature : (...) the Erster entwurf -- Synthetic reason : the system of transcendental idealism -- The idea of system -- The synthetic method -- History and art -- Reason as reflection and speculation : Hegel's collaboration with Schelling -- The differenzschrift -- Krug's pen -- The sacred abyss : Schelling's identity philosophy -- The darstellung -- System of philosophy in general -- Space, time, and suspension : Hegel's absolute knowing -- The phenomenology's critique of Schelling -- Absolute knowing -- Suspended reason : Hegel on the certainty and truth of reason -- Empty idealism -- Observing nature -- Observing self-consciousness -- Self-actualizing reason -- The project of individuality -- Reason on the periphery : Schelling's freedom essay -- Reason as peripheral -- Pantheism and freedom -- God as existing -- Longing for ground -- The possibility of evil -- The actuality of evil -- System, ground, and indifference -- Reason's systematic excess -- Hegel's system -- The myth of totalizing reason -- The philosophy of nature -- History -- Reason's systematic excess -- Schelling's positive philosophy -- The natural history of reason -- The critique of Hegel -- Now what? (shrink)

In situations where we ignore everything but the space of possibilities, we ought to suspend judgment—that is, remain agnostic—about which of these possibilities is the case. This means that we cannot sum our degrees of belief in different possibilities, something that has been formalized as an axiom of non-additivity. Consistent with this way of representing our ignorance, I defend a doxastic norm that recommends that we should nevertheless follow a certain additivity of possibilities: even if we cannot sum degrees of (...) belief in different possibilities, we should be more confident in larger groups of possibilities. It is thus shown that, in the type of situation considered (in so-called ‘classical ignorance’, i.e. “behind a thin veil of ignorance”), it is epistemically rational for advocates of suspending judgment to endorse this comparative confidence; while on the other hand it is shown that, even in classical ignorance, no stronger belief—such as a precise uniform probability distribution—is warranted. (shrink)

A telic virtue epistemology was presupposed in our treatment of insight and understanding. What follows will lay out the main elements of that telic theory and explore how it provides an epistemology of suspension.

It is generally thought that suspension of judgment about a proposition p is the doxastic attitude one is rationally compelled to adopt whenever the epistemic reasons for and against p are equipollent or equally credible, that is, whenever the total body of available evidence bearing on p epistemically justifies neither belief nor disbelief in p. However, in a recent contribution to this journal, Jan Wieland proposes “to broaden the conditions for suspension, and argue that it is rational to (...) suspend belief on a certain issue even if one’s current evidence is not neutral (or even close to neutral)”. My aim in this paper is to point to a number of problems in Wieland’s position, some of which in connection with the account of Pyrrhonian skepticism found in the extant works of Sextus Empiricus. (shrink)

This paper treats a heretofore-unnoticed concept in the history of the philosophical discussion of human freedom, a kind of freedom that is not defined solely in terms of the causal power of the agent. Instead, the exercise of freedom essentially involves the non-occurrence of something. That being free involves the non-occurrence, that is, the absence, of an act may seem counterintuitive. With the exception of those specifically treated in this paper, philosophers tend to think of freedom as intimately involved with (...) volition, the judging or deciding activity of the will that votes in favor of or against a proposed action. However, there are two thinkers who endorse a view where not willing constitutes human freedom. Our analysis focuses on the views of Malebranche and Locke. Both invoke a notion dubbed here as ‘absential suspension.’ On this view, freedom is associated not with the power of volition, but rather with this kind of suspension. (shrink)

Recently, many normative theories of democracy have taken an epistemic turn. Rather than focus on democracy's morally desirable features, they argue that democracy is valuable (at least in part) because it tends to produce correct political decisions. I argue that these theories place epistemic demands on citizens that conflict with core democratic commitments. First, I discuss a well-known challenge to epistemic arguments for democracy that I call the ‘deference problem’. I then argue that framing debates about this deference problem in (...) terms of work on epistemic defeat reveals a structurally similar but more serious challenge for epistemic arguments for democracy. Succinctly put, the problem is that if democracy tends to produce correct political decisions, then those in the minority might be required to suspend beliefs about political matters; however, this requirement conflicts with the pivotal democratic principle of self-government. Call this the ‘suspension problem’. (shrink)

The paper is concerned with the rational requirements for suspended judgment, or what suspending judgment about a question rationally commits one to. It shows that two purported rational requirements for suspended judgment cannot both be true at the same time, at least when the entailment relation between questions is understood a certain way. The first one says that one is rationally required to suspend judgment about those questions that are entailed by the questions that one already suspends judgment about. The (...) second one says that one is rationally required to believe the presuppositions of the questions one suspends judgment about. Two plausible solutions to the problem are discussed. One of them explicates the relation of entailment between questions in an alternative manner, and the other one rejects the presupposition requirement. Either way, a closure requirement for suspended judgment can be maintained which is analogous to the closure requirement for belief. Whereas belief is ideally closed under entailment between propositions, suspended judgment is ideally closed under entailment between questions. (shrink)

Epistemological disputes in the philosophy of science often focus on the question of how restrained or expansive one should be in interpreting our best scientific theories and models. For example, some empiricist philosophers countenance only belief in their observable content, while realists of different sorts extend belief (in incompatible ways, reflecting their different versions of realism) to strictly unobservable entities, structures, events, and processes. I analyze these disputes in terms of differences regarding where to draw a line between domains in (...) which one has warrant for belief and those in which one should suspend belief and thus remain sceptical. I consider and defend the idea that the precise location of this line is subject to a form of epistemic voluntarism, and argue that a Pyrrhonian reading of the basis of such voluntaristic choice is both natural and transformative of our understanding of these debates. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:SuspenseDonald BeecherSuspense is one of those workaday terms so integrated into the discussion of literature that definition would hardly seem necessary. It does receive pro forma entries in most literary handbooks, but never provokes more than a statement of the self-evident: that it is a "state of uncertainty, anticipation and curiosity as to the outcome of a story or play, or any kind of narrative in verse or prose,"1 (...) that such anticipations arise "particularly as they affect a character for whom one has sympathy," and that plot types vary in ways that affect the ethos of suspense: those situations in which the outcome is uncertain and readers are concerned with how they will be resolved, and those in which the outcome is inevitable and readers, in their fear, concentrate merely on knowing when the catastrophe will be complete.2 Indicatively, Roger Fowler's A Dictionary of Modern Critical Terms gives it a pass altogether.3 But even these generic representations of the concept must venture such quizzical terms as "state" and "sympathy," both of which are seen to inhere not in texts and narratives, but in spectators and readers. Suspense, then, must have two sides: that which is invested in the design of the story as an emotion prompt; and that which is a feature of mind.This critical divide can be stated in many ways. One could say that evaluating the emotionality embedded in a text is an act of literary criticism, while the study of the emotionality aroused by literature belongs to cognitive psychology. These are, of course, two sides to the proverbial coin worthy of critical alignment—namely that which authors know about organizing narratives to produce suspense, and that which readers "know" through the constitution of their brains about responding to situations of alarm or disorientation involving themselves or others, and the compelling limbic reinforcement that impels them toward ends [End Page 255] that will release them from incertitude or danger. The critical challenge at this juncture is to decide whether a study of suspense should begin in narratology or psychology, for without the récit of events in time there are no prompts, even though suspense as experience does not reside in texts but in psyches.Wolfgang Iser calls for a balanced approach to literary study in general that "lays full stress on the idea that, in considering a literary work, one must take into account not only the actual text, but also, in equal measure, the actions involved in responding to that text."4 But that does not help in determining whether suspense should be defined according to a minimum prescription of narrative procedures and characteristics, or as a literary subset of a human, genetically-conditioned response mechanism selectively engineered to meet a range of stressors in the environment.The first question in the creation of a rapprochement between these domains must deal with the very capacity for mind states to be emotionally moved by literary configurations, insofar as literary suspense borrows from the vocabulary of limbic arousal responses. The second question pertains to what readers are brought to feel more particularly for make-believe persons in make-believe situations of danger. Are these also make-believe emotions, for then it must be determined what an exclusively literary emotion might be. Subsequent questions must deal with the range of suspense arousing situations, whether they involve only protagonists, their desires and prospects, or whether suspense applies to any motivated pursuit of information deemed vital to mental satisfaction. These distinctions and their relationship will prove critical.Almost universally, in the limited number of critical studies that exist, literary suspense entails liked characters under duress whose futures are perilous and uncertain—futures about which readers hold strong preferences. This perspective stands in opposition to potentially broader definitions that include curiosity, problem-solving sequences, cognitive jags, or pattern completion. One obstacle is that problem-solving activities appear to exceed the capacities of minds already absorbed in the events of fictive worlds, arriving merely as distractions from the conditions of high, dramatic suspense. They can be said to fall outside the fictive representation altogether, particularly as they pertain to the patterns of fiction, or a... (shrink)

Historically, the suspension of presuppositions arose as part of the philosophical procedure of the transcendental reduction which, Husserl taught, led to the distinct realm of phenomenological research: pure consciousness. With such an origin, it may seem surprising that bracketing remains a methodological concept of modern phenomenological psychology, in which the focus is on the life-world. Such a focus of investigation is, on the face of it, incompatible with transcendental idealism. The gap was bridged largely by Merleau-Ponty, who found it (...) possible to interpret Husserl's later work in an existentialist way, and thus enabled the process of bracketing to refer, not to a turning away from the world and a concentration on detached consciousness, but to the resolve to set aside theories, research presuppositions, ready-made interpretations, etc., in order to reveal engaged, lived experience. This paper outlines the history of the suspension of presuppositions and discusses the scope and limitations of bracketing in its new sense within existential phenomenology. The emphasis is on research practice and on the phenomenological quest for entry into the life-world of the research participant. It is argued that the bracketing of presuppositions throughout the process of research should be a cardinal feature of phenomenological psychology. Of equal importance is the investigator's sensitive awareness that the investigation of the life-world and the phenomena which appear within it is a thoroughly interpersonal process, necessarily entailing the taken-for-granted assumptions implicit in all social interaction. These presuppositions are not open to bracketing. (shrink)

When we’re inquiring to find out whether p is true, knowing that we’ll get better evidence in the future seems like a good reason to suspend judgment about p now. But, as Matt McGrath has recently argued, this natural thought is in deep tension with traditional accounts of justification. On traditional views of justification, which doxastic attitude you are justified in having now depends on your current evidence, not on what you might learn later. McGrath proposes to resolve this tension (...) by distinguishing between different ways of having a neutral attitude. I argue that McGrath’s account is unable to account for the full range of cases in which an agnostic attitude is warranted. We can remedy this by pairing his account with my theory of transitional and terminal attitudes, which claims that attitudes are justified in different ways depending on whether they are formed in intermediate stages of deliberation or as conclusions of deliberation. I compare my view with an alternative, more parsimonious one, according to which deliberation itself is a source of new evidence. I argue that this alternative proposal is faced with a dilemma: it either generates a vicious regress, or it fails to capture the relevant cases. (shrink)

What is suspense, and why do we feel it? These questions are at the heart of the first part of this study. It develops and defends the ‘imminence theory of suspense’ – the view that suspense arises in situations that are structurally defined by something essential being imminent. Next, the study utilizes this theory as an interpretative key to Søren Kierkegaard’s seminal work ‘Frygt og Bæven’. FB is an exploration of what it means to take the story of Abraham and (...) Isaac as a paradigmatic example of faith. The study argues that a core aspect of how Kierkegaard conceptualizes faith through the figure of Abraham is suspense. The argument is built upon the observation that to have faith is to be a hero. To be hero means to belong to a story. Stories manifests different conceptualizations of time. Abraham’s story, as FB frames it, is radically geared towards something imminent – it is characterized by an essential relation of suspense. The study then explores how suspense not only forms part of the conceptualization of faith, but is also part of how this conceptualization is communicated. Thus, the study argues that there exists a symmetry of suspense between the rhetorical and the conceptual levels of the text. (shrink)

In line with [2], [12, 13, 14] carefully studies the Leibnizian notion of suspensive condition—notion that Leibniz sometimes names moral condition. Thiercelin points out Leibniz’ will to provide a rigorous definition of that kind of condition. Leibniz not only establishes a link between the legal notion of condition and the logical notion of condition, but he also grasps the problematic of suspensive condition through its epistemic and dynamic features. In this paper we start from Thiercelin’s reflections about Leibniz’ suspensive condition. (...) Thiercelin’s work offers an inventory of different clauses that a logical conditional must fulfill to capture the legal meaning of suspensive condition. Our aim is to compare such a definition with the Public Announcement operator semantics ([16]) taking advantage of both its model theoretic semantics and its dialogical semantics (introduced for the first time in [5]). We show that the public announcement operator entails the same dynamic and epistemic features than the ones that Leibniz requires with its notion of suspensive condition. (shrink)

Knowledge is good, ignorance is bad. So it seems, anyway. But in this dissertation, I argue that some ignorance is epistemically valuable. Sometimes, we should suspend judgment even though by believing we would achieve knowledge. In this apology for ignorance (ignorance, that is, of a certain kind), I defend the following four theses: 1) Sometimes, we should continue inquiry in ignorance, even though we are in a position to know the answer, in order to achieve more than mere knowledge (e.g. (...) understanding) while minimizing the effects of confirmation bias. 2) It’s false that we should believe every proposition such that we are guaranteed to be right about it (and even such that we are guaranteed to know it) if we believe it. 3) Being in a position to know is the norm of assertion: importantly, this does not require belief or (thereby) knowledge, and so proper assertion can survive speaker-ignorance. 4) It can be permissible and conversationally useful to tell audiences things that it is logically impossible for them to come to know: Proper assertion can survive (necessary) audience-side ignorance. Cumulatively, this project suggests that, properly understood, ignorance has an important role to play in the good epistemic life. (shrink)

The chapter 'Of power' of Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding is a very fine discussion of agency and a very complex piece of philosophy. It is the result of the superimposition of at least three layers of text (those of the first, second and fifth editions of the Essay), expressive of widely differing views of the same matters. The argument concerning agency and free will that it puts forward (as it now stands, reporting Locke's last word on the subject) is (...) thus beset with problems, and even inconsistencies. But these textual and analytical difficulties should not hide from us the relevance and, in a way, the deep coherence of Locke's philosophy of action. In what follows, I will attempt to cast some light on this complicated interpretive and conceptual matter, by a careful reading of some parts of Locke's discussion. The first section shows how accounting for the evaluation and choice of remote goods, in terms of their real value and in preference to smaller, nearer ones, is a crucial problem for Locke's philosophy of action. The second section reads Locke's move from an internalist to an externalist view of motivation as a first, conceptually complex step towards such an account; and shows how this is linked to a change in the concept of will. The third and fourth sections reconstruct Locke's account (a pattern of suspension and examination of occurrent desire); discuss the role of the motivational and normative concept of happiness; and cast some doubt on the consistency of Locke's position. (shrink)

In what follows, I’ll discuss several approaches to suspension. As we’ll see, the issue of whether and in what sense(s) suspension is *question-directed* is important to developing an adequate account. I will argue that suspension isn’t question-directed in the way that curiosity, wondering, and inquiry are. The most promising approach, in my view, takes suspension to be an agential matter; it involves the will. As we’ll see, this view makes sense of a lot of familiar facts (...) about suspension, and it makes sense of its role in curating beliefs. It also raises intriguing questions about how it comes up for epistemic assessment. (shrink)

We argue that we can avoid epistemic dilemmas by properly understanding the nature and epistemology of the suspension of judgment, with a particular focus on conflicts between higher-order evidence and first-order evidence.

We will be in a better position to evaluate some important skeptical theses if we first investigate two questions about justified suspended judgment. One question is this: when, if ever, does one justified suspension confer justification on another suspension? And the other is this: what is the structure of justified suspension? The goal of this essay is to make headway at answering these questions. After surveying the four main views about the non-normative nature of suspended judgment and (...) offering a taxonomy of the epistemic principles that might govern which suspended judgments are justified, I will isolate five important principles that might govern which suspended judgments are justified. I will call these suspension-to-suspension principles. I will then evaluate these principles by the lights of each of the four views about what suspensions are. I close by drawing some conclusions about the prospects for skepticism, the structure of justified suspended judgment, and the importance of theorizing about justified suspended judgment. (shrink)

What are the conditions under which suspension of belief—or suspension, for short—is justified? Process reliabilists hold that our beliefs are justified if and only if these are produced or sustained by reliable cognitive processes. But they have said relatively little about suspension. Perhaps they think that we may easily extend an account of justified belief to deal with justified suspension. But it's not immediately clear how we may do so; in which case, evidentialism has a distinct (...) advantage over reliabilism. In this paper, I consider some proposals as to how process reliabilists might seek to account for justified suspension. Although several of these proposals do not work, two are promising. The first such proposal appeals to the notion of propositional justification; the second involves weaving evidentialist elements into reliabilism. I'll argue that the second proposal is better than the first. (shrink)

By means of the Ten Modes, Pyrrhonian skeptics appeal to conflicting appearances to bring about suspension of judgment. However, precisely how the skeptic might do so in a nondogmatic manner is not entirely clear. In this paper, I argue that existing accounts of the Modes face significant objections, and I defend an alternative account that better explains the logical structure, rational nature, and effectiveness of the Modes. In particular, I clarify how the Modes appeal to concerns about epistemic impartiality (...) and circularity, the nature of the skeptic's nondoxastic attitude(s), and how the skeptic can employ the Modes nondogmatically. (shrink)

The aim of the paper will be to analyze the different strategies that the Stoics of the Imperial times designed in order to put our sense of justice on hold, due to the fact that it is deemed responsible for certain attitudes which do not contribute to our search for _eudaimonía_. I will organize such strategies in two groups: the first one corresponds to the strategies that target the idea that an injustice has been committed; the second one corresponds to (...) the ones that aim to show that there are more convenient attitudes towards injustice than the demand for punishment or the desire for revenge. I will end by pointing at the difficulty of reconciling both sets of strategies, and I will suggest a possible way to account for that difficulty. (shrink)

Most theories of suspense implicitly or explicitly have as a background assumption what I call suspense realism, i.e., that suspense is itself a genuine, distinct emotion. I claim that for a theory of suspense to entail suspense realism is for that theory to entail a contradiction, and so, we ought instead assume a background of suspense eliminativism, i.e., that there is no such genuine, distinct emotion that is the emotion of suspense. More precisely, I argue that i) any suspense realist (...) (...) theory must resolve the paradox of suspense, ii) if suspense is itself a genuine, distinct emotion, then in order to resolve the paradox of suspense it must be a radically sui generis genuine, distinct emotion, iii) according to any minimally adequate theory of the emotions, there can be no radically sui generis emotion, and so iv) there can be no genuine, distinct emotion that is the emotion of suspense. Quite simply, if a theory of suspense must entail suspense realism, then we ought to be eliminativists about suspense. This I call the Paradox of Suspense Realism, which I take to constitute a productive viability condition for any theory of suspense, i.e., any viable theory of suspense must be mutatis mutandis compatible with suspense eliminativism. (shrink)

First in-depth analysis of this important Mexican philosopher’s work.

In this paper, I want to discuss a problem that arises when we try to understand the connections between justification, knowledge, and suspension. The problem arises because some prima facie plausible claims about knowledge and the justification for judging and suspending are difficult to reconcile with the possibility of a kind of knowledge or apt belief that a thinker cannot aptly judge to be within her reach. I shall argue that if we try to accommodate the possibility of this (...) kind of knowledge, we should reject a widely held view about justification. We can correct this mistaken view about the connection between justification and knowledge by connecting justification to a kind of competence, but not the one we might have expected. In the course of this discussion, I shall flag some questions about the explanatory ambitions of the telic virtue-theoretic approach. (shrink)

Le pacte romanesque suppose un cadre dans lequel le lecteur consent à suspendre sa méfiance envers les mensonges de la fiction, mais ce cadre a souvent été transgressé. La multiplication actuelle des récits brouille plus que jamais la limite entre fiction et réalité, et les théories du complot pourraient n’être qu’un avatar de cette perversion narrative. Il faut faire droit à une théorie de la réception des fictions complotistes, où le lecteur apparaît plus du côté de l’incertitude subjective que de (...) la manipulation. (shrink)

Motivating philosophical interest in the notion of suspense requires comparatively little appeal to what goes on in our ordinary work-a-day lives. After all, with respect to our everyday engagements with the actual world suspense appears to be largely absent—most of us seem to lead lives relatively suspense-free. The notion of suspense strikes us as interesting largely because of its significance with respect to our engagements with (largely fictional) narratives. So, when I indicate a preference for suspense novels, I indicate a (...) preference not only for reading novels with certain narrative structures or content but for novels that in virtue of their narrative structure or content, when properly engaged, evoke a .. (shrink)

Antithetical desires displayed throughout Kierkegaard’s authorship indicate the disjunctive assumption that the individual exists either in a state of increasing autonomy, expressed negatively as striving for freedom from divine constraint, or in a state of self-annihilating submission, expressed positively in terms of kenotic unification. Proximity to the divine thereby entails forfeiture of individuality, contrary to the explicit aim of Kierkegaard’s authorial project, and aversion to materiality. This essay enunciates the conflict (I), traces the crescendo of loss that births the pseudonymous (...) authorship and ends in realized longing for death (II), and approaches a more holistic vision of psycho-spiritual development (III). (shrink)

Epistemologists often claim that in addition to belief and disbelief there is a third, neutral, doxastic attitude. Various terms are used: ‘suspending judgment’, ‘withholding’, ‘agnosticism’. It is also common to claim that the factors relevant to the justification of these attitudes are epistemic in the narrow sense of being factors that bear on the strength or weakness of one’s epistemic position with respect to the target proposition. This paper addresses two challenges to such traditionalism about doxastic attitudes. The first concerns (...) the relevance of non-epistemic factors we might call "future-comparative" – e.g., that you’ll have more decisive evidence on whether p tomorrow – to the justification of suspending judgment. The second, from Jane Friedman, is to explain the point of the neutral attitude without appealing to inquiry and thus taking goal-related factors, which are not epistemic, such as the value of the goal or the prospects for finding means to achieve it, to bear on the justification of the neutral attitude. My defense of traditionalism relies on distinguishing three ways of being neutral on a question: agnosticism, inquiry and suspension of judgment. Traditionalism is saved because, of these, agnosticism alone is a genuine doxastic attitude. (shrink)

This paper concerns Kierkegaard's notion of a teleological suspension of the ethical, which is presented by his pseudonym Johannes de Silentio in Fear and Trembling in connection with the biblical narrative of Abraham's sacrifice of Isaac. Against prevailing readings, I argue that Abraham's suspension of the ethical does not consist in his violating the ethical in order to satisfy a higher normative requirement. Rather, it consists in his preparedness to violate an overriding ethical norm, even where he does (...) not believe that there is some competing requirement that such a violation will satisfy - indeed, even where he believes that he has no reason to commit the violation and conclusive reason not to. Abraham's faith, as expressed in the teleological suspension, consists not in his willingness to obey God or his recognition that God's authority overrides that of the ethical; it consists in his trustful confidence that what seems certain - that he will have committed a monstrous wrong - will not obtain, a confidence that is best understood as a practical orientation toward the world rather than a propositional attitude such as a belief. I argue that this way of interpreting the teleological suspension makes the sections in which that phenomenon is discussed cohere better with the text's earlier sections than standard readings, and shows Kierkegaard's conception of faith to be more radical and more interesting than is commonly supposed. (shrink)

Arguments about the effects of repeated exposure to a suspenseful narrative raise controversial disputes over the paradox of suspense. The lexical meaning and theoretical analyses of suspense imply that suspense cannot be experienced repeatedly because, in such cases, the knowledge from prior viewings and the resolution of outcome will eliminate tension and suspense. However, previous studies have argued that suspense can be re-experienced even when the participants know the outcome or repeatedly confront a suspenseful narrative. This study investigated the effects (...) of repeated exposure to a suspenseful film by collecting self-reported questionnaires and measuring psychophysiological responses. The participants (N = 50) watched clips of a suspenseful film three times and answered self-reported items regarding suspense, arousal, and enjoyment. Psychophysiological data, including skin conductance level (SCL) and electrocardiogram (ECG), were collected while the participants watched the video clips. It was hypothesized that self-reported suspense, arousal, and enjoyment as well as the physiological indices of arousal (SCL) and attention (ECG) would decrease upon repeated viewing of suspenseful clips. Furthermore, it was postulated that there would be inter-group differences depending on the awareness of potential or definite change in outcome at the end of repeatedly shown suspenseful events. The results showed that self-reported suspense and arousal, as well as physiological measures of SCL, declined with repeated exposure, although there were no significant differences on self-reported enjoyment. No group difference was found in self-reported items, but meaningful significant changes were observed in the group comparison of SCL and ECG. The findings suggest that repeated exposure to suspenseful films could result in affective habituation or desensitization to repeated stimuli. The implications and limitations of the current study and suggestions for future research are discussed. (shrink)

In the first edition of the Essay concerning Human Understanding, Locke claims that human beings have freedom of action - that is, that some of their actions are free - but that they do not have freedom of will - that is, that none of their volitions are free. Volitions themselves are actions for Locke; they are operations of the will and hence acts of willing. And volitions give rise to other actions: an action that follows and is caused by (...) a volition is thereby a voluntary action. But volitions are not subject to the will; they cannot be caused by acts of willing and so cannot themselves be voluntary actions. This doctrine, that acts of willing cannot be voluntary, is one of Locke’s reasons for thinking that they are not free. (He also has a reason for holding this doctrine, and a second reason for thinking that acts of willing cannot be free, both of which I’ll be considering later on.) Locke follows not only the scholastics but also Descartes and Hobbes in holding that being voluntary is a prerequisite for being free. But unlike Descartes and Hobbes, though not unlike the scholastics, Locke does not make voluntariness sufficient for freedom. In addition to being voluntary, a free action must be one its agent can avoid - avoid, that is, merely by willing, whether by willing not to do it or by willing to do something else that is incompatible with doing it. (shrink)

How does Cahiers du cinéma react to the emergence of the French New Wave? What are the strategies implemented by the magazine when confronted to the risk that the politique des auteurs could end up as a politique de l’amitié? While other magazines –such as Positif or Présence du cinéma– focus themselves to attack the new cineastes, Éric Rohmer strengthens his preference for clacisism and avoids to make references to modern films. His refusal to any engagement with contemporaneity creates a (...) source of friction within the magazine and, in the end, Rohmer would be replaced by Jacques Rivette. A new cicle begins: the new chief editor believes that modern cinema demands modern forms of criticism and that it is not a question of extracting meaning from films anymore but, instead, now it is all about suspending it. From the perpective of historical criticism, this article tries to reconstruct the different stages of that conflictive transitional moment. My intention is to show that a certain notion of modern cinema and a new conception of the image emerge as a result of that controversy. (shrink)