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Inquiring Minds Want to Improve

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Arianna Falbo discusses a series of cases which indicate that inquiry is not as narrow as these views suggest.

Image courtesy of interviewee. May 21, 2024

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This video video discusses a philosophical exploration of inquiry and its aims, particularly within the field of epistemology. The speaker critiques the prevalent view that the primary goal of inquiry is to gain knowledge of an answer. They propose a more pluralistic understanding, suggesting that inquiry can pursue various epistemic improvements beyond simply acquiring knowledge.

The argument includes practical examples, such as two detectives investigating a murder; one is curious and does not know the answer, while the other does know they are the murderer yet behaves similarly. The speaker uses this to illustrate that simply knowing the answer does not imply engaging in genuine inquiry.

Additionally, real-life scenarios, such as a doctor double-checking a patient's file before surgery or someone wondering about the weather, reveal that inquiry can occur even when knowledge isn't the end goal. The speaker emphasizes that inquiry can yield deeper understanding, higher confidence, or clarification of misconceptions.

Ultimately, they argue for a broader conception of inquiry that accommodates various epistemic aims and suggests that productive inquiry is possible even when it does not lead to finding an answer. This video video perspective invites future investigation into how inquiry operates under different conditions, including those involving ignorance or initial misunderstanding.

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X-TIMESTAMP-MAP:LOCAL=00:00:00.000,MPEGTS=900000

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A lot of the motivations for the project.

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Were kind of thinking through a lot

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of recent scholarship in epistemology, which has kind

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of shifted its focus on, inquiry

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and in particular, sort of questions surrounding

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what the goal or aim of inquiry is.

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Like, what are we trying to do when

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we're investigating questions?

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And a really sort of popular, influential view,

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that's been defended in recent literature as well as sort

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of older literature, is this idea that what we're trying

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to do when we ask a question

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and investigate into it is like, come

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to know the answer to that question.

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I think there's a lot of, good persuasive arguments

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for this position, but what I try to do in my work is

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to push back against this as sort of like the only goal

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or like the only reason why we engage in inquiry.

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Um, so I had to defend a position on which inquiry can

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aim among other things.

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Um, it can aim at knowledge,

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but it can also aim at other kinds of, of sort

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of epistemic goodies, like kinds of,

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positions we might wanna be in as a result

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of asking an investigating question.

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So for example, maybe we want like a deeper understanding

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of the answer to a question.

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Maybe we want a better sense of the answer.

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Maybe we wanna just like come to figure out whether

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or not the question we're asking is a good question, right?

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Identify any potential confusions we might have.

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Um, so in general, I'm kind of really coming at this,

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being motivated by this worry

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that perhaps this construes the aim of inquiry just sort

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of solely in terms of coming

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to gain knowledge a bit too narrowly.

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And I try to pitch a sort of more pluralistic understanding,

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in terms of epistemic improvements where

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that can be broadly, broadly construed.

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I'll say that a lot of my own motivations

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for this paper came from engaging with, some work

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by people like Jane Friedman, Dennis Whitcomb,

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even earlier than that sort of, Christopher Hook way,

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sort of one of a sort

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of earlier people really thinking about inquiry

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in relation to epistemology.

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Um, and maybe it'll be helpful to sort of give a kind

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of case study that's been really influential from Jane

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Friedman in pitching this idea

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that inquiry aims at knowledge.

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Should we, should we do that? Yeah. Okay.

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Um, so imagine a detective who's been like called in the

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middle of the night and you know,

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they're really startled and they go, my gosh.

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They answer the phone and they're like,

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A doctor's been murdered, and you need to go to the scene

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of the crime and investigate, you know,

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who, who committed this crime?

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Who murdered the doctor? So imagine you're the detective,

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you like rush over to the scene of the crime

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and you start to investigate.

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You're like super curious.

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You're like, my gosh, what happened?

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You interrogate witnesses.

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You, you know, you like closely look at all the clues at the

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scene of the crime and maybe like, come

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to know who committed the murder.

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Okay? So that's like the first kind of case.

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Now imagine a slight variation of that kind of case

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where you get a call, you're a detective,

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you get a call in the middle of the night, you're told

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that a doctor has been murdered,

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and you need to like go to the scene

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of the crime and investigate.

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So you wake up, you're like startled

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and you like rush to the scene of the crime, but you're

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Also, you know, very worried about what might happen

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because you yourself are the murderer, right?

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So like, you're like washing the blood off your hands.

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You're like wondering like, where did I leave any clues?

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Oh my gosh. Um, so you, you're like,

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you can imagine this person's like behaviorally

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indistinguishable from the first detective.

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They do all the same things. They, they know,

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they interview all the same, potential witnesses,

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but a key difference is like they already know the

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answer to the question, right?

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They already know who the murderer is 'cause it's them.

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Um, so one of the kind of upshots of,

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of comparing these two cases

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that Jane Friedman highlights across some of her,

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like really interesting work on this is

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that it doesn't really make sense

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to construe the second detective

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as really engaged in inquiry at all.

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And you might think a part of that is

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because they've already achieved the aim, right?

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They already know the answer to the question

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that they're cur that they're sort of investigating.

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In fact, it doesn't even make sense to construe them

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as being curious about the answer to the question.

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Whereas the first detective, you know,

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much more clearly an instance of inquiry, right?

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They don't know the answer, they're curious about it

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and they're trying to figure out the answer.

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Um, so cases like this

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and sort of among other arguments have been given

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to motivate this idea

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that when more inquiring into a question were like curious

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and we're trying to figure out the answer,

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perhaps we're trying to come to know the answer.

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In my work, I consider a broader range of cases,

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which I think put pressure on this idea

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that knowledge is like the sole or only aim of inquiry.

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It's like the only thing we're

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after when we're investigating questions.

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Um, so to see this consider, cases where

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you already know or you already believe an answer

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to the question that you're inquiring into,

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but it still seems appropriate

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or rational to continue investigating into a question.

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So imagine a really high stakes case.

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So imagine you're a doctor and you know, the morning

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before a really important sort of life saving surgery.

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You reviewed the patient's file

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and you know that it's the left kidney

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that needs to be removed.

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Nonetheless, right

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before you're about to perform the surgery,

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it'd be really easy to just like double check what,

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what kidney it was, you know, you already know

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that it's the left, but you wanna be absolutely sure you,

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you might even think this is what's needed

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to responsibly act in this case.

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So you investigate, you sort

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of open an inquiry into the question of which kidney it is

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and you recheck the patient's file, right?

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So I think here, you know, the answer to the question

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and what you're after is not knowledge of the answer,

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but instead some sort of deeper

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or sort of stronger epistemic standing, namely some,

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some kind of certainty or a higher degree

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of confidence in the answer.

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So if that's right, then it looks like you have an instance

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of inquiry, I think, I think intuitively irrational inquiry

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into a question where the agent already knows the answer.

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Um, and if that's right, this suggests that perhaps we ought

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to be thinking about the aim of inquiry in a sort

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of broader, more expansive way, right?

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It's not just about knowledge.

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This case suggests

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that it's also about like gaining a deeper understanding,

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gaining further confirmation, gaining a higher degree

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of confidence or certainty in the answer.

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Okay? I also think there's cases on the sort of other side,

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or sort of, sort of weaker standings

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that we might be seeking that fall short

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of coming to know the answer.

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So imagine that you are about to leave for work

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and you're wondering whether it'll rain later.

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That's sort of like the question you're puzzling over.

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You also happen to live in an environment

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where like the weather's pretty variable, right?

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So, you know, you look outside the clouds, you know,

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it's pretty clear and you think like, hmm, okay, you know,

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I I I have a sense that it probably won't rain later,

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but of course you don't know for sure.

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You don't know that it won't rain later,

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given your current evidential situation.

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You can't really come to know the answer to this question

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of whether it'll rain later.

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So if that's right, then according

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to a view on which knowledge is the sole aim of inquiry,

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it's kind of puzzling why you would even engage in this

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activity given that you couldn't achieve the aim.

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Um, but still I think you can inquire in these cases,

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even though it's not possible to achieve the aim, right?

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You can imagine the person walking up to the window,

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lifting the curtain, wondering if it'll rain later,

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looking up and being like, hmm, looks pretty clear.

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And as a result, having, you know, a higher degree

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of confidence that it won't rain later, a sort

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of a better sense or better idea of whether

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or not it'll rain later, even though they fall short

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of knowing or even being in a position

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to come to know the answer.

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Um, so I think these two kinds of cases,

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like on the one hand cases where you might seek a kind

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of epistemic improvement that goes

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beyond knowledge in the Dr. Case,

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but also other cases like this sort of rain case

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where I think we often can engage in inquiry even when we're

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looking, to, to gain a kind of improvement

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that fell short of knowledge.

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And in fact, when we couldn't gain knowledge,

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I wanna understand epistemic improvements like very broadly

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construed, right?

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So according to somebody who defends a sort

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of more traditional or sort

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of more popular knowledge aim of inquiry.

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So I wanna be able to capture knowledge

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as being an important thing we're

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after, when we're engaging in inquiry.

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But I just don't think that exhausts all the kinds

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of epistemic improvements that there are.

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It's like one important kind

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of epistemic improvement is coming to gain knowledge

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of the answer to a question,

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but there's also other kinds

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of epistemic improvements out there, right?

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I think inquiry has a lot to offer us beyond this.

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So inquiry can yield important understanding, it can yield,

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a higher level of confidence

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or certainty in the answer to the question.

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Um, it can also, you know, put us in a position

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to gain a better idea or a higher expected, credence or,

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or level of accuracy in the answer to a question, right?

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So in the rain case, what I think the Enquirer gets is like

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a better sense of whether

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or not it'll rain later

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where this falls short of knowing the answer.

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Um,

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More recently I've been thinking about a kind

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of epistemic improvement

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that might result from identifying a confused

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or mistaken belief, right?

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So say you're inquiring into a question that's sort

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of mistaken or it lacks a true answer.

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So say you're inquiring into, you know,

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why did Bertrand Russell quit smoking when in fact

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he never did, right?

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So maybe you have a confused or misguided belief here.

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I think a kind of epistemic improvement you might gain is

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like realizing that you were wrong

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or realizing that the question is somehow, defective

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or bad and now you're in a position

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to ask a better question, right?

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Or to sort of reconfigure your inquiry in a way that'll put

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you on the path to a sort of better kind

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of epistemic improvement.

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Um, so I think identifying false beliefs is also an

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important kind of epistemic improvement as well.

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If we begin

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to construe epistemic improvements in this broader way,

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if we begin to think about inquiry as not just this activity

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that we engage in, in order to come to know the answer

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to a question, I think this gives us a sort

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of broader way of understanding what we're up

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to when we're engaging in inquiry

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and investigating various questions.

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Um, so first upshot is sort of thinking about the goals

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of inquiry in a broader flexible, I think more, you know,

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forgiving and sort of more accurate

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to the actual practice, kind of way.

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I also think that, you know, a more general upshot is

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that we shouldn't think about inquiry

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as only successful if we come to like, figure out the answer

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to a question, right?

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I think there's all kinds of ways in which inquiry can be

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really productive and valuable even if, we don't come

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to find the answer to a question.

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I think this is gonna ultimately end up being really

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important in sort of an area of future research that I am,

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starting

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to pursue is like thinking about inquiries conducted from

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the position of radical ignorance

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or from the position of say, a child who might make a lot

10:46.625 --> 10:47.825
of mistakes when they're

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investigating questions for the first time.

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So we want our norms of inquiry.

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We want how we're understanding the conditions under which

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it's rational to inquire, to be compatible with thinking

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through, productive inquiries carried out

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by agents like children or agents who might be sort

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of radically wrong about, the subject matter

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that they're investigating

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and the ways in which their,

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their inquiry can still be productive nonetheless.

11:10.685 --> 11:12.905
Um, so yeah, that's sort of broad directions for,

11:12.965 --> 11:14.305
for future topics in this area.

00:00 - A lot of the motivations for the project. Were kind of thinking through a lot of recent scholarship in epistemology, which has kind of shifted its focus on, inquiry and in particular, sort of questions surrounding what the goal or aim of inquiry is.

00:14 - Like, what are we trying to do when we're investigating questions? And a really sort of popular, influential view, that's been defended in recent literature as well as sort of older literature, is this idea that what we're trying to do when we ask a question and investigate into it is like, come to know the answer to that question. I think there's a lot of, good persuasive arguments for this position, but what I try to do in my work is

00:38 - to push back against this as sort of like the only goal or like the only reason why we engage in inquiry. so I had to defend a position on which inquiry can aim among other things. it can aim at knowledge, but it can also aim at other kinds of, of sort of epistemic goodies, like kinds of, positions we might wanna be in as a result of asking an investigating question. So for example, maybe we want like a deeper understanding

01:03 - of the answer to a question. Maybe we want a better sense of the answer. Maybe we wanna just like come to figure out whether or not the question we're asking is a good question, right? Identify any potential confusions we might have. so in general, I'm kind of really coming at this, being motivated by this worry that perhaps this construes the aim of inquiry just sort of solely in terms of coming to gain knowledge a bit too narrowly.

01:28 - And I try to pitch a sort of more pluralistic understanding, in terms of epistemic improvements where that can be broadly, broadly construed. I'll say that a lot of my own motivations for this paper came from engaging with, some work by people like Jane Friedman, Dennis Whitcomb, even earlier than that sort of, Christopher Hook way, sort of one of a sort of earlier people really thinking about inquiry in relation to epistemology.

01:53 - and maybe it'll be helpful to sort of give a kind of case study that's been really influential from Jane Friedman in pitching this idea that inquiry aims at knowledge. Should we, should we do that? Yeah. Okay. so imagine a detective who's been like called in the middle of the night and you know, they're really startled and they go, my gosh. They answer the phone and they're like, A doctor's been murdered, and you need to go to the scene

02:16 - of the crime and investigate, you know, who, who committed this crime? Who murdered the doctor? So imagine you're the detective, you like rush over to the scene of the crime and you start to investigate. You're like super curious. You're like, my gosh, what happened? You interrogate witnesses. You, you know, you like closely look at all the clues at the scene of the crime and maybe like, come

02:34 - to know who committed the murder. Okay? So that's like the first kind of case. Now imagine a slight variation of that kind of case where you get a call, you're a detective, you get a call in the middle of the night, you're told that a doctor has been murdered, and you need to like go to the scene of the crime and investigate. So you wake up, you're like startled and you like rush to the scene of the crime, but you're

02:58 - Also, you know, very worried about what might happen because you yourself are the murderer, right? So like, you're like washing the blood off your hands. You're like wondering like, where did I leave any clues? my gosh. so you, you're like, you can imagine this person's like behaviorally indistinguishable from the first detective. They do all the same things. They, they know, they interview all the same, potential witnesses, but a key difference is like they already know the

03:23 - answer to the question, right? They already know who the murderer is 'cause it's them. so one of the kind of upshots of, of comparing these two cases that Jane Friedman highlights across some of her, like really interesting work on this is that it doesn't really make sense to construe the second detective as really engaged in inquiry at all. And you might think a part of that is

03:44 - because they've already achieved the aim, right? They already know the answer to the question that they're cur that they're sort of investigating. In fact, it doesn't even make sense to construe them as being curious about the answer to the question. Whereas the first detective, you know, much more clearly an instance of inquiry, right? They don't know the answer, they're curious about it and they're trying to figure out the answer. so cases like this

04:07 - and sort of among other arguments have been given to motivate this idea that when more inquiring into a question were like curious and we're trying to figure out the answer, perhaps we're trying to come to know the answer. In my work, I consider a broader range of cases, which I think put pressure on this idea that knowledge is like the sole or only aim of inquiry. It's like the only thing we're after when we're investigating questions.

04:30 - so to see this consider, cases where you already know or you already believe an answer to the question that you're inquiring into, but it still seems appropriate or rational to continue investigating into a question. So imagine a really high stakes case. So imagine you're a doctor and you know, the morning before a really important sort of life saving surgery. You reviewed the patient's file and you know that it's the left kidney

04:57 - that needs to be removed. Nonetheless, right before you're about to perform the surgery, it'd be really easy to just like double check what, what kidney it was, you know, you already know that it's the left, but you wanna be absolutely sure you, you might even think this is what's needed to responsibly act in this case. So you investigate, you sort of open an inquiry into the question of which kidney it is

05:20 - and you recheck the patient's file, right? So I think here, you know, the answer to the question and what you're after is not knowledge of the answer, but instead some sort of deeper or sort of stronger epistemic standing, namely some, some kind of certainty or a higher degree of confidence in the answer. So if that's right, then it looks like you have an instance of inquiry, I think, I think intuitively irrational inquiry into a question where the agent already knows the answer.

05:49 - and if that's right, this suggests that perhaps we ought to be thinking about the aim of inquiry in a sort of broader, more expansive way, right? It's not just about knowledge. This case suggests that it's also about like gaining a deeper understanding, gaining further confirmation, gaining a higher degree of confidence or certainty in the answer. Okay? I also think there's cases on the sort of other side, or sort of, sort of weaker standings

06:14 - that we might be seeking that fall short of coming to know the answer. So imagine that you are about to leave for work and you're wondering whether it'll rain later. That's sort of like the question you're puzzling over. You also happen to live in an environment where like the weather's pretty variable, right? So, you know, you look outside the clouds, you know, it's pretty clear and you think like, hmm, okay, you know, I I I have a sense that it probably won't rain later,

06:41 - but of course you don't know for sure. You don't know that it won't rain later, given your current evidential situation. You can't really come to know the answer to this question of whether it'll rain later. So if that's right, then according to a view on which knowledge is the sole aim of inquiry, it's kind of puzzling why you would even engage in this activity given that you couldn't achieve the aim. but still I think you can inquire in these cases,

07:07 - even though it's not possible to achieve the aim, right? You can imagine the person walking up to the window, lifting the curtain, wondering if it'll rain later, looking up and being like, hmm, looks pretty clear. And as a result, having, you know, a higher degree of confidence that it won't rain later, a sort of a better sense or better idea of whether or not it'll rain later, even though they fall short of knowing or even being in a position to come to know the answer.

07:31 - so I think these two kinds of cases, like on the one hand cases where you might seek a kind of epistemic improvement that goes beyond knowledge in the Dr. Case, but also other cases like this sort of rain case where I think we often can engage in inquiry even when we're looking, to, to gain a kind of improvement that fell short of knowledge. And in fact, when we couldn't gain knowledge, I wanna understand epistemic improvements like very broadly

07:56 - construed, right? So according to somebody who defends a sort of more traditional or sort of more popular knowledge aim of inquiry. So I wanna be able to capture knowledge as being an important thing we're after, when we're engaging in inquiry. But I just don't think that exhausts all the kinds of epistemic improvements that there are. It's like one important kind

08:15 - of epistemic improvement is coming to gain knowledge of the answer to a question, but there's also other kinds of epistemic improvements out there, right? I think inquiry has a lot to offer us beyond this. So inquiry can yield important understanding, it can yield, a higher level of confidence or certainty in the answer to the question. it can also, you know, put us in a position to gain a better idea or a higher expected, credence or,

08:41 - or level of accuracy in the answer to a question, right? So in the rain case, what I think the Enquirer gets is like a better sense of whether or not it'll rain later where this falls short of knowing the answer. More recently I've been thinking about a kind of epistemic improvement that might result from identifying a confused or mistaken belief, right?

09:03 - So say you're inquiring into a question that's sort of mistaken or it lacks a true answer. So say you're inquiring into, you know, why did Bertrand Russell quit smoking when in fact he never did, right? So maybe you have a confused or misguided belief here. I think a kind of epistemic improvement you might gain is like realizing that you were wrong or realizing that the question is somehow, defective or bad and now you're in a position

09:29 - to ask a better question, right? Or to sort of reconfigure your inquiry in a way that'll put you on the path to a sort of better kind of epistemic improvement. so I think identifying false beliefs is also an important kind of epistemic improvement as well. If we begin to construe epistemic improvements in this broader way, if we begin to think about inquiry as not just this activity that we engage in, in order to come to know the answer

09:54 - to a question, I think this gives us a sort of broader way of understanding what we're up to when we're engaging in inquiry and investigating various questions. so first upshot is sort of thinking about the goals of inquiry in a broader flexible, I think more, you know, forgiving and sort of more accurate to the actual practice, kind of way. I also think that, you know, a more general upshot is that we shouldn't think about inquiry

10:18 - as only successful if we come to like, figure out the answer to a question, right? I think there's all kinds of ways in which inquiry can be really productive and valuable even if, we don't come to find the answer to a question. I think this is gonna ultimately end up being really important in sort of an area of future research that I am, starting to pursue is like thinking about inquiries conducted from the position of radical ignorance

10:42 - or from the position of say, a child who might make a lot of mistakes when they're investigating questions for the first time. So we want our norms of inquiry. We want how we're understanding the conditions under which it's rational to inquire, to be compatible with thinking through, productive inquiries carried out by agents like children or agents who might be sort of radically wrong about, the subject matter that they're investigating

11:06 - and the ways in which their, their inquiry can still be productive nonetheless. so yeah, that's sort of broad directions for, for future topics in this area.

Faculti AI can make mistakes