Dr Livingstone, I Presume?

Pascal Engel (1)

1 CRAL - Centre de recherches sur les arts et le langage

Presumption is often discussed in law, less often in epistemology. Is it an attitude? If so where can we locate it within the taxonomy of epistemic attitudes? Is it a kind of belief, a judgment, an assumption or a supposition? Or is it a species of inference? There are two basic models of presumption: judgmental, as a kind of judgment, and legal, taken from the use of presumptions in law. The legal model suggests that presumption is a practical inference, whereas the judgmental model suggests that presumption is an epistemic attitude. I argue that presumption is neither a practical inference nor a merely epistemic attitude: it involves both, within the category of what we may call the inquiring attitudes.

Mots clés: presumption; assumption; abduction; doxastic attitudes; practical reasoning; inquiry; Edna Ullman-Margalit; Douglas Walton

Domaines: Philosophie

Pascal Engel. Dr Livingstone, I Presume?. Episteme, 2021, Episteme Conference, 18 (3), pp.477-491. ⟨10.1017/epi.2021.35⟩. ⟨hal-03643984⟩