A logical account of questions in inquiry

A detective investigating a burglary faces a number of questions: How did the burglar get in? What has been stolen? Is the mark on the floor a footprint from the culprit?

The detective has certain attitudes towards these questions: she wonders about them, she is curious about them, and maybe she suspends her judgment about some of them.

These attitudes motivate the detective to search for new information in order to make progress towards solving the case.

This general picture of the process of inquiry raises a number of issues: What is the relation between an agent’s available information and the attitudes she has towards the questions that guide her inquiry? How does this relation change when the agent receives new information or discovers new questions?

Standard formal logical accounts of knowledge and belief lack the resources to represent questions and our attitudes towards them.

The project aims to remedy this situation by developing a general logical framework in which the role of questions in inquiry can be represented.

By representing inquiring agents’ attitudes towards questions in exact mathematical terms, the project will provide a handle on the complexities involved in the study of inquiry.

In addition to the project's impact with respect to our understanding of inquiry in general, it will also make contributions to debates in epistemology and philosophy of language, and to research in cognitive science on the role of questions in human reasoning.