Simon Graf PhD

 September 15th, 2024 until December 14th, 2024

Affiliation: University of Leeds

Research for a study about:

Epistemic Conflicts: Incommensurability and Permissibility

During my time at the IVC I am working on a novel treatment of so-called permissive cases, that is, cases in which one body of evidence seemingly rationalises multiple doxastic attitudes. The question of whether there are permissive cases or whether rationality always recommends a unique rational attitude has recently received much attention in epistemology. While permissivists believe that there are at least some permissive cases, impermissivists argue that there is a unique attitude for every evidential situation. Instead of contributing to this debate directly by providing arguments in favour or against permissivism, I argue that apparently permissive cases are best understood as epistemic conflicts between incommensurable doxastic attitudes. That is, instead of understanding the doxastic attitudes which are rationalized by the evidence to be equally supported, we shall treat them as being supported by independent and non-directly comparable, i.e., incommensurable, epistemic standards. This novel treatment of permissive cases is supported by the observation that these cases do show various idiosyncratic characteristics of comparisons under incommensurability, such as sweetening insensitivity (improving either of the alternatives does not necessarily resolve the conflict), bindingness (ending up with one alternative binds one to appeal to similar resolutions in analogous future conflicts), and angst (resolving the conflict often comes with a distinct uncertainty about whether one has responded rightly).

Lecture

Epistemic Conflicts: Permissibility and Incommensurability

Philosophy of Science Colloquium Talk

Date: October 24, 2024

Time: 4.45-6.15 pm

Venue:  Lecture Hall 2G, NIG Universitätsstraße 7, 2nd floor, 1090 Vienna

Abstract

Sometimes we face choices in which the different values we subscribe to give us conflicting recommendations. This talk sets out to compare these value-conflict cases with so-called permissive cases, which are cases in which one body of evidence seemingly rationalizes multiple doxastic attitudes. The proposed resemblance arises from a similarity in the underlying conflicts displayed in these cases: while the former involve conflicting values, the latter involve conflicting epistemic standards. In both instances, we are faced with incommensurable alternatives which are supported by independent and non-directly comparable normative sources. By showing that permissive cases share the idiosyncratic features of comparisons under incommensurability, we gain a better understanding of numerous issues, such as the alleged arbitrariness of permissive attitudes. Furthermore, I will demonstrate that the proposed strategy is neutral regarding whether epistemic rationality is genuinely permissive. While some understandings of incommensurability support a permissive interpretation, others can be used to motivate impermissivism. This shifts the debate between permissivists and impermissivists by reducing normative questions about epistemic rationality to more fundamental questions about the nature of incommensurability.