Abstract
It might initially appear impossible to inquire into whether p while trusting someone that p. At the very least, it might appear that doing so would be irrational. In this paper, I shall argue that things are not as they appear. Not only is it possible for a person to inquire into whether p while trusting someone that p, it is very often rational. Indeed, combining inquiry and trust in this way is an epistemic balancing act central to a well-lived epistemic life.
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Notes
On Richard Holton’s (1994) view, trusting that you will x does not necessarily involve believing that you will x. I do not find that view plausible. But more importantly, here we are interested not in trust that someone will act but trust that someone is right about some proposition. Ordinarily, if I trust you to be right about whether p and you have asserted that p, then I ought to take up a belief that p on the basis of trust in you. If I have stronger evidence for the opposing view, that evidence is a reason to reduce my trust in you with respect to whether p. At any rate, it is cases of belief on the basis of trust that interest us here because it is such cases that seem hardest to reconcile with inquiry.
My argument applies equally well to any case in which one has a belief that is a complete answer to the question into which one is inquiring, but I focus on inquiry into whether p and belief that p for simplicity. Other forms of inquiry might not even appear incompatible with belief that p—inquiry into why p does not appear incompatible with belief that p, for instance. I’m interested in the cases where such incompatibility does appear to be present. Those cases are not limited to inquiry into whether p—inquiry into why p and belief that p entirely because q, for instance, also appear incompatible because the latter is a complete answer to the former.
For example, Friedman (2017) prominently holds that suspension of judgment is required for the kind of openness at issue, McGrath (2021: 477) seems to say that inquiry requires lacking judgment, Archer (2018) holds that inquiry into whether p is impossible if one has accessible knowledge that p, and Armour-Garb (2011) holds that inquiry is impossible if one takes oneself to know.
For example, see Adler (2004).
Here I draw on the work of Davidson (2018), who helpfully explores “commitment to a question,” as she puts it.
Here I mean to rule out trivial inquiry where someone asks, “p?” and immediately concludes, “yes, p,” because their belief that p comes to mind.
I use “<p>” to denote the proposition that p.
Many authors on this topic agree with some claim in this neighborhood. Whitcomb (2010), for example, argues that knowledge is the unique satisfier of inquiry. Carruthers (2018: 135) seems to suggest agreement with the claim that belief closes inquiry when he writes, “A questioning attitude is satisfied (and ceases to exist) when one comes to believe one of the propositions specified by the question that is the content of the attitude.” Sapir and Van Elswyk (2021) argue that knowledge is incompatible with inquiry. My arguments are meant to show that even very confident or well-justified belief, including belief that counts as knowledge, is compatible with inquiry.
Here Friedman appears to assume that if X and Y are rationally incompatible, and Y is a metaphysically necessary part of Z, then X and Z are also rationally incompatible.
Although I direct my arguments in this section against Friedman’s view, I take it that my arguments apply equally well to views on which mere lack of belief or knowledge are necessary for inquiry (either constitutively or rationally) and hence that the acquisition of belief or knowledge necessarily close (or ought to close) inquiry. So, my arguments also apply to the claims of Whitcomb (2010), Carruthers (2018), and Sapir and van Elswyk (2021) mentioned in footnote 10, for example. Although the view that knowledge is incompatible with inquiry is compatible with the claim that belief is compatible with inquiry, I am arguing that no amount of doubt or lack of justification in one’s belief is necessary to make one’s belief compatible with inquiry, and partly for this reason that knowledge is compatible with inquiry, too. Since open-mindedness is compatible with knowledge, knowledge is compatible with inquiry, on my view.
Friedman’s own case is more complicated, but the details won’t matter for our purposes.
It’s true that one can still believe that p while having some doubts. That’s why I say “significant doubt”—there seems to be some amount of doubt that’s incompatible with belief. On my view, no amount of doubt is necessary for inquiry. Fully confident belief is compatible with inquiry.
The motivational story here might be subtly less plausible with respect to suspension of judgment than with respect to merely lacking a judgment, depending on one’s view of suspension of judgment. If suspension of judgment is a kind of committed neutrality, then one will not need to suspend judgment in order to be motivated to form a judgment—mere lack of judgment is sufficient to be so motivated. I take this to be reason to think that it is more plausible that inquiry requires merely lacking a judgment than that it requires suspension of judgment of that kind. My argument does not hinge on the point, however.
Stroud (2006).
See Arpaly and Brinkerhoff (2018).
I’ll address a worry about this argument from motivation being too generally applicable in the following section.
We might understand the value of avoiding epistemic bubbles as being grounded in a kind of epistemic respect due to others as epistemic agents, the value of the views of people outside our own groups. Many authors (e.g. Anderson (2012), Dotson (2014), Hawley (2017), Goldberg (2017) have claimed that some kind of respect due to others qua epistemic agents is valuable, with the respect often taking the form of epistemic inclusion.
Friedman herself says that inquiry requires a kind of openness, which she thinks is supplied by suspension of judgment (forthcoming). I agree that a kind of openness—open-mindedness—is required for inquiry, but if my argument up to now is successful, this openness need not involve suspension of judgment.
In general, not being disposed to X does not entail being disposed to not X. A rock is not disposed to jump, but it does not have a disposition to not jump.
It may be that Robert has other pressing projects and so the opportunity costs given the time spent on inquiry might make him refrain, but what’s important is that his trust doesn’t give him any reason not to be happy to inquire.
Evidence that the people we could talk to about x are frequent practitioners of brainwashing and hypnotizing with respect to x would count as reason to worry that a particular inquiry would not yield most evidence in support of the truth, whatever the truth turns out to be.
Similarly, Gordon (2022) argues specifically with respect to monitoring trust (which is a species of inquiry) that monitoring is compatible with trust as long as that monitoring is not intended to mitigate the risks of betrayal (2022: 561–562). In particular, Gordon is interested in cases where you only happen to be monitoring (only happen to be around to observe some relevant behavior on the part of the trusted person). I agree with her assessment of those cases, but my argument with respect to inquiry more generally is in a sense stronger because I’ve positively suggested that you can intentionally inquire, as long as your reasons for so intending do not have to do with mitigating vulnerability.
There are some views on which doubt is compatible with belief, such as Miriam Schoenfield’s (draft). Her view of doubt, however, makes it the kind of thing that is compatible even with trust, given my other views. She writes: “In sum, subjecting a view to doubt, in my sense, amounts to engaging in an inquiry” (4). If doubt amounts to engaging in inquiry, then it is compatible with trust. What is incompatible with trust, on my view, is sufficient doubt in the sense of weakened belief or confidence. That is the sense of “doubt” that I am using here.
Nguyen’s specific target is what he calls echo chambers, which he characterizes as social epistemic structures that actively discredit other epistemic sources, but the details don’t matter here as we are interested generally in diagnoses of problematic social epistemic structures.
I disagree with Battaly that there are “effects-virtues” (i.e. that something can be a virtue due to the effect it has) and that a single character trait such as closed-mindedness can sometimes be a virtue and sometimes not, but I’m not interested in disputing that here. Instead, I’m interested in the reasons people have had for arguing that we sometimes ought not be open-minded (and so ought not genuinely inquire).
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Acknowledgements
I am grateful to Robert Audi, Gordon Barnes, Selim Berker, Elís Miller Larsen, Joseph Long, Michael Rabenberg, Susanna Rinard, Susanna Siegel, Nicholas Teh, audiences at the Eastern APA, the Southwest Philosophical Society Conference, a meeting of the Early Career Inquiry Network, and the University of Notre Dame, my fellow members of the Metaphysics and Epistemology Workshop at Harvard University, and to two anonymous reviewers for Philosophical Studies.
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Rabenberg, H. Inquiry and trust: An epistemic balancing act. Philos Stud 181, 583–601 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-024-02128-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-024-02128-4