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Inquiring About the Future: The Rationality of Hopefulness

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 December 2024

Juliette Vazard
Juliette Vazard*
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy, Central European University
*
Corresponding author. Email: [email protected]
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Abstract

What is epistemically required of the rationally hopeful? In this paper, I propose that, as a subject becomes hopeful that p, she also adopts an inquiring attitude toward the question of whether p. Moreover, remaining rationally hopeful requires maintaining an inquiring attitude toward those possibilities we are hopeful about. On top of being led by a particular practical goal (that of attaining p), I suggest that the hopeful agent is also led by the epistemic goal of knowing whether p. Adding the “inquiry” criteria to rational hopefulness helps explain our intuition that there is something wrong with being hopeful that p and not disposed to inquire into whether p. It also helps us further distinguish hopefulness from other positive attitudes we adopt in the face of uncertainty, such as optimism, and faith.

Keywords

hopeinquiryrationalityfaithuncertaintyemotion
Type
Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy , Volume 54 , Issue 1 , January 2024 , pp. 1 - 11
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2024. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of The Canadian Journal of Philosophy, Inc

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