This volume brings together essays from several different perspectives on a topic in epistemology that is garnering increased attention: Inquiry. It is the first volume focused solely on philosophical issues related to inquiry.
Inquiry is a fundamental human practice. We have questions, and we want answers. These questions span numerous domains and range from the trivial to questions of the utmost importance. Without inquiry, and successful inquiry in particular, our fate is bleak. Inquiry is also familiar. Everyone engages in inquiry. In fact, inquiry (of some sort) is something that we engage in every day. However, while inquiry is both fundamental and familiar, only recently have epistemologists turned to focus explicitly on inquiry. The result is a growing literature concerning questions like the following:
- Does inquiry have an aim?
- If so, what is the aim of inquiry?
- What norms govern inquiry?
- How are epistemic norms and norms of inquiry related?
- What does inquiry look like with an epistemic division of labor?
- Is it ever permissible to interfere with the inquiry of another person?
- What is the relationship between inquiry and belief? Knowledge? Wisdom?
- How do bias and prejudice affect inquiry?
- What is the nature and role of attitudes like curiosity and wonder?
Inquiry: Philosophical Perspectives builds on the existing debates surrounding these questions, advancing them, and taking them in new directions. It will appeal primarily to scholars and graduate students working in epistemology, philosophy of language, philosophy of mind, and philosophy of science.
This volume brings together essays from several different perspectives on a topic in epistemology that is garnering increased attention: inquiry. It is the first volume focused solely on philosophical issues related to inquiry.
Introduction
1. Is Skeptical Inquiry Possible?
2. Lysistratas Lament:
Interrogative Analogues of Testimonial Injustice
3. Epistemic Injustice and
Inquiry
4. Is Comparative Philosophical Inquiry Risky Business?
5. To Counter
Propaganda and Disinformation, Think Beyond Modernity
6. Transcultural
Inquiry and the Method of Philosophical Sublation
7. The Zetetic Significance
of Unpossessed Evidence
8. Inquiry and Normative Defeat
9. Navigating Inquiry
10. In Defense of Open-Minded Inquiry into Crazy Philosophical Arguments
11.
Explanatory Inquiry, Achievement, and Enhancement
12. Inquiry and
Higher-Order Evidence
13. Inquiry and Underdetermination
14. The Science
Contract: Scientific Inquiry, Public Trust in Science, and the Division of
Zetetic Labor
15. Instruments as Muses of Inquiry
16. Inquiry in the
Entangled Bank Translating and Interpreting Causation in Biology
17.
Reshuffling the Deck: p4c Hawaii and Special Education
Aaron B. Creller is an associate professor in the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies at the University of North Florida. His research areas are cross-cultural approaches to epistemology and philosophy of science. His recent monograph is the 2018 Making Space for Knowing: A Capacious Approach to Comparative Epistemology.
Jonathan Matheson is a professor of philosophy at the University of North Florida and the director of the Florida Blue Center for Ethics, where he is also a distinguished faculty fellow. His research interests are in epistemology where his work has focused on the epistemic significance of disagreement, as well as the nature and value of epistemic autonomy.
