This thesis has been submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for a postgraduate degree (e.g. PhD, MPhil, DClinPsychol) at the University of Edinburgh. Please note the following terms and conditions of use: This work is protected by copyright and other intellectual property rights, which are retained by the thesis author, unless otherwise stated. A copy can be downloaded for personal non-commercial research or study, without prior permission or charge. This thesis cannot be reproduced or quoted extensively from without first obtaining permission in writing from the author. The content must not be changed in any way or sold commercially in any format or medium without the formal permission of the author. When referring to this work, full bibliographic details including the author, title, awarding institution and date of the thesis must be given. WHY ASK: THE EPISTEMOLOGY OF QUESTIONING Lani Watson PhD Philosophy The University of Edinburgh 2015 Dedicated to the memory of Mike Porter Acknowledgements I would like to acknowledge and thank all those - strangers, colleagues, and friends - who have asked me a question during the writing of this thesis. These have provided a rich and extensive data-set, offering a perpetual and often unintended source of inspiration. Special thanks to the Oxford taxi driver, and exemplary questioner, who dropped me at the Society of Applied Philosophy Conference in 2014. Sincere thanks to my supervisory team, Professor Duncan Pritchard, Dr Allan Hazlett, Professor Holly Branigan, and Professor Theodore Scaltsas, for their insightful and apposite questions, comments, and encouragement throughout the process. Thanks also to my examiners, Dr Ben Kotzee and Professor Sanford Goldberg, for their thorough and discerning questioning of the end product, and to many other members of the academic community, including Professor Heather Battaly, Dr Adam Carter, Professor Catherine Elgin, Professor John Greco, Professor Stephen Grimm, Dr Ian Kidd, Dr Elinor Mason, Professor Wayne Riggs, Dr Nick Treanor, and Professor Linda Zagzebski, for much invaluable and often formative questioning and critique. Thanks to Professor Jason Baehr and Professor Nikolaj Pedersen for hosting me during research visits to Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles, and Yonsei University, Seoul, respectively, and for much valuable philosophical discussion during these visits. Special thanks to Ali, on Venice Beach, Young-Sup Lee and family, and everyone who spent the summer of 2014 at the Cinder Bar in Songdo, for making these visits both possible and memorable. Warm thanks to the philosophy postgraduate community at the University of Edinburgh, including Alfred Archer, Natalie Ashton, Cameron Boult, Sebastian Köhler, Tim Kunke, Robin McKenna, Joey Pollock, Stephen Ryan, Lauren Ware, Lee Whittington, and Alan Wilson. Their astute questions and lively scrutiny has improved this work immeasurably, and proven, indisputably, the philosophical necessity of tea-breaks. Thanks also to the School of Philosophy, Psychology, and Language Sciences for the research studentship that has enabled this thesis, and to all members of support staff in the school, especially Miss Katie Keltie, for answering so many of my questions. Many thanks to all those who contributed questions to the ‘one thousand questions spreadsheet’, to the more than five thousand participants to date who have taken part in the ‘What is a Question’ survey, and to Ms Carolyn Anstruther, and the teachers and students at Sciennes Primary School, Edinburgh, for allowing me to conduct the experimental study described in this thesis. Finally, deepest thanks to the consistent and loving support of my dearest friends and family for providing many of the most inspiring and often the most challenging questions of the past four years. It has been, in the most enriching sense, anything but elementary. Abstract Imagine living one day without asking a single question. Why not try it. How long before a question surfaces in your mind. How long before you are compelled, by force of necessity or habit, to ask it. Questioning is an integral part of our everyday lives. We use it to learn, to communicate, to express ourselves and to understand our world. Questioning binds us to common goals, allows us to establish common ground and is a vital tool in our daily search for information. What we ask, how we ask and where, when, and who we ask determines a large proportion of what we come to know about our world and the people that we share it with. That’s why questioning matters. Regardless of who we are, questioning occupies a familiar, ubiquitous, and indispensable place in our lives. This thesis examines the nature and value of questioning. It opens in Chapter One with an overview of the history of questioning in the Western philosophical tradition, uncovering divergent roles for questioning in distinct historical contexts, and changing attitudes towards the practice in line with underlying epistemological commitments. In Chapter Two a contemporary context for the epistemology of questioning is offered, providing an indication of the nature and scope of contemporary philosophical inquiry into questioning, and outlining a contemporary epistemological context for the investigation. Chapter Three begins the analytical investigation, presenting a characterisation of questioning as a social epistemic practice, and a characterisation of questions as acts, drawing on the results of a large online survey. Chapter Four investigates the value of questioning, highlighting its role in the acquisition of epistemic goods, such as knowledge and understanding, and in the dissemination of these goods within epistemic communities. Chapter Five examines the nature and practice of good questioning, presenting a component-based account of good questioning, drawing on the results of an original empirical study conducted with schoolchildren. Chapter Six explores the nature of virtuous questioning, offering a characterisation of the intellectual virtue of inquisitiveness and highlighting the distinctive role of inquisitiveness in the intellectually virtuous life. Finally, Chapter Seven investigates the role that questioning plays in education and presents an argument in support of educating for virtuous questioning. The epistemological examination of questioning captures its essential character and significance. Questioning matters because of the purpose that it serves; that of finding things out. We ask questions in order to gather information on the basis of which we form beliefs and decide how to act. Through the information that we gather and the beliefs that we form, we arrive at knowledge and understanding. Questioning matters because it forms the basis of what we know and understand, as individuals and communities. This thesis examines questioning in light of its central epistemological significance. As such, it provides the groundwork for an epistemology of questioning. i Declaration I have read and understood The University of Edinburgh guidelines on Plagiarism and declare that this thesis is all my own work except where I indicate otherwise by proper use of quotes and references. The work has not been submitted for any other degree or professional qualification except as specified. ii Contents Preface………………………………………………………………………v Introduction………………………………………………………………...1 Chapter 1: The Epistemology of Questioning: A Brief History……………...5 Chapter 2: The Epistemology of Questioning: A Contemporary Context….43 Chapter 3: What is Questioning…………………………………………....73 Chapter 4: What is the Value of Questioning……………………………..108 Chapter 5: What is Good Questioning…………………………………....135 Chapter 6: What is Virtuous Questioning………………………………....170 Chapter 7: Why Should We Educate For Virtuous Questioning………......192 Conclusion……………………………………………………………….214 Bibliography……………………………………………………………...218 Appendix One: Online Survey…………………………………………....239 Appendix Two: School Experiment……………………………………....249 iii “Look then how he will come out of his perplexity while searching along with me. I shall do nothing more than ask questions” (Socrates in Meno 84c) iv Preface This research is about questions and questioning. Before the main introduction, a preliminary point of methodology is required regarding the use of question-marks. My task during the writing of this thesis has been to investigate the nature of questions and questioning, and to examine the role that they play in everyday life. My primary subject matter has always been, and continues to be, the questions that I find myself asking throughout the day, and those that are asked of me. These have provided rich, authentic and diverse material for my research. At an early stage in the research it became apparent, through reflection on my own questions, and those of others, that the form of a question, typically an interrogative sentence followed by the familiar question-mark, and the question as an abstract entity, were at least to some extent, distinct objects of analysis. The former, for example, is governed by certain linguistic norms, while the latter is not. In order to make this distinction explicit, and so to explore it further, I chose to drop the use of question-marks in my own writing. I have adopted this approach consistently in, for example, personal writing and note-taking, informal communication with friends and family, and formal settings such as conference papers and academic publications. Removing this conventional grammatical marker has provided many valuable