Suppose Sally wants to know whether Matt will be in his office tomorrow and proceeds to answer her question by locking Matt in his office. Is this a case of successful inquiry? This paper develops the Right Way Account of inquiry that respects an intuitive “no”. According to the Right Way Account, the constitutive goal of inquiry is to acquire knowledge (or some related epistemic state) in the right way, specifically, the inquiring way. For a question-answering activity to constitute a case of i…
Read moreSuppose Sally wants to know whether Matt will be in his office tomorrow and proceeds to answer her question by locking Matt in his office. Is this a case of successful inquiry? This paper develops the Right Way Account of inquiry that respects an intuitive “no”. According to the Right Way Account, the constitutive goal of inquiry is to acquire knowledge (or some related epistemic state) in the right way, specifically, the inquiring way. For a question-answering activity to constitute a case of inquiry, the inquirer must attempt to come to know the answer without intentionally causing an answer to be true so as to know. The upshot of my argument is that epistemology of inquiry has erred in assuming that the goal of inquiry is merely coming to be in a particular state. Instead, the goal of inquiry is coming to be in a particular state in a particular way. Accordingly, the inquiring way is indispensable to theorizing the nature of inquiry.
