Please join us on February 27th, 2025 for our Spring Colloquium with Sarah Paul of New York University - Abu Dhabi.

Title: "Attempts as Inquiry"

Abstract: Here is a question many of us would like to know the answer to:  “What could I (or we) accomplish, if I (we) really tried?”  First, I suggest that when we ask this question, we are often interested in an underexplored sense of ability that I call "difficult achievement ability." I then argue that the best way of approaching a well-founded answer to this question will generally be to simply try to do the thing and see what happens.  And on the other hand, "really trying" to succeed will involve inquiring into the conditions bearing on whether and how it will be possible to succeed.  We end up with the idea that difficult attempts in the face of uncertainty just are, at the same time, instances of inquiry.  The last part of the talk explores the implications of the fact that there can be a single act-token to which both practical and theoretical standards and assessments apply.  If we think that there are epistemic norms on inquiry, cases of "inquisitive attempts" suggest that such norms and assessments are not insulated from practical features of the context.