Pre-doxastic Epistemic Decision

This paper addresses a central problem in contemporary epistemology, namely how epistemic evaluation should be understood in contexts in which no propositional attitude is rationally permissible. Dominant evidentialist approaches locate epistemic normativity primarily in the domain of belief and its relation to available evidence, treating suspension of judgment as the appropriate response to inconclusive data. On the evidentialist view articulated by Feldman and Conee (1985), the justificatory status of a doxastic attitude is entirely determined by the evidence possessed by the agent, such that, in the absence of conclusive support, suspension of judgment is rationally required.

Although influential, this framework does not fully capture ordinary practices of epistemic assessment. Even when agents legitimately suspend judgment, they continue to be evaluated, and sometimes criticized, for how they conduct their inquiry. Epistemic criticism is often directed at unjustified persistence in stagnant investigative regimes, where inquiry is prolonged without adequate reason, as discussed by Friedman (2017), as well as at the premature closure of questions whose constitutive epistemic aims have not yet been achieved, a concern emphasized by Kelp (2021). These assessments do not target the correctness of propositional attitudes, but rather the way inquiry is organized and governed over time.

The theoretical challenge is to explain this form of evaluation without appealing to doxastic voluntarism or reducing it to merely practical considerations. As Shah (2003) argues, deliberation about belief does not admit of direct practical choice, and contemporary accounts of epistemic agency deny voluntary control over belief formation while allowing for responsibility in terms of responsiveness to reasons. A promising strategy is therefore to conceive of inquiry not merely as an instrumental means to belief formation, but as a normative practice in its own right.

In this vein, Friedman (2020) argues that epistemic normativity includes zetetic norms that regulate inquiry as a temporally extended process rather than merely its final doxastic outcomes. This expansion helps explain evaluations directed at the continuation or termination of inquiry, but it leaves open how to characterize the point of normative assessment that arises when assent is blocked and suspension of judgment is epistemically appropriate.

This paper intervenes at that juncture. It argues that, under conditions of rational suspension, agents nonetheless adopt a distinctive form of normative commitment concerning how inquiry is to be conducted. This commitment is termed a pre-doxastic epistemic decision. Such decisions do not target isolated propositional attitudes, but the organization of inquiry over time. To clarify this structure, the paper introduces a case in which an agent confronts a proposition for which the available evidence renders neither acceptance nor rejection rationally permissible. While suspension of judgment is epistemically appropriate, the agent must still adopt an orientation toward inquiry under suspension, which may be managed responsibly or irresponsibly. These orientations are not epistemically equivalent, despite the absence of belief formation.

The notion of pre-doxastic epistemic decision captures this dimension of epistemic evaluation and expands the focus of epistemology beyond doxastic states, while preserving anti-voluntarist constraints on belief and the central role of evidential norms.