Erotetics or erotetic logic is a part of
logic
Logic is the study of correct reasoning. It includes both formal and informal logic. Formal logic is the science of deductively valid inferences or of logical truths. It is a formal science investigating how conclusions follow from premises ...
, devoted to logical analysis of
question
A question is an utterance which serves as a request for information. Questions are sometimes distinguished from interrogatives, which are the grammar, grammatical forms typically used to express them. Rhetorical questions, for instance, are inte ...
s. It is sometimes called the logic of questions and answers.
Overview
The idea was originally developed by
Richard Whately
Richard Whately (1 February 1787 – 8 October 1863) was an English academic, rhetorician, logician, philosopher, economist, and theologian who also served as a reforming Church of Ireland Archbishop of Dublin. He was a leading Broad Churchman ...
. For example, he noted the ambiguity of the interrogation "Why?". (1) It could be a reason, such as why the angles of a triangle sum to two right angles, or (2) a cause, such as why days are shorter in winter than summer, or (3) a design requirement as in a timepiece.
[Mary Prior and ]Arthur Prior
Arthur Norman Prior (4 December 1914 – 6 October 1969), usually cited as A. N. Prior, was a New Zealand–born logician and philosopher. Prior (1957) founded tense logic, now also known as temporal logic, and made important contribution ...
"Erotetic Logic", ''The Philosophical Review
''The Philosophical Review'' is a quarterly journal of philosophy edited by the faculty of the Sage School of Philosophy at Cornell University and published by Duke University Press (since September 2006).
Overview
The journal publishes original ...
'' 64(1) (1955): pp. 43–59 .
In 1936 Whately's work was revived by
Eugeniu Sperantia Eugeniu Sperantia ( – January 11/12, 1972) was a Romanian poet, aesthetician, essayist, sociologist and philosopher.
He was born in Bucharest to folklorist Theodor Speranția and his wife Elena (''née'' Cruceanu), a relative of poet Mihail ...
. In 1955 Mary and
Arthur Prior
Arthur Norman Prior (4 December 1914 – 6 October 1969), usually cited as A. N. Prior, was a New Zealand–born logician and philosopher. Prior (1957) founded tense logic, now also known as temporal logic, and made important contribution ...
recalled Whately's suggestion for a variable
copula to write questions symbolically. Recognizing the consequent symbolic calculus, they note that it is insufficient for the logic of interrogatives, which is antisymbolic.
[
In 1940 R. G. Collingwood published ''An Essay on Metaphysics'' in which he examined ]presupposition
In the branch of linguistics known as pragmatics, a presupposition (or PSP) is an implicit assumption about the world or background belief relating to an utterance whose truth is taken for granted in discourse. Examples of presuppositions include ...
s in statements and questions. In fact he claimed "Every statement that anybody ever makes is made in the answer to a question." By way of explanation, he wrote "In proportion as a man is thinking scientifically when he makes a statement, he knows the statement is the answer to a question and he knows what the question is." In this sense, when thinking is scientifically ordered, a question is logically prior to its own answer. Collingwood also asserts that "Each question involves a presupposition".
In 1966 Nuel D. Belnap, Jr. wrote on "Questions, Answers, and Presuppositions".
In 1963 MIT Press
The MIT Press is a university press affiliated with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, Massachusetts (United States). It was established in 1962.
History
The MIT Press traces its origins back to 1926 when MIT publish ...
published ''Communication: a Logical Model'' by David Harrah that focused on questions as pivotal in communication. The same year Belnap published ''An analysis of questions: preliminary report''. C. L. Hamblin
Charles Leonard Hamblin (20 November 1922 – 14 May 1985) was an Australian philosopher, logician, and computer pioneer, as well as a professor of philosophy at the New South Wales University of Technology (now the University of New South Wales) ...
reviewed the works of Harrah and Belnap together: he considered them a launching of erotetics into serious consideration. Later, Nuel Belnap and T.B. Steel Jr. wrote ''The Logic of Questions and Answers'' (1976), which came at a watershed moment: while purportedly continuing the philosophical investigation of Harrah, they anticipated query language
Query languages, data query languages or database query languages (DQL) are computer languages used to make queries in databases and information systems. A well known example is the Structured Query Language (SQL).
Types
Broadly, query language ...
s and data base management system
In computing, a database is an organized collection of data stored and accessed electronically. Small databases can be stored on a file system, while large databases are hosted on computer clusters or cloud storage. The design of databases s ...
s. The bibliography included 25 references on question answering
Question answering (QA) is a computer science discipline within the fields of information retrieval and natural language processing (NLP), which is concerned with building systems that automatically answer questions posed by humans in a natural l ...
and natural language understanding.
For most of the time, researchers concentrated on the relation between questions and answers. Recently, more attention is given to the way questions come from sentences or other questions, similar to entailment
Logical consequence (also entailment) is a fundamental concept in logic, which describes the relationship between statements that hold true when one statement logically ''follows from'' one or more statements. A valid logical argument is one ...
.
Some contributions in this direction are Jaakko Hintikka
Kaarlo Jaakko Juhani Hintikka (12 January 1929 – 12 August 2015) was a Finnish philosopher and logician.
Life and career
Hintikka was born in Helsingin maalaiskunta (now Vantaa).
In 1953, he received his doctorate from the University of Helsin ...
's interrogative model and Andrzej Wiśniewski
Andrzej Wiśniewski (13 January 1956 – 3 April 2022) was a Polish professional football manager.
Career
In 2001, Wiśniewski briefly managed Wisła Płock, which fell to the second division. In 2002, he coached the Palestine national team. La ...
's inferential erotetic logic (IEL). In the interrogative model, questioning is seen as game played between two parties. One of these parties may be reality
Reality is the sum or aggregate of all that is real or existent within a system, as opposed to that which is only imaginary. The term is also used to refer to the ontological status of things, indicating their existence. In physical terms, r ...
.
In 2011 Anna Brożek published ''The Theory of Questions'' which started with philosophical context (ontology
In metaphysics, ontology is the philosophical study of being, as well as related concepts such as existence, becoming, and reality.
Ontology addresses questions like how entities are grouped into categories and which of these entities exis ...
, epistemology
Epistemology (; ), or the theory of knowledge, is the branch of philosophy concerned with knowledge. Epistemology is considered a major subfield of philosophy, along with other major subfields such as ethics, logic, and metaphysics.
Episte ...
), then use in human intercourse, with a consideration of cognition
Cognition refers to "the mental action or process of acquiring knowledge and understanding through thought, experience, and the senses". It encompasses all aspects of intellectual functions and processes such as: perception, attention, thought, ...
and answers. Embedded questions and situational analysis are noted, as well as specific considerations with regard to science, psychology, and surveys. Concluding chapters consider legal proceedings, philosophical questions, and the history of erotetic study in Poland in the 20th-century.
Erotetics has been used for insight into teaching
Teaching is the practice implemented by a ''teacher'' aimed at transmitting skills (knowledge, know-how, and interpersonal skills) to a learner, a student, or any other audience in the context of an educational institution. Teaching is closely re ...
: "To teach someone something is to answer that person’s questions about some subject matter."[C.J.B. MacMillan & James W. Garrison (1988) ''A Logical Theory of Teaching: Erotetics and Intensionality'', Kluwer ]
See also
* Complex question
* Contingent question
* Display and referential questions
* Leading question
In common law systems that rely on testimony by witnesses, a leading question is a question that suggests a particular answer and contains information the examiner is looking to have confirmed. The use of leading questions in court to elicit test ...
* Loaded question
A loaded question is a form of complex question that contains a controversial assumption (e.g., a presumption of guilt).
Such questions may be used as a rhetorical tool: the question attempts to limit direct replies to be those that serve the qu ...
* Open-ended question
An open-ended question is a question that cannot be answered with a "yes" or "no" response, or with a static response. Open-ended questions are phrased as a statement which requires a longer response. The response can be compared to information tha ...
* Rhetorical question
A rhetorical question is one for which the questioner does not expect a direct answer: in many cases it may be intended to start a discourse, or as a means of displaying or emphasize the speaker's or author's opinion on a topic.
A common example ...
* Scientific question
* Socratic method
The Socratic method (also known as method of Elenchus, elenctic method, or Socratic debate) is a form of cooperative argumentative dialogue between individuals, based on asking and answering questions to stimulate critical thinking and to draw ...
* Suggestive question
A suggestive question is one that implies that a certain answer should be given in response, or falsely presents a presupposition in the question as accepted fact. Such a question distorts the memory thereby tricking the person into answering in a ...
References
Sources
* Whately, Richard (1875) ''Elements of Logic'', Longman, Green & Co. (9th Edition, London)
* Jaakko Hintikka
Kaarlo Jaakko Juhani Hintikka (12 January 1929 – 12 August 2015) was a Finnish philosopher and logician.
Life and career
Hintikka was born in Helsingin maalaiskunta (now Vantaa).
In 1953, he received his doctorate from the University of Helsin ...
(1999) ''Inquiry as Inquiry: A Logic of Scientic Discovery'', Springer books
* Nicholas Rescher
Nicholas Rescher (; ; born 15 July 1928) is a German-American philosopher, polymath, and author, who has been a professor of philosophy at the University of Pittsburgh since 1961. He is chairman of the Center for Philosophy of Science and was fo ...
(2000) ''Inquiry Dynamics'', Transaction Publishers
Transaction Publishers was a New Jersey-based publishing house that specialized in social science books and journals. It was located on the Livingston Campus of Rutgers University. Transaction was sold to Taylor & Francis in 2016 and merged with ...
{{ISBN, 0-7658-0007-1
* Andrzej Wiśniewski (1995) ''The Posing of Logical Questions'', Springer Netherlands.
External links
Erotetics
at PhilPapers
PhilPapers is an interactive academic database of journal articles in philosophy. It is maintained by the Centre for Digital Philosophy at the University of Western Ontario, and as of 2022, it has "394,867 registered users, including the majorit ...
Logic