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theses

This dissertation is about the epistemology of inquiry. It concerns the appropriate attitudes of inquiry, what epistemic reasons and values such attitudes should be sensitive to, and what kinds of virtues an inquirer should have. I argue that our theories about these attitudes, reasons, and virtues must be revised. This is necessary in light of several problems that the practice of contemporary, organized research raises for traditional epistemological theories. Standard accounts of epistemic rationality and justification fail to properly evaluate contemporary researchers, instead counting them as irrational in their commitments, theory choice, pursuit strategies, evidential evaluations and assertions. This is an unacceptable result: our best epistemic theories should not call our best researchers epistemically irrational for promoting healthy inquiry. We need a new account.

My project seeks to resolve some of these problems in the epistemology inquiry. First, I propose that we recognize the attitude of endorsement: a distinct doxastic attitude, governed by an inclusive kind of epistemic rationality. This is the attitude of resilient commitment and advocacy that researchers have toward their favored theories during inquiry. Recognizing endorsement, along with the inclusive epistemic rationality that governs it, allows us to vindicate the committed advocacy of researchers. This project is the focus of my first two chapters, in which I argue that endorsement eases the tension between individual and collective rationality, promotes beneficial disagreement and distribution of cognitive labor, and solves the biggest problems for conciliationism about disagreement.

The third chapter takes up a related project concerning our understanding of the credences (degrees of belief) of researchers engaged in inquiry. There I argue that (like endorsement), the credences of researchers should be understood as fragmented. That is, these attitudes are compartmentalized to individual projects in a subject's mental life. The final chapter concerns the relationship between virtues of inquiry and virtues that constitute knowledge. This project is another attempt to alleviate tensions between our traditional epistemic theories and the practice of inquiry. I argue that the intellectual character virtues investigated by virtue responsibilists are virtues of inquiry. They gain their epistemic import by promoting healthy inquiry, in a way that supports the reliabilist virtues (or competences) that constitute knowledge. This removes the apparent conflict between the two factions of virtue epistemology, while at the same time explaining the epistemic value of intellectual character virtues by appeal to their role in inquiry, and their indirect connection to knowledge.

This dissertation is written on the new, multiple-paper model. That is, it consists in a collection of independent papers in the epistemology of inquiry. They are thematically linked, but I have not altered them significantly from their individual forms. They can thus each be read independently.

ETD_9108

Ph.D.

Includes bibliographical references

by William Fleisher

doi:10.7282/t3-z234-rj23

ETD doctoral

The author owns the copyright to this work.