Epistemic normativity as autotelic: why suspension and judgment aren’t like archery

We can evaluate what people do in relation to the effects of their doings. Often, the effect is the result of the agent trying to bring about some goal, and we evaluate what they have done by asking how well they have pursued the goal and whether they have achieved it. If someone is trying to bake a loaf of bread, for example, we can assess how well they did by asking how well they followed the recipe and whether the result matches what they were trying to achieve. This is not the only way to assess a doing, however: we can also assess it by comparing its effects to a constitutive aim of the doing, which the agent may not have in mind when they perform the deed. For example, if a chess-player moves their bishop, we can assess that move by relating it to the constitutive aim of chess moves—checkmate—even if that’s not what the person is trying to achieve with the particular move. Either way, when we evaluate a doing by assessing how effective it is at bringing about some goal—which, importantly, may never come about—our evaluations are, as we shall say, heterotelic. The evaluations are telic, because they evaluate their target relative to ends, and they are heterotelic, because the standard of evaluation is something different than a conception of the doing itself. The standard of evaluation will commonly be a state of affairs that can potentially be brought about by the doing.