Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-4rdpn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-10T13:43:06.976Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Suspending Judgment is Something You Do

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 October 2022

Lindsay Crawford
Lindsay Crawford*
Affiliation:
Connecticut College, CT, USA
*
Email: lcrawfo1@conncoll.edu
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

What is it to suspend judgment about whether p? Much of the recent work on the nature and normative profile of suspending judgment aims to analyze it as a kind of doxastic attitude. On some of these accounts, suspending judgment about whether p partly consists in taking up a certain higher-order belief about one's deficient epistemic position with respect to whether p. On others, suspending judgment about whether p consists in taking up a sui generis attitude, one that takes the question of whether p? as its content. In this paper, I defend an account on which suspending judgment about whether p is not a matter of taking up a doxastic attitude, but rather a way of intentionally omitting to judge whether p. I then close with a discussion of how an account like mine, which sees suspending judgment as fundamentally practical, rather than doxastic, can accommodate what appear to be distinctively epistemic reasons to suspend judgment.

Keywords

Suspending judgmentbeliefomissionintentionepistemic normativity
Type
Article
Information
Episteme , Volume 19 , Special Issue 4: Jamaica conference special issue , December 2022 , pp. 561 - 577
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Archer, A. (2019). ‘Agnosticism, Inquiry, and Unanswerable Questions.’ Disputatio 11(53), 673–88.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bernstein, S. (2015). ‘The Metaphysics of Omissions.’ Philosophy Compass 10(3), 208–18.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clarke, R. (2010). ‘Intentional Omissions.’ Noûs 44(1), 158–77.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clarke, R. (2014). Omissions: Agency, Metaphysics, and Responsibility. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Crawford, S. (2004). ‘A Solution for Russellians to a Puzzle About Belief.’ Analysis 64, 223–9.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Friedman, J. (2013 a). ‘Suspended Judgment.’ Philosophical Studies 162(2), 165–81.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Friedman, J. (2013 b). ‘Question Directed Attitudes.’ Philosophical Perspectives 27(1), 145–74.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Friedman, J. (2017). ‘Why Suspend Judging?’ Noûs 51(2), 302–26.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kolodny, N. (2018). ‘Instrumental Reasons.’ In Star, D. (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Reasons and Normativity, pp. 731–63. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Kolodny, N. and Brunero, J. (2018). ‘Instrumental Rationality.’ In Zalta, E.N. (ed.), Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/rationality-instrumental/Google Scholar
Lord, E. (2020). ‘Suspension of Judgment, Rationality's Competition, and the Reach of the Epistemic.’ In Schmidt, S. and Ernst, G. (eds), The Ethics of Belief and Beyond: Understanding Mental Normativity, pp. 126–45. Abingdon: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lord, E. and Slyvan, K. (2021). ‘Suspension, Higher-Order Evidence, and Defeat.’ In Simion, M. and Brown, J. (eds), Reasons, Justification, and Defeat, pp. 116–45. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Marusic, B. (2015). Evidence and Agency: Norms of Belief for Promising and Resolving. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Masny, M. (2020). ‘Friedman on Suspended Judgment.’ Synthese 197, 5009–26.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McGrath, M. (2021). ‘Being Neutral: Agnosticism, Inquiry, and the Suspension of Judgment.’ Noûs 55(2), 463–84.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McGrath, M. (Forthcoming). ‘Epistemic Norms on Waiting (and Suspension).’ Philosophical Topics.Google Scholar
Morton, J. and Paul, S. (2018). ‘Believing in Others.’ Philosophical Topics 46(1), 75–95.Google Scholar
Raleigh, T. (2021). ‘Suspending as Believing.’ Synthese 198, 2449–74.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rinard, S. (2017). ‘No Exception for Belief.’ Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 94(1), 121–43.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Russell, B. (1997). ‘What is an Agnostic?’ In Slater, J.G. (ed.), Last Philosophical Testament, 1943–68. Vol. 11 of The Collected Papers of Bertrand Russell, pp. 549–57. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Schroeder, M. (2012). ‘Stakes, Withholding, and Pragmatic Encroachment on Knowledge.’ Philosophical Studies 160(2), 265–85.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shah, N. (2006). ‘A New Argument for Evidentialism.’ Philosophical Quarterly 56(225), 481–98.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shah, N. and Velleman, D. (2005). ‘Doxastic Deliberation.’ Philosophical Review 114(4), 497–534.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shepherd, J. (2014). ‘Causalism and Intentional Omission.’ American Philosophical Quarterly 51(1), 15–26.Google Scholar
Singer, D. and Aronowitz, S. (Forthcoming). ‘What Epistemic Reasons are For: Against the Belief-Sandwich Distinction.’ In Dunaway, B. and Plunkett, D. (eds), Meaning, Decision, and Norms: Themes from the Work of Allan Gibbard. Ann Arbor, MI: Michigan Publishing.Google Scholar
Steglich-Peterson, A. (2018). ‘Epistemic Instrumentalism, Permission, and Reasons for Belief.’ In McHugh, C. (ed.), Normativity: Epistemic and Practical, pp. 260–80. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Steglich-Peterson, A. and Skipper, M. (2020). ‘Instrumental Reasons for Belief: Elliptical Talk and Elusive Properties.’ In Schmidt, S. and Ernst, G. (eds), The Ethics of Belief and Beyond: Understanding Mental Normativity, pp. 109–25. Abingdon: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sturgeon, S. (2010). ‘Confidence and Coarse-Grained Attitudes.’ In Gendler, T. Szabo and Hawthorne, J. (eds), Oxford Studies in Epistemology. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Wedgwood, R. (2013). ‘Doxastic Correctness.’ Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 87(1), 217–34.CrossRefGoogle Scholar