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Inquiry
Edited by Joshua Habgood-Coote (University of Leeds)
About this topic
| Summary | Inquiry is a central topic in philosophy, with a history running from Plato's dialogues and Pyrrhonian scepticism to American Pragmatism, but it has largely been overlooked as a topic in epistemology in favour of knowledge, belief, and justification. To understand inquiry, we need to negotiate issues at the intersection of epistemology, philosophy of language, and linguistics. We inquire into questions, so we need to understand what questions and answers are, and what it takes to resolve a question. Inquiry is a goal-directed activity, so we need to understand what the goals of inquiry might be (knowledge, true belief, understanding), and what the norms of inquiry are. There are also important questions about the relation between inquiry, curiosity and wonder, and between inquiry, belief, and the suspension of judgement . Although we can inquire alone, we typically try to answer questions together, so we need to understand the inquisitive character of conversation, as well as larger-scale collaborative inquiry, in science, philosophy, and democratic discourse. |
| Key works | There is a recent surge of interest in inquiry within epistemology. Some notable topics include: the content of inquiry Friedman 2013, the relation between inquiry, belief, and suspension of judgement Friedman 2013, Friedman 2017 , what the goal of inquiry might be Peirce 1877, Pritchard 2008, Kelp 2014 whether inquiry has a constitutive norm Whitcomb 2017, the nature of collective inquiry Habgood-Coote 2022, and how the norms associated with inquiry relate to other epistemic norms Friedman 2020, Fleisher 2021. On conversation as collective inquiry, see Stalnaker 1984 and Roberts 1996. On Pyrrhonianism and inquiry, see Perin 2006, and on Peirce, see . |
| Introductions | For an accessible introduction to the semantics of questions, see https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/questions/ |
Show all references
Related
Siblings
- The Basing Relation (113)
- Belief (2,205 | 1,206)
- Bias (1)
- Defeat (200)
- Entitlement (106)
- Epistemic Possibility (136)
- Epistemic Luck (252)
- Evidence (974 | 131)
- Ignorance (228)
- Justification (1,237 | 732)
- Knowledge (5,181 | 770)
- Rationality (2,901 | 2,192)
- Reasons (3,001 | 336)
- Subjectivity and Objectivity (196 | 30)
- Thought and Thinking (541 | 273)
- Understanding (451)
- Warrant (178 | 76)
- Wisdom (395)
- Epistemological States and Properties, Misc (89)
See also
- Questions (528)
- Social Epistemology (8,095 | 3,204)
- American Pragmatism (3,685 | 3,111)
- Belief (2,205 | 1,206)
- Pyrrhonian Skepticism (320)
Contents
211 found
Order:
| 1 — 50 / 211 |
- New Boundary Lines.Alejandro Pérez Carballo - manuscriptIntellectual progress involves forming a more accurate picture of the world. But it also figuring out which concepts to use for theorizing about the world. Bayesian epistemology has had much to say about the former aspect of our cognitive lives, but little if at all about the latter. I outline a framework for formulating questions about conceptual change in a broadly Bayesian framework. By enriching the resources of Epistemic Utility Theory with a more expansive conception of epistemic value, I offer (...)
- Taking a Good look at the norms of gathering and responding to evidence.Richard Pettigrew - manuscriptIn the recent philosophical literature on inquiry, epistemologists point out that their subject has often begun at the point at which you already have your evidence and then focussed on identifying the beliefs for which that evidence provides justification. But we are not mere passive recipients of evidence. While some comes to us unbidden, we often actively collect it. This has long been recognised, but typically epistemologists have taken the norms that govern inquiry to be practical, not epistemic. The recent (...)
- Suspension in Inquiry.Julia Staffel - manuscriptWhen 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 (...)
- Knowledge: A Human Interest Story.Brian Weatherson - manuscriptOver the years I’ve written many papers defending an idiosyncratic version of interest-relative epistemology. This book collects and updates the views I’ve expressed over those papers. -/- Interest-relative epistemologies all start in roughly the same way. A big part of what makes knowledge important is that it rationalises action. But for almost anything we purportedly know, there is some action that it wouldn’t rationalise. I know what I had for breakfast, but I wouldn’t take a bet at billion to one (...)
- Do Your Homework! A Rights-Based Zetetic Account of Alleged Cases of Doxastic Wronging.J. Spencer Atkins - forthcoming - Ethical Theory and Moral Practice:1-28.This paper offers an alternate explanation of cases from the doxastic wronging literature. These cases violate what I call the degree of inquiry right—a novel account of zetetic obligations to inquire when interests are at stake. The degree of inquiry right is a moral right against other epistemic agents to inquire to a certain threshold when a belief undermines one’s interests. Thus, the agents are sometimes obligated to leave inquiry open. I argue that we have relevant interests in reputation, relationships, (...)
- Epistemic Value, Duty, and Virtue.Guy Axtell - forthcoming - In Brian C. Barnett (ed.), Introduction to Philosophy: Epistemology. Rebus Community.This chapter introduces some central issues in Epistemology, and, like others in the open textbook series Introduction to Philosophy, is set up for rewarding college classroom use, with discussion/reflection questions matched to clearly-stated learning objectives,, a brief glossary of the introduced/bolded terms/concepts, links to further open source readings as a next step, and a readily-accessible outline of the classic between William Clifford and William James over the "ethics of belief." The chapter introduces questions of epistemic value through Plato's famous example (...)
- “Do Your Own Research”.Nathan Ballantyne, Jared B. Celniker & David Dunning - forthcoming - Social Epistemology.This article evaluates an emerging element in popular debate and inquiry: DYOR. (Haven’t heard of the acronym? Then Do Your Own Research.) The slogan is flexible and versatile. It is used frequently on social media platforms about topics from medical science to financial investing to conspiracy theories. Using conceptual and empirical resources drawn from philosophy and psychology, we examine key questions about the slogan’s operation in human cognition and epistemic culture.
- Inquiry Beyond Knowledge.Bob Beddor - forthcoming - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research.Why engage in inquiry? According to many philosophers, the goal of inquiring into some question is to come to know its answer. While this view holds considerable appeal, this paper argues that it stands in tension with another highly attractive thesis: knowledge does not require absolute certainty. Forced to choose between these two theses, I argue that we should reject the idea that inquiry aims at knowledge. I go on to develop an alternative view, according to which inquiry aims at (...)
- Unsettled Belief.Bob Beddor - forthcoming - The Philosophical Quarterly.According to many philosophers, belief is a settling state. On this view, someone who believes p is disposed to take p for granted in practical and theoretical reasoning. This paper presents a simple objection to this settling conception of belief: it conflicts with our ordinary patterns of belief ascription. I show that ascriptions of unsettled beliefs are commonplace, and that they pose problems for all of the most promising ways of developing the settling conception. I proceed to explore the implications (...)
- Who knows what? Epistemic dependence, inquiry, and function-first epistemology.Joshua DiPaolo - forthcoming - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy.Function-first epistemologists analyze epistemic concepts, norms, and practices by investigating their functions. According to the most prominent function-first account, the primary function of our concept of knowledge is identifying reliable informants. In this paper, I take for granted the function-first methodology to achieve three main goals: First, I argue against this prominent account: studying practices of knowledge attribution and denial related to epistemic dependence, coordination, and competition reveals that the primary function of our concept of knowledge is not identifying reliable (...)
- Two kinds of curiosity.Daniela Dover - forthcoming - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research.Leading philosophical models of curiosity represent it as a desiderative attitude whose content is a question, and which is satisfied by knowledge of the answer to that question. I argue that these models do not capture the distinctive character of a form of curiosity that I call 'erotic curiosity'. Erotic curiosity addresses itself not to a question but to an object whose significance for the inquirer is affective as well as epistemic. This form of curiosity is best understood by analogy (...)
- The Zetetic.Arianna Falbo - forthcoming - In Kurt Sylvan, Ernest Sosa, Jonathan Dancy & Matthias Steup (eds.), The Blackwell Companion to Epistemology, 3rd edition. Wiley Blackwell.
- Zetetic Epistemology.Jane Friedman - forthcoming - In Baron Reed & A. K. Flowerree (eds.), Towards an Expansive Epistemology: Norms, Action, and the Social Sphere. Routledge.In this paper I explore the contours of a picture of normative epistemology that speaks centrally to the question of how to inquire rather than just the question of what to believe. What if normative epistemology were expanded to encompass inquiry in full? I argue that while a 'zetetic epistemology' builds on traditional normative epistemology in many appealing ways, it also faces some challenges.
- Inquiry, Questions, and Actions.Benoit Guilielmo - forthcoming - Dialogue.This article aims to contribute to the elucidation of the nature of inquiry. I start with some common desiderata for any theory of inquiry. I then categorize inquiry as a structured process. By focusing on its essential components, I advance a new characterization of inquiry as a combination of questioning attitudes guiding actions. Finally, I turn to the recent objection that questioning attitudes are not necessary for inquiry. I argue that inquiry is a structured process essentially constituted by questioning attitudes (...)
- Curious to Know.Eliran Haziza - forthcoming - Episteme:1-15.What is curiosity? An attractive option is that it is a desire to know. This analysis has been recently challenged by what I call interrogativism, the view that inquiring attitudes such as curiosity have questions rather than propositions as contents. In this paper, I defend the desire-to-know view, and make three contributions to the debate. First, I refine the view in a way that avoids the problems of its simplest version. Second, I present a new argument for the desire-to-know view (...)
- Inquiring and Making Sure.Eliran Haziza - forthcoming - Philosophical Topics.It can be rational to inquire into what you already know, as cases of double-checking suggest. But, I argue, this is compatible with a knowledge aim of inquiry. In general, it can be rational to pursue an aim you’ve already achieved, and inquiry is no different. In particular, I argue that to double-check what you already know is to make sure you have knowledge, and that is still to aim at knowledge.
- Viewpoint Convergence as a Philosophical Defect.Grace Helton - forthcoming - In Sanford C. Goldberg & Mark Walker (eds.), Attitude in Philosophy. Oxford University Press.What can we know? How should we live? What is there? Philosophers famously diverge in the answers they give to these and other philosophical questions. It is widely presumed that a lack of convergence on these questions suggests that philosophy is not progressing at all, is not progressing fast enough, or is not progressing as fast as other disciplines, such as the natural sciences. Call the view that ideal philosophical progress is marked by at least some degree of convergence on (...)
- Review of Reason and Inquiry: The Erotetic Theory, by Philipp Koralus. [REVIEW]Daniel Hoek - forthcoming - Mind:fzad062.Philipp Koralus' "Reason and Inquiry" presents a questioning or erotetic theory of reasoning. This review connects ideas from the book to the broader philosophical literature on inquiry and questions, as well as providing a simplified overview of the theory.
- Belief and Settledness.Wooram Lee - forthcoming - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy.This paper elucidates the sense in which belief is a question-settling attitude. In her recent work, Jane Friedman suggests that we understand the settledness of belief in terms of a normative principle about belief and inquiry: one ought not inquire into a question and believe the answer to the question at the same time. On the basis of the distinction between dispositional and occurrent belief, I argue against Friedman that there is no principle linking belief and inquiry that is both (...)
- Fit-Related Reasons to Inquire.Genae Matthews - forthcoming - Australasian Journal of Philosophy.Recent philosophical work on inquiry yields important results about when it is appropriate to inquire and to what extent norms on inquiry are compatible with other epistemic norms. However, philosophers have been remarkably silent on the matter of what questions we ought to take up in the first place. In this paper, I take up this question, and argue that moral considerations constitute fit-related, right-kind reasons to adopt interrogative attitudes towards, and so inquire about, particular questions. This is a conclusion (...)
- Rational Aversion to Information.Sven Neth - forthcoming - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science.Is more information always better? Or are there some situations in which more information can make us worse off? Good (1967) argues that expected utility maximizers should always accept more information if the information is cost-free and relevant. But Good's argument presupposes that you are certain you will update by conditionalization. If we relax this assumption and allow agents to be uncertain about updating, these agents can be rationally required to reject free and relevant information. Since there are good reasons (...)
- Higher-Order Evidence and the Duty To Double-Check.Michele Palmira - forthcoming - Noûs.The paper proposes an account of the rational response to higher-order evidence whose key claim is that whenever we acquire such evidence we ought to engage in the inquiring activity of double-checking. Combined with a principle that establishes a connection between rational inquiry and rational belief retention, the account offers a novel explanation of the alleged impermissibility of retaining one’s belief in the face of higher-order evidence. It is argued that this explanation is superior to the main competitor view which (...)
- Rational Hypothesis: Inquiry Direction Without Evidence.Michele Palmira - forthcoming - Philosophical Topics.There are scenarios in which letting one’s own views on the question whether p direct one’s inquiry into that question brings about individual and collective epistemic benefits. However, these scenarios are also such that one’s evidence doesn’t support believing one’s own views. So, how to vindicate the epistemic benefits of directing one’s inquiry in such an asymmetric way, without asking one to hold a seemingly irrational doxastic attitude? To answer this question, the paper understands asymmetric inquiry direction in terms of (...)
- Provisional Attitudes.Michele Palmira - forthcoming - In Kurt Sylvan, Ernest Sosa, Jonathan Dancy & Matthias Steup (eds.), The Blackwell Companion to Epistemology, 3rd edition. Wiley Blackwell.
- Kierkegaard on Belief and Credence.Z. Quanbeck - forthcoming - European Journal of Philosophy.Kierkegaard’s pseudonym Johannes Climacus famously defines faith as a risky “venture” that requires “holding fast” to “objective uncertainty.” Yet puzzlingly, he emphasizes that faith requires resolute conviction and certainty. Moreover, Climacus claims that all beliefs about contingent propositions about the external world “exclude doubt” and “nullify uncertainty,” but also that uncertainty is “continually present” in these very same beliefs. This paper argues that these apparent contradictions can be resolved by interpreting Climacus as a belief-credence dualist. That is, Climacus holds that (...)
- Kierkegaard on the Relationship between Practical and Epistemic Reasons for Belief.Z. Quanbeck - forthcoming - Pacific Philosophical Quarterly.On the dominant contemporary accounts of how practical considerations affect what we ought to believe, practical considerations either encroach on epistemic rationality by affecting whether a belief is epistemically justified, or constitute distinctively practical reasons for belief which can only affect what we ought to believe by conflicting with epistemic rationality. This paper shows that a promising alternative view can be found in a surprising source: the writings of Søren Kierkegaard. I argue that in light of two of his central (...)
- Resolving to Believe: Kierkegaard’s Direct Doxastic Voluntarism.Z. Quanbeck - forthcoming - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research.According to a traditional interpretation of Kierkegaard, he endorses a strong form of direct doxastic voluntarism on which we can, by brute force of will, make a “leap of faith” to believe propositions that we ourselves take to be improbable and absurd. Yet most leading Kierkegaard scholars now wholly reject this reading, instead interpreting Kierkegaard as holding that the will can affect what we believe only indirectly. This paper argues that Kierkegaard does in fact endorse a restricted, sophisticated, and plausible (...)
- The Epistemology of Attention.Catharine Saint-Croix - forthcoming - In Kurt Sylvan, Ernest Sosa, Jonathan Dancy & Matthias Steup (eds.), The Blackwell Companion to Epistemology, 3rd edition. Wiley Blackwell.Root, branch, and blossom, attention is intertwined with epistemology. It is essential to our capacity to learn and decisive of the evidence we obtain, it influences the intellectual connections we forge and those we remember, and it is the cognitive tool whereby we enact decisions about inquiry. Moreover, because it is both an epistemic practice and a site of agency, attention is a natural locus for questions about epistemic morality. This article surveys the emerging epistemology of attention, reviewing the existing (...)
- How do lines of inquiry unfold? Insights from journalism.Susanna Siegel - forthcoming - Oxford Studies in Epistemology: Special Issue on Applied Epistemology.I analyze a type of practice related to inquiry: treating things as zetetically relevant to questions, and argue that this practice is a central normatively evaluable way to extend lines of inquiry. My strategy is to introduce the practice and its normative features by examining its relationship to something already well-understood: the ways that news stories produced by journalists frame events. I then argue that the same core zetetic practice can be found across domains, just not in journalism. Finding the (...)
- Making Sense of Things: Moral Inquiry as Hermeneutical Inquiry.Paulina Sliwa - forthcoming - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research.We are frequently confronted with moral situations that are unsettling, confusing, disorienting. We try to come to grips with them. When we do so, we engage in a distinctive type of moral inquiry: hermeneutical inquiry. Its aim is to make sense of our situation. What is it to make sense of one's situation? Hermeneutical inquiry is part of our everyday moral experience. Understanding its nature and its place in moral epistemology is important. Yet, I argue, that existing accounts of moral (...)
- Curiosity and Zetetic Style in ADHD.Asbjørn Steglich-Petersen & Somogy Varga - forthcoming - Philosophical Psychology.While research on Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) has traditionally focused on cognitive and behavioral deficits, there is increasing interest in exploring possible resources associated with the disorder. In this paper, we argue that the attention-patterns associated with ADHD can be understood as expressing an alternative style of inquiry, or “zetetic” style, characterized mainly by a lower barrier for becoming curious and engaging in inquiry, and a weaker disposition to regulate curiosity in response to the cognitive and practical costs associated (...)
- A Puzzle about Guessing and Inquiry.Richard Teague - forthcoming - Analysis.This paper presents a puzzle in the form of a tension between two things: (1) data points about what intuitively count as good guesses to a question given an agent's subjective probabilities, and (2) plausible strategic norms of inquiry that tell us how to go about answering a question. Recent theories of guessing and good guessing have acknowledged this puzzle in one form or another, and they aim to get around it by appealing to some sort of contextualism. But I (...)
- Wondering and Epistemic Desires.Richard Teague - forthcoming - Philosophical Quarterly.This paper explores the relationship between the questioning attitude of wondering and a class of attitudes I call 'epistemic desires'. Broadly, these are desires to improve one's epistemic position on some question. A common example is the attitude of wanting to know the answer to some question. I argue that one can have any kind of epistemic desire towards any question, Q, without necessarily wondering Q, but not conversely. That is, one cannot wonder Q without having at least some epistemic (...)
- General-Purpose Institutional Decision-Making Heuristics: The Case of Decision-Making under Deep Uncertainty.David Thorstad - forthcoming - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science.Recent work in judgment and decisionmaking has stressed that institutions, like individuals, often rely on decisionmaking heuristics. But most of the institutional decisionmaking heuristics studied to date are highly firm- and industry-specific. This contrasts to the individual case, in which many heuristics are general-purpose rules suitable for a wide range of decision problems. Are there also general-purpose heuristics for institutional decisionmaking? In this paper, I argue that a number of methods recently developed for decisionmaking under deep uncertainty have a good (...)
- The zetetic turn and the procedural turn.David Thorstad - forthcoming - Journal of Philosophy.Epistemology has taken a zetetic turn from the study of belief towards the study of inquiry. Several decades ago, theories of bounded rationality took a procedural turn from attitudes towards the processes of inquiry that produce them. What is the relationship between the zetetic and procedural turns? In this paper, I argue that we should treat the zetetic turn in epistemology as part of a broader procedural turn in the study of bounded rationality. I use this claim to motivate and (...)
- Norms of inquiry.David Thorstad - forthcoming - Philosophical Topics.Epistemologists have recently proposed a number of norms governing rational inquiry. My aim in this paper is to unify and explain recently proposed norms of inquiry by developing a general account of the conditions under which inquiries are rational, analogous to theories such as evidentialism and reliabilism for rational belief. I begin with a reason-responsiveness conception of rationality as responding correctly to possessed normative reasons. I extend this account with a series of claims about the normative reasons for inquiry that (...)
- The accuracy-coherence tradeoff in cognition.David Thorstad - forthcoming - British Journal for Philosophy of Science.I argue that bounded agents face a systematic accuracy-coherence tradeoff in cognition. Agents must choose whether to structure their cognition in ways likely to promote coherence or accuracy. I illustrate the accuracy-coherence tradeoff by showing how it arises out of at least two component tradeoffs: a coherence-complexity tradeoff between coherence and cognitive complexity, and a coherence-variety tradeoff between coherence and strategic variety. These tradeoffs give rise to an accuracy-coherence tradeoff because privileging coherence over complexity or strategic variety often leads to (...)
- Asking expresses a desire to know.Peter van Elswyk - forthcoming - Philosophical Quarterly.A speaker’s use of a sentence does more than contribute a content to a conversation. It also expresses the speaker’s attitude. This essay is about which attitude or attitudes are expressed by using an interrogative sentence to ask a question. With reference to eight lines of data about how questions are circulated in conversation, it is argued that a desire to know the question’s answer(s) is expressed.
- Enquiry and the Value of Knowledge.Barnaby Walker - forthcoming - Philosophy.In this paper I challenge the orthodox view of the significance of Platonic value problems. According to this view, such problems are among the central questions of epistemology, and answering them is essential for justifying the status of epistemology as a major branch of philosophical enquiry. I challenge this view by identifying an assumption on which Platonic value problems are based – the value assumption – and considering how this assumption might be resisted. After articulating a line of thought that (...)
- Bullshit Questions.Dennis Whitcomb - forthcoming - Analysis.This paper argues that questions can be bullshit. First it explores some shallowly interrogative ways in which that can happen. Then it shows how questions can also be bullshit in a way that’s more deeply interrogative.
- Inquiring Attitudes and Erotetic Logic: Norms of Restriction and Expansion.Dennis Whitcomb & Jared Millson - forthcoming - Journal of the American Philosophical Association:1-23.A fascinating recent turn in epistemology focuses on inquiring attitudes like wondering and being curious. Many have argued that these attitudes are governed by norms similar to those that govern our doxastic attitudes. Yet, to date, this work has only considered norms that might *prohibit* having certain inquiring attitudes (``norms of restriction''), while ignoring those that might *require* having them (``norms of expansion''). We aim to address that omission by offering a framework that generates norms of expansion for inquiring attitudes. (...)
- Ignorance, Soundness, and Norms of Inquiry.Christopher Willard-Kyle - forthcoming - Philosophical Studies.The current literature on norms of inquiry features two families of norms: norms that focus on an inquirer’s ignorance and norms that focus on the question’s soundness. I argue that, given a factive conception of ignorance, it’s possible to derive a soundness-style norm from a version of the ignorance norm. A crucial lemma in the argument is that just as one can only be ignorant of a proposition if the proposition is true, so one can only be ignorant with respect (...)
- Why Double-Check?Elise Woodard - forthcoming - Episteme:1-24.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 ignorance norms, (...)
- The aim of inquiry?Jane Friedman - 2024 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 108 (2):506-523.Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, EarlyView.
- Inquiry, reasoning and the normativity of logic.van Remmen Maximilian - 2024 - Synthese 203 (3):1-28.According to the traditional view in the philosophy of logic facts of logic bear normative authority regarding how one ought to reason. Usually this is to mean that the relation of logical consequence between statements has some special relevance for how one’s beliefs should cohere. However, as I will argue in this article, this is just one way in which logic is normative for reasoning. For one thing, belief is not the only kind of mental state involved in reasoning. Besides (...)
- Systematicity and Skepticism.Aaron Segal - 2024 - American Philosophical Quarterly 64 (1):1-18.The fact that philosophy is systematic—that philosophical issues are thoroughly interconnected—was a commonplace among nineteenth century idealists, then neglected by analytic philosophers throughout much of the twentieth century, and has now finally started to get some renewed attention. But other than calling attention to the fact, few philosophers have tried to say what it consists in, or what its implications are. -/- I argue that the systematicity of philosophy has disastrous epistemological implications. In particular, it implies philosophical skepticism: philosophers are (...)
- Why bounded rationality (in epistemology)?David Thorstad - 2024 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 108 (2):396-413.Bounded rationality gets a bad rap in epistemology. It is argued that theories of bounded rationality are overly context‐sensitive; conventionalist; or dependent on ordinary language (Carr, 2022; Pasnau, 2013). In this paper, I have three aims. The first is to set out and motivate an approach to bounded rationality in epistemology inspired by traditional theories of bounded rationality in cognitive science. My second aim is to show how this approach can answer recent challenges raised for theories of bounded rationality. My (...)
- Inquiry and Metaphysical Rationalism.Fatema Amijee - 2023 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 101 (4):809-823.ABSTRACT According to an important version of the Principle of Sufficient Reason, every fact has a metaphysical explanation, where a metaphysical explanation of some fact tells us what makes it the case that the fact obtains. I argue that, so long as we have not yet discovered that any fact is brute, we ought to be committed to this version of the principle—henceforth ‘the PSR’—because it is indispensable to a species of inquiry in which we ought to engage. I argue, (...)
- XI—Śrīharṣa on Two Paradoxes of Inquiry.Nilanjan Das - 2023 - Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 123 (3):275-304.In A Confection of Refutation (Khaṇḍanakhaṇḍakhādya), the twelfth-century philosopher and poet Śrīharṣa addresses a version of Meno’s paradox. This version of the paradox was well known in first millennium South Asia through the writings of two earlier Sanskrit philosophers, Śabarasvāmin (4th–5th century ce) and Śaṃkara (8th century ce). Both these thinkers proposed a solution to the paradox. I show how Śrīharṣa rejects this solution, and splits the old paradox into two new ones: the paradox of triviality and the paradox of (...)
- The Value of Biased Information.Nilanjan Das - 2023 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 74 (1):25-55.In this article, I cast doubt on an apparent truism, namely, that if evidence is available for gathering and use at a negligible cost, then it’s always instrumentally rational for us to gather that evidence and use it for making decisions. Call this ‘value of information’ (VOI). I show that VOI conflicts with two other plausible theses. The first is the view that an agent’s evidence can entail non-trivial propositions about the external world. The second is the view that epistemic (...)
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