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).
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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.
This article discusses pragmatic aspects of our interpretation of intensional constructions like questions and prepositional attitude reports. In the first part, it argues that our evaluation of these constructions may vary relative to the identification methods operative in the context of use. This insight is then given a precise formalization in a possible world semantics. In the second part, an account of actual evaluations of questions and attitudes is proposed in the framework of bi-directional optimality theory. Pragmatic meaning selections are explained as the result of specific rankings of potentially conflicting generation and interpretation constraints.
It has been argued with some justice by commentators from Walter Kaufmann to Thomas Hurka that Nietzsche’s positive ethical position is best understood as a variety of virtue theory – in particular, as a brand of perfectionism. For Nietzsche, value flows from character. Less attention has been paid, however, to the details of the virtues he identifies for himself and his type. This neglect, along with Nietzsche’s frequent irony and non-standard usage, has obscured the fact that almost all the virtues he praises are intellectual rather than moral. The vices he most despises include dogmatism, intellectual partisanship, faith, boredom, the desire for certainty and pity. The virtues he most appreciates include curiosity, honesty, scepticism, creativity, the historical sense, intellectual courage and intellectual fastidiousness. These tables of values place Nietzsche squarely among so-called responsibilist virtue epistemologists, such as Lorraine Code and Linda Zagzebski, who emphasize that knowledge is infused with desire and affect. I argue that curiosity construed as the specification of the will to power in the domain of epistemology is the cardinal Nietzschean virtue, and that the others – especially intellectual courage and honesty – are presupposed by curiosity. Thus, Nietzsche turns out to accept his own peculiar brand of the thesis of the unity of virtue.
What is a Question and why does it matter. Royal Institute of Philosophy Public Lecture Series. Scheduled for 28 Feb 2020.
One basis for classifying questions is in terms of the intentions of their speakers ( Ch. Fillmore, On Grammatical Constructions, 1986 ms). At the outset of a question, contextual and/or pragmatic information is present in the speaker's mind. The aim of the paper is first to examine four categories of questions of interrogative structure and their function in semantic and/or pragmatic level. I will then turn to their use in real discourse, utiItzing data from three types of oral corpus of English. It is observed that not only the different types of questions are characterized by different functions, but the use of the different modes of questioning indicate the relationship that exists between the questioner and the respondent (intimacy, social distance , authority). I shall therefore concentrate on the relationship between the various functions questions perform and the roles of the speakers involved in the question act.
In a series of recent papers, Jane Friedman has argued that attitudes like wondering, inquiring, and suspending judgement are question-directed and have the function of moving someone from a position of ignorance to one of knowledge. Call such attitudes interrogative attitudes (IAs). Friedman insists that all IAs are governed by the following Ignorance Norm: Necessarily, if one knows Q at t, then one ought not have an IA towards Q at t. However, I argue that key premises in Friedman’s argument actually point towards an opposing conclusion; namely, that (i) IAs are not governed by the Ignorance Norm, and (ii) IAs have functions other than moving someone from a position of ignorance to one of knowledge. I conclude that the Ignorance Norm should be rejected.
'What is a Question', Philosophy Club, St Paul’s School
'Questions and P4C', Scottish Learning Festival, Glasgow
'Epistemic Rights and Why We Need Them', Edinburgh Legal Theory Group, University of Edinburgh
'The Social Virtue of Questioning', Civic Virtues Conference, University of Nottingham (Keynote)
'Epistemic Rights and Why We Need Them', Philosophy Speaker Series, Queen’s University Belfast
'Vices of Questioning in Public Discourse', Epistemic Vices Conference, University of Liverpool (Keynote)
‘Questioning and P4C’, Advanced P4C Seminar, University of Winchester.
‘Vices of Questioning in Public Discourse’, Vice Epistemology Conference, University of Connecticut.
‘Questions and Power’, Language and Power Workshop, University of Connecticut.
'Knowledge is Power’: Barriers to Intellectual Humility in the Classroom’, Fellows’ Talk, University of Connecticut.
‘What are Epistemic Rights and when are they violated’, Social Epistemology Working Group, University of Connecticut.
‘What is a Question’ an interview for the ‘Choose To Be Curious’ podcast with Lynn Borton at Arlington Independent Media. Listen to the 30 minute interview here!
Question First. Training and consultancy for Royal Zoological Society Scotland.
Question First. Training workshops for the Moray House School of Education JESIE summer school for visiting Chinese students.
Question First. Training and consultancy for Scottish Opera.
The Art of Questioning – Four part column for The Philosopher: A Public Philosophy Journal.
This is a handy and contemporary book review of the seminal text, The Logic of Questions and Answers, by Belnap and Steel.
Synopsis: We speak of the right to know with relative ease. You have the right to know the results of a medical test or to be informed about the collection and use of personal data. But what exactly is the right to know, and who should we trust to safeguard it?
This book provides the first comprehensive examination of the right to know and other epistemic rights: rights to goods such as information, knowledge and truth. These rights play a prominent role in our information-centric society and yet they often go unnoticed, disregarded and unprotected. As such, those who control what we know, or think we know, exert an influence on our lives that is often as dangerous as it is imperceptible.
Beginning with a rigorous but accessible philosophical account of epistemic rights, Lani Watson examines the harms caused by epistemic rights violations, drawing on case studies across medical, political and legal contexts. She investigates who has the right to what information, who is responsible for the quality and circulation of information and what epistemic duties we have towards each other. This book is essential reading for philosophers, legal theorists and anyone concerned with the protection and promotion of information, knowledge and truth.
Reviews: "Watson makes a powerful and timely case for the adoption of a rights framework to understand and address the wrongs resulting from doubt mongering and misinformation campaigns. Written in a lucid and accessible style this book provides a defence of citizens’ right to know and of institutions and corporations’ duty to inform. It lays the groundwork for what promises to be a whole new area of inquiry." - Alessandra Tanesini, Cardiff University, UK
This paper deals with two distinct topics; unwarranted questions and admittures. The traditional speech act analysis of questions needs revision, since among the felicity conditions of asking a question is believing that the question is warranted. Some questions are unwarranted according to my analysis. A question is unwarranted if the questioner is not standing in the right relation to the addressee, such that he can demand or expect a sincere answer. I use the idea of unwarranted questions to show how conversational admittures can be generated. A conversational admitture is a non-intended admittance by the speaker of some state of affairs being believed by the speaker to be true. Under the assumption that the speaker is rational, the nonintended admittance is something that it is reasonable to credit the speaker with believing as an explanation of the speaker’s unwillingness to be cooperative in a given conversation. In the last section I introduce what I call the Principle of Privacy, which tells us that we have a prima facie right to guard some of our thoughts, feelings, personal history, etc. I argue that the Principle of Privacy together with the ideas that there are unwarranted questions and conversational admittures, and the way unwarranted questions can be exploited to generate the latter, endows us with the right to lie in certain contexts.
This book is a contribution to “responsibilist” or character‐based virtue‐epistemology, which is an approach to epistemology that gives a primary role to reflection on intellectual character virtues like inquisitiveness, open‐mindedness, carefulness and thoroughness in inquiry, and intellectual courage, rigor, and generosity. Beyond providing an accessible introduction to virtue epistemology and intellectual virtues, the book has two main goals. The first is to shed light on the nature and structure of intellectual virtues and their role in the cognitive economy. To this end, it examines the difference between intellectual virtues and intellectual faculties, talents, temperaments and skills, develops a “personal worth” account of the nature of an intellectual virtue, contrasts this account with several others, and provides analyses of two individual virtues: namely, open‐mindedness and intellectual courage. The second main goal is to account for the role that reflection on intellectual character virtues should play within epistemology at large. Here three main claims are defended. The first is that the concept of intellectual virtue does not merit a central or fundamental role with traditional epistemology. The second is that it does, nonetheless, merit a secondary or background role in this context. The third is that intellectual character virtues and their role in the intellectual life considered in their own right can form the basis an approach to epistemology that is distinct from but complementary to traditional epistemology. Finally, an Appendix examines the relation between intellectual and moral virtues.
‘What are Epistemic Rights’, Social Epistemology Network Meeting, University of Oslo.
‘Educating for Curiosity’, SPECS Workshop, University of Edinburgh.
‘The Right to Know and the Right to Ask’, Political Polarization and Epistemic Arrogance, Humility and Conviction in Public Life conference, University of Connecticut, CT, US.
‘Curiosity: An Epistemic Emotion’ World Congress of Philosophy, Peking University.
‘The Epistemology of Education’ World Congress of Philosophy, Peking University.
'Knowledge is Power’: Barriers to Intellectual Humility in the Classroom and what we can do to remove them’, Virtue Epistemology Conference, University of Glasgow.
‘Virtue and Vice in the Media’, Jubilee Centre for Character and Virtues annual conference, University of Oxford, UK.
This article examines data drawn from a 2001 Ontario (Canada) provincial inquiry into the deaths of seven people as a result of water contamination in a small Ontario town. The examination focuses on question-answer sequences in which the premier of Ontario, Michael Harris, attempted to resist lawyers' attempts to control and restrict his responses. In particular, on the basis of the data it is argued that the power of cross-examining lawyers does not reside solely in their ability to ask controlling and restrictive questions of witnesses, but rather is crucially dependent on their ability to compel witnesses to produce straightforward, or "type-conforming," answers to these controlling and restrictive questions. The witness whose testimony is analyzed was not compelled to produce answers that logically conformed to the form of the lawyers' questions (i.e., "yes" or "no") and, as a result, often usurped control over the topical agenda of the proceedings. In this sense, the present work builds on Eades's conclusion that "we cannot rely on question form to discover how witnesses are controlled." (Courtroom discourse, conversation analysis, presupposition, question-answer sequences).
What is a Question – Short piece for The Philosopher’s Magazine.
Questioning the Questions – Short piece for The Philosopher: A Public Philosophy Journal.
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.
Philosophers of science have long spoken as if the concept of language required for their enterprise involved only the declarative parts. I agree with Bromberger 's thesis that they were mistaken, and that essential reference to the erotetic (inter- rogative) apparatus of scientific language is mandatory. This involves logical work on a number of erotetic concepts, among which are (1) the question-answer (q-a) relationship itself, and (2) the concept of presupposition.
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.
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.
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.
This paper focuses on the semantics of interrogative sentences and has three main parts. The first critically reviews some basic issues drawing on the recent literature. In the second, I present and motivate the outlines of a theory of questions and a semantics for interrogatives. Both sections are based on work presented in much fuller detail in Ginzburg 1994a. The third section offers a dialogue setting for the theory developed in the second part.
This paper argues that questions have an important role to play in logic, both semantically and proof-theoretically. Semantically, we show that by generalizing the classical notion of entailment to questions, we can capture not only the standard relation of logical consequence, which holds between pieces of information, but also the relation of logical dependency, which holds between information types. Proof theoretically, we show that questions may be used in inferences as placeholders for arbitrary information of a given type; by manipulating such placeholders, we may construct formal proofs of dependencies. Finally, we show that such proofs have a specific kind of constructive content: they do not just witness the existence of a certain dependency, but actually encode a method for transforming information of the types described by the assumptions into information of the type described by the conclusion.
)Ongoing) OPEN-Scotland.com – I coordinate OPEN Scotland: An Online Philosophy and Education Network for Scotland. The network aims to provide access to training, resources, events and an online community for anyone interested in promoting the quality and quantity of philosophy in Scottish schools and communities. The network has been supported by Knowledge Exchange and Impact Grants from the University of Edinburgh and the Eidyn Research Centre.
Curiosity Forest – Public presentation as part of the European Commission’s Explorathon Night.
One of the most recent trends in epistemology is contrastivism. It can be characterized as the thesis that knowledge is a ternary relation between a subject, a proposition known and a contrast proposition. According to contrastivism, knowledge attributions have the form ‘‘S knows that p, rather than q’’. In this paper I raise several problems for contrastivism: it lacks plausibility for many cases of knowledge, is too narrow concerning the third relatum, and overlooks a further relativity of the knowledge relation.
‘The Epistemology of Education: A Role for Questioning and Inquisitiveness.’ Presentation tour: Nihon University, University of Hiroshima, University of Kyoto, and Sofia University, Japan
‘Vices of Questioning in Public Discourse’, Changing Attitudes in Public Discourse conference, University of Cardiff, UK.
‘The Problem with Educating for Inquisitiveness by Example’, Aretai Centre, University of Genoa, Italy.
‘What are Epistemic Rights and When are they Violated’, Epistemic vice and corruption workshop, University of Nottingham, UK.
‘Educating for Inquisitiveness by Example’, Bled Philosophical Conference, Bled, Slovenia.
‘Systematic Epistemic Rights Violations in the Media: A Brexit Case Study’, Joint Session, University of Edinburgh, UK.
'Why We Should Educate for Inquisitiveness in a Democracy’, Beacon Project Workshop, Wake Forest University, SC, US.
‘Systematic Epistemic Rights Violations in the Media: A Brexit Case Study’, Virtue Epistemology Conference, University of Oklahoma, OK, US.
“What is a question?” is a question which seems to have been almost totally ignored by logicians. The problem is, however, about as important for rational thought as the more common inquiry into the nature of propositions, assertions, or judgments. And if the former inquiry does, in its claim to significance, presuppose a solution, so too does the answer to the latter. That is to say, in order to answer the former question we must assume that it is a question, just as we must assume that any real definition of a proposition is a proposition.
I argue that curiosity about the world deserves attention as a moral virtue, even apart from the role it may play in (the more generally praised) love of wisdom. First, close relationships and caring are reasonably considered part of a well-lived life, and curiosity is important for caring both about people and about things in the world. Second, curiosity helps us to define an appropriate way for persons to be affected by certain situations. Perhaps most important, curiosity can help one to live well because it addresses the most fundamental existential task humans face, the need to see their lives as meaningful. I argue that curiosity is a distinctive virtue but suggest that related virtues (e.g., receptivity, reverence) may contribute to different kinds of worthy engagement with the world.
‘Why We Should Educate for Inquisitiveness in a Democracy’, Values and Leadership in Education Conference, Western University, Ontario, Canada.
‘Why We Should Educate for Questioning’, series of invited lectures, University of New Mexico, University of Oklahoma, and Loyola Marymount University, USA.
‘Educating for Inquisitiveness’, Disagreement and Education Workshop, National University of Singapore, Singapore.
The paper is in two parts. In Part I, a semantics for embedded and query uses of interrogatives is put forward, couched within a situation semantics framework. Unlike many previous analyses, questions are not reductively analysed in terms of their answers. This enables us to provide a notion of an answer that resolves a question which varies across contexts relative to parameters such as goals and inferential capabilities. In Part II of the paper, extensive motivation is provided for an ontology that distinguishes propositions, questions, and facts, while at the same time the semantics provided captures an important commonality between questions and propositions: facts prove propositions and resolve questions. This commonality is exploited to provide an explanation for why predicates such as 'know' carry presuppositions such as factivity and for a novel account of the behaviour of adverbially modified predicates with interrogative, declarative and fact-nominal arguments.
‘How are the children’ and ‘What is Justice’ engagement events – Participated as a postdoctoral fellow in outreach events organised by the Institute for the Study of Human Flourishing, in collaboration with Oklahoma City based organisations SALLT and Thriving Cities.
Philosophy in Schools – Philosophy sessions with 11-13 year-olds, conducted at Firrhill Secondary School, Edinburgh.
Epistemic rights feature both implicitly and explicitly in the highly polarized pro-life versus pro-choice abortion debate in the US. This paper explores the nature and role of epistemic rights in that debate. I argue that the proper characterisation of epistemic rights allows us to identify a range of epistemic harms perpetrated by key actors and institutions in the debate amounting to epistemic rights violations. Using two case studies, I highlight where epistemic rights arise and are violated in the abortion debate and examine the consequences of these violations for individuals and epistemic communities. I conclude that epistemic rights violations in the abortion debate harm individuals, diminish the quality of the debate and lead to increased polarization.
‘Asking Virtuous Questions: Perspectives from Indian Philosophy’, Indian Philosophy Workshop, University of Durham, UK.
‘Knowledge is a Questioning-Relative State: A virtue-based contrastive account’, Virtue Epistemology Conference, KU Leuven, Belgium.
‘Virtuous Questioning’, Virtuous Adversariality Conference, University of Durham, UK.
The question of how to arrive at questions is ambiguous. I will concentrate on two readings: (i) How should one set up a formal syntax that accommodates questions? (ii) How does one, while working in a suitable formal language, arrive at a situation where one is allowed to or even must ask a certain question? In other words: How is the asking of questions regulated within a given formal language? I will propose an answer to question (i) and consider the field of possibilities of answering (ii).
In the first part of this paper* I discussed two central notions concerning questions, aboutness and resolvedness, and proposed an analysis of these notions which I used to provide a situation semantics account for both query and embedded uses of interrogatives (see 'Resolving Questions, I' for discussion and for the notation assumed below; all sections numbered 5.x and less are in part I.). In this part of the paper, I discuss two main issues: first, the modification of interrogatives by adverbs of extent. Second, the ontological nature of embedded interrogative and declarative sentences: an ontology that distinguishes propositions, questions, and facts is motivated, while at the same time a specification is provided for a semantics that captures an important commonality between questions and propositions: facts prove propositions and resolve questions.
A central intuition many epistemologists seem to have is that knowledge is distinctively valuable. In his paper ‘Radical Scepticism, Epistemic Luck and Epistemic Value’, Duncan Pritchard rejects the virtue-theoretic explanation of this intuition. This explanation says that knowledge is distinctively valuable because it is a cognitive achievement. It is maintained, in the first place, that the arguments Pritchard musters against the thesis that knowledge is a cognitive achievement are unconvincing. It is argued, in the second place, that even if the arguments against the thesis that knowledge is a cognitive achievement were convincing, there is another explanation of the intuition that knowledge has final value available: the question-relative treatment of knowledge.
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.
This chapter focuses on the question of whether true belief can have final value because it answers our ‘intellectual interest’ or ‘natural curiosity’. The idea is that sometimes we are interested in the truth on some issue not for any ulterior purpose, but simply because we are curious about that issue. It is argued that this approach fails to provide an adequate explanation of the final value of true belief, since there is an unbridgeable gap between our valuing the truth on some issue for its own sake, and that truth's being valuable for its own sake.
We propose a dynamic-epistemic analysis of the different epistemic operations constitutive of the process of interrogative inquiry, as described by Hintikka’s Interrogative Model of Inquiry (IMI). We develop a dynamic logic of questions for representing interrogative steps, based on Hintikka’s treatment of questions in the IMI, along with a dynamic logic of inferences for representing deductive steps, based on the tableau method. We then merge these two systems into a dynamic logic of interrogative inquiry which articulates a joint treatment of questions and inferences, providing thereby a unified framework representing the informational dynamics of interrogative inquiry. We provide sound and complete axiomatic systems for the three dynamic logics that we introduce, we compare our framework with existing approaches, and we finally propose several directions for further work.
‘What is a Question’, Philosophy ThinkTank, University of Edinburgh, UK.Watch a video of this public presentation where I present some empirical results from my questionnaire exploring what a question is.
‘The Value of Questioning in Applied Epistemology’, Language and Epistemology Workshop, Yonsei University, South Korea.
‘Why Should Philosophers Study Questioning’, Society for Applied Philosophy Annual Conference, University of Oxford, UK.
‘Why Should Philosophers Study Questioning’, Intellectual Virtues, Group Knowledge and Education workshop, University of Edinburgh, UK.
The aim of this paper is a modest one. In what follows, we will argue that if one takes into consideration certain constructions involving interrogatives, a flexible approach to the relationship between syntactic categories and semantic types may be of great help. More in particular, we will try to show that if one uses something like an orthodox intensional type theory as one’s semantic tool, a more liberal association between syntactic categories and semantic types becomes imperative. However, we will also see that such flexibility is by no means easily introduced into the grammar, and that it needs to be properly checked in order to avoid undesirable consequences.
Philosophy ThinkTank – A philosophical public engagement event hosted by the University of Edinburgh. Watch the presentation here.
Children’s University – A workshop introducing primary school children to philosophical ideas and methods, held in collaboration with the Children’s University Trust at Stoneyhill Primary School in Edinburgh.
Philosophy in the Playground – An interactive philosophy workshop for parents with young children, run by the University of Edinburgh’s Eidyn Research Centre at Summerhall Arts Centre in Edinburgh.
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.
Faculty and administrators in higher education discussing the topic of general education often stress the development of certain attitudes, skills, and competencies for their students rather than a haphazard, even coherent, set of distribution requirements or a fixed core curriculum. Attitudes, competencies and dispositions are applied to the categories of communication like critical thinking, scientific and mathematical literacy, information acquisition, and humanistic inquiry. These, in turn, are broken down into finer categories. Communication reduces to reading, writing, speaking, and listening. Formal and informal logic, interpretation, criticism, analysis, synthesis and the evaluation of texts fall under critical thinking which is widely held to be the most fundamental of all competencies. No inquiry is possible without logic. The Organon, or instrument, is the leading treatise in the corpus of Aristotle's writings. Aristotle turns his thought to the tools of thinking that are used in order to think such as grammar, terms, statements, argument forms, fallacies, the language of science, categories of existence, or, as we say, logic or critical thinking. This is a good model. Without focusing exclusively on discrete courses, proficiencies can be distributed across the curriculum and reinforced throughout undergraduate education.
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 book contains six studies on different subjects in the theory of questions and answers. They were written over a period of several years. Yet, we trust that they present a coherent view.
‘A Theory of Good Questioning’, Edinburgh Epistemology Workshop, University of Edinburgh, UK. Watch a video of this presentation where I presented some of my preliminary theoretical considerations concerning good questioning.
‘Why Should We Educate For Inquisitiveness’, Educating for Intellectual Virtues, Loyola Marymount University, USA.
The Interrogative Model of Inquiry (IMI) and Dynamic Epistemic Logics (DELs) are two central paradigms in formal epistemology. This paper is motivated by the observation of a significant complementarity between them: on the one hand, the IMI provides a framework for investigating inquiry represented as an idealized game between an Inquirer and Nature, along with an account of the interaction between questions and inferences in information-seeking processes, but is lacking a formulation in the multi-agent case; on the other hand, DELs model various operations of information change in multi-agent systems, but the field is lacking a proper integration of question and inference dynamics, along with an application to the investigation of inquiry processes. The goal of this paper is to integrate the two paradigms in such a way as to combine their respective insights. To this end, we develop a formal system called DELIMI which aims to represent the interaction between question and inference dynamics in inquiry—as described by the IMI—in a multi-agent setting, and this in such a way as to enable an investigation of inquiry games with multi-agent dimensions. The DELIMI system is designed to represent the possible moves of such inquiry games through three types of epistemic actions: agents addressing questions to Nature, agents addressing questions to other agents, agents drawing logical inferences. We then show how the resulting framework can be used to formally define multi-agent inquiry games. We conclude by evaluating the interest of the DELIMI system for the IMI and DELs paradigms.
Three-Minute Thesis Competition – An international public engagement competition for PhD students in all disciplines in which I was the University of Edinburgh’s second place finalist. Watch the presentation here.
‘Create a Philosophy TimeTree’ – An interactive philosophy workshop for undergraduates, designed and run for Innovative Learning Week at the University of Edinburgh.
Contributing author for 1001 Ideas That Changed The Way We Think. Quintessence Publishing.
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.