Ignasi Gil: Incessant checking is epistemically flawless (but might be zetetically criticisable)

Tuesday April 8 2025 @11:30 (CET)
Sala B, Edificio de Humanidades, UNED & online

Abstract
There seems to be something dubious in incessant checking even if it leads to epistemic improvement. In this paper I explain this dubious through a zetetic consequentialist account, ZCA, which claims that re-checking is prohibited when the expected zetetic utility of re-checking is outweighed by the expected zetetic utility of the other lines of inquiry S would like to undertake but cannot because she is re-checking. I show that ZCA satisfies two desiderata: neutrality (lacking controversial commitments) and extension adequacy (explaining all the relevant cases). Then I argue that ZCA is not an epistemic account and that, therefore, incessant checking is epistemically flawless but might be zetetically criticisable. To strengthen my argument, I show that Friedman’s (2019) account, that claims that incessant checking is epistemically criticisable, is unsatisfactory because does not satisfy the two desiderata.

Bio
Ignasi Gil is a predoctoral researcher in the Department of Logic and Theoretical Philosophy at Universidad Complutense de Madrid (UCM) and an FPI fellow working on the project “The Nature and Normativity of Inquiry” (PID2021-123938NB-100). His research primarily focuses on exploring the tensions between zetetic and epistemic normativity, as well as their grounding. Additionally, he has a keen interest in higher-order evidence and the doxastic profiles of individuals with obsessive-compulsive disorder. He is currently studying which epistemic and zetetic norms are violated during incessant re-checking.