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Text of the page (random words):
s lights the shift from stage 1 to stage 2 of inquiry is marked by a shift from suspending q to hypothesizing p q where the expression p q means that some proposition p is a complete answer to q 2 in sum palmira insists that the distinction between stages 1 and 2 of inquiry is best captured by saying that while in stage 1 one has the attitude of suspending q in stage 2 one has the attitude of hypothesizing p q this brings us to palmira s criticism of bicon bicon predicts that the inquiring agent would be suspended at both stages of her inquiry this follows from the fact that bicon states that being in an inquiring frame of mind towards q entails that one is suspended about q since both stages 1 and 2 involves being in an inquiring frame of mind towards a question it follows from bicon that both stages 1 and 2 entail that one is suspended about that question palmira puts the objection as follows importantly bicon contains an answer to the focal question of this paper since being in an inquiring state of mind towards a given matter just is being suspended about it and since one is in such an inquiring state of mind at both stages of open inquiry it follows that one just is suspended at both stages of open inquiry p 5 hence according to palmira bicon does not leave room for the idea that stages 1 and 2 of inquiry implicate different doxastic attitudes suspending and hypothesizing respectively this is palmira s first line of criticism his second line of criticism is that bicon runs into what he describes as the unity of inquiry problem this second line of criticism begins with the observation that the inquiring agent is disposed to make different inquisitive moves during stages 1 and 2 for example suppose i am considering the following question q 1 where did life on earth come from during stage 1 my investigation may focus on figuring out what are some of the candidate answers to q 1 this initial period of investigation may culminate in my thinking that there are at least three equally likely answers to q 1 p 1 q1 life on earth originated from non life p 2 q1 life on earth came from some other planet p 3 q1 life on earth was created by an intelligent designer suppose that after further investigation i come to regard p 1 q1 as being the most likely answer to q 1 at that point i would have transitioned from stage 1 to stage 2 of my inquiry into q 1 plausibly my investigation will no longer be concerned with figuring out what are the candidate answers to q 1 as was the case during the first stage of my inquiry into q 1 instead my investigation will now be concerned with the evidence for and against life on earth originating from non life according to palmira the defender of bicon can only accommodate the above shift in the focus of my investigation by holding that the question i am suspended about has also shifted whereas i was initially suspended about q 1 i am now suspended about something along the lines of q 2 q 2 did life on earth originate from non life hence palmira insists that bicon implies that at the different stages of inquiry the inquiring agent is suspended about different questions however this would undermine the idea that the inquiry i am engaged in is a single unified activity moreover since bicon implies that i am inquiring about q 1 only if i am suspended about q 1 the fact that during the second stage of my inquiry i am suspended about q 2 rather than q 1 implies that i am no longer inquiring into q 1 here is the objection in palmira s own words i f we accepted the idea that one holds an attitude of suspended judgement at both the first and the second stage of the inquiry we would not be able to capture the unity of subject matter of the inquiry one is pursuing for the content of the inquiring state of mind would change across stages and there is no other way to specify which subject matter of inquiry is at stake this is the unity of inquiry problem palmira 2018 6 while i agree with palmira that bicon should be rejected 3 i find his objections to the left to right side of bicon unconvincing let us call the left to right side of bicon i e the claim that being in an inquiring frame of mind entails suspension the inquirer as suspender thesis palmira s first line of criticism is meant to show that the inquirer as suspender thesis does not leave room for the suggestion that stages 1 and 2 of inquiry implicates different doxastic attitudes suspending q 1 and hypothesizing p 1 q1 respectively however this criticism only gets off the ground if we assume that being in an inquiring frame of mind towards q at some time t entails that suspending q is the only q related doxastic attitude one has at t however this is not what the inquirer as suspender thesis claims what the inquirer as suspender thesis claims is that being in an inquiring frame of mind towards q at t entails that suspending q be among the set of doxastic attitudes one has at t whether or not the set of attitudes in question is one that only has suspending q as a member is a matter about which the inquirer as suspender thesis is entirely silent moreover the claim that suspending q is the only q related attitude one may have when one is inquiring about q is one friedman explicitly rejects by her lights suspension accompanies and is perhaps even a pre requisite for every other inquiring attitude hence friedman is open to the possibility of an inquiring agent having other q related attitudes alongside suspending q at a given point in time this means that if palmira wishes to deny that an agent may rationally suspend q at some time t and also hypothesizing p q at time he will need to provide us with some positive grounds for thinking that these two attitudes in particular are incompatible palmira regards hypothesizing as a doxastic attitude it may therefore be argued that simultaneously suspending and hypothesizing violates the rational prohibition against inconsistent doxastic attitudes according to the present suggestion suspending q entails that one has a doxastic attitude of committed neutrality with respect to q however insofar as hypothesizing p q entails treating one possible answer to q as more plausible than all other potential answers hypothesizing is a doxastic attitude that is not neutral with respect to q hence an agent that simultaneously suspends q and hypothesizes p q has conflicting doxastic attitudes or at least so the objection goes however the preceding line of argument trades on an equivocation there are two distinct ways in which the expression doxastic attitude has been used in the literature sometimes it used narrowly to refer to the attitudes of believing disbelieving and suspending call this usage of the expression doxastic attitude da narrow however at other times the expression doxastic attitude is employed to refer more broadly to all attitudes that display a mind to world direction of fit including assuming supposing imagining and hypothesizing call this broader usage da wide when palmira says that hypothesizing is a doxastic attitude he clearly has da wide in mind however the prohibition against inconsistent doxastic attitudes only applies to da narrow for example it is common for a philosopher who believes p to assume for the sake of reductio argumentation that not p although the philosopher s belief and assumption are inconsistent we certainly would not regard her as irrational for assuming something inconsistent with what she believes why not because assuming p does not entail that one is rationally committed to the truth of p hence one may assume not p without violating one s rational commitment to the truth of p the upshot is that the prohibition against inconsistent doxastic attitudes does not apply to da wide the salient question then is not whether an agent s doxastic attitudes understood in terms of da wide line up but rather whether an agent s rational commitments line up we must therefore ask if hypothesizing p q entails that one is rationally committed to the truth of p q the answer is clearly no after all if hypothesizing p q entailed being committed to p q then hypothesizing p q at t would entail that q is settled for one at t and that one was therefore not engaged in inquiry into q at t in sum holding that hypothesizing entails a rational commitment to the truth of p q would undermine its status as a penultimate stage of inquiry at best hypothesizing p q entails being committed to p q being more likely to be true than not however i may hold that a proposition is more likely than not to be true and yet suspend about whether it is true for example suppose the national polls all predict that trump has a 70 chance of losing the upcoming united states presidential election i may consistently believe that it is more likely than not that trump will lose based on my available evidence and yet suspend judgement about whether he would lose consider during the 2016 presidential campaign most national polls placed trump s chances of losing to hillary clinton between 70 and 99 and projected that she would be the clear winner in states like pennsylvania and wisconsin both of which ultimately went to trump as the eventual 2016 election results illustrate sometimes the less likely outcome given the available evidence is the one that is ultimately realized recognizing this fact there is nothing inconsistent about believing some outcome to be more likely than not based on one s available evidence and yet deciding to remain agnostic about whether it will obtain 5 the upshot is that even if hypothesizing p q entails a rational commitment to p q being more likely to be true than not it does not follow that it is rationally impermissible to suspend q at t and hypothesize p q at t moreover friedman s rationale for holding that suspending q and believing p q are rationally incompatible is that the former entails treating q as open while the latter entails treating q as settled or closed however insofar as hypothesizing is an inquiring attitude it does not entail having a settled position on some question this means that friedman s rationale for holding that suspending and believing are incompatible is missing in the case of hypothesizing the upshot is that there is nothing on friedman s account of the relationship between suspension and inquiry that prevents us from saying that an inquiring agent suspends q 1 at some time t and also hypothesizes p 1 q1 at t nor does palmira supply any other compelling rationale for thinking that suspending and hypothesizing are incompatible this means that the defender of the inquirer as suspender thesis remains entitled to say that the inquiring agent suspends q 1 at both stages 1 and 2 and that at stage 2 she also hypothesizes p 1 q1 alongside suspending q 1 indeed the defender of the inquirer as suspender thesis may insist that it is the fact that the inquiring agent not only suspends q 1 but also hypothesizes p 1 q1 that distinguishes stage 2 from stage 1 the upshot is that palmira s charge that the defender of the inquirer as suspender thesis is unable to register the difference between stages 1 and 2 in terms of the doxastic attitudes each stage implicates ultimately flounders this brings us to palmira s second line of criticism of the inquirer as suspender thesis namely that it gives rise to the unity of inquiry problem once it is granted that an agent may simultaneously suspend q and hypothesize p q there is no need for the defender of the inquirer as suspender thesis to mark the shift from stage 1 to stage 2 in terms of the shift from suspending q 1 and suspending q 2 instead the defender of the inquirer as suspender thesis may claim that at both stages of inquiry the agent suspends q 1 and that the difference between stages 1 and 2 is to be explained in terms of the fact that hypothesizing p 1 q1 is absent in the former stage and present in the latter admittedly the defender of the inquirer as suspender thesis is committed to saying that at whatever point i adopt an inquiring frame of mind towards q 2 i am also suspended about q 2 however it is uncontroversial that an agent may suspend two different questions at the same time for example i may simultaneously suspend judgement about where life on earth came from and about whether life on earth originated from non life hence the defender of the inquirer as suspender thesis may hold that during stage 1 the inquiring agent only suspends q 1 and that during stage 2 they come to suspend q 2 in addition to suspending q 1 on the present suggestion what unifies stages 1 and 2 as stages of a single instance of inquiry is that both primarily involve suspending q 1 however during stage 2 the agent suspends a secondary question q 2 in the service of answering the primary question q 1 in sum the agent comes to suspend q 2 in order to facilitate her continued inquiry into q 1 about which she is also suspended the upshot of the preceding analysis is a hybrid view of the second stage of inquiry that includes both hypothesizing p 1 q1 and suspending q 2 according to the view currently on offer what unifies both stages 1 and 2 as stages of inquiry into a single question is the fact that both stages implicate suspending q 1 however once i settle on p 1 q1 as the most likely answer to q 1 my inquiring enters a new phase this new phase is marked by the adoption of the attitude of hypothesizing p 1 q1 once this hypothesis has been adopted this initiates a sub inquiry into q 2 as part of the overarching inquiry into q 1 this sub inquiry implicates its own instance of suspension i e suspending q 2 however both hypothesizing p 1 q1 and suspending q 2 are attitudes i adopt alongside my suspension of q 1 and are adopted in the service of the inquiry facilitated by my suspending q 1 in sum the defender of the inquirer as suspender thesis is both able to mark the shift from stages 1 to 2 of inquiry i e in terms of the shift from merely suspending q 1 to hypothesizing p 1 q1 and suspending q 2 in addition to suspending q 1 while also avoiding the unity of inquiry problem i e by holding that both stages of my inquiry into q 1 involve suspending q 1 1 see and cf friedman 2017 302 2 see and cf friedman 2019 303 3 archer forthcoming 4 see palmira 2018 5 5 this comports with my earlier observation that suspending judgement is the appropriate response to one s recognition that the available evidence is inconclusive it is not merely the appropriate response to the recognition that the available evidence equally supports p and not p references archer avery forthcoming agnosticism inquiry and unanswerable questions disputatio archer avery 2018 wondering about what you know analysis 78 4 596 604 friedman jane 2017 why suspend judging nous 51 2 302 326 friedman jane 2013a question directed attitudes philosophical perspectives 27 1 145 174 friedman jane 2013b suspended judgment philosophical studies 162 2 165 181 palmira michele 2018 inquiry and the doxastic attitudes synthese...