Abstract:

Suspension of judgement is often closely associated with inquiry (Friedman 2017, 2019; Fritz 2020; Lord 2021).  Interestingly these philosophers have also provided an inquiry-based explanation of high stakes cases. In a nutshell, a belief that P is justified only if one ought not to inquire further. Due to insufficient attention paid to cases in which a subject already has a belief, they are liable to counter examples, as well as a stability worry – just as other encroachment views. In light of these difficulties, other have provided an alternative picture of inquiry: inquirers aim at epistemically improve in ways which goes beyond knowledge. On their view, high stakes subjects aim at certainty (Falbo 2021) or higher-order knowledge (Woodard 2021). Suspension of judgement plays no role withhin this new framework. As I see it, the two camps are talking past each other. In this talk, I will take a step back. I will first develop an action-account of suspension of judgement. Second, I will specify its relations to belief and inquiry. Finally, I will account for the intuition behind high stakes scenarios while avoiding the pitfalls of encroachment views.

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