4. Settlement Without Final Settlement

If a conviction can be examined using a criterion, and the criterion can itself be examined, why does inquiry not regress indefinitely?

Suppose we challenge a conviction and assess its defense using a criterion. We could then challenge that criterion. Whatever we use in examining the criterion could in principle become questionable too.

The move remains available.

But availability is not the same as force.

Part I already found that we can deliberately formulate a question without being able to decide that it will become genuinely puzzling.

The same applies here.

We can turn attention toward a criterion, an assumption, or a method. We can ask what supports it, what would count against it, or what may happen if it changes.

But we cannot simply decide that it will become questionable for us.

Trying to answer may expose a difficulty we had not expected. Or the question may leave what was already convincing entirely untouched.

Recursive examination makes further inquiry possible. But here too, participation does not give us command over what becomes unsettled.

The availability of the move does not mean that inquiry actually proceeds indefinitely. Most of orientation ordinarily remains in place while some part of it becomes questionable.

For the inquiry at hand, enough remains sufficiently settled to carry what happens next.

This is settlement without final settlement.