My Abstract

Dear Students,

I will be working on a paper alongside you, just so that you can get a window into my process. Please read the tutorial on abstract writing, then take a look at this:

Inquisitive Accuracy Monism

Kareem Khalifa and Jared Millson

Epistemologists frequently endorse truth monism, the thesis that only true beliefs are of fundamental epistemic value. However, such a view faces searching counterexamples, particularly when it is used to account for various facets of scientific practice. While many of truth monism’s critics adopt a pluralistic view in which other epistemic goods are as fundamental as true belief, we opt instead to alter the letter but not the spirit of truth monism. We dub the resulting view “Inquisitive accuracy monism,” which holds that only accurate representations are of fundamental epistemic value, and that a representation’s accuracy is to be assessed by its success in providing correct answers to relevant questions. Which questions are relevant is a function of a putative representer’s perspective, which is characterized by his/her social role, abilities, and presuppositions. We argue that inquisitive accuracy monism outperforms both truth monism and its pluralist alternatives in accounting for the epistemic value underlying a variety of scientific practices.

This is a prospective basic abstract (do the reading!). You’ll also see that I’ve covered all four things that an abstract ought to do:

Motivation: The first two sentences state the problem to be solved: how to reconcile truth monism with scientific practice?

Thesis: The solution to the problem is to shift from truth monism to inquisitive accuracy monism, both of which are defined.

Encapsulation: Inquisitive accuracy monism will be established by accounting for a variety of scientific practices’ epistemic value.

Flagging differences: The main foils are truth monism and its pluralist rivals.

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