Abstract: The zetetic turn in epistemology raises three questions about epistemic and zetetic norms. First, there is the relationship question: what is the relationship between epistemic and zetetic norms? Are some epistemic norms zetetic norms, or are epistemic and zetetic norms distinct? Second, there is the tension question: are traditional epistemic norms in tension with plausible zetetic norms? Third, there is the reaction question: how should theorists react to a tension between epistemic and zetetic norms? Drawing on an analogy to practical philosophy, I develop a focal point view to resolve these motivating questions. On the focal point view, traditional epistemic norms and zetetic norms answer different types of normative questions. There is nevertheless a familiar type of evaluative tension between traditional epistemic norms and zetetic norms, but this tension is an unavoidable feature of the normative landscape and not a sign that traditional epistemic norms need revision. But if traditional epistemic norms are not zetetic norms, then in what sense is zetetic epistemology a project for epistemologists? I conclude by articulating a sense in which some nontraditional epistemic norms are zetetic norms, and in which zetetic epistemology is an important part of the study of theoretical rationality.
Abstract: Recent objections to epistemic permissivism have a metaepistemic flavor. Impermissivists argue that their view best accounts for connections between rationality, planning and deference. Impermissivism is also taken to best explain the value of rational belief and normative assessment. These objections pose a series of metaepistemic explanatory challenges for permissivism. In this paper, I illustrate how permissivists might meet their explanatory burdens by developing two permissivist metaepistemic views which fare well against the explanatory challenges.
Under review (email for drafts)
A paper on puzzles for bounded rationality
A paper on norms of inquiry
A paper on the relationship between inquiry and bounded rationality
A paper on duties to gather evidence
A paper on the relationship between epistemic and zetetic norms
A paper on the role of coherence in bounded rationality
Abstract: By the lights of traditional normative theories, human inquiry is substantially irrational. Humans regularly violate normative constraints set out by logic, probability theory, and decision theory. Traditional normative theories blame the agent, taking these findings to show that humans are irrational. By contrast, I suggest it is often better to blame the theory. Many seeming irrationalities are instances of rational inquiry by bounded agents. To defend this claim, I develop a consequentialist account of rational inquiry and metacognition. This view explains the value of rationality, accounts for duties to gather evidence, and is our best hope for vindicating empirically demonstrated biases as instances of rational inquiry. I apply this account of rational inquiry to clarify and ground a collection of normative claims that arise in scientific theorizing about bounded rationality.