Conceptual limitations, puzzlement, and epistemic dilemmas

Abstract

Conceptual limitations restrict our epistemic options. One cannot believe, disbelieve, or doubt what one cannot grasp. I show how such restrictions could lead to epistemic dilemmas: situations in which each of one's options violates some epistemic requirement. To help the dilemmist distinguish their view of these cases from alternative non-dilemmic analyses, I propose to treat puzzlement as a kind of epistemic residue, appropriate only when one has violated an epistemic requirement. As moral dilemmists have appealed to unavoidable guilt as a sign of a moral dilemma, so too can the epistemic dilemmist appeal to unavoidable puzzlement as a sign of an epistemic dilemma. I conclude by considering why, on the dilemmist's view, it sometimes makes sense for inquirers to seek out puzzlement.* For helpful discussions and comments, thanks to Daniel Ferguson, Daniel Greco, Juan S. Pi ñeros Glasscock, Zoltán Gendler Szab ó, participants of the 2017 Yale Philosophy WIP seminar, and two anonymous reviewers for this journal.1 This principle, in various formulations, has been the topic of much controversy. It has been claimed to be subject to counterexamples (Stocker 1971;King 2014;Graham 2011), undermined by folk judgements Turri and Buckwalter (2015), and have only self-undermining theoretical motivation (Talbot 2016). For defenses of it, see Howard-