Nath, Oushinar;
(2025)
Wisdom, Open-Mindedness, and KK-Failure.
Acta Analytica
10.1007/s12136-025-00657-z.
(In press).
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Abstract
Wise agents are characteristically open-minded. In this paper, I discuss why that is the case. Central to my argument is the notion that open-mindedness is an inquiring attitude. A standard thought about inquiring attitudes is that they entail ignorance—if S is inquiring into a question q, then S doesn’t know its answer pq. This, however, doesn’t sit well with some of our intuitions about open-mindedness; for, as I shall show, there are instances of open-mindedness where S knows that pq and yet is justified in inquiring into q. I explain that such instances are best explained in terms of KK-failure, i.e. failing to know that one knows, and more specifically a sort of KK-failure that emerges out of S’s sensitivity to unawareness. I argue that a wise agent too is in a similar state of KK-failure in relation to the body of knowledge that makes her wise, and it’s precisely because of this that a wise agent remains characteristically open-minded.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | Wisdom, Open-Mindedness, and KK-Failure |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1007/s12136-025-00657-z |
| Publisher version: | https://doi.org/10.1007/s12136-025-00657-z |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. |
| Keywords: | Practical wisdom, Open-mindedness, Inquiry, Certainty, KK-principle |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of Arts and Humanities UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of Arts and Humanities > Dept of Philosophy |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10216565 |
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