Michele Palmira

The Rational Inquirer offers an original account of the rational response to peer disagreement in terms of a duty to double-check one’s initial conclusions and a permission to retain an inquiry-directing attitude of hypothesis towards those conclusions. This allows for a vindication of the competing rational pressures to revise and retain one’s original views that give rise to the distinctive puzzle of peer disagreement. Peer disagreement is conceived as higher-order evidence (HOE) that generates a genuine epistemic duty to double-check one’s initial conclusions. This stands in stark contrast with existing views that characterize the rational response to HOE in terms of doxastic duties to revise or retain one’s beliefs. A framework for thinking about the nature and norms of inquiry is developed. The framework provides a pluralist account of the aims of inquiry, a definition of double-checking, and a defence of the genuine epistemic nature of the duty to double-check. It is shown that while the duty to double-check is incompatible with rational belief retention, it is compatible with the retention of an attitude of hypothesis whereby two peers retain their initial cognitive leanings toward conflicting answers to the question at hand. A non-evidentialist and consequentialist view of the central epistemic norm governing rational hypothesis is presented, and it is argued the account on offer compares favourably with recent views that also appeal to doxastic attitudes other than belief and suspended judgement.

According to a prominent strand of thought in analytic philosophy of mind, certain judgments of the form “a is F” are such that, although one can be mistaken about what property it is that a has, one cannot be mistaken that it is a that has the relevant property. Judgments of this kind are said to be immune to error through misidentification (IEM). This article has two main aims. On the one hand, it responds to a need for a systematization of the debate about immunity to error through misidentification, which consists of multiple contributions in epistemology, philosophy of language, philosophy of mind, and metaphysics that have accumulated throughout the last 80 years – since the publication of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Blue Book – and which no one – to the best of our knowledge – has drawn together in an exhaustive and accessible way. On the other hand, the article will take a stand on matters concerning the nature, scope, explanation, and significance of immunity to error through misidentification.

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 appeals to the notion of defeat.

Permissivism is the view that, sometimes, there is more than one doxastic attitude that is perfectly rationalised by the evidence. Impermissivism is the denial of Permissivism. Several philosophers, with the aim to defend either Impermissivism or Permissivism, have recently discussed the value of (im)permissive rationality. This paper focuses on one kind of value-conferring considerations, stemming from the so-called “truth-connection” enjoyed by rational doxastic attitudes. The paper vindicates the truth-connected value of permissive rationality by pursuing a novel strategy which rests on two main planks: first, there is a distinction between a fine-grained and a coarse-grained type-individuation of belief-forming methods. Secondly, different kinds of decision-theoretic reasoning, i.e. expected-accuracy reasoning and accuracy-domination reasoning, must be paired with a fine-grained and a coarse-grained type-individuation of methods, respectively. I argue that while the first pair is wholly irrelevant to the question of the truth-connection, the second affords the means to a permissivist explanation of the truth-connected value of rationality.

In this paper I take up the question of the nature of the doxastic attitudes we entertain while inquiring into some matter. Relying on a distinction between two stages of open inquiry, I urge to acknowledge the existence of a distinctive attitude of cognitive inclination towards a proposition qua answer to the question one is inquiring into. I call this attitude “hypothesis”. Hypothesis, I argue, is a sui generis doxastic attitude which differs, both functionally and normatively, from suspended judgement, full belief, credences, and acceptance. In closing, I point to the epistemological significance of hypothesis. More specifically, I contend that holding an attitude of hypothesis enables us to respond rationally to peer disagreement, and I suggest that such an attitude offers a suitable articulation of the view, originally put forward by Philip Kitcher, that cognitive diversity in inquiry has epistemic benefits.