6. Recursive Examination Without Infinite Paralysis

If every criterion can itself be questioned, why does inquiry not regress indefinitely?

Suppose we challenge a conviction and assess its defense using a criterion. We can then challenge that criterion and assess it using another one. The same move remains available again.

But the availability of that move does not mean inquiry actually proceeds indefinitely.

Much of orientation remains in fact convincing while some part of it becomes questionable.

I may ask whether an argument is valid while the words on the page continue to appear where they appear, while arithmetic continues to constrain a calculation, and while many other convictions remain completely untroubled.

I did not first establish those convictions from a final foundation. Nor did I choose them into force. They remain convincing enough to be relied on unless something disturbs them.

Formal systems make the same structure especially clear. I can deliberately enter a derivation and leave its rules unexamined for the moment. Once those rules and interpretations are sufficiently operative, they can constrain what follows even though they may later become objects of inquiry themselves.

But often I may not even know what there is to examine. A rule, interpretation, or assumption can remain unnoticed until something makes it questionable.

This is settlement without final settlement.

What has settled need not be justified once and for all in order to carry what happens next. It may remain sufficiently convincing, or we may continue to work with it provisionally.

In practice, recursive examination does not usually paralyze inquiry. Hume still plays backgammon. However far an inquiry is pushed, most of orientation can continue to support perception, conversation, action, and further thought.

We have not found a conviction that must convince everyone. Neither have we found an examination that dissolves every conviction for everybody.

Finite inquiry moves locally.

It does not make the entire structure of orientation unconvincing whenever one part becomes questionable.

Recursive examination does also not force us to keep questioning everything. Most of the time, we leave most things alone and continue with the inquiry at hand.

A criterion can remain sufficiently convincing to carry an inquiry and still be open to examination later. It does not have to become an ultimate foundation.