자료유형  

 학위논문

Control Number  

0017163548

International Standard Book Number  

9798384016410

Dewey Decimal Classification Number  

100

Main Entry-Personal Name  

Hurley, Regina Marie.

Publication, Distribution, etc. (Imprint  

[S.l.] : Northwestern University., 2024

Publication, Distribution, etc. (Imprint  

Ann Arbor : ProQuest Dissertations & Theses, 2024

Physical Description  

124 p.

General Note  

Source: Dissertations Abstracts International, Volume: 86-02, Section: A.

General Note  

Advisor: Goldberg, Sanford.

Dissertation Note  

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Northwestern University, 2024.

Summary, Etc.  

요약Recent theorizing about the nature and norms of inquiry implicitly relies on a conception of inquiry that I will call the Answer-Seeking Conception (ASC). There are three theses undergirding ASC. The first is a descriptive thesis about what it means to have a question. To have a question is to have some interrogative attitude (such as curiosity or wondering) which takes some question as its content. To be curious about when poppies bloom, for instance, is to have your curiosity directed towards the question When do poppies bloom?. The second is a normative thesis about the structure of inquiry. It states that the normative structure of inquiry can be fully understood as a process of answering a question. This means that an inquirer's actions can be normatively evaluated based on whether and the extent to which they serve the goal of answering her question. I may do many things to figure out when poppies bloom. To evaluate my actions, we need to assess only how expeditious they are in bringing me closer to answering my question (or how reasonable I was to think my actions would bring me closer). The third thesis is a metaphysical thesis about the constitutive aim of inquiry. Inquiry is said to be a goal-oriented process where the goal is to answer some question and inquiring is the means to achieving that goal. The "constitutive aim" of inquiry is generally conceived as the aim of answering some question. This is supposed to be a general characterization of the aim that both constitutes the nature of inquiry itself and is the aim of individual inquirers.So natural are these theses that they more often are accepted as a neutral starting point for theorizing about the nature and norms of inquiry, rather than being something explicitly argued or endorsed. ASC makes for a temptingly tidy story about inquiry: our interrogative attitudes take questions as their contents (descriptive thesis); qua inquirers, we ought to take the means towards answering those questions (normative thesis); and the very nature of inquiry is characterized by a process whose constitutive aim is to answer those questions (metaphysical thesis). Although this conception of inquiry suffices for many of the routine inquiries that one may pursue on a given day, this dissertation will demonstrate that inquiry does not always take this simple form.Chapter 1 begins by introducing a kind of inquiry that makes trouble for the widely held theses underpinning ASC. Not all inquiries begin with the benefit of a clearly grasped question which one can launch into answering. Nebulous inquiries, as I will call them, are inquiries in which an inquirer is struck by some vague curiosity or a hunch of a puzzle but is unable to grasp a question in a fully satisfying manner. As I will show, the descriptive thesis entails a degree of transparency about our interrogative attitudes - attitudes such as curiosity and wondering - that belies the experience of the nebulous beginnings of some inquiries. This chapter reveals the shortcomings of the ways in which the literature has thus far described the nature of interrogative attitudes (IAs), and as I will show, the IAs present at the nebulous beginnings of inquiry compel us to create a new class of IAs. I call this unruly kind of IAs interrogative inclinations. The motivation for introducing interrogative inclinations is to explain a cluster of inquiry-related phenomena that would otherwise remain inexplicable if we rely on accounts of IAs that are based on the current conception of IAs.Carrying on with the critique of ASC, Chapter 2, argues against the normative thesis, i.e., the thesis that enjoins inquirers to take the means of answering their questions. Inquirers in the nebulous beginning of inquiry do not - and should not - proceed by trying to answer their vague question. Rather, they should try, first, to clarify. As such, nebulous inquiries exhibit a richer kind of normative structure, one that involves the development of an initially opaque interest. This is lost on a conception that views inquiry merely as a process of seeking the answer to a question. Nebulous inquiries, therefore, pose a significant challenge to those who accept ASC. In this chapter, I set forward what I call the Clarifying Norm of Inquiry, which is meant to guide inquirers in the nebulous beginnings of inquiry.Chapter 3 concludes the critique of ASC by raising issues for the metaphysical thesis. According to the metaphysical thesis, inquiry is a process whose constitutive aim is to answer some question and, in order to count as inquiring, one must take this aim as her own personal aim. Contrary to this, I argue that this conception of inquiry cannot capture the distinctive character of a form of inquiry that I call striving inquiry. In striving inquiry, agents inquire simply to relish in the process of inquiring itself. Striving inquirers do not exhibit the traditional motivational structure outlined by ASC. I develop this notion of 'striving inquiry' by drawing an to analogy to 'striving games,' as theorized by Thi Nguyen.Chapter 4 takes an applied turn. By taking some insights gleaned in reflecting on the nature of ASC, I show the ways in which ASC nevertheless has merits. In this chapter, I develop and account of the diagnostic process as a kind of inquiry that seeks to answer diagnostic questions. I show how the norms that we associate with proper ways of settling the diagnostic questions can help bring nuance to the literature on epistemic injustice in healthcare. There is now a significant body of research that seeks to understand a set of patient-doctor testimonial interactions as instances of testimonial injustice, i.e., cases in which healthcare professionals unjustly downgrade the credibility of patients due to negative identity prejudices. This chapter argues that centering the role of identity prejudices runs the risk of oversimplifying the nature of the testimonial dynamics in the cases discussed. By examining them within the broader evidential context of diagnostic inquiry, we can see how credibility assessments of patient testimony are influenced by other evidence at play in the diagnostic inquiry. This enables us to gain a more perspicuous understanding of the epistemic problems, as well as a clearer understanding of the solutions.Overall, this dissertation seeks to strike a balance between revealing the shortcomings of the Answer Seeking Conception of Inquiry while also demonstrating the value it can offer. Our lives as inquiring agents consist of much more than simply seeking answers to questions. Chapters 1-3 will demonstrate the many important aspects of inquiry that ASC cannot address, but nevertheless, there is a way of conceiving these chapters as expansions to our conception of inquiry, rather than as a necessarily incompatible competing alternative conception. The norms of the nebulous beginnings of inquiry, the nature of interrogative attitudes that obtain within them, and the structure of striving inquiry, I believe, can be consistently maintained as part of a more capacious conception of inquiry, one that makes room for the norms and nature of the standardly conceived answer-seeking stage of inquiry and the ones that I will here propose.

Subject Added Entry-Topical Term  

Philosophy.

Subject Added Entry-Topical Term  

Epistemology.

Subject Added Entry-Topical Term  

Metaphysics.

Index Term-Uncontrolled  

Diagnostic epistemology

Index Term-Uncontrolled  

Inquiry

Index Term-Uncontrolled  

Interogative Attitudes

Index Term-Uncontrolled  

Normativity

Index Term-Uncontrolled  

Question asking

Index Term-Uncontrolled  

Zetetic

Added Entry-Corporate Name  

Northwestern University Philosophy

Host Item Entry  

Dissertations Abstracts International. 86-02A.

Electronic Location and Access  

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Control Number  

joongbu:658523