2. Standards Remain Inside Conviction Formation

We can find one conviction more convincing than another.

But that does not yet tell us whether one is better than another. People can be convinced of claims that we ourselves judge to be worse.

To make that judgment, we need some criterion by which to compare them.

We might appeal to consistency, evidence, reliability, corrigibility, empirical success, logical validity, probabilistic coherence, causal adequacy, or something else.

These standards can organize inquiry.

But Conviction Formation Theory cannot simply place one of them above the process it has been examining.

Consider the sentence: This is a better conviction than that conviction. If that judgment is to become part of a finite agent's own assessment, it too has to become sufficiently convincing.

The same applies to:

This is a better criterion.

This is better evidence.

This objection matters more.

This method is more reliable.

This is the rational response.

Standards and judgments about standards remain within conviction formation.

Once a criterion is sufficiently fixed, comparing convictions under it may be straightforward.

One conviction may be more consistent than another, better supported by some evidence, more predictively successful, or fare better under some other criterion.

The harder question is why that criterion rather than another one should determine which conviction counts as better.

Another complication: a person can use a criterion without being convinced that it is correct or appropriate to the problem. We may follow a criterion provisionally because a procedure requires it, because others expect us to use it, or simply to see what follows. We may even be coerced into applying a criterion we reject. Applying a criterion and being convinced by it can come apart.

A criterion can be applied provisionally or even without being convincing. But if it is to guide our own judgment of which conviction is better, it has to acquire convincing force for us.

Like other convictions, criteria encounter persons with already existing orientations, histories, capacities, practices, relationships, and surroundings.

One criterion may acquire force quickly or remain inert. Another may become convincing through training and use, then later become questionable. Something compelling to one person may leave another unconvinced. That is not ours simply to choose.

The problem does not end with disagreement about the convictions being assessed.

Two people may agree that convictions should be examined and still disagree about which evidence matters, which distinctions should be drawn, which representations preserve what is important, which criteria organize a good assessment, or which methods are appropriate to the problem.

Part I already encountered this when examining defensibility.

A conviction can be strong while poorly defended.

A defense can fare well under shared criteria and still fail to persuade.

Two people may begin by disagreeing about a conclusion and discover that their disagreement concerns the criteria under which it is being assessed.

A fitting name for this wider situation is convictional pluralism.

Convictional pluralism describes a situation in which incompatible convictions, criteria, standards, interpretations, or commitments concerning methods can retain convincing force across different orientations of persons and groups.

This is not a pluralism of frameworks that people freely select from a shelf.

Someone can choose to conduct an inquiry using intuitionistic logic, or agree provisionally to work under a Bayesian model.

What cannot simply be chosen is whether the relevant commitments will become convincing, gain force, lose force, or remain unchanged through the investigation.

Convictional pluralism does not make convictions, criteria, interpretations, or methods matters of preference or choice. It is not a form of relativism.

A conviction may be convincing for me and not for you, or for one group and not another. But if I am convinced of $P$, I cannot simply decide that an incompatible conviction is equally convincing. Nor can I decide that a criterion I find unconvincing now carries the same force as one I rely on.

Convictional pluralism describes differences in what becomes convincing across orientations.

It does not say that incompatible convictions are equally true, equally justified, equally defensible, equally useful, or equally tolerable. It does not entail that truth or correctness are relative to orientation.

What remains open is how such comparisons could be made without simply assuming the criteria that would settle them.

Conviction Formation Theory cannot settle that merely by choosing one.

Whatever criterion is used remains within conviction formation too.

It can become convincing, fail to convince, conflict with another criterion, or become itself an object of inquiry.