An instrumentalist unification of zetetic and epistemic reasons

Datos Bibliográficos

ID21335635
AutoresAsbjørn Steglich-Petersen (0000-0002-5023-3449, Aarhus University, autor de correspondencia)
Año2024
Volumen67
Número9
Páginas2979-3006
Fecha de publicación2024-10-20
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessNo
TipoARTICLE
RevistaInquiry (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0020-174X • E-ISSN: 1502-3923
EditorialInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/0020174x.2021.2004220
OpenAlexW3215118082
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas20
Referencias citadas57

Inquiry is an aim-directed activity, and as such governed by instrumental normativity. If you have reason to figure out a question, you have reason to take means to figuring it out. Beliefs are governed by epistemic normativity. On a certain pervasive understanding, this means that you are permitted – maybe required – to believe what you have sufficient evidence for. The norms of inquiry and epistemic norms both govern us as agents in pursuit of knowledge and understanding, and, on the surface, they do so in harmony. Recently, however, Jane Friedman (2020, “The Epistemic and the Zetetic.” The Philosophical Review 129: 501–536) has pointed out that they are in tension with each other. In this paper, I aim to resolve this tension by showing that reasons for acts of inquiry – zetetic reasons – and epistemic reasons for belief can both be understood as flowing from the same general normative principle: the transmission principle for instrumental reasons. The resulting account is a version of epistemic instrumentalism that offers an attractive unity between zetetic and epistemic normativity

Epistemology · Instrumentalism · Mathematical economics · Unification · Computer Science · Epistemology, Ethics, and Metaphysics · Mathematics · Musicology and Musical Analysis · Philosophy