3. Recursive Examination

Suppose two people disagree.

One says:

"Peter deliberately excluded me."

The other asks:

"Why do you think that?"

Maybe Peter invited everyone else. Maybe he had excluded the speaker before, or something he said earlier seemed hostile.

"Why does that count as evidence of deliberate exclusion?"

Deliberate action may have been inferred from a pattern of selective behavior.

"What else could explain what happened?"

Peter may have forgotten. He may have assumed someone else had sent the invitation. The omission may have resulted from a mailing list or a technical error.

"Why these alternatives?"

Maybe they came from experience, analogy, or someone else's suggestion. Important possibilities may still be absent.

"Would you use the same evidential standard if someone you liked had done the same thing?"

Throughout this sequence, the examination remains part of conviction formation.

An answer can convince or fail to convince, a new possibility may seem serious or irrelevant, criteria can remain stable or become questionable.

Trying to answer one question can expose something that had previously organized the inquiry without itself being examined.

We can call this recursive examination: making more of what a conviction depends on, or of what has organized its examination, available as an object of further inquiry.

A conviction may depend on an interpretation. The interpretation may rely on a distinction. A distinction may matter because of a criterion. Criteria may be embedded in a method. A method may rely on assumptions, representations, mappings, rules, or procedures.

Any of these can become the next object of attention.

This matters because examination is not merely an external audit of an otherwise unchanged conviction.

Trying to answer a question can reveal an assumption that had never been explicit.

A newly available possibility may weaken what had seemed like the necessary explanation, or a contradiction may become salient. A distinction may turn out to matter in a way it did not before. Criteria can become harder to defend once they are applied elsewhere. An objection can acquire force after careful reconstruction.

The reverse can happen too.

A conviction may become stronger after examination. An objection may fail. A formal reconstruction may make a relation visible that had previously been only vaguely sensed. Criteria or methods may become more convincing once we understand better how they work and what they depend on.

Sometimes the main change is not that either side becomes more or less convinced. Further disagreements become visible.

What appeared to be a disagreement about Peter's intention may turn out to concern which alternatives were considered, how evidence of intention should be interpreted, or whether the same standard is being applied consistently.

The same pattern can appear in more formal inquiries.

Two people may agree about what follows within a formal system while disagreeing about what has to be put into it. They may accept the formal consequence but dispute a premise, a representation, or whether the system fits the problem in the first place.

Examination does not necessarily remove disagreement. It can reveal more precisely what the disagreement depends on.

Part I gives us one reason why making such dependencies available may matter.

We can deliberately ask a question without being able to decide whether it will become genuinely puzzling. Sometimes an adequate answer appears immediately and little changes. But sometimes we ask a question expecting that we can answer it and discover that we cannot. The absence of the expected answer can itself give the question force.

Recursive examination can create such situations. It can make assumptions, alternatives, criteria, and dependencies explicit enough to become objects of further inquiry.

We can then ask what supports them, whether they apply, or what would happen if they changed.

What we hope to find is firmer ground: a conviction that remains convincing after more of what it depends on has been brought into view and examined. Some possible sources of disturbance are no longer hidden. We may understand better what would have to change for the conviction to weaken, become qualified, or give way.