Ylwa Sjölin Wirling: “Understanding with Live Possibilities: On the Epistemic Gains of Seemingly Unsuccessful Inquiries”

Abstract

Some version of the idea that all inquiry aims at securing knowledge of true answers to questions we entertain, is widely shared among philosophers that work in analytic epistemology. Against the backdrop of that idea, one might easily be led to believe that a particular inquiry is successful only insofar as it gets us such knowledge, and that it makes progress only insofar as it brings us closer to or puts us in a better position to acquire that knowledge. But for various reasons, plenty of seemingly legitimate and valuable inquiries fit this mould poorly. Philosophy itself provides several clear examples of this, and the humanities more broadly houses many more. In order to avoid the conclusion that either these intellectual endeavours are wildly unsuccessful, or they are not really forms of inquiry at all, we need to broaden our conception of how inquiries might succeed and progress. In this talk, I will sketch my own suggested contribution to this widening of horizons in epistemology. In particular, I propose a new way to think of the value of inquiries that have not, and perhaps cannot, get us knowledge of the true answer.