studying & research
Below is a selection of resources for the philosophical study of questions.
Expand to read abstracts and find links to publications (where possible).
Abstract: One natural application of Linda Zagzebski’s exemplarist moral theory (EMT) is found in the context of moral and intellectual character education. Zagzebski discusses this application in her recent book, commenting that ‘exemplars can serve as a guide for moral training’ (p. 129) and endorsing ‘the learning of virtue by imitation’ (p. 129). This theme has been pursued compellingly by authors working at the intersection of virtue ethics and education, contributing to an emerging case for exemplarist-based approaches to character education. I focus on intellectual character education and draw attention to an interesting case in which exemplarism in the classroom may be seen to inhibit, rather than promote, the development of intellectually virtuous character. This is the case of virtuous inquisitiveness.
This paper presents an analysis of wh-complements in Montague Grammar. We will be concerned primarily with semantics, though some remarks on syntax are made in Section 4. Questions and wh-complements in Montague Grammar have been studied in Hamblin (1976), Bennett (1979), Karttunen (1977) and Hauser (1978) among others. These proposals will not be discussed explicitly, but some differences with Karttunen's analysis will be pointed out along the way.
Abstract: This review essay provides a critical discussion of Linda Zagzebski’s (2017) Exemplarist Moral Theory (EMT). We agree that EMT is a book of impressive scope that will be of interest to ethical theorists, as well as epistemologists, philosophers of language, and philosophers of religion. We argue that exemplarism faces a number of important challenges, firstly, in dealing with the fallibility of admiration, which plays a central role in the theoretical framework, and secondly, in serving as a practical guide for moral development. Despite this, we maintain that EMT points the way for significant future theoretical and empirical research into some of the most well-established questions in ethical theory.
I modify Grice’s theory of conversational implicature so as to accommodate acts of implicating propositions by asking questions, acts of implicating questions by asserting propositions, and acts of implicating questions by asking questions. I describe the relations between a declarative sentence’s semantic content (the proposition it semantically expresses), on the one hand, and the propositions that a speaker locutes, asserts, and implicates by uttering that sentence, on the other. I discuss analogous relations between an interrogative sentence’s semantic content (the question it semantically expresses), and the questions that a speaker locutes, asks, and implicates by uttering that sentence.
Philosophy in Schools Training – Stage 1 of the Philosophy Foundation’s philosophy in schools training.
‘Timelining Session’ – An interactive philosophy workshop for undergraduates, designed and run for Innovative Learning Week at the University of Edinburgh.
Conversation is one of the main contexts in which we are conducting inquiries. Yet, little attention has been paid so far in pragmatics or epistemology to the process of inquiry in conversation. In this paper, we propose to trigger such an investigation through the development of a formal modelling based on inquisitive pragmatics – a framework offering a semantic representation of questions and answers, along with an analysis of the pragmatic principles that govern questioning and answering moves in conversations geared towards information exchange. Our starting observation is that an interrogative inquiry in a conversation takes the form of a finite sequence of questioning and answering steps, and appears thereby as an inherently temporal process. The central notion of interrogative protocol introduced in this paper precisely aims to capture the temporal dimension of inquiry. Interrogative protocols are defined as branching-time tree structures encoding all the possible sequences of questioning and answering steps - i.e., all the possible inquiry paths - that can subsequently occur in a starting conversational situation in accordance with the principles of inquisitive pragmatics. They provide us with a formal environment to define and investigate the epistemological notions of interrogative inquiry and interrogative consequence in conversational contexts. One of the main interests of the resulting framework is to enable a formal investigation of central epistemological issues relative to interrogative inquiry under the form of computational problems. We frame three key inquiry problems along this line, and we then propose an algorithmic procedure for solving them in the restricted case where the inquirer has at her disposal a finite number of questions in her inquiry. We conclude by relating our approach to Wiśniewskie Erotetic Search Scenarios and Hintikka's Interrogative Model of Inquiry.
‘The Value of Questions: Third Time Lucky’, Edinburgh Epistemology Workshop, University of Edinburgh, UK.
‘Questions of Epistemic Value’, Understanding Value, University of Sheffield, UK.
‘The Virtue of Inquiring’, Aims of Inquiry and Cognition workshop, University of Edinburgh, UK.
‘Questions of Epistemic Value’, Work-In-Progress Seminar, University of Edinburgh, UK.
‘The Value of Questions: Revisited’, Edinburgh Epistemology workshop, University of Edinburgh, UK.
What was the last question that you asked. Take a moment to recall. Perhaps it was in conversation with a friend or colleague. Perhaps to a stranger in a café or a shop. Maybe you conducted a search in Google or wondered to yourself which article in The Philosophers’ Magazine to read next. Can you recall precisely what you asked, who you asked, or how you asked it. Read more…
The purpose of this special issue is to bring together a collection of articles that present the core elements of these different approaches in an accessible way, and establish new connections between the various perspectives.
I favor a version of intellectualism about knowing how. According to my version, which I call ‘The Answer Theory’, an agent knows how to G if and only if she knows a proposition that answers the question of how to G. But judgments about whether a proposition answers the question of how to G vary from context to context. (This contextual variation in judgments motivates semantic views that say that knows-how-to ascriptions are context sensitive, but they are also consistent with the invariantist semantic theory that I prefer.) Many objections to intellectualism, including Schiffer's, Koethe's, and Bengson and Moffett's objections to Stanley and Williamson's version of intellectualism, exploit this contextual variation in judgments. Once we recognize the role of contextual variation in these objections, it is easy to formulate effective replies to them and to analogous objections to the answer theory.
What was the last question that you asked. Take a moment to recall. Perhaps it was in conversation with a friend or colleague. Perhaps to a stranger in a café or a shop. Maybe you conducted a search in Google or wondered to yourself which article in The Philosophers’ Magazine to read next. Can you recall precisely what you asked, who you asked, or how you asked it. Read more…
Recently I was handed a small black card by a stranger in the street. It read: ‘SIMPLE QUESTION! Where will YOU spend eternity?’ The card also displayed a website and a QR code, presumably for those wishing to seek out an answer. I haven’t visited the website yet but the card did get me thinking. Read more…
‘The Value of Questions’, Edinburgh Epistemology workshop, University of Edinburgh, UK.
Recently I was handed a small black card by a stranger in the street. It read: ‘SIMPLE QUESTION! Where will YOU spend eternity?’ The card also displayed a website and a QR code, presumably for those wishing to seek out an answer. I haven’t visited the website yet but the card did get me thinking. Read more…
Most current work in epistemology deals with the evaluation and justification of information already acquired. In this book, Jaakko Hintikka instead discusses the more important problem of how knowledge is acquired in the first place. His model of information-seeking is the old Socratic method of questioning, which has been generalized and brought up-to-date through the logical theory of questions and answers that he has developed. Hintikka also argues that philosophers' quest for a definition of knowledge is ill-conceived and that the entire notion of knowledge should be replaced by the concept of information. He offers an analysis of the different meanings of the concept of information and of their interrelations. The result is a new and illuminating approach to the field of epistemology.
Different people know different things and are ignorant about different things. For instance, much that inhabitants of Massachusetts know and don't know is different from what inhabitants of Provence know and don't know, and much of what physicists know and don't know is different from what linguists know and don't know. These differences are to a large extent traceable to differences in circumstances and opportunities. But some are traceable to deliberate choices: people can and do choose to find out certain things and to remain ignorant about others. And they don't all make the same choices, even when the same choices are available to them. In this paper, I want to explore some aspects of these choices, and of the constraints that limit them.
In this paper I shall briefly survey one approach to the dynamics of scientific inquiry which has interesting connections in several different directions but whose structure-call it 'logic' if you want-is only now beginning to be investigated by logicians and epistemologists. The basic idea of this approach goes back all the way to Kant and even to Francis Bacon, who proposed to consider the process of science as a series of questions put to nature. In this approach, science is considered as a process of information-gathering and problem-solving through questioning. It is not my claim that other approaches are impossible or even inferior. It nevertheless seems to me that this is the direction in which we can make the next few breakthroughs in understanding how sciences actually progress in the sense of understanding the intrinsic structure of the dynamics of science. The logic of scientific investigation, if there is such a thing, is on this model the logic of questions, answers, and question-answer sequences. Hence most of this paper is in fact devoted to a survey of the fundamentals of a theory of questions and answers.
In this article I shall aim at showing that there exists beneath the surface of many why-questions about human behaviour a nest of deterministic assumptions which can preclude their ever being truly answered. A symptom of the presence of these underlying assumptions can be observed in an explanation-seeking dialogue in which the questioner persistently tries to discover 'why' a certain human behaviour occurred. He repeats his why-question until he gets the type of answer he wants, but in the process he effectively reasons in a circle. If the repeated questioning with its implied circular reasoning becomes chronic, then the questioner will beg the question with regards to the answer he desires and consequently run the risk of missing the truth.
Abstract: In this paper, I outline the nature of epistemic rights and epistemic rights violations (Sections I-III) and demonstrate the widespread perpetration of such violations in pre-Brexit media coverage (Section IV). This provides a case study for the investigation of epistemic rights violations across national and international media; a topic of central concern for contemporary epistemology (Section V).
Abstract: My aim, in this chapter, is to present a characterisation of the intellectual virtue of curiosity that offers some insight into educating for the virtue, and provides theoretically grounded motivations for doing so. I begin by outlining a characterisation of curiosity as an intellectual virtue. I then examine three key features of this characterisation relevant to the task of educating for curiosity as an intellectual virtue. Finally, I present, what I take to be two of the most compelling reasons to educate for the intellectual virtue of curiosity.
Abstract: My aim, in this chapter, is to present a characterisation of the intellectual virtue of curiosity that offers some insight into educating for the virtue, and provides theoretically grounded motivations for doing so. I begin by outlining a characterisation of curiosity as an intellectual virtue. I then examine three key features of this characterisation relevant to the task of educating for curiosity as an intellectual virtue. Finally, I present, what I take to be two of the most compelling reasons to educate for the intellectual virtue of curiosity.
This chapter focuses on interrogative logic as a general theory of reasoning. The interrogative method is the theory of reasoning, logical along with the empirical, comprising deductive logic as a special case. The interrogative approach can be argued to be a general theory of reasoning. There are two kinds of moves, logical inference moves and interrogative moves. The logical inference moves are simply a variant of the tableau building rules of the usual tableau method. For simplicity, the chapter assumes that all the formulas the chapter deals with are in the negation normal form, that is, that all negation signs precede immediately atomic formulas or identities, unless otherwise indicated. The basic concepts of the tableau method, such as column, closure and subtableau, are used as usual. In order to obtain a more concise notation the chapter formulates the tableau building rules as inverses of the corresponding Genzen-style (sequent) rules.
In The Scientific Image B. C. van Fraassen argues that a theory of explanation ought to take the form of a theory of why-questions~ and a theory of this form is what he provides. Van Fraassen's account of explanation is good, as far as it goes. In particular, van Fraassen's theory of why-questions adds considerable illumination to the problem of alternative explanations in psychodynamics. But van Fraassen's theory is incomplete because it ignores those .classes of explanations that are answers not to why-questions but to how-questions. In this article I provide a unified theory of explanatory questions that comprehends both how-questions and why-questions, and I show that a question-theoretic approach to explanation can be defended independently of van Fraassen's programme of Constructive Empiricism.
There are many ways of understanding the nature of philosophical questions. One may consider their morphology, semantics, relevance, or scope. This article introduces a different approach, based on the kind of informational resources required to answer them. The result is a definition of philosophical questions as questions whose answers are in principle open to informed, rational, and honest disagreement, ultimate but not absolute, closed under further questioning, possibly constrained by empirical and logico-mathematical resources, but requiring noetic resources to be answered. The article concludes with a discussion of some of the consequences of this definition for a conception of philosophy as the study (or “science”) of open questions, which uses conceptual design to analyse and answer them.
In Jaakko Hintikka's interrogative model of inquiry, the strategic principles governing empirical inquiry (interrogatively construed) turn out to be closely related to those governing deductive reasoning. Hence it is important to study the precise analogies which obtain between deductive logic and interrogative inquiry. The basic concept of the interrogative model is the relation of model consequence. It is said to obtain iff C can be derived from T by means of an interrogative process in the model M (in the logicians' sense of model). We prove here a counterpart of Craig's interpolation theorem for the concept of model consequence. The interrogative analogue to definability is a logical generalization of methodologists' concept of identifiability. For this concept, we prove an analogue to Beth's theorem. Some further philosophical consequences of these results are mentioned. For instance, identifiability is a good rational reconstruction of the idea of observability (measurability).
Abstract: This paper offers characterisations of the intellectual virtues of curiosity and inquisitiveness and discusses the distinction between them. I argue that curiosity and inquisitiveness should not be regarded as synonymous. Specifically, virtuous inquisitiveness emerges as a restricted form of virtuous curiosity: it is virtuous curiosity manifested as good questioning. This has implications, within applied virtue epistemology, for the ways in which we educate for these closely related, but distinct intellectual virtues.
Abstract: In this paper, I present a central line of argument in support of educating for good questioning, namely, that it plays an important role in the formation of an individual’s intellectual character and can thereby serve as a valuable pedagogical tool for intellectual character education. I argue that good questioning plays two important roles in the cultivation of intellectual character: good questioning 1) stimulates intellectually virtuous inquiry and 2) contributes to the development of several of the individual intellectual virtues. Insofar as the cultivation of intellectually virtuous character is a desirable educational objective, we should educate for good questioning.
Call the norms of inquiry zetetic norms. How are zetetic norms related to epistemic norms? At first glance, they seem quite closely connected. Aren't epistemic norms norms that bind inquirers qua inquirers? And isn't epistemology the place to look for a normative theory of inquiry? While much of this thought seems right, this paper argues that the relationship between the epistemic and the zetetic is not as harmonious as one might have thought and liked. In particular, this paper argues that some familiar contemporary epistemic norms are in tension with, and even in conflict with, central zetetic norms.
Abstract: In this paper, I present a central line of argument in support of educating for good questioning, namely, that it plays an important role in the formation of an individual’s intellectual character and can thereby serve as a valuable pedagogical tool for intellectual character education. I argue that good questioning plays two important roles in the cultivation of intellectual character: good questioning 1) stimulates intellectually virtuous inquiry and 2) contributes to the development of several of the individual intellectual virtues. Insofar as the cultivation of intellectually virtuous character is a desirable educational objective, we should educate for good questioning.
Abstract: The landscape of contemporary epistemology has significantly diversified in the past thirty years, shaped in large part by two complementary movements; virtue and social epistemology. This diversification provides an apt theoretical context for the epistemology of education. No longer concerned exclusively with the formal analysis of knowledge, epistemologists have turned their attention towards individuals as knowers, and the social contexts in which epistemic goods such as knowledge and understanding are acquired and exchanged. As such the concerns of epistemology have once again aligned with questions lying at the heart of the philosophy of education regarding the nature, aims and practice of education. Employing the conceptual tools and frameworks of the contemporary field, these questions are addressed by both epistemologists and education theorists in the emerging epistemology of education literature.
In this paper I look at belief and degrees of belief through the lens of inquiry. I argue that belief and degrees of belief play different roles in inquiry. In particular I argue that belief is a “settling” attitude in a way that degrees of belief are not. Along the way I say more about what inquiring amounts to, argue for a central norm of inquiry connecting inquiry and belief and say more about just what it means to have an inquiry or question settled.
Abstract: Inquisitiveness is a paradigm example of an intellectual virtue. Despite some extensive work on the characterisation of the intellectual virtues, however, (e.g. Roberts and Wood, 2007; Baehr 2011) no detailed treatment of the virtue of inquisitiveness has been forthcoming in the recent literature. This paper offers a characterisation of virtuous inquisitiveness considered within the framework of educating for intellectual virtue. It presents the case in support of educating for inquisitiveness arguing that it is a primary intellectual virtue to educate for.
Abstract: Inquisitiveness is a paradigm example of an intellectual virtue. Despite some extensive work on the characterisation of the intellectual virtues, however, (e.g. Roberts and Wood, 2007; Baehr 2011) no detailed treatment of the virtue of inquisitiveness has been forthcoming in the recent literature. This paper offers a characterisation of virtuous inquisitiveness considered within the framework of educating for intellectual virtue. It presents the case in support of educating for inquisitiveness arguing that it is a primary intellectual virtue to educate for.
In this paper, I want to explore at least some of what makes incessant checking epistemically problematic.2 The arguments to come have broader epistemic implications as well. In what follows I’ll discuss suspension of judgment, epistemic justification, the permissivism/uniqueness debate, and the norms of inquiry in general. On this last item: part of what will emerge in the discussion is that some of the cases in which checking again is epistemically problematic are cases in which subjects stand to gain in evidence or epistemic standing by performing that check. In these cases, even though further inquiry could improve subjects’ epistemic situations, I’m going to argue that there are serious problems – epistemic ones – with inquiring further.
Abstract: This paper offers an in-depth examination of the intellectual virtue of inquisitiveness. A characterisation of inquisitiveness is developed in Part I in which the inquisitive person is identified as one who is characteristically motivated to engage sincerely in good questioning. Part II examines the place of inquisitiveness among the virtues. Inquisitiveness is seen to bear a defining relationship to the process of inquiry as a fundamentally motivating intellectual virtue. On this basis, it is argued that inquisitiveness plays a distinctively valuable role in the intellectually virtuous life, placing it at the heart of autonomous virtue epistemology.
In this paper I want to argue that there is a class of attitudes that havequestions as contents. These attitudes are a class of inquiry-related states andprocesses (I’ll call them all ‘attitudes’ here). The ones that I will focus on inthis discussion are: inquiry, investigation, wondering, curiosity and suspensionof judgment or agnosticism.1I do not intend that list as an exhaustive listof question-directed attitudes, in fact I think that there are surely more, but theattitudes on that list will be the focus of this discussion. In virtue of their relationsto questions, I will call these focal attitudes,Interrogative Attitudes (IAs).Fornow then, when I talk about IAs I mean to be talking about the attitudes on thelist, but the discussion here will ultimately generalize to other attitudes as well.
This paper has a twofold purpose. First, it will attempt to unite Jaakko Hintikka's recent extension of his logic of questions and answers to an interrogative model of scientific inquiry with Larry Laudan's conception of science as a problem-solving or question-answering activity. This is not as straightforward a task as it might at first seem, since the two erotetic conceptualizations appear to be diametrically opposed. The result might be called the Hintikka-Laudan interrogative interpretation of scientific inquiry. This done, I will then provide a concrete historical example of a scientific research project that seems to conform to Hintikka's model, as well as illustrate some of the model's more surprising properties. This second task is important since Hintikka presents his logic as being, in one straightforward sense, a logic of discovery. This paper then may be seen as an attempt to place Hintikka's so far largely formal work in the logic of science into the broader context of recent philosophy of science, while at the same time providing it with much needed historical evidence.
Hume concludes Book II of his Treatise of Human Nature with a section on the passion of curiosity, ‘that love of truth, which was the first source of all our enquiries’. At first sight, this characterization of curiosity – as the motivating factor in that specifically human activity that is the pursuit of knowledge – may seem unoriginal. However, when Hume speaks of the ‘source of all our enquiries’, he is referring both to the universal human pursuit of knowledge and to his own philosophical project. Seen in this light, his discussion of curiosity takes on a new significance, as it weaves together elements of his systematic account of human nature – notably, his theory of cognition and motivation – with observations about the pursuit of philosophy as well as the progress of the arts and sciences. In the present paper, I offer a reconstruction of Hume’s view on curiosity and its role in cognition and inquiry.
We examine the notion of inquiry and argue that philosophic inquiry is a transcendental activity. Activities, viewed as conforming to intelligible canons, applying to appropriate contexts, and directed to specifiable ends, are contrasted with their empirical descriptions. Inquiry, characterized as an internalized, continuous activity directed to an intrinsic end, and fundamentally presupposed by other activities, is considered at the levels of (1) science, (2) philosophy and (3) transcendental philosophy. We argue that (2) is a transcendental activity which determines nonempirical concepts and is presupposed by (1). Alternative philosophic frameworks are grounded on hypothetical canons conceived by intelligence itself, which imply interpretations of objectivity and universality claiming validity for the community of inquirers, but they can always be rejected. We consider the possibility of categorical canons operating as second-order rules necessarily presupposed for the formulation of alternative philosophic frameworks, and (3) would be the activity of identifying, justifying and applying such transcendental canons of inquiry in general. Finally, we suggest that the only possible 'justification' of such categorical canons would be a kind of ontological proof. Thus, a given philosophic approach reflects the transcendental activity of determining non-empirical concepts through the implementation of its fundamental regulative norms; but transcendental philosophy would determine the concept of philosophy itself through implementation of the categorical canons of inquiry in the construction of philosophic systems.
From the patristic period to the beginning of the seventeenth century curiosity was regarded as an intellectual vice. Curious individuals were considered to be proud and "puffed up," and the objects of their investigations were deemed illicit, dispute engendering, unknowable, or useless. Seventeenth-century projects for the advancement of learning had to distance themselves from curiosity and its dubious fruits or, alternatively, enhance the moral status of the curious sensibility. Francis Bacon's proposals for the instauration of knowledge were an integral part of a process by which curiosity underwent a remarkable transformation from vice to virtue over the course of the seventeenth century. The changing fortunes of this human propensity highlight the morally charged nature of early modern debates over the status of natural philosophy and the particular virtues required of its practitioners. The rehabilitation of curiosity was a crucial element in the objectification of scientific knowledge and led to a gradual shift of focus away from the moral qualities of investigators and the propriety of particular objects of knowledge to specific procedures and methods.
The use of the notion of a range of attention as a factor in an interrogative inquiry is seen to be both natural and apt to bring out an important feature of interrogative processes in general. One first task is thus to incorporate the notion of tacit knowledge in the interrogative model. The problem of knowledge representation arises in many different ways. Philosophers know it best as a problem concerning the nature of knowledge, especially its logic and semantics. It is also a problem in computer science, especially perhaps in database theory. What is crucial is that the optimal way of activating information depends on what is known about the structure and contents of the database and not just on the hardware where it is stored. In a sense the crucial question knows what information there is in a given database, that is, what the database “knows.”
Most current work in epistemology deals with the evaluation and justification of information already acquired. In this book, Jaakko Hintikka instead discusses the more important problem of how knowledge is acquired in the first place. His model of information-seeking is the old Socratic method of questioning, which has been generalized and brought up-to-date through the logical theory of questions and answers that he has developed. Hintikka also argues that philosophers' quest for a definition of knowledge is ill-conceived and that the entire notion of knowledge should be replaced by the concept of information. He offers an analysis of the different meanings of the concept of information and of their interrelations. The result is a new and illuminating approach to the field of epistemology.
In recent years, I have developed a general approach to inquiry in which knowledge-seeking is modelled by means of question-answer sequences. In its non probabilistic versions, this approach has led to several interesting new insights. In this paper, I shall briefly indicate how this approach, which can be codified in what I have called the interrogative model of inquiry, can be extended so as to include probabilistic elements and so as to elucidate different probability based aspects of the scientific process.
Questions are relevant to epistemology because they formulate cognitive goals, they are used to elicit information, they are used in Socratic reflection and knowledge sentences often have indirect question complements. The paper explores what capacities we must possess if we are to understand questions and identify and evaluate potential answers to them. The later sections explore different ways in which these matters depend upon pragmatic and other contextual considerations.
Philosophers such as Richard Rorty and Donald Davidson have argued that it is a consequence of accepting fallibilism that truth cannot be our aim in inquiry. The paper examines these arguments, compares them with some apparently similar arguments employed by philosophers in the pragmatist tradition, and uses some pragmatist ideas to show how the arguments can be defused.
Pragmatists challenge a sharp separation of issues of theoretical and practical rationality. This can encourage a sort of anti-realism: our classifications and theories are shaped by our interests and practical concerns. However, it need not do this. A more fundamental theme is that cognition is itself an activity, the attempt to solve problems and discover truths effectively and responsibly. Evidence has to be collected, experiments have to be devised and carried out, dialogues must be engaged in with fellow inquirers, decisions must be made about when we have scrutinized our opinions enough to trust our results. Even if our goals are “purely cognitive,” the attempt to achieve them through inquiry and deliberation is an activity. The normative standards that guide its conduct, like those governing any activity, will include standards of practical rationality. Indeed, we might suggest that a belief is justified so long as it is the product of responsible, well-executed inquiry.
When we say on a particular occasion that so-and-so is curious about suchand-such, we do not thereby wish to attribute to them a character trait, a drive, or an instinct, nor do we wish to assert that they have behaved in a certain way or are disposed to do so.
The question of how curiosity and knowledge are related brings about a host of interesting philosophical issues, the most important of which relates to what curiosity is (I am inclined to think that curiosity based knowledge has more value than what might be called “accidental” knowledge. If so this should provide good reason for virtue epistemologists to address philosophical questions on curiosity). After all the classical “definition” equates curiosity with a desire to know. There is then the important comparative logical question: If knowledge is a propositional attitude, is curiosity so too? There are also issues concerning how curiosity relates not to knowledge, but rather its opposite, namely ignorance. What are the mental mechanisms we employ which allow us to become aware of our ignorance on a particular issue, and how does this motivate curiosity? Is awareness of ignorance a precondition for curiosity? I have dealt with these and other related issues in detail in recent work (See Inan, The philosophy of curiosity, Routledge, New York/London, 2012). Based on some of the ideas developed there, I now wish to elaborate on topics which should be relevant not just to virtue epistemology, but to epistemology in general, and especially to formal epistemology. These involve how curiosity relates to some of our basic epistemic attitudes that come short of knowledge. Among them two stand out as being the most relevant, that is belief and acquaintance. How does curiosity relate to the holding of a belief that is uncertain and how does it relate to having partial acquaintance with an object?
In this book, Ilhan Inan questions the classical definition of curiosity as a desire to know. Working in an area where epistemology and philosophy of language overlap, Inan forges a link between our ability to become aware of our ignorance and our linguistic aptitude to construct terms referring to things unknown.
The book introduces the notion of inostensible reference (or reference to the unknown). Ilhan connects this notion to related concepts in philosophy of language: knowledge by acquaintance and knowledge by description; the referential and the attributive uses of definite descriptions; the de re/de dicto distinction; and Kripke’s distinction between rigid and accidental designators.
Continuing with a discussion of the conditions for curiosity and its satisfaction, Inan argues that the learning process—starting in curiosity and ending in knowledge—is always an effort to transform our inostensible terms into ostensible ones. A contextual account is adopted for the satisfaction of curiosity. It then discusses the conditions of successful reference to the object of curiosity and its presuppositions. The book concludes with a discussion on the limits of curiosity and its satisfaction.
Curiosity has taken a winding path through intellectual history, from Early Christian vice to Enlightenment virtue and beyond. This original volume sees contemporary philosophers and psychologists examining the nature and value of curiosity, shedding light on some of its most interesting and contentious features. As the first of its kind, this volume provides an in-depth and multifaceted examination of the epistemological, psychological, moral, and educational dimensions of curiosity.
Do teachers’ questions help students learn the curriculum? Do they promote the development of thinking skills? Are some questioning practices more effective than others? Research prior to 1970 provided few answers to these important questions: since then, however, many relevant investigations have been carried out.
We advance the understanding of the philosophy and psychology of curiosity by operationalizing and constructing an empirical measure of Nietzsche’s conception of inquisitive curiosity, expressed by the German term Wissbegier, (“thirst for knowledge” or “need/impetus to know”) and Neugier (“curiosity” or “inquisitiveness”). First, we show that existing empirical measures of curiosity do not tap the construct of inquisitive curiosity, though they may tap related constructs such as idle curiosity and phenomenological curiosity. Next, we map the concept of inquisitive curiosity and connect it to related concepts, such as open-mindedness and intellectual humility. The bulk of the paper reports four studies: an Anglophone exploratory factor analysis, an Anglophone confirmatory factor analysis, an informant study, and a Germanophone exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis.
This is a short response piece to Moritz Cordes' 'How to arrive at Questions'. In the abstract to his paper, Cordes notes that his title is ambiguous across (at least) two readings, one regarding the correct formal syntax for questions, the other regarding the correct regulatory parameters for question-asking in a formal language. In adopting that same title for this response, I aim to offer an alternative and complementary reflection, from an explicitly informal perspective. In particular, I focus on the more salient second reading, and provide a sketch of what I take to be the correct regulatory parameters, or norms, for question-asking in informal language. In other words, I provide a sketch of the norms that guide question-asking in everyday life. I then offer some thoughts on what this means for good and virtuous questioning.
It is a truism for educators that questions play an important role in teaching. Aschner (1961), for example, called the teacher "a professional question maker" and claimed that the asking of questions is "one of the basic ways by which the teacher stimulates student thinking and learning." Also, asking questions is one of the 10 major dimensions for studying teachers' behavior in the widely used System for Interaction Analysis (Flanders, 1970).
Questions are, in many respects, the hallmarks of the philosopher's trade. They are passed down from one generation to the next and yet, throughout history, philosophers have had relatively little to say about questions. In particular, few have asked or tried to answer the question ‘what is a question'. I call this the ‘Question Question’ and I offer an answer to it in this paper, furnishing philosophical analysis with the results of a large online survey, which has been running for more than a decade.
In the volume under review Macmillan and Garrison have brought together, refined, and supplemented their ideas for an erotetic theory of teaching. The result is one of the more important contributions in recent years to the literature on teaching theory.
How does the idea that knowledge is power play out in our schools and universities. How does it feature in our education systems and how does it impact upon the intellectual characters of students. Specifically, how does the pervasiveness of this idea in our schools and classrooms affect students’ willingness and ability to be intellectually humble. In this paper, I suggest that this idea presents itself in contemporary classrooms as a barrier to the development and exercise of intellectual humility. Simply put, when we equate knowledge with power, we make it harder to be intellectually humble. In its most prevalent manifestation, this barrier arises in the form of answer-oriented education. I spend the majority of the paper outlining the nature and impact of answer-oriented education and, towards the end, suggest one way to remove this barrier by shifting from answer-oriented to question-oriented education. The latter, I argue, warrants further attention in philosophical and educational research.
Questioning is ubiquitous and habitual in our daily lives. We ask questions all the time, often without reflecting consciously on the practice. Sometimes it goes well, sometimes it doesn't and often we don’t notice the difference. Questions are also a familiar feature of public discourse and here the difference between good and bad questioning can have important and sometimes damaging effects: a leading question that influences the results of a referendum, a loaded question that forces a prejudicial response in public debate, the aggressive or insensitive questioning of journalists hungry for a story.
In this paper I investigate what makes questioning bad (Section I) then offer a taxonomy of bad questioning practices (Section II). Drawing on examples of questioning in contemporary politics, I go on to discuss the nature and impact of bad questioning in the public sphere (Section III). I argue that bad questioning is an intellectual failing often expressed in intellectual vices such as negligence, closed-mindedness and arrogance (Section IV). As such, bad questioning in the public sphere degrades the professional character of, for example, journalists and politicians and undermines the wider role that they play in our epistemic communities. I conclude that greater attention should be paid to questioning practices in public and political forums in order to check and maintain the epistemic and characterological integrity of key social institutions (Section V).
Abstract: In this paper I argue that we should rethink the dominant answer-oriented education model and educate for good questioning. I align the case in support of educating for good questioning with the democratic education movement, drawing additional support from the distinct but complementary argument for skills-based education. I present an account of the skill of good questioning and examine three distinct contributions that this skill makes to the successful functioning of democratic society, arguing that good questioning facilitates 1) understanding, 2) participation, and 3) decision-making. Good questioning is thereby conducive to both individual learning and societal cohesion and is a key component of intellectual character, without which learning is in danger of becoming passive and compliant. Good questioning serves the aims of democratic education and, correspondingly, of democracy itself. We should educate for good questioning in democratic society.
Abstract: One natural application of Linda Zagzebski’s exemplarist moral theory (EMT) is found in the context of moral and intellectual character education. Zagzebski discusses this application in her recent book, commenting that ‘exemplars can serve as a guide for moral training’ (p. 129) and endorsing ‘the learning of virtue by imitation’ (p. 129). This theme has been pursued compellingly by authors working at the intersection of virtue ethics and education, contributing to an emerging case for exemplarist-based approaches to character education. I focus on intellectual character education and draw attention to an interesting case in which exemplarism in the classroom may be seen to inhibit, rather than promote, the development of intellectually virtuous character. This is the case of virtuous inquisitiveness.
What was the last question that you asked. Take a moment to recall. Perhaps it was in conversation with a friend or colleague. Perhaps to a stranger in a café or a shop. Maybe you conducted a search in Google or wondered to yourself which article in The Philosophers’ Magazine to read next. Can you recall precisely what you asked, who you asked, or how you asked it. Read more…
Recently I was handed a small black card by a stranger in the street. It read: ‘SIMPLE QUESTION! Where will YOU spend eternity?’ The card also displayed a website and a QR code, presumably for those wishing to seek out an answer. I haven’t visited the website yet but the card did get me thinking. Read more…
This paper explores the relation between interrogative, a category of grammatical form, and question, a category of meaning. Interrogative contrasts with declarative, imperative, etc., in the system of clause type (not sentence type); a question defines a set of answers. Two kinds of interrogative are distinguished, closed and open, though in some languages they may be distinct primary classes. Three kinds of question are distinguished according to the way the set of answers in defined: polar, alternative and variable questions; another dimension distinguishes information from direction questions. Mismatches between interrogatives and questions are found only in the areas of coordination, parentheticals, echoes and questions signalled only prosodically. Mismatches between interrogative phrases and questioned elements are also investigated.
Abstract: My aim, in this chapter, is to present a characterisation of the intellectual virtue of curiosity that offers some insight into educating for the virtue, and provides theoretically grounded motivations for doing so. I begin by outlining a characterisation of curiosity as an intellectual virtue. I then examine three key features of this characterisation relevant to the task of educating for curiosity as an intellectual virtue. Finally, I present, what I take to be two of the most compelling reasons to educate for the intellectual virtue of curiosity.
Abstract: This paper offers characterisations of the intellectual virtues of curiosity and inquisitiveness and discusses the distinction between them. I argue that curiosity and inquisitiveness should not be regarded as synonymous. Specifically, virtuous inquisitiveness emerges as a restricted form of virtuous curiosity: it is virtuous curiosity manifested as good questioning. This has implications, within applied virtue epistemology, for the ways in which we educate for these closely related, but distinct intellectual virtues.
Abstract: In this paper, I present a central line of argument in support of educating for good questioning, namely, that it plays an important role in the formation of an individual’s intellectual character and can thereby serve as a valuable pedagogical tool for intellectual character education. I argue that good questioning plays two important roles in the cultivation of intellectual character: good questioning 1) stimulates intellectually virtuous inquiry and 2) contributes to the development of several of the individual intellectual virtues. Insofar as the cultivation of intellectually virtuous character is a desirable educational objective, we should educate for good questioning.
Abstract: Inquisitiveness is a paradigm example of an intellectual virtue. Despite some extensive work on the characterisation of the intellectual virtues, however, (e.g. Roberts and Wood, 2007; Baehr 2011) no detailed treatment of the virtue of inquisitiveness has been forthcoming in the recent literature. This paper offers a characterisation of virtuous inquisitiveness considered within the framework of educating for intellectual virtue. It presents the case in support of educating for inquisitiveness arguing that it is a primary intellectual virtue to educate for.
Abstract: This paper offers an in-depth examination of the intellectual virtue of inquisitiveness. A characterisation of inquisitiveness is developed in Part I in which the inquisitive person is identified as one who is characteristically motivated to engage sincerely in good questioning. Part II examines the place of inquisitiveness among the virtues. Inquisitiveness is seen to bear a defining relationship to the process of inquiry as a fundamentally motivating intellectual virtue. On this basis, it is argued that inquisitiveness plays a distinctively valuable role in the intellectually virtuous life, placing it at the heart of autonomous virtue epistemology.