SOPhiA 2021
Salzburgiense Concilium Omnibus Philosophis Analyticis
Programm - Vortrag
Suspension of judgment has its own standard of correctness
(Epistemology, )
any have observed that belief is subject to a normative standard of correctness. A belief is correct if and only if its content is true. On this ground, many have built an evidentialist account of belief's normative profile: the only reasons for belief are evidence (truth-indicating considerations) or a belief is correct iff it is sufficiently supported by evidence (Shah 2003; Engel 2014, 2019). In comparison, suspension of judgment and its normative profile have received little interest in contemporary epistemology. Some simply assume that the normative account of standard of correctness for belief can explain the normative profile of suspension of judgment (e.g., Engel 2019). This talk's aims are twofold. First, I will argue that this strategy fails because it does not distinguish between the mere lack of belief and suspension of judgment. However, according to an influential claim in the literature, suspension of judgment is not reducible to the mere lack of belief (Friedman 2013, 2017; Wedgwood 2002). Second, I will explore the possibility that suspension of judgment is a sui generis attitude. Consequently, it might have its own standard of correctness. If as Friedman (2017) claims, suspension of judgment is an interrogative attitude, its standard of correctness might be the following: it is correct to suspend judgment as to whether P iff it is correct to inquire into P. The implications are far-reaching: as the standard of correctness is both practical and epistemic, the reasons to suspend judgment are not purely evidential. Some kind of pragmatism might be true of suspension of judgment.
Chair: Kimon Sourlas-Kotzamanis
Zeit: 12:00-12:30, 10. September 2021 (Freitag)
Ort: HS E.002
Lena Mudry
(University of Zuerich, )
