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Inquiry
Edited by Joshua Habgood-Coote (University of Leeds)
About this topic
| Summary | Inquiry is a central topic in philosophy, with a history running from Plato's dialogues and Pyrrhonian scepticism to American Pragmatism, but it has largely been overlooked as a topic in epistemology in favour of knowledge, belief, and justification. To understand inquiry, we need to negotiate issues at the intersection of epistemology, philosophy of language, and linguistics. We inquire into questions, so we need to understand what questions and answers are, and what it takes to resolve a question. Inquiry is a goal-directed activity, so we need to understand what the goals of inquiry might be (knowledge, true belief, understanding), and what the norms of inquiry are. There are also important questions about the relation between inquiry, curiosity and wonder, and between inquiry, belief, and the suspension of judgement . Although we can inquire alone, we typically try to answer questions together, so we need to understand the inquisitive character of conversation, as well as larger-scale collaborative inquiry, in science, philosophy, and democratic discourse. |
| Key works | There is a recent surge of interest in inquiry within epistemology. Some notable topics include: the content of inquiry Friedman 2013, the relation between inquiry, belief, and suspension of judgement Friedman 2013, Friedman 2017 , what the goal of inquiry might be Peirce 1877, Pritchard 2008, Kelp 2014 whether inquiry has a constitutive norm Whitcomb 2017, the nature of collective inquiry Habgood-Coote 2022, and how the norms associated with inquiry relate to other epistemic norms Friedman 2020, Fleisher 2019. On conversation as collective inquiry, see Stalnaker 1984 and Roberts 1996. On Pyrrhonianism and inquiry, see Perin 2006, and on Peirce, see . |
| Introductions | For an accessible introduction to the semantics of questions, see https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/questions/ |
Show all references
Related
Siblings
- The Basing Relation (117)
- Belief (2,272 | 1,231)
- Bias (18 | 8)
- Defeat (206)
- Entitlement (108)
- Epistemic Possibility (141)
- Epistemic Luck (269)
- Evidence (1,020 | 151)
- Ignorance (236)
- Justification (1,268 | 743)
- Knowledge (5,261 | 779)
- Rationality (2,969 | 2,225)
- Reasons (3,143 | 342)
- Subjectivity and Objectivity (211 | 32)
- Thought and Thinking (562 | 289)
- Understanding (472)
- Warrant (179 | 76)
- Wisdom (400)
- Epistemological States and Properties, Misc (94)
See also
- Questions (541)
- Social Epistemology (8,588 | 3,290)
- American Pragmatism (3,742 | 3,139)
- Belief (2,272 | 1,231)
- Pyrrhonian Skepticism (322)
Contents
244 found
Order:
| 1 — 50 / 244 |
- Suspension in Inquiry.Julia Staffel - forthcoming - Episteme:1-13.When we're inquiring to find out whether p is true, knowing that we'll get better evidence in the future seems like a good reason to suspend judgment about p now. But, as Matt McGrath has recently argued, this natural thought is in deep tension with traditional accounts of justification. On traditional views of justification, which doxastic attitude you are justified in having now depends on your current evidence, not on what you might learn later. McGrath proposes to resolve this tension (...)
- New Boundary Lines.Alejandro Pérez Carballo - manuscriptIntellectual progress involves forming a more accurate picture of the world. But it also figuring out which concepts to use for theorizing about the world. Bayesian epistemology has had much to say about the former aspect of our cognitive lives, but little if at all about the latter. I outline a framework for formulating questions about conceptual change in a broadly Bayesian framework. By enriching the resources of Epistemic Utility Theory with a more expansive conception of epistemic value, I offer (...)
- The puzzle of defective and permissible inquiry.Michele Palmira - manuscriptI present a puzzle about inquiry and discuss two potential solutions. The puzzle stems from two equally compelling sets of data suggesting that, on the one hand, there’s something epistemically defective with inquiring into questions that don’t have true answers. On the other hand, however, there can be scenarios in which we are epistemically permitted to inquire into questions that don’t have true answers. How is it that inquiries into questions that don’t have true answers can both be defective and (...)
- The value of information and the epistemology of inquiry.Richard Pettigrew - manuscriptIn the recent philosophical literature on inquiry, epistemologists point out that their subject has often begun at the point at which you already have your evidence and then focussed on identifying the beliefs for which that evidence provides justification. But we are not mere passive recipients of evidence. While some comes to us unbidden, we often actively collect it. This has long been recognised, but typically epistemologists have taken the norms that govern inquiry to be practical, not epistemic. The recent (...)
- (1 other version)Knowledge: A Human Interest Story.Brian Weatherson - manuscriptOver the years I’ve written many papers defending an idiosyncratic version of interest-relative epistemology. This book collects and updates the views I’ve expressed over those papers. -/- Interest-relative epistemologies all start in roughly the same way. A big part of what makes knowledge important is that it rationalises action. But for almost anything we purportedly know, there is some action that it wouldn’t rationalise. I know what I had for breakfast, but I wouldn’t take a bet at billion to one (...)
- Do Your Homework! A Rights-Based Zetetic Account of Alleged Cases of Doxastic Wronging.J. Spencer Atkins - forthcoming - Ethical Theory and Moral Practice:1-28.This paper offers an alternate explanation of cases from the doxastic wronging literature. These cases violate what I call the degree of inquiry right—a novel account of zetetic obligations to inquire when interests are at stake. The degree of inquiry right is a moral right against other epistemic agents to inquire to a certain threshold when a belief undermines one’s interests. Thus, the agents are sometimes obligated to leave inquiry open. I argue that we have relevant interests in reputation, relationships, (...)
- Rational dynamics in efficient inquiry.David Barack - forthcoming - Analysis.Which premisses should we use to start our inquiries? Which transitions during inquiry should we take next? When should we switch lines of inquiry? In this paper, I address these open questions about inquiry, formulating novel norms for such decisions during deductive reasoning. I use the first-order predicate calculus, in combination with Carnap’s state description framework, to state such norms. Using that framework, I first demonstrate some properties of sets of sentences used in deduction. I then state some norms for (...)
- Unsettled Belief.Bob Beddor - forthcoming - The Philosophical Quarterly.According to many philosophers, belief is a settling state. On this view, someone who believes p is disposed to take p for granted in practical and theoretical reasoning. This paper presents a simple objection to this settling conception of belief: it conflicts with our ordinary patterns of belief ascription. I show that ascriptions of unsettled beliefs are commonplace, and that they pose problems for all of the most promising ways of developing the settling conception. I proceed to explore the implications (...)
- (1 other version)What is creativity?Lindsay Brainard - forthcoming - Philosophical Quarterly.I argue for an account of creativity that unifies creative achievements in the arts, sciences, and other domains and identifies its characteristic value. This account draws upon case studies of creative work in both the arts and sciences to identify creativity as a kind of successful exploration. I argue that if creativity is properly understood in this way, then it is fundamentally a property of processes, something only agents can achieve, something that comes in degrees, subjectively novel, and non-formulaic. As (...)
- Who knows what? Epistemic dependence, inquiry, and function-first epistemology.Joshua DiPaolo - forthcoming - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy.Function-first epistemologists analyze epistemic concepts, norms, and practices by investigating their functions. According to the most prominent function-first account, the primary function of our concept of knowledge is identifying reliable informants. In this paper, I take for granted the function-first methodology to achieve three main goals: First, I argue against this prominent account: studying practices of knowledge attribution and denial related to epistemic dependence, coordination, and competition reveals that the primary function of our concept of knowledge is not identifying reliable (...)
- The Zetetic.Arianna Falbo - forthcoming - In Kurt Sylvan, Ernest Sosa, Jonathan Dancy & Matthias Steup (eds.), The Blackwell Companion to Epistemology, 3rd edition. Wiley Blackwell.
- On Interrogative Inquiries Without Suspended Judgement and Doxastic Neutrality.Leonardo Flamini - forthcoming - Dialogue.It is a widespread idea that suspended judgement implies a state of doxastic neutrality. Jane Friedman has recently claimed that while inquiring into a given question, one suspends one’s judgement on it. Jointly considered, the previous claims imply that one is in a state of doxastic neutrality about a given question while inquiring into it. In this article, I explore the leading cases against Friedman’s perspective, arguing that it is debatable whether they exhibit inquiries into questions without doxastic neutrality. However, (...)
- On instrumental zetetic normativity.Leonardo Flamini - forthcoming - Philosophical Topics.Jane Friedman claims that when we inquire, there is a tension between the instrumental normativity of our inquiries and some basic epistemic norms: The former forbids what the latter permit. Moreover, she argues that since the instrumental normativity of inquiry is epistemic, the previous tension shows that our current conception of epistemic normativity is incoherent and needs to be revised. To solve the problem, she suggests that all our epistemic norms should be considered “zetetic”, namely, norms of inquiry. In this (...)
- Epistemic practices: A unified account of epistemic and zetetic normativity.Will Fleisher - forthcoming - Noûs.This paper presents the epistemic practices account, a theory about the nature of epistemic normativity. The account aims to explain how the pursuit of epistemic values such as truth and knowledge can give rise to epistemic norms. On this account, epistemic norms are the internal rules of epistemic social practices. The account explains four crucial features of epistemic normativity while dissolving some apparent tensions between them. The account also provides a unified theory of epistemic and zetetic normativity.
- A Defense of Endorsement.Will Fleisher - forthcoming - In Sanford C. Goldberg & Mark Walker (eds.), Attitude in Philosophy. Oxford University Press.It is often irrational to believe philosophical claims because they are subject to systematic disagreement, under-determination, and pessimistic induction. Along with some other authors in this volume, I argue that many philosophers should (and do) have a different attitude to their own philosophical commitments. On my account, this attitude is a form of epistemic acceptance called endorsement. However, several objections have been raised to this view and others like it. One worry is that endorsement is spineless: that people who merely (...)
- Zetetic Rights and Wrong(ing)s.Daniel C. Friedman - forthcoming - Philosophical Quarterly.What do we owe those with whom we inquire? Presumably, quite a bit. Anything beyond what is necessary to secure knowledge? Yes. In this paper, I argue for a class of ‘zetetic rights.’ These are rights distinctive to participants in group inquiry. Zetetic rights help protect important central interests of inquirers. These include a right to aid, a right against interference, and a right to exert influence over the course of inquiry. Building on arguments by Fricker (2015), I defend these (...)
- Zetetic Epistemology.Jane Friedman - forthcoming - In Baron Reed & A. K. Flowerree (eds.), Towards an Expansive Epistemology: Norms, Action, and the Social Sphere. Routledge.In this paper I explore the contours of a picture of normative epistemology that speaks centrally to the question of how to inquire rather than just the question of what to believe. What if normative epistemology were expanded to encompass inquiry in full? I argue that while a 'zetetic epistemology' builds on traditional normative epistemology in many appealing ways, it also faces some challenges.
- What is it to have an inquisitive attitude?Benoit Gaultier - forthcoming - Philosophical Quarterly.Following a common assumption, when one inquires into a question, one has an inquisitive attitude towards it. More precisely, I shall assume that there is an inquisitive attitude towards Q that all of those who inquire into Q have in common and in virtue of which they can be said to be in an inquisitive state of mind towards Q. This paper is about the nature of this attitude. I elucidate it by examining whether it boils down to doubt, curiosity, (...)
- (1 other version)The rules and aims of inquiry.Javier Gonzalez de Prado - forthcoming - The Philosophical Quarterly.Are norms of inquiry in tension with epistemic norms? I provide a (largely) negative answer, turning to a picture of epistemic practices as rule-governed games. The idea is that, while epistemic norms are correctness standards for the attitudes involved in epistemic games, norms of inquiry derive from the aims of those games. Attitudes that, despite being epistemically correct, are inadvisable regarding the goals of some inquiry are just like bad (but legal) moves in basketball or chess. I further consider cases (...)
- Viewpoint Convergence as a Philosophical Defect.Grace Helton - forthcoming - In Sanford C. Goldberg & Mark Walker (eds.), Attitude in Philosophy. Oxford University Press.What can we know? How should we live? What is there? Philosophers famously diverge in the answers they give to these and other philosophical questions. It is widely presumed that a lack of convergence on these questions suggests that philosophy is not progressing at all, is not progressing fast enough, or is not progressing as fast as other disciplines, such as the natural sciences. Call the view that ideal philosophical progress is marked by at least some degree of convergence on (...)
- Review of Reason and Inquiry: The Erotetic Theory, by Philipp Koralus. [REVIEW]Daniel Hoek - forthcoming - Mind:fzad062.Philipp Koralus' "Reason and Inquiry" presents a questioning or erotetic theory of reasoning. This review connects ideas from the book to the broader philosophical literature on inquiry and questions, as well as providing a simplified overview of the theory.
- Zetetic Intransigence and Democratic Participation.Hrishikesh Joshi - forthcoming - Episteme.A pervasive feature of democracy is disagreement. And in general, when we encounter disagreement from someone who is at least more reliable than chance, this puts some pressure on us to moderate our beliefs. But this raises the specter of asymmetric compliance—it’s not obvious what to do when we moderate our beliefs but the other party refuses to do so. Whereas an elegant solution is available when it comes to how we can to respond to our higher-order evidence while still (...)
- Belief and Settledness.Wooram Lee - forthcoming - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy.This paper elucidates the sense in which belief is a question-settling attitude. In her recent work, Jane Friedman suggests that we understand the settledness of belief in terms of a normative principle about belief and inquiry: one ought not inquire into a question and believe the answer to the question at the same time. On the basis of the distinction between dispositional and occurrent belief, I argue against Friedman that there is no principle linking belief and inquiry that is both (...)
- Evidentialism and Normative Expecations.Jonathan Matheson - forthcoming - In Scott Stapleford, Kevin McCain & Matthias Steup (eds.), Evidentialism at 40: New Arguments, New Angles. Routledge.In this paper I examine a recent incarnation of common objection to evidentialism. According to this common objection, evidentialism gives the wrong verdicts in cases where the subject has been irresponsible in inquiry. Sandy Goldberg (2021) has argued that a particularly vivid instance of this problem occurs when an individual violates normative expectations that have been placed on them in their inquiry. Having laid out Goldberg’s case, I argue that the desirable verdicts can be better attained by endorsing evidentialism and (...)
- Fit-Related Reasons to Inquire.Genae Matthews - forthcoming - Australasian Journal of Philosophy.Recent philosophical work on inquiry yields important results about when it is appropriate to inquire and to what extent norms on inquiry are compatible with other epistemic norms. However, philosophers have been remarkably silent on the matter of what questions we ought to take up in the first place. In this paper, I take up this question, and argue that moral considerations constitute fit-related, right-kind reasons to adopt interrogative attitudes towards, and so inquire about, particular questions. This is a conclusion (...)
- (Ir)rational Inquiry.Taylor-Grey Miller & Andrew del Rio - forthcoming - Thought: A Journal of Philosophy.The unity thesis is the thesis that epistemic norms and zetetic norms comprise a unified normative domain. We argue against the unity thesis by presenting cases where the zetetic norms issue requirements to adopt doxastic attitudes (essential to the inquiry) which are forbidden by nearly platitudinous epistemic norms. After arguing that our cases are an improvement upon extant cases in the literature, we canvas a range of responses unity theorists might offer to resist our conclusion and argue that they either (...)
- Rational Aversion to Information.Sven Neth - forthcoming - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science.Is more information always better? Or are there some situations in which more information can make us worse off? Good (1967) argues that expected utility maximizers should always accept more information if the information is cost-free and relevant. But Good's argument presupposes that you are certain you will update by conditionalization. If we relax this assumption and allow agents to be uncertain about updating, these agents can be rationally required to reject free and relevant information. Since there are good reasons (...)
- The zetetic significance of unpossessed evidence.Michele Palmira - forthcoming - In Aaron Creller & Jonathan Matheson (eds.), Inquiry: Philosophical Perspectives. Routledge.The presence of easily accessible yet unpossessed evidence seems to matter epistemically. In this chapter I offer an inquiry-theoretic explanation of this datum. I argue that agents in the target cases fail to be competent inquirers and gather the relevant easily accessible evidence. This offers a deflationary explanation of the initial datum. I then show how to inflate this explanation to vindicate the thought that unpossessed evidence has defeating power over the justificatory status of one’s beliefs. The inflationary explanation rests (...)
- Provisional Attitudes.Michele Palmira - forthcoming - In Kurt Sylvan, Ernest Sosa, Jonathan Dancy & Matthias Steup (eds.), The Blackwell Companion to Epistemology, 3rd edition. Wiley Blackwell.
- Rational Hypothesis: Inquiry Direction Without Evidence.Michele Palmira - forthcoming - Philosophical Topics.There are scenarios in which letting one’s own views on the question whether p direct one’s inquiry into that question brings about individual and collective epistemic benefits. However, these scenarios are also such that one’s evidence doesn’t support believing one’s own views. So, how to vindicate the epistemic benefits of directing one’s inquiry in such an asymmetric way, without asking one to hold a seemingly irrational doxastic attitude? To answer this question, the paper understands asymmetric inquiry direction in terms of (...)
- Suspensive Wronging.Chris Ranalli - forthcoming - In Verena Wagner & Zinke Alexandra (eds.), Suspension in Epistemology and Beyond. Routledge.According to the thesis of doxastic wronging, we can wrong people in virtue of having certain beliefs about them. In this chapter, I motivate and defend a similar view, the thesis of suspensive wronging, that we can wrong people in virtue of bearing an indecision attitude towards certain questions that bear on certain people. I explore the extent to which the thesis of suspensive wronging fits with certain prominent conceptions of suspension of judgment, including the sui generis attitude, higher-order, and (...)$190.00 new (collection) View on Amazon.comRemove from this list Direct downloadExport citation
Bookmark - The Epistemology of Attention.Catharine Saint-Croix - forthcoming - In Kurt Sylvan, Ernest Sosa, Jonathan Dancy & Matthias Steup (eds.), The Blackwell Companion to Epistemology, 3rd edition. Wiley Blackwell.Root, branch, and blossom, attention is intertwined with epistemology. It is essential to our capacity to learn and decisive of the evidence we obtain, it influences the intellectual connections we forge and those we remember, and it is the cognitive tool whereby we enact decisions about inquiry. Moreover, because it is both an epistemic practice and a site of agency, attention is a natural locus for questions about epistemic morality. This article surveys the emerging epistemology of attention, reviewing the existing (...)
- How do lines of inquiry unfold? Insights from journalism.Susanna Siegel - forthcoming - Oxford Studies in Epistemology: Special Issue on Applied Epistemology.I analyze a type of practice related to inquiry: treating things as zetetically relevant to questions, and argue that this practice is a central normatively evaluable way to extend lines of inquiry. My strategy is to introduce the practice and its normative features by examining its relationship to something already well-understood: the ways that news stories produced by journalists frame events. I then argue that the same core zetetic practice can be found across domains, just not in journalism. Finding the (...)
- Wandering Inquiry.Susanna Siegel - forthcoming - Journal of Philosophy.Inquiry is guided, in the minimal sense that it is not haphazard. It is also often thought to have as a natural stopping point ceasing to inquire, once inquiry into a question yields knowledge of an answer. On this picture, inquiry is both telic and guided. By contrast, mind-wandering is unguided and atelic, according to the most extensively developed philosophical theory of it. This paper articulates a puzzle that arises from this combination of claims: there seem to be plenty of (...)
- Curiosity and Zetetic Style in ADHD.Asbjørn Steglich-Petersen & Somogy Varga - forthcoming - Philosophical Psychology.While research on Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) has traditionally focused on cognitive and behavioral deficits, there is increasing interest in exploring possible resources associated with the disorder. In this paper, we argue that the attention-patterns associated with ADHD can be understood as expressing an alternative style of inquiry, or “zetetic” style, characterized mainly by a lower barrier for becoming curious and engaging in inquiry, and a weaker disposition to regulate curiosity in response to the cognitive and practical costs associated (...)
- Wondering and Epistemic Desires.Richard Teague - forthcoming - Philosophical Quarterly.This paper explores the relationship between the questioning attitude of wondering and a class of attitudes I call 'epistemic desires'. Broadly, these are desires to improve one's epistemic position on some question. A common example is the attitude of wanting to know the answer to some question. I argue that one can have any kind of epistemic desire towards any question, Q, without necessarily wondering Q, but not conversely. That is, one cannot wonder Q without having at least some epistemic (...)
- The zetetic turn and the procedural turn.David Thorstad - forthcoming - Journal of Philosophy.Epistemology has taken a zetetic turn from the study of belief towards the study of inquiry. Several decades ago, theories of bounded rationality took a procedural turn from attitudes towards the processes of inquiry that produce them. What is the relationship between the zetetic and procedural turns? In this paper, I argue that we should treat the zetetic turn in epistemology as part of a broader procedural turn in the study of bounded rationality. I use this claim to motivate and (...)
- Norms of inquiry.David Thorstad - forthcoming - Philosophical Topics.Epistemologists have recently proposed a number of norms governing rational inquiry. My aim in this paper is to unify and explain recently proposed norms of inquiry by developing a general account of the conditions under which inquiries are rational, analogous to theories such as evidentialism and reliabilism for rational belief. I begin with a reason-responsiveness conception of rationality as responding correctly to possessed normative reasons. I extend this account with a series of claims about the normative reasons for inquiry that (...)
- Exploitative informing.David Thorstad - forthcoming - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science.Informing others about the world is often a helpful act. In this paper, I study agents who conduct experiments to gather information about the world, committing in advance to fully disclose the nature of the experiment together with all experimental findings. While this appears to be a benign activity, I characterize a type of exploitative informing that is possible even within this restricted setup. I show how exploitative informants use public experiments to predictably manipulate interlocutors’ beliefs and actions to their (...)
- (1 other version)The accuracy-coherence tradeoff in cognition.David Thorstad - forthcoming - British Journal for Philosophy of Science.I argue that bounded agents face a systematic accuracy-coherence tradeoff in cognition. Agents must choose whether to structure their cognition in ways likely to promote coherence or accuracy. I illustrate the accuracy-coherence tradeoff by showing how it arises out of at least two component tradeoffs: a coherence-complexity tradeoff between coherence and cognitive complexity, and a coherence-variety tradeoff between coherence and strategic variety. These tradeoffs give rise to an accuracy-coherence tradeoff because privileging coherence over complexity or strategic variety often leads to (...)
- General-Purpose Institutional Decision-Making Heuristics: The Case of Decision-Making under Deep Uncertainty.David Thorstad - forthcoming - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science.Recent work in judgment and decisionmaking has stressed that institutions, like individuals, often rely on decisionmaking heuristics. But most of the institutional decisionmaking heuristics studied to date are highly firm- and industry-specific. This contrasts to the individual case, in which many heuristics are general-purpose rules suitable for a wide range of decision problems. Are there also general-purpose heuristics for institutional decisionmaking? In this paper, I argue that a number of methods recently developed for decisionmaking under deep uncertainty have a good (...)
- Dogmatic Withholding: Confessions of a Serial Offender.Chris Tucker - forthcoming - In Verena Wagner & Zinke Alexandra (eds.), Suspension in Epistemology and Beyond. Routledge.This chapter provides an account of what dogmatism is, why the term matters, and how it applies to withholding judgment. Roughly, a person is dogmatic about P when a certain problematic personal investment—a superiority complex, broadly construed—biases their judgment concerning whether P. The term dogmatism and its cognates matter because of their social function. To accuse you of dogmatism is to signal how you are to be treated: your judgment or behavior needs to be “brought down to earth,” so that (...)$190.00 new (collection) View on Amazon.comRemove from this list Direct downloadExport citation Bookmark
- Beyond Evidence in Epistemology: Introduction.Marie Van Loon, Anne Meylan & Sebastian Schmidt - forthcoming - Philosophical Topics.This special issue arises from the observation that an exploration of the role of non-evidential considerations in epistemology through a broader lens is missing from the current landscape of philosophical research. The present collection of contributions fills this research gap by bringing together three central and much-discussed epistemological topics for which non-evidential considerations become relevant.
- Enquiry and the Value of Knowledge.Barnaby Walker - forthcoming - Philosophy.In this paper I challenge the orthodox view of the significance of Platonic value problems. According to this view, such problems are among the central questions of epistemology, and answering them is essential for justifying the status of epistemology as a major branch of philosophical enquiry. I challenge this view by identifying an assumption on which Platonic value problems are based – the value assumption – and considering how this assumption might be resisted. After articulating a line of thought that (...)
- Lysistrata's Lament: Interrogative Analogues of Testimonial Injustice.Dennis Whitcomb - forthcoming - In Aaron Creller & Jonathan Matheson (eds.), Inquiry: Philosophical Perspectives. Routledge.When a person commits a testimonial injustice, the unjust thing they do consists in their reaction to an assertion (theorists diverge on the details; paradigmatically the relevant unjust thing consists in prejudicially refraining from believing the assertion). Whatever reactions to questions are analogous to these reactions to assertions, those things are "interrogative injustices". I explore some models of those things and apply them to some non-ideal cases. One of the models appeals to mental states like curiosity and wonder, telling us (...)
- Evoked Questions and Inquiring Attitudes.Christopher Willard-Kyle, Jared Millson & Dennis Whitcomb - forthcoming - Philosophical Quarterly.Drawing inspiration from the notion of evocation employed in inferential erotetic logic, we defend an ‘evoked questions norm’ on inquiring attitudes. According to this norm, it is rational to have an inquiring attitude concerning a question only if that question is evoked by your background information. We offer two arguments for this norm. First, we develop an argument from convergence. Insights from several independent literatures (20th-century ordinary-language philosophy, inferential erotetic logic, inquisitive epistemic logic, and contemporary zetetic epistemology) all converge on (...)
- Asking expresses a desire to know.Peter van Elswyk - 2025 - Philosophical Quarterly 75 (1):254-267.A speaker’s use of a sentence does more than contribute a content to a conversation. It also expresses the speaker’s attitude. This essay is about which attitude or attitudes are expressed by using an interrogative sentence to ask a question. With reference to eight lines of data about how questions are circulated in conversation, it is argued that a desire to know the question’s answer(s) is expressed.
- Epistemic Consequentialism as a Metatheory of Inquiry.Frederik J. Andersen & Klemens Kappel - 2024 - Asian Journal of Philosophy 3 (50):1-16.The overall aim of this article is to reorient the contemporary debate about epistemic consequentialism. Thus far the debate has to a large extent focused on whether standard theories of epistemic justification are consequentialist in nature and therefore vulnerable to certain trade-off cases where accepting a false or unjustified belief leads to good epistemic outcomes. We claim that these trade-offs raise an important—yet somewhat neglected—issue about the epistemic demands on inquiry. We first distinguish between two different kinds of epistemic evaluation, (...)
- Do Your Own Research.Nathan Ballantyne, Jared B. Celniker & David Dunning - 2024 - Social Epistemology 38 (3):302-317.This article evaluates an emerging element in popular debate and inquiry: DYOR. (Haven’t heard of the acronym? Then Do Your Own Research.) The slogan is flexible and versatile. It is used frequently on social media platforms about topics from medical science to financial investing to conspiracy theories. Using conceptual and empirical resources drawn from philosophy and psychology, we examine key questions about the slogan’s operation in human cognition and epistemic culture.
- Inquiry for the Mistaken and Confused.Arianna Falbo - 2024 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research (3):962-985.Various philosophers have recently defended norms of inquiry which forbid inquiry into questions which lack true answers. I argue that these norms are overly restrictive, and that they fail to capture an important relationship between inquiry and our position as non-ideal epistemic agents. I defend a more flexible and forgiving norm: Epistemic Improvement. According to this norm, inquiry into a question is permissible only if it’s not rational for one to be sure that by inquiring one won’t improve epistemically upon (...)
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