Abstract

This book presents a novel approach to the logic of questions. This approach starts from the fact that in many cases arriving at a question resembles coming to a conclusion: there are premises involved and some inferential thought processes take place. These processes - erotetic inferences - occur in almost every process of reasoning, but logicians are just beginning to investigate them. This book systematically develops a conceptual framework for this new field of logic. It also contains a general overview of the existing logical theories of questions and a more detailed exposition of the most widely developed theories. The book is self-contained and presupposes only some knowledge of elementary formal logic. Although it is a study in the logic of questions, it may also be of interest to philosophers of science, cognitive scientists and computer scientists.