Abstract
Recently, philosophers (Yalcin 2016, Friedman 2019, Hoek 2022) have tried to address some long-standing problems in epistemology by looking at beliefs as question-sensitive. For instance (see Hoek 2022), how is it that I know the phone number ending in -6301 is John’s but can’t recall a phone number when asked, “What is John’s phone number?” Or (see Yalcin 2016) how is it that I know Mary lives in New York and that John lives in Boston and that New York is to the south of Boston but don’t form the logically implied belief that Mary will have to travel northward to see John in Boston? The answer lies in looking at beliefs not as belief states simpliciter, as traditional epistemology does, but look at beliefs qua answers to specific questions. In the literature, questions are often conceived as possible partitionings on the logical space. Dividing the logical space along some lines and not others, decides what beliefs are foregrounded and ‘accessible’ and which ones are rendered inaccessible due to being in the background. It is intuitive to note here that attention becomes a relevant factor. But few attempts have been made to elaborate on the connection of attention with viewing beliefs as question-sensitive.
Some authors have tried to connect attention with inquiry more broadly. For instance, Koralus (2014) makes the strong claim that attention can be defined as doing a task attentively and to do a task attentively is attending to things that might lie in the domain of answers that satisfactorily answer a question encoded by the task. Munton argues (in forthcoming work) that while attention cannot be constitutively defined in terms of performing tasks attentively, the relevance of an attentional activity to answering a question may be an important way of epistemically evaluating an attentional activity.
These views seem to look at the connection between attention and inquiry in the following way: Given a task, there is a question that we wish to answer in order to complete the task, and attention helps us narrow down on objects and beliefs that might be relevant to answering the questions or it helps us evaluate whether the task was well done, epistemically speaking.
What these views overlook is the role of attention in deciding the question that is to be addressed in the first place. This is the topic I take up in the paper.
I argue that attention often performs the function of selecting an inquiry among potential inquiries in the first place. That is, by attending to x, we prioritize inquiries or questions related to x. We could view an attentional activity as a move within a discourse where, by attending to x, I also perform an indirect, communicative act of asking a question about x. For example, when I walk into a room full of all possible things about which I can ask various questions and form various beliefs, attending to the ceiling fan ensures that I selectively focus on inquiries and beliefs concerning the ceiling fan and not other things.
The paper will also argue that attention plays a role in not just selecting what questions to ask but also the hierarchical order (of superordinate-ness and subordinate-ness) in which our questions and sub-questions divide the available logical space .
One way to summarize the paper’s position is this: attention can be seen as performing the function of ‘selection for inquiry’.
The paper tries to understand this role, situate this understanding within the foregoing philosophical literature on attention and inquiry and address the potential worry that the explanatory role proposed for attention in the paper can instead be performed by beliefs or value hierarchies. Further, the paper will consider important contributions this role of attention can make for important philosophical problems arising in connection to looking at beliefs as question-sensitive.
How to attend
This is a read-ahead seminar. The meetings have a hybrid format. We meet in person in GM 667 and digitally on Zoom (Zoom login required).
The meeting link, along with a copy of the paper to be discussed, will be made available in advance via the mailing list.