95. Avery Archer | Agnosticism

When you don’t have enough evidence to believe or disbelieve, is agnosticism a rational attitude in its own right or just a temporary pause on the way to a verdict?My links: https://linktr.ee/frictionphilosophy.1. GuestAvery Archer is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Philosophy at George Washington University in Washington, DC. His work has focused on the philosophy of action, philosophy of mind and intentionality, moral psychology and metaethics, epistemology, and more.2. Book SummaryIn The Attitude of Agnosticism, Avery Archer aims to (i) sort out what agnosticism is (as a distinctive doxastic attitude) and (ii) defend a package of claims about when it’s rationally appropriate. The book starts by laying down seven criteria any good descriptive account should satisfy—e.g., it must require ‘cognitive contact’ with the proposition, explain agnosticism’s ‘neutrality’ and ‘commitment’ to neutrality, allow for ‘spontaneous’ agnosticism, and (controversially) preserve the possibility of ‘agnosticism-involving doxastic inconsistency’ (someone can be irrationally inconsistent by both believing P and being agnostic toward P). With those criteria in hand, Archer then surveys leading contemporary ‘attitudinal’ accounts (Russell, Crawford, Masny, Raleigh, Wagner, Friedman) and argues that each fails at least one criterion, clearing the way for a new positive view.Archer’s positive proposal is the ‘questioning-attitude account’: to be agnostic toward P is to be in a commitment-involving mental state of sceptically questioning both the truth and the falsity of P—so agnosticism is sui generis (not just a form of belief, disbelief, desire, etc.). On this picture, agnosticism is not defined by being “in inquiry”: Archer rejects the idea that agnosticism essentially entails an inquiring state of mind, arguing instead that the core of agnosticism is its rational appropriateness when one’s competently considered evidence is insufficient to establish either P or ¬P. The book also defends a ‘bipartite’ view of doxastic neutrality: the act of ‘withholding judgement’ typically puts you into the attitude of agnosticism (roughly as judging relates to believing). And it argues there is no practical analogue of agnosticism—no third practical attitude that stands to intending X / intending not-X the way agnosticism stands to belief / disbelief—drawing out consequences for how belief differs from intention and mere “acceptance.”In the later chapters Archer connects this framework to live debates in epistemology. He argues that pragmatic considerations can sometimes be reasons to remain agnostic (reasons not to believe), even if they cannot be reasons to believe—using this to claim that ‘transparency’-style arguments at best constrain reasons for belief, not reasons for agnosticism, and motivating distinctions like ‘weak’ vs ‘strong’ evidentialism. He also defends a modest (‘weak’) form of permissivism on which, for some evidence e, it can be rationally permissible either to believe P or to be agnostic about P (without committing to permissibility between belief and disbelief), and he argues that agnosticism is the rationally appropriate response to certain cases of revealed peer disagreement. Overall, the book’s upshot is to “give agnosticism its due”: treat it as a distinctive, norm-governed attitude whose central role is to be the fitting doxastic response when our evidence doesn’t settle matters either way.3. Interview Chapters00:00 - Introduction00:47 - Background to book03:38 - Philosophical relevance of agnosticism06:52 - Agnosticism and inquiry08:42 - Consideration criterion11:26 - Two notions of consideration17:37 - Basic approach22:24 - Criticism25:54 - Rejoinder27:22 - Descriptive vs. prescriptive33:02 - Inconsistency criterion40:00 - Believing and disbelieving simultaneously45:04 - Attitudinal account47:28 - Second order beliefs52:05 - Occurrent attitudes1:02:25 - Agnosticism and inquiry1:11:14 - No evidence case1:14:36 - Alternatives1:18:57 - Normativity1:20:47 - Instrumental1:23:36 - Example1:26:22 - Other sorts of rationality1:30:27 - Belief vs. judgment1:36:13 - Questioning account1:37:22 - Belief1:40:37 - Unrealized disposition1:43:22 - Minimum threshold1:45:00 - Upshot of account1:49:03 - Value of philosophy1:51:08 - Conclusion This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit fric.substack.com/subscribe