Guest lecture: Verena Wagner (Konstanz) (new venue!)
Host: Michael Pauen
In epistemology, suspension of judgment is discussed as the third doxastic
stance besides belief and disbelief, which gives rise to new questions about
rationality. In this talk, I will deviate from standard epistemology and
focus on the nature of the neutral mindset. Using intuitive cases of
suspension of judgment, I will demonstrate that there is more than one way
of being in a neutral state of mind. I will propose a philosophical
framework for cognitive neutrality which can account for the distinctiveness
of various neutral states and their conceptual unification. Suspension of
judgment, I will argue, should be viewed as a mental act of committing to
neutrality, but there can be different kinds of commitments: depending on
their epistemic situation and their goals, subjects can suspend
agnostically, precautiously, or hypothetically. The resulting neutral states
of mind differ in their relation to inquiry and must be distinguished from
uncommitted or plain neutrality. I will show that distinguishing between
these states is fruitful for various areas of application, e.g., in
experimental approaches, where neutral outcomes are standardly avoided by
using the method of forced-choice alternatives, but also in machine learning
and evidence-based medicine.
