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Questions and Answers: Understanding Knowledge-Wh

2022; Springer International Publishing; Linguagem: Inglês

10.1007/978-3-031-07365-6_3

2542-8292

André J. Abath,

Logic, Reasoning, and Knowledge

An important step in building an account of the knowledge of what things are is to recognize that knowledge of this sort is a species of knowledge-wh, which includes, for example, knowledge-who, knowledge-where, knowledge-which and knowledge-why. Sentences of knowledge-wh involve interrogative complements, as in “Patricia knows where Buenos Aires is”, “Patricia knows who Zendaya is” or “Patricia knows what a rhombus is”. It is thus tempting to think that knowing-wh is a matter of knowing answers to the questions that figure in knowledge-wh sentences. For instance, it is tempting to think that Patricia knows who Zendaya is if and only if Patricia knows the answer to the question who Zendaya is. I take it that his approach to knowledge-wh (that I call the standard account) is correct in its broad lines, but that it needs to be somewhat revised and improved. Doing so is the main aim of this chapter. I attempt to improve the standard account of knowledge-wh by introducing an inquiry-based approach to knowledge of this sort. I defend a view according to which knowing-wh is the outcome of (successful) inquiries into certain wh-questions. Thus knowing where Buenos Aires is is the outcome of a (successful) inquiry into the question of where Buenos Aires is. An inquiry-based approach to knowledge-wh should make clear that knowing-wh is not only a matter of knowing true answers to certain questions, but of knowing answers that are both true and settle (or close) these questions. Importantly, moreover, we shall see that whether an answer to a question happens to settle it is a context-sensitive matter—the answer expressed by “Buenos Aires is north of Santa Rosa” may settle the question of where Buenos Aires is in certain contexts, but not in others. If this is so, then an account of knowledge-wh should also be context-sensitive, or so I argue. I end this chapter by discussing objections to such a context-sensitive treatment of knowledge-wh.