Abstract
The zetetic turn in epistemology raises three questions about epistemic and zetetic norms. First, there is the relationship question: what is the relationship between epistemic and zetetic norms? Are some epistemic norms zetetic norms, or are epistemic and zetetic norms distinct? Second, there is the tension question: are traditional epistemic norms in tension with plausible zetetic norms? Third, there is the reaction question: how should theorists react to a tension between epistemic and zetetic norms? Drawing on an analogy to practical philosophy, I develop a focal point view to resolve these motivating questions. On the focal point view, traditional epistemic norms and zetetic norms answer different types of normative questions. There is nevertheless a familiar type of evaluative tension between traditional epistemic norms and zetetic norms, but this tension is an unavoidable feature of the normative landscape and not a sign that traditional epistemic norms need revision. But if traditional epistemic norms are not zetetic norms, then in what sense is zetetic epistemology a project for epistemologists? I conclude by articulating a sense in which some nontraditional epistemic norms are zetetic norms, and in which zetetic epistemology is an important part of the study of theoretical rationality.
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Notes
While I accept that many traditional epistemic norms govern belief, I do not hold that all epistemic norms govern belief. See Sect. 7 for discussion.
This point may require an argument depending on how the relevant reasons are specified. See for example Kiesewetter (2017).
This is no longer obvious once ZIP is weakened to take into account the totality of an agent’s epistemic goals. Forming the false belief that she is loved may lead Boss to form a large number of related false beliefs at work, and throughout her life.
Value-based approaches can also be adopted by nonconsequentialists (Sylvan 2020).
Similarly, Nishi Shah (2003, 2006) argues that only epistemic reasons can be reasons for belief because the question of whether to believe p is transparent to whether p. But the question of whether and how to inquire into p is not transparent to whether p. Another prominent motivation for epistemic prioritarianism about belief is the claim that seeming non-epistemic reasons to believe that p are actually reasons to get oneself to believe that p (Way 2012). But this commits us to accepting many non-epistemic reasons for inquiry, insofar as the typical way in which we get ourselves to believe something is through inquiry.
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Acknowledgements
This paper benefitted greatly from discussions with Arianna Falbo, Daniel Friedman, Ned Hall, Eliran Haziza, and Susanna Rinard; audiences at Harvard, Oxford and the Early Career Inquiry Network; and the comments of two anonymous reviewers for Philosophical Studies.
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Thorstad, D. Inquiry and the epistemic. Philos Stud 178, 2913–2928 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-020-01592-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-020-01592-y