Abstract

In Knowing What Things Are, Abath shifts the focus of epistemology from propositional knowledge to the capacity to answer questions, emphasizing knowledge as an outcome of human activity. He highlights the role of interrogatives in epistemic evaluation. However, his emphasis on Socratic questions ("What is X?") overlooks the interconnectedness of different types of questions within an inquiry. This paper examines two Socratic questions: "What is a gene?" and "What is a marriage?" In the case of "What is a gene?" advances in molecular biology challenge the classical molecular gene concept, leading to a pluralistic or emergent definition. Inquiry into genes involves meta-level questions concerning the concept’s definition and the role of related terms such as "heritable." Similarly, "What is a marriage?" encompasses both descriptive and normative dimensions, requiring an understanding of legal, social, and cultural definitions. Abath’s erotetic framework, which aims to refine answers to Socratic questions, must account for these meta-level inquiries and the various ways an inquiry can be directed to provide a more comprehensive depiction of knowledge as an activity.