The erotetic epistemology: a primer

• Author / Creator

  Buenting, Joel M

• One way of “doing” philosophy is to choose a topic of investigation, proceed in depth narrowly on an analysis of that topic; then to apply the results widely. I follow this strategy in my dissertation. The topic I investigate narrowly is “questions”; then I emphasize its applications in epistemology. Since an analysis of questions has consequences for the ways it makes sense to think about knowledge, framing my project in terms of the erotetic epistemology seems natural, though it is novel.
  The best developed erotetic epistemology is contrastive knowledge. Contrastivists about knowledge say ‘knows’ denotes the ternary relation “s knows p rather than q”. The contrastive view thus conflicts with the standard view in epistemology according to which ‘knows’ denotes the binary relation “s knows p”.
  I argue that knowledge within an erotetic framework cannot be contrastive. So, after detailing the contrastive view (Chapters 1 & 2) and its application in epistemology (Chapters 3 & 4), I argue that certain types of questions are clear counterexamples to the contrastive interpretation of the erotetic epistemology (Chapter 6). In route, I defend contrastive knowledge against objection in the literature (Chapter 5).

• Subjects / Keywords

  • Contrastive knowledge
  • Epistemology
  • Questions

• Graduation date

  Fall 2011

• Type of Item

  Thesis

• Degree

  Doctor of Philosophy

• DOI

  https://doi.org/10.7939/R3X40M

• License

  This thesis is made available by the University of Alberta Libraries with permission of the copyright owner solely for non-commercial purposes. This thesis, or any portion thereof, may not otherwise be copied or reproduced without the written consent of the copyright owner, except to the extent permitted by Canadian copyright law.