The ignorance behind inconsistency toleration. Rosario Martínez-Ordaz, M. d. Synthese, March, 2020.
The ignorance behind inconsistency toleration [link]Paper  doi  abstract   bibtex   
Inconsistency toleration is the phenomenon of working with inconsistent information without threatening one’s rationality. Here I address the role that ignorance plays for the tolerance of contradictions in the empirical sciences. In particular, I contend that there are two types of ignorance that, when present, can make epistemic agents to be rationally inclined to tolerate a contradiction. The first is factual ignorance, understood as temporary undecidability of the truth values of the conflicting propositions. The second is what I call “ignorance of theoretical structure”, which is lack of knowledge of relevant inference patterns within a specific theory. I argue that these two types of ignorance can be explanatory of the scientists’ rational disposition to be tolerant towards contradictions, and I illustrate this with a case study from neutrino physics.
@article{rosario_martinez-ordaz_ignorance_2020,
	title = {The ignorance behind inconsistency toleration},
	issn = {1573-0964},
	url = {https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-020-02593-4},
	doi = {10.1007/s11229-020-02593-4},
	abstract = {Inconsistency toleration is the phenomenon of working with inconsistent information without threatening one’s rationality. Here I address the role that ignorance plays for the tolerance of contradictions in the empirical sciences. In particular, I contend that there are two types of ignorance that, when present, can make epistemic agents to be rationally inclined to tolerate a contradiction. The first is factual ignorance, understood as temporary undecidability of the truth values of the conflicting propositions. The second is what I call “ignorance of theoretical structure”, which is lack of knowledge of relevant inference patterns within a specific theory. I argue that these two types of ignorance can be explanatory of the scientists’ rational disposition to be tolerant towards contradictions, and I illustrate this with a case study from neutrino physics.},
	language = {en},
	urldate = {2020-10-29},
	journal = {Synthese},
	author = {Rosario Martínez-Ordaz, María del},
	month = mar,
	year = {2020},
}

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