1. The Problem Part I Leaves Behind

Part I began from the claim that becoming convinced is not under direct voluntary control.

We can assert something without being convinced of it, entertain a possibility, follow a rule provisionally, or act on a decision we privately doubt.

But we cannot normally decide that something will become convincing simply because we want it to.

That limitation still leaves room to act.

We can ask questions, seek information, generate possibilities, compare alternatives, externalize reasoning, introduce criteria and procedures, challenge or defend convictions, practise, prepare, and return to an inquiry later.

Part I gave this broader involvement a name: participation. We can have a part in what happens without comprehensively controlling what follows.

Criteria can also become sufficiently stable to organize inquiry. Several people may rely on enough of the same criteria to assess something together without reopening every standard at each step and without requiring final settlement.

Finite agents can continue to inquire and act while larger questions about truth, justification, rationality, and authority remain unresolved. At the same time questions can reopen convictions. Criteria can organize and constrain how convictions are assessed.

But the criteria, procedures, and distinctions used in that examination remain part of conviction formation too. They can become convincing, lose force, conflict with one another, and become themselves objects of inquiry.

What do these different forms of examination and constraint actually add?

And if they change what becomes convincing, by what criterion could we call one conviction better than another?

Part I made inquiry possible without direct control or final settlement.

Part II looks at what can constrain such inquiry from within it.