Verena Wagner

This paper examines the question of when to terminate an inquiry. We are specifically interested in whether acceptance rules recently discussed in formal epistemology can be used for establishing when to stop inquiry by adopting an answer to the target question. Assuming that, in some of our inquiries, we value accuracy as well as speed, we use computer simulations to compare along these dimensions rules that we derive from the best known acceptance rules. It will be seen that the rules make different speed—accuracy trade-offs. We argue that, because different circumstances may ask for different speed—accuracy trade-offs, there is no single correct answer to the question of when an inquiry can be ended.

Libertarismus (lat. libertas, Freiheit) wird diejenige Position in der praktischen Freiheitsdebatte genannt, die (1) die Kompatibilität von Freiheit und Determinismus zurückweist, (2) Freiheit für real hält, (3) den Determinismus nicht für real hält und (4) Freiheit und Indeterminismus für kompatibel erachtet. Damit steht die libertarische Position auf der einen Seite dem freiheitsbejahenden Kompatibilismus entgegen, der Freiheit und Determinismus für vereinbar hält, und auf der anderen Seite steht der Libertarismus aber auch denjenigen inkompatibilistischen Positionen entgegen, die die Realität von Freiheit leugnen. In diesem Kapitel sollen die vier Thesen, auf die der Libertarismus verpflichtet ist, nacheinander besprochen werden, wobei auf Implikationszusammenhänge verwiesen wird und die einzelnen Thesen ihren wichtigsten Vertreterinnen zugeordnet werden. Ferner wird der Libertarismus in Bezug auf seine Einzelthesen von anderen Positionen der Freiheitsdebatte abgegrenzt. Besonderes Augenmerk erfährt dabei die Trennung von modalen Aussagen (Kompatibilität) und Aussagen über die tatsächliche Welt (Realität).

In this chapter, I assess a new challenge for Evidentialism as proposed by Earl Conee and Richard Feldman. This challenge arises from the “zetetic turn” in epistemology that marks a shift from the assessment of doxastic attitudes to the study of inquiry and the process of making up one’s mind. Can the core Evidentialist principles, EJ and WF, be defended against Jane Friedman’s suggestion that rational inquirers often have to fail standard epistemic norms? I argue that Evidentialism can be defended but its claims about epistemic obligation need revising. I will argue that epistemic justification is not equivalent to epistemic obligation and that a subject’s epistemic obligation to be in a doxastic state that fits their evidence depends on being motivated or obliged to figure out the corresponding question. I will show that there is no problem for evidentialism in supporting these claims: (1) having evidence alone is insufficient to generate an epistemic obligation to have the fitting doxastic attitude, and (2) epistemic justification is solely a matter of the evidence possessed.

Suspension of judgment or belief is often described as the neutral doxastic position or stance, alongside belief and disbelief. However, in this contribution, I will demonstrate that there is more than one way of being neutral. I will introduce paradigmatic cases involving cognitive neutrality and highlight significant differences in their nature, such as their relation to inquiry. I will argue that judgment suspension is an act of committing to indecision, leading to a qualified neutral state of mind. However, subjects can commit to indecision in different ways: depending on their epistemic situation and goals, they can suspend agnostically, precautionarily, or hypothetically. These three resulting states of committed indecision must be distinguished from uncommitted indecision, which is the basic state of doxastic neutrality.

This paper examines Hume’s understanding of a third doxastic position distinct from belief and disbelief, arguing that his epistemology presupposes different forms of doxastic neutrality. While Hume does not explicitly discuss this third position, his Treatise of Human Nature and Enquiry concerning Human Understanding offer ideas relevant to contemporary debates on suspension of judgement and inquiry. Hume engaged with Pyrrhonian scepticism, finding its suspension of judgement excessive, yet acknowledging that the Pyrrhonian arguments are theoretically difficult to refute. Based on various interpretations of Hume’s critique of Pyrrhonian ideas, we discuss the relevance of his thoughts on suspension of judgement and inquiry through the lens of modern epistemological discussions.

This is the first edited collection dedicated to demonstrating Hume's relevance to contemporary debates in epistemology. It features original essays by Hume scholars and epistemologists that address a wide range of important questions, including: What does a Humean conception of knowledge look like? How do Hume's understanding of belief and suspension of judgement bear on current debates about doxastic attitudes? Is there a Humean way of uniting reasons in the epistemic and practical domains? What is the proper role of reason at the foundations of ethics and epistemology from a Humean point of view? What contribution might an examination of Humean scepticism make to understanding of current sceptical hypotheses? Is Hume a hinge epistemologist? Does naturalized epistemology trace back to Hume? Does Hume have an ethics of belief? What can Hume contribute to virtue and vice epistemology? Some chapters try to bring historically accurate interpretations of Hume's ideas into contact with current issues while others will take ideas merely suggested by Hume and demonstrate their philosophical usefulness. Together, they demonstrate Hume's enduring relevance for debates about knowledge, belief, inquiry and suspension, reasons, modal knowledge, scepticism, hinge epistemology, naturalized epistemology, the ethics of belief and moral epistemology, virtue and vice epistemology, and the epistemology of testimony. Hume and Contemporary Epistemology will be of interest to scholars and advanced students working on Hume, epistemology, and history of philosophy.

The paper addresses the nature of seemings in light of their role in inquiry. Seemings are mental states or events with propositional content that have a specific phenomenology often referred to as “felt truth”. In epistemology, seemings are mainly discussed as possible (non-inferential) justifications for belief. Yet, epistemology has recently taken a zetetic turn, that is, a turn toward the study of inquiry. I will argue that the role of seemings in epistemology should be re-assessed from the perspective of inquiry and deliberation. Seemings may fall short of justifying beliefs, but there is an important role for seemings in the zetetic realm, which may also explain why seemings lack direct justificatory force for beliefs. Seemings, so I will suggest, can provide normative reasons for performing certain zetetic tasks, but they cannot provide normative reasons for making up one’s mind about the inquired question. In this sense, the zetetic role of seemings can be described as guiding rational inquiry. I will suggest that a modified version of the so-called Taking Evidence View about the nature of seemings is best fitted to accommodate their zetetic role. Yet, contra existing versions of the Taking Evidence View, my modified account acknowledges that seemings are genuine experiences (of one’s evidential standing during inquiry) that are accompanied by the characteristic phenomenology of what is called a “feeling of truth”. By doing so, my modified version of the Taking Evidence View incorporates the (as I take it) most important feature of the rival Experience View of seemings.

In this paper, I will examine the notion of an epistemic dilemma, its characterizations in the literature, and the different intuitions prompted by it. I will illustrate that the notion of an epistemic dilemma is expected to capture various phenomena that are not easily unified with one concept: while some aspects of these phenomena are more about the agent in a certain situation, other aspects seem to be more about the situation as such. As a consequence, incompatible intuitions emerge concerning the transparency of epistemic dilemmas as well as regarding the role that doxastic suspension plays in resolving cases of epistemic dilemma. I suggest to distinguish between the mental state of agents who find themselves in an epistemic dilemma and the normative situation that gives rise to a dilemma. I will refer to the agent’s mental state as epistemic conflict and will reserve the term epistemic dilemma for evidential situations in which epistemic principles either recommend incompatible doxastic responses or render all options impermissible. The concept of epistemic conflict not only captures the mental state of agents who find themselves in a genuine epistemic dilemma but also applies to agents who face difficult epistemic choices that they cannot resolve without substantial cognitive (and often pragmatic) effort, for example, via doxastic suspension.

In this paper, I spell out a descriptive account of agnosticism that captures the intuitive view that a subject enters the mental state of agnosticism via an act or event called suspension. I will argue that agnosticism is a complex mental state, and that the formation of an attitude is the relevant act or event by which a subject commits to indecision regarding some matter. I will suggest a ‘two-component analysis’ that addresses two aspects that jointly account for the settled state of agnosticism: the subject’s de facto indecision and the subject’s commitment to her indecision. Unlike meta-cognitivist or sui generis accounts, I do not take the agnostic’s commitment to indecision as constitutive for her indecision but rather as an evaluation or qualification of the indecision that she already exhibits. Agnosticism, thus, is a settled form of indecision that marks the end of inquiry.

Descartes' Meditations do not end up sceptical at all. In fact, the sixth meditation displays an intriguing epistemological optimism. Descartes affirms without reservation that knowledge of the external world is possible. The antisceptical argument at the end of the Meditations is often interpreted as a refutation of dream scepticism, with the conclusion that a person in the waking state can also determine that he or she is awake. We examine the logic of the argument in detail and find that this is not the point. Our reconstruction shows that the question of waking or dreaming which seems to be so crucial for Descartes can even be dropped from his argument.

The aim of this paper is to show that doxastic compatibilists are making a strong case for genuine doxastic freedom when modelled on compatibilist free will. Unfortunately, their arguments from analogy can be used for the introduction of rather odd forms of freedom that concern our emotions, e.g. “freedom of fear” and “freedom of anger”. The author argues that this problem of overgeneralisation also concerns free will compatibilists who originally provided the weak conditions that are used by doxastic compatibilists. She points out the possibilities and costs of avoiding these consequences and concludes that the standard compatibilist picture is not tenable.

In this paper I reject the view that the famous ‘Knobe effect’ reveals an asymmetry within people’s judgments concerning actions with good or bad side effects. I agree with interpretations that see the ascriptions made by survey subjects as moral judgments rather than ascriptions of intentionality. On this basis, I aim at providing an explanation as to why people are right in blaming and ‘expraising’ agents that acted on unacceptable motives, but praise and excuse agents who meet intersubjective expectations by acting on acceptable motives. The asymmetry only arises when blameworthiness and praiseworthiness are seen as instances of one and the same concept: moral responsibility. This analysis is backed by a study of Joshua Shepherd who extended and varied Knobe’s original vignettes.

Compatibilist methods borrowed from the free will debate are often used to establish doxastic freedom and epistemic responsibility. Certain analogies between the formation of intention and belief make this approach especially promising. Despite being a compatibilist myself in the practical debate, I will argue that compatibilist methods fail to establish doxastic freedom. My rejection is not based on an argument against the analogy of free will and free belief. Rather, I aim at showing that compatibilist free will and free belief are equally misguided because freedom is a concept that only applies to an agent’s actions and not to her mental attitudes. Compatibilist strategies that seek to define control by reason-responsiveness merely weaken the conditions for freedom such that arbitrary forms of control can be defined. I will demonstrate that these methods also commit to freedom of fear, freedom of hope and freedom of anger. However, I accept the compatibilist challenge to account for the addict’s and the paranoid’s unfreedom. I will sketch a unified approach to compatibilist free agency that does justice to these phenomena without the help of free will or free belief