The event is hybrid and open to philosophy faculty and students outside St Andrews. Remote participants can access the teams link by requesting it from Patrick Winther-Larsen (pjwl@st-andrews.ac.uk) or Jessica Brown (jab30@st-andrews.ac.uk).

Speakers:

Endre Begby (Simon Fraser University)
Sanford Goldberg (Northwestern/St Andrews)
Joshua Habgood-Coote (Leeds)
Chris Kelp (Glasgow)
Julia Staffel (Colorado)
Elise Woodard (KCL, London)

Programme:

May 20th:

11:30AM — 1PM: Sanford Goldberg;

1PM — 2PM: Lunch;

2PM — 3:30PM: Joshua Habgood-Coote;

3:30PM — 4PM: afternoon coffee/tea plus biscuits;

4PM — 5:30PM: Elise Woodard;

Dinner: 6:30 at Forgans

May 21st:

9:30AM — 11AM: Chris Kelp;

11AM — 11:30AM: morning tea/coffee;

11:30AM — 1PM: Julia Staffel;

1PM — 2PM: lunch;

2PM — 3:30PM: Endre Begby.

Abstracts

Endre Begby. Doxastic and zetetic norms: mutually dependent and equally fundamental

The recent resurgence of interest in the epistemology of inquiry has produced a discussion that is generally structured around the following types of questions: (i) granted that in addition to norms governing how we should form our beliefs in light of our evidence (“doxastic norms”) there also exist norms governing what we should do to provide ourselves with evidence in the first place (“zetetic norms”). But are these latter norms properly construed as epistemic norms, as opposed to belonging to some broader category of prudential norms? (ii) If doxastic norms and zetetic norms are both epistemic norms, which is more fundamental? Can we derive one set of norms from the other? Or (iii) should we be open to the possibility that they might be mutually irreducible and independent, so that they might well generate incompatible obligations in context?

In this talk, I offer some reasons to think that this dialectic is misguided. It is true that we sometimes criticize epistemic agents for the inferences they draw from the evidence currently at their disposal. Likewise, it is true that we sometimes criticize them for their failure to gather more evidence, where such evidence is there to be had. What doesn’t follow is that we are always (or even typically) invoking distinct norms in articulating these criticisms.

To support this claim, I will present examples suggesting that in a large (and representative) range of cases — spanning science, policy decisions, and everyday life –, what we should believe on our current evidence is importantly indeterminate: in order to settle which hypothesis our current evidence supports we require more evidence, evidence which we could only gain by engaging in further inquiry. But on the other hand, we could never know what sort of inquiry we thereby ought to engage in unless we also had a reasonably clear sense of what epistemic possibilities our current evidence leaves open and what it forecloses. I conclude that from the point of view of epistemic normativity, the doxastic and zetetic perspectives are complementary, mutually dependent, and equally fundamental.

Sanford Goldberg. The norms of inquiry and the demands of conversation

In this paper I want to revisit Stalnaker’s (1978; 2002) Common Ground (CG) model as a way of thinking about inquiry.  While the CG is standardly used to model information updates in the course of (conversations about) inquiry, my aim is to show how we can use the CG to model how the norms of inquiry bear on epistemic assessment.  I pursue this aim by developing several ideas regarding the CG.  Among these ideas I highlight the following: (1) there are types of conversation (Green 2017) which are such that participants are properly expected to presuppose certain things throughout the conversation (I call these the conversation’s “normative presuppositions”); (2) some inquiries are such that there is a corresponding conversation-type associated with them (throughout the period of inquiring); (3) for some social (or institutional) roles, subjects who occupy these roles are properly expected to participate in certain conversations (including some associated with inquiries); (4) assertions made in the context of inquiry answer to an epistemic standard; and (5) assertions that contradict, or are in tension with, the conversation’s normative presuppositions are presumptively criticizable.  In this way, I hope to show that there are types of inquiry for which the CG model enables us to capture our answerability to the norms of inquiry themselves and to the widely-accepted results thereby attained.

Joshua Habgood-Coote. Bad Questions.

This paper is about questions which are bad as questions, in the sense that pursuing them will impede progress in inquiry. It seeks to do three things. First, to gather examples of question critique: criticisms of views based not on their claims or arguments, but the questions they ask. Second to give an account of the function of questions which sheds light on the varieties of bad question. And thirdly, to provide us with a sound normative basis on which to undertake question critique. 

Chris Kelp. Inquiry and Epistemic Psychology

This paper proposes an account of epistemic psychological attitudes (such as belief, credences, suspension, etc.) according to which they are types of moves in inquiry that have their own constitutive aims. I zoom in on belief and show how the account I developed in Inquiry, Knowledge, and Understanding can deal with a range of objections that have been raised in recent literature. The remainder of the paper takes a closer look at an alternative view of the relation between inquiry and epistemic psychology, developed in recent work by Jane Friedman and provides reason to think that my account compares favourably with Friedman’s.

Julia Staffel. Are there transitional beliefs? – I think so?

A question that has gathered much interest in epistemology recently is whether it can ever be rational to keep inquiring into a question once one has adopted a belief that answers it. Friedman (2019) has prominently argued for a negative answer to this question.

I am interested in a related, but slightly different question here, which has not gathered any attention, but will help us better understand the nature of belief and its relation to inquiry and deliberation: Is it ever rationally permissible to believe something prior to concluding one’s deliberation? My question differs from the more commonly discussed one, insofar as it asks about the rationality of believing that p before settling on p as the answer to some question Q, while the commonly discussed one asks about the rationality of continuing to inquire into Q after coming to believe that p is the answer to Q.

I will argue that it is possible for rational agents to hold beliefs of a certain kind, which I call transitional beliefs, prior to settling on an answer to a question. Further, I will show that many common claims about what beliefs are don’t identify important features of belief itself, but of attitudes that are held as conclusions of deliberations more generally.

Elise Woodard. How to Change Your Mind

If realists are more likely to become anti-realists than vice versa, is that evidence that anti-realism is true? I argue that the answer is yes. When more people move from view A to B than B to A, this is defeasible evidence that B is more likely correct than A. This idea, which I refer to as “Migration as Evidence,” suggests that widespread changes in belief could be meaningful indicators of truth. This approach has two main benefits. First, it provides an additional tool for forming opinions on complex and controversial issues in areas like philosophy, politics, and religion, where even experts disagree. Second, it encourages a culture where changing one’s mind is more openly shared and less socially penalized, fostering an environment where the pursuit of truth is prioritized over consistency. If correct, “Migration as Evidence” highlights a valuable yet overlooked source of information when inquiring about complex and contentious issues.