The Interrogative Model of Inquiry and Dynamic Epistemic Logics are two central paradigms in formal epistemology. This paper is motivated by the observation of a significant complementarity between them: on the one hand, the IMI provides a framework for investigating inquiry represented as an idealized game between an Inquirer and Nature, along with an account of the interaction between questions and inferences in information-seeking processes, but is lacking a formulation in the multi-agent case; on the other (...) hand, DELs model various operations of information change in multi-agent systems, but the field is lacking a proper integration of question and inference dynamics, along with an application to the investigation of inquiry processes. The goal of this paper is to integrate the two paradigms in such a way as to combine their respective insights. To this end, we develop a formal system called DEL $$_\mathrm{IMI }$$ IMI which aims to represent the interaction between question and inference dynamics in inquiry—as described by the IMI—in a multi-agent setting, and this in such a way as to enable an investigation of inquiry games with multi-agent dimensions. The DEL $$_\mathrm{IMI }$$ IMI system is designed to represent the possible moves of such inquiry games through three types of epistemic actions: agents addressing questions to Nature, agents addressing questions to other agents, agents drawing logical inferences. We then show how the resulting framework can be used to formally define multi-agent inquiry games. We conclude by evaluating the interest of the DEL $$_\mathrm{IMI }$$ IMI system for the IMI and DELs paradigms. (shrink)

This book explores the two major elements of Hintikka’s model of inquiry: underlying game theoretical motivations and the central role of questioning. The chapters build on the Hintikkan tradition extending Hintikka’s model and present a wide variety of approaches to the philosophy of inquiry from different directions, ranging from erotetic logic to Lakatosian philosophy, from socio-epistemologic approaches to strategic reasoning and mathematical practice. Hintikka's theory of inquiry is a well-known example of a dynamic epistemic procedure. (...) In an interrogative inquiry, the inquirer is given a theory and a question. He then tries to answer the question based on the theory by posing questions to nature or an oracle. The initial formulation of this procedure by Hintikka is rather broad and informal. This volume introduces a carefully selected responses to the issues discussed by Hintikka. The articles in the volume were contributed by various authors associated with a research project on Hintikka's interrogative theory of inquiry conducted in the Institut d’Histoire et de Philosophie des Sciences et des Techniques of Paris, including those who visited to share their insight. (shrink)

The article outlines the prospects of using J. Hintikka’s interrogative epistemology for modelling cognitive operations carried out by a cognizing agent to create a machine capable of full cognition. It was established that modeling is divided into two objectives: modeling the cognitive operations and modeling the strategic reasoning. Interrogative epistemology presents a solution to the first objective. It relies on a game-theoretic formal apparatus that allows one to correctly describe all types of possible moves within the framework of (...) a particular cognitive game. The second objective cannot be accomplished in a general epistemological theory framework since strategic considerations about the organization of research and even the concept of knowledge inevitably depend on the broader context of an agent’s practical activity. Therefore, interrogative epistemology does not claim a universal and complete description of the process of cognition, focusing on other tasks: primarily on identifying hidden premises that cognitive agents use in their reasoning. For the same reason, interrogative epistemology deems the possibility of the existence of a cognizing machine as formally unsubstantiated and questionable. However, arguments are given in favor of the fact that interrogative epistemology serves as an acceptable conceptual framework for clarifying the nature of the difficulties that arise with attempts to accomplish the second objective and improving the quality of philosophical discourse in the field of artificial intelligence research. The author substantiates this position by arguing that the ability to cognize presupposes the ability to perform all the essential functions that are usually called mental. (shrink)

Book Reviews: Can Başkent, Perspectives on Interrogative Models of Inquiry, Logic, Argumentation & Reasoning, Volume 8, Springer, 2016, vii + 197 pages, ISBN: 978-3-319-20761-2, 978-3-319-20762-9. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-20762-9.

This article commends Jaakko Hintikka's interrogative model of reasoning as an aid to historiography in relation to historical inquiry and explanation. After an initial discussion of David Hackett Fischer's appeal to the "logic of historical thought" in terms of his overlapping complementary emphases with Hintikka's interrogative model, a critical evaluation is given of Fischer's brief but strong comments regarding the role of why-questions in historical explanation. From there the main part of the article is given (...) over to how the interrogative model provides an account of the nature of explanation in general using Hintikka's recently published work on explanation theory. The theory of explanation that uses the interrogative model is applied to historical explanation and illustrated in the way the interrogative model serves a descriptively-valuable role in historiography by reference to historical inquiry and explanation in Herodotus. (shrink)

Conversation is one of the main contexts in which we are conducting inquiries. Yet, little attention has been paid so far in pragmatics or epistemology to the process of inquiry in conversation. In this paper, we propose to trigger such an investigation through the development of a formal modelling based on inquisitive pragmatics—a framework offering a semantic representation of questions and answers, along with an analysis of the pragmatic principles that govern questioning and answering moves in conversations geared towards (...) information exchange. Our starting observation is that an interrogative inquiry in a conversation takes the form of a finite sequence of questioning and answering steps, and appears thereby as an inherently temporal process. The central notion of interrogative protocol introduced in this paper precisely aims to capture the temporal dimension of inquiry. Interrogative protocols are defined as branching-time tree structures encoding all the possible sequences of questioning and answering steps—i.e., all the possible inquiry paths—that can subsequently occur in a starting conversational situation in accordance with the principles of inquisitive pragmatics. They provide us with a formal environment to define and investigate the epistemological notions of interrogative inquiry and interrogative consequence in conversational contexts. One of the main interests of the resulting framework is to enable a formal investigation of central epistemological issues relative to interrogative inquiry under the form of computational problems. We frame three key inquiry problems along this line, and we then propose an algorithmic procedure for solving them in the restricted case where the inquirer has at her disposal a finite number of questions in her inquiry. We conclude by relating our approach to Wiśniewski’s Erotetic Search Scenarios and Hintikka’s Interrogative Model of Inquiry. (shrink)

We propose a dynamic-epistemic analysis of the different epistemic operations constitutive of the process of interrogative inquiry, as described by Hintikka’s Interrogative Model of Inquiry (IMI). We develop a dynamic logic of questions for representing interrogative steps, based on Hintikka’s treatment of questions in the IMI, along with a dynamic logic of inferences for representing deductive steps, based on the tableau method. We then merge these two systems into a dynamic logic of interrogative (...) inquiry which articulates a joint treatment of questions and inferences, providing thereby a unified framework representing the informational dynamics of interrogative inquiry. We provide sound and complete axiomatic systems for the three dynamic logics that we introduce, we compare our framework with existing approaches, and we finally propose several directions for further work. (shrink)

The relationship between discovery and justification is not clear. According to a standard twentieth-century opinion, in the philosophy of science these two are understood as separate problems: how to recognize and conceptualize the object of study and how to find the justification for the conceptualized belief. How to study the logic of discovery? What kind of logic might such a logic be? The basic observation is that discoveries do not take place in a vacuum. They have to be localized into (...) scientific inquiry processes: a discovery is a discovery only in the context of a scientific inquiry process. To do this we use a systematic logico-philosophical model called the interrogative model of inquiry, which was developed by Jaakko Hintikka. The interrogative model of inquiry allows us to consider the scientific inquiry process as a strategic, goal-tracking process which gives justification for the discovery. The model allows us to formulate a systematic logic of scientific discovery and justification. (shrink)

In Jaakko Hintikka's interrogative model of inquiry, the strategic principles governing empirical inquiry turn out to be closely related to those governing deductive reasoning. Hence it is important to study the precise analogies which obtain between deductive logic and interrogative inquiry. The basic concept of the interrogative model is the relation of model consequence $\text{M}\colon \text{T}\vdash \text{C}$. It is said to obtain iff C can be derived from T by means of (...) an interrogative process in the model M. We prove here a counterpart of Craig 's interpolation theorem for the concept of model consequence. The interrogative analogue to definability is a logical generalization of methodologists' concept of identifiability. For this concept, we prove an analogue to Beth's theorem. Some further philosophical consequences of these results are mentioned. For instance, identifiability is a good rational reconstruction of the idea of observability. (shrink)

This paper examines critically the reconstruction of the ‘Sherlock Holmes sense of deduction’ proposed jointly by M.B. Hintikka and J. Hintikka in the 1980s, and its successor, the interrogative model of inquiry developed by J. Hintikka and his collaborators in the 1990s. The Hintikkas’ model explicitly used game theory in order to formalize a naturalistic approach to inquiry, but the imi abandoned both the game-theoretic formalism, and the naturalistic approach. It is argued that the latter (...) better supports the claim that the imi provides a ‘logic of discovery’, and safeguards its empirical adequacy. Technical changes necessary to this interpretation are presented, and examples are discussed, both formal and informal, that are better analyzed when these changes are in place. The informal examples are borrowed from Conan Doyle’s The Case of Silver Blaze, a favorite of M.B. and J. Hintikka. (shrink)

Contents: Matti SINTONEN: From the Science of Logic to the Logic of Science. I: HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVES. Zev BECHLER: Hintikka on Plenitude in Aristotle. Marja-Liisa KAKKURI-KNUUTTILA: What Can the Sciences of Man Learn from Aristotle? Martin KUSCH: Theories of Questions in German-Speaking Philosophy Around the Turn of the Century. Nils-Eric SAHLIN: 'HE IS NO GOOD FOR MY WORK': On the Philosophical Relations between Ramsey and Wittgenstein. II: FORMAL TOOLS: INDUCTION, OBSERVATION AND IDENTIFIABILITY. Theo A.F. KUIPERS: The Carnap-Hintikka Programme in Inductive Logic. (...) Isaac LEVI: Caution and Nonmonotonic Inference. Ilkka NIINILUOTO: Inductive Logic, Atomism, and Observational Error. Arto MUTANEN: Theory of Identifiability. III: QUESTIONS IN INQUIRY: THE INTERROGATIVE MODEL. Sylvain BROMBERGER: Natural Kinds and Questions. Scott A. KLEINER: The Structure of Inquiry in Developmental Biology. Andrzej WISNIEWSKI: Some Foundational Concepts of Erotetic Semantics. Jan WOLE??N??SKI: Science and Games. IV: GROWTH OF KNOWLEDGE: EXPLANATION AND DISCOVERY. Matti SINTONEN: Explanation: The Fifth Decade. Erik WEBER: Scientific Explanation and the Interrogative Model of Inquiry. George GEBHARD: Scientific Discovery, Induction, and the Multi-Level Character of Scientific Inquiry. Mika KIIKERI: On the Logical Structure of Learning Models. V: JAAKKO HINTIKKA: REPLIES. VI: ABSTRACTS. (shrink)

When a person commits a testimonial injustice, the unjust thing they do consists in their reaction to an assertion (theorists diverge on the details; paradigmatically the relevant unjust thing consists in prejudicially refraining from believing the assertion). Whatever reactions to questions are analogous to these reactions to assertions, those things are "interrogative injustices". I explore some models of those things and apply them to some non-ideal cases. One of the models appeals to mental states like curiosity and wonder, telling (...) us that interrogative injustice occurs when hearers prejudicially refrain from adopting those mental states. Other models appeal to common conversational goals – these goals including the answering of questions. On these models, interrogative injustice occurs when a person asks a question, and another person prejudicially blocks the answering of that question from joining the common goals. Or, if they don’t block said answering, perhaps they believe that it should be thus blocked. Or perhaps they merely resist the question, not fully blocking its answering from joining the common goals but instead pushing back against it in some other way. Or perhaps they merely believe that they should resist the question. I endorse a pluralism on which each of these things can be an interrogative injustice. (shrink)

This article presents an archaeological inquiry into the early histories of Quality of Life (QoL) measures, and takes this as an occasion to rethink the concept of the ‘medical model of disability’. Focusing on three instruments that set the ground for the emergence of QoL measures, namely, the Karnofsky Performance Scale (KPS, 1948), and the classification of functional capacity as a diagnostic criterion for heart diseases (Bainton, 1928) and as a supplementary aid to therapeutic criteria in rheumatoid arthritis (...) ( Steinbrocker, Traeger, and Batterman, 1949 ) – I discuss how medicine, throughout the emergence of QoL, began to expand its gaze beyond the confines of the body to what that body does in daily life. Building upon Armstrong et al.’s notion of ‘distal symptoms’ (2007) and Wahlberg’s idea of ‘knowledge of living’ (2018), I propose the notion of disabilitization to encapsulate this expansion of the clinical gaze, through which medicine has come to articulate diseases and their treatments in new ways, and in so doing, has inadvertently created disability as a new kind of knowledge category in itself – a category that is defined not through its reduction to mere pathology, but through its dispersal into everyday life. I present this concept not as a periodization, but as a provocative discontinuity with the totalizing history assumed within the medical model of disability, and in so doing, ask what, in fact, holds ‘the medical model’ together, and whether there might be other ways of understanding medicine’s complex relationship to disability than what the concept of the medical model allows us to envisage. (shrink)

Kuhn 's contribution should be viewed as posing a number of important problems, not as a full-fledged theory of the structure of science. Kuhn 's alleged theory-ladenness of observations is examined as a test case in the light of Hintikka's interrogative model of inquiry. A certain superficial theory-ladenness is built into that model. Moreover, the model provides a deeper analysis of theory-ladenness via the two-levelled character of experimental science. A higher-level and a lower-level inquiry (...) rely on different kinds of initial premises and operate with different kinds of "answers" by nature. The model also throws light on the alleged theory-ladenness of meaning. (shrink)

Several of the so-called “fallacies” in Aristotle are not in fact mistaken inference-types, but mistakes or breaches of rules in the questioning games which were practiced in the Academy and in the Lyceum. Hence the entire Aristotelian theory of “fallacies” ought to be studied by reference to the author's interrogative model of inquiry, based on his theory of questions and answers, rather than as a part of the theory of inference. Most of the “fallacies” mentioned by Aristotle (...) can in fact be diagnosed by means of the interrogative model, including petitio principii, multiple questions, “babbling’, etc., and so can Aristotle's alleged anticipation of the fallacy of argumentum ad hominem. The entire Aristotelian conception of inquiry is an interrogative one. Deductive conclusions caught Aristotle's attention in the form of answers that every rational interlocutor must give, assuming only his own earlier answers. Several features of Aristotle's methodology can be understood by means of the interrogative model, including the role of endoxa in it. Theoretically, there is also considerable leeway as to whether “fallacies” are conceived of as mistakes in questioning or as breaches of the rules that govern questioning games. (shrink)

In his book Knowledge and Belief, Jaakko Hintikka uses a model-theoretic approach of modal semantics as a theoretical basis for investigating the principles of epistemic logic. I shall first summarize the main points of Hintikka’s classic work and then address the most disputed themes raised by it in the 60s and later, such as logical omniscience and the KK-thesis, as well as Hintikka’s modifying his views on the basis of criticism. The last part of the book treats quantified epistemic (...) logic, particularly quantifying into “intensional” or “referentially opaque” epistemic contexts defended against Quine’s objections. I deal with this topic in Sect. 17.3 and add some relevant comparisons with John Buridan’s medieval approach in Sect. 17.4. A survey of Hintikka’s later theory of modelling knowledge acquisition is presented in Sect. 17.5; this includes the semantics of questions and inquiry in terms of game-theoretical semantics and their application to the logic of epistemology and scientific reasoning in the interrogative model of inquiry. Combining these results with the theory of independence friendly logic provides, Hintikka argues, a promising improvement of general epistemology which he calls a second-generation epistemic logic. The subject of the last section is “knowing who” in the sense of a basic epistemic attitude associated with identification which is the key notion in Hintikka’s epistemic theory of questions and answers, reference, and quantification. A central issue in this context is Hintikka’s discovery of the duality of cross-identification methods, the public or descriptive and the perspective ones. (shrink)

Erik J. Olsson and David Westlund have recently argued that the standard belief revision representation of an epistemic state is defective. In order to adequately model an epistemic state one needs, in addition to a belief set K and an entrenchment relation E, a research agenda A, i.e. a set of questions satisfying certain corpus-relative preconditions the agent would like to have answers to. Informally, the preconditions guarantee that the set of potential answers represent a partition of possible expansions (...) of K, hence are equivalent to well-behaved sets of alternative hypotheses. (shrink)

I will present a short overview of Hintikka’s main ideas in logic, starting with his early work on constituents and model sets, continuing with his contributions to epistemic logic, up to his later work in game-theoretical semantics and the Interrogative Model of Inquiry.

In this paper, we discuss Hintikka’s theory of interrogative approach to inquiry with a focus on bracketing. First, we dispute the use of bracketing in the interrogative model of inquiry arguing that bracketing provides an indispensable component of an inquiry. Then, we suggest a formal system based on strategy logic and logic of paradox to describe the epistemic aspects of an inquiry, and obtain a naturally paraconsistent system. We then apply our framework to (...) some cases to illustrate its use. (shrink)

The purpose of the present article is to propose a research project which will analyse the issue of theoretization of empirical data which takes place in the process of formulating scientific problems. J. Hintikka’s interrogative model of inquiry will serve us as a starting point for our considerations. First, his proposal of viewing the theory-dependence of facts will be characterized. Then, with reference to the results of K. Jodkowski, three interpretations of theory-laden thesis will be given: a (...) radical, a modest and a weak one. This will render it possible to further develop a critique of certain aspects of Hintikka’s conception. Subsequently, the critique will provide a basis for presenting a new way of viewing theory-dependence of empirical data. Some considerations regarding a possible use of the received conceptual scheme for analyzing certain problems of philosophy of science will close the article. A possibility of analyzing such classical problems as falsification and the use of the principle of auto-determinacy in science will also be offered. Lastly, with reference to A. Grobler’s analyses, a possibility of representing a process of rejecting metaphysical presuppositions in science will be considered. (shrink)

Detectives and scientists are in the business of reasoning from observations to explanations. This they often do by raising cunning questionsduring their inquiries. But to substantiate this claim we need to know how questions arise and how they are nurtured into more specific hypotheses. I shall discuss what the problem is, and then introduce the so-called interrogative model of inquiry which makes use of an explicit logic of questions. On this view, a discovery processes can be represented (...) as a model-based game in which an inquirer subjects a source of information to a series of strategically organized questions. Strategic principles and why-questions are especially important in heuristical reasoning. Why-questions have their own peculiar nature among questions. They indicate that the inquirer's expectations are somehow disappointed, and that is cognitively challenging. In a finished argument why-questions can be omitted, but in the search for more specific questions they are highly important. As a detetective example I shall analyze Sherlock Holmes reasoning in Silver Blace, the scientific one is A.R. Wallace's discovery of the principle of natural selection. In both of these examples the meaning of questions, especially of well-chosen why-questions, of strategic principles, and of highly structured background knowledge come to the fore. Good questions frequent those who have orderly expectations, based on experience and expertise (detectives!) or highly structured background theories (scientists!). (shrink)

In this paper we maintain that abductive inferential processes should be embedded to a more general outlook on human cognition. Abduction has clear a.nities to the so-called interrogative model of inquiry in which inquiry and reasoning are conceptualized as a dialogue. We think, in addition, that dialogicality must be broadened to a “trialogical” framework which means a threefold relationship with mediating artefacts where the inquirer, other inquirers , and the object of knowledge are inextricably bound up (...) with each other in long term processes of inquiry. Seen from this perspective Peirce's semeiotic pragmatism has close connections to modern ideas about distributed cognition; also to Pera's dialectical model of science, and Davidson's theory of triangulation concerning human mind, cognition, and knowledge. (shrink)

Olsson and his collaborators have proposed an extension of Belief Revision Theory where an epistemic state is modeled as a triple S=⟨K_,E,A_⟩ , where A_ is a research agenda, i.e. a set of research questions. Contraction and expansion apply to states, and affect the agenda. We propose an alternative characterization of the problem of agenda updating, where research questions are viewed as blueprints for research strategies. We offer a unified solution to this problem, and prove it equivalent to Olsson’s own. (...) We conclude arguing that: (i) our solution makes the idea of ‘minimal change’ in questions and agendas clearer; (ii) can be extended in ways the original theory was not, and may help better realize the aims this theory was proposed for; (iii) unveils some limitations of the initial approach, yet opening a way to overcome them. (shrink)

Jaakko Hintikka's Kantianism in philosophy of logic and mathematics is known to go further than Kant's own, for he argues that mathematical reasoning involves the "language-games" of seeking and finding. Therefore, logic mirrors the structure of this activity. But Hintikka also pushes the Copemican Revolution further to epistemology and philosophy of science. He agrees that "reason has insight only into what which it produces after a plan of ist own", but gives the idea a new logical turn. Kant thought that (...) reason imposes certain architectonic constraints on the possible outcome of inquiry, but Hintikka's interrogative model of inquiry also emphasizes the activity of and therefore the strategy in, putting questions to Nature. (shrink)

Jaakko Hintikka's Kantianism in philosophy of logic and mathematics is known to go further than Kant's own, for he argues that mathematical reasoning involves the "language-games" of seeking and finding. Therefore, logic mirrors the structure of this activity. But Hintikka also pushes the Copemican Revolution further to epistemology and philosophy of science. He agrees that "reason has insight only into what which it produces after a plan of ist own", but gives the idea a new logical turn. Kant thought that (...) reason imposes certain architectonic constraints on the possible outcome of inquiry, but Hintikka's interrogative model of inquiry also emphasizes the activity of and therefore the strategy in, putting questions to Nature. (shrink)

Formal models of scientific inquiry, aimed at capturing socio-epistemic aspects underlying the process of scientific research, have become an important method in formal social epistemology and philosophy of science. In this introduction to the special issue we provide a historical overview of the development of formal models of this kind and analyze their methodological contributions to discussions in philosophy of science. In particular, we show that their significance consists in different forms of ‘methodological iteration’ whereby the models initiate new (...) lines of inquiry, isolate and clarify problems with existing knowledge claims, and stimulate further research. (shrink)

I. Levi has advocated a decision-theoretic account of belief revision. We argue that the game-theoretic framework of Interrogative Inquiry Games, proposed by J. Hintikka, can extend and clarify this account. We show that some strategic use of the game rules generate Expansions, Contractions and Revisions, and we give representation results. We then extend the framework to represent explicitly sources of answers, and apply it to discuss the Recovery Postulate. We conclude with some remarks about the potential extensions of (...) interrogative games, with respect to some issues in the theory of belief change. (shrink)

The task of this article is to interrogate the Knowledge Is Power Program (KIPP) model to develop a more robust understanding of a prominent trend in the charter school movement and education policy more generally. To accomplish this task, this article details the findings of a synthetic analysis that examines the KIPP model as a Hegelian whole concept operative in a specific mode of social reality. The guidance for this analysis is grounded in a rather straightforward research question. (...) Given the prominence that the KIPP model has achieved in the charter school movement in the United States, what can a synthetic analysis tell us about not only KIPP, but also the larger charter school movement? (shrink)

These provocative essays by leading philosophers of science exemplify and illuminate the contemporary uncertainty and excitement in the field. The papers are rich in new perspectives, and their far-reaching criticisms challenge arguments long prevalent in classic philosophical problems of induction, empiricism, and realism. By turns empirical or analytic, historical or programmatic, confessional or argumentative, the authors' arguments both describe and demonstrate the fact that philosophy of science is in a ferment more intense than at any time since the heyday of (...) logical positivism early in the twentieth century. -/- Contents: -/- "Thoroughly Modern Meno," Clark Glymour and Kevin Kelly "The Concept of Induction in the Light of the Interrogative Approach to Inquiry," Jaakko Hintikka "Aristotelian Natures and Modern Experimental Method," Nancy Cartwright "Genetic Inference: A Reconsideration of "David Hume's Empiricism," Barbara D. Massey and Gerald J. Massey "Philosophy and the Exact Sciences: Logical Positivism as a Case Study," Michael Friedman "Language and Interpretation: Philosophical Reflections and Empirical Inquiry," Noam Chomsky "Constructivism, Realism, and Philosophical Method," Richard Boyd "Do We Need a Hierarchical Model of Science?" Diderik Batens "Theories of Theories: A View from Cognitive Science," Richard E. Grandy "Procedural Syntax for Theory Elements," Joseph D. Sneed "Why Functionalism Didn't Work," Hilary Putnam "Physicalism," Hartry Field. (shrink)

In this essay David Kennedy argues that children represent one vanguard of an emergent shift in Western subjectivity, and that adult–child dialogue, especially in the context of schooling, is a key locus for the epistemological change that implies. Following Herbert Marcuse's invocation of a “new sensibility,” Kennedy argues that the evolutionary phenomenon of neoteny — the long formative period of human childhood and the paedomorphic character of humans across the life cycle — makes of the adult–child collective of school a (...) primary site for the reconstruction of belief. After exploring child–adult dialogue more broadly as a form of dialectical interaction between what John Dewey called “impulse” and “habit,” Kennedy identifies three key dimensions of dialogic schooling, all of which are grounded in a fourth: the form of dialogical group discourse called community of philosophical inquiry, which is based on the problematization and reconstruction of concepts through critical argumentation. As a discourse model, CPI grounds practice in all of the dialogic school's emergent curricular spaces, whether science or mathematics, whether literature, art, or philosophy. Second, CPI opens a functional space for shared decision making and collaborative governance, making of school an exemplary model of direct democracy. Finally, CPI as a site for the critical interrogation of concepts encountered in the curriculum and as a site for democratic governance leads naturally to expression in activist projects that model an emergent “new reality principle” through concrete solutions to practical problems on local and global levels. (shrink)

This article reconstructs John Dewey's philosophy of the public by replacing its emphasis on scientific truth with an interpretive model of inquiry; it then shows how we can use this interpretive model of inquiry both to prevent collective harms and to expand the boundaries of our moral community.

By critically interrogating the methodological foundations of orthodox economic theory, Tal Gilead challenges the growing conviction in educational policymaking quarters that, being more scientific than other forms of educational investigation, inquiries grounded in orthodox economics should provide the basis for educational policymaking. He argues that the main methodological problem with accepting orthodox economic theory as a guide to educational policymaking is not, as commonly claimed, its alleged reliance on a materialistic and egoistic conception of human nature, but rather its embracement (...) of a value-free conception of science and the hypothetico-deductive model of prediction. These, Gilead maintains, prevent economics-based investigations from adequately dealing with questions of human agency and ethics, which are central to education. Orthodox economic thinking, he concludes, should not be accorded a dominant role in educational policymaking, but rather should only be viewed as providing one additional source of insight that has limited applicability. (shrink)

The social epistemology of science has adopted agent-based computer simulations as one of its core methods for investigating the dynamics of scientific inquiry. The epistemic status of these highly idealized models is currently under active debate in which they are often associated either with predictive or the argumentative functions. These two functions roughly correspond to interpreting simulations as virtual experiments or formalized thought experiments, respectively. This paper advances the argumentative account of modeling by proposing that models serve as a (...) means to (re)conceptualize the macro-level dynamics of complex social epistemic interactions. I apply results from the epistemology of scientific modeling and the psychology of mental simulation to the ongoing debate in the social epistemology of science. Instead of considering simulation models as predictive devices, I view them as artifacts that exemplify abstract hypothetical properties of complex social epistemic processes in order to advance scientific understanding, hypothesis formation, and communication. Models need not be accurate representations to serve these purposes. They should be regarded as pragmatic cognitive tools that engender rather than replace intuitions in philosophical reasoning and argumentation. Furthermore, I aim to explain why the community tends to converge around few model templates: Since models have the potential to transform our intuitive comprehension of the subject of inquiry, successful models may literally capture the imagination of the modeling community. (shrink)

This study examines the outcomes of a four-year faculty learning community (FLC) that aimed to transform departmental ethics curriculum by supporting Earth Sciences faculty members as they ethically inquired into their teaching of ethics and refined existing courses in alignment with an Integrated Community-Engaged Learning and Ethical Reflection (ICELER) framework. We present ethnographic case studies that unpack processes through which three faculty members transformed undergraduate courses. We assembled case studies by triangulating interview data, course artifacts, and faculty reflections. We examine (...) how faculty (1) built awareness around teaching ethics, (2) took responsibility for and made judgments about teaching ethics, (3) experimented by designing and implementing ICELER-inspired courses, and (4) interrogated the outcomes of their ethics teaching, utilizing findings to enhance awareness and revise courses. The paper closes by introducing a model detailing how instructors inquire into ethics teaching and how model components might inspire future educational practice and research. (shrink)

In this paper we examine the epistemic value of highly idealized agent-based models of social aspects of scientific inquiry. On the one hand, we argue that taking the results of such simulations as informative of actual scientific inquiry is unwarranted, at least for the class of models proposed in recent literature. Moreover, we argue that a weaker approach, which takes these models as providing only “how-possibly” explanations, does not help to improve their epistemic value. On the other hand, (...) we suggest that if ABMs of science underwent two types of robustness analysis, they could indeed have a clear epistemic function, namely by providing evidence for philosophical and historical hypotheses. In this sense, ABMs can obtain evidential and explanatory properties and thus be a useful tool for integrated history and philosophy of science. We illustrate our point with an example of a model—building on the work by Kevin Zollman—which we apply to a concrete historical case study. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Untying Foucauldian Knots of Power/Knowledge and Tying Better Relationships with the Confucian PersuasionJoseph Harroff (bio)Reconsidering the Life of Power: Ritual, Body, and Art in Critical Theory and Chinese Philosophy. By James Garrison. Albany: SUNY Press, 2021.Life is a self-renewing process through action upon the environment.—Dewey, Democracy and Education (2)There is no pure self to be redeemed here, but perhaps some kind of rehabilitation beyond the problematic trappings of subject (...) life might be possible.—Garrison, Reconsidering the Life of Power (54)The problem of critiquing power by untangling and retangling ourselves more creatively and intelligently in webs of habit and flows of somaesthetic information and value-laden ethical-political imaginative horizons of futurity is taken up by James Garrison in Reconsidering the Life of Power: Ritual, Body and Art in Critical Theory and Chinese Philosophy (2021). By asking a series of ethically sustained and interculturally hermeneutically sensitive questions surrounding the critical problematic as to the conditions for the possibility of how "it is possible to use the sign chains of power to chain power," or how it is possible to "tie power up in its own knots" (p. 18), Garrison makes creative use of "subjectality theory" that foregrounds somaesthetic practices seeking to be in many ways recasting rather than simply reconsidering the life of power. It is through a methodological sounding of the depths of somaesthetic experience and a creative-critical inquiry into the ways in which the complex of social arts understood in the broadest possible conception, including at all ethical and political intersections, that this book enters into the domain of Confucian theorizing of persons as part of never-simply-located root-body-persons (shenti 身體)—that is, as offering a theory of relational persons that is simultaneously and intersectionally caught up in a manifold of social practices of aesthetic, ethical, political, and religious signification. It is by critically interrogating the historical a priori that condition the possibility for any specific knowledge-power discursive interpellation by drawing attention to the complex interplay and entanglement of forces and signification involved in tool-making and tool-using practices as a "sedimentation" (jidian 積澱) of [End Page 809] somaesthetic arts that straddle a polarity of natural-cultural form-functioning, that Garrison makes creative advances in pushing critical theory past a problematic pessimism and/or nihilism that stems from any brute recognition of the "skintight prison" houses we inhabit as a result of Foucauldian power knots.Using the idea of "sedimentation" to better articulate the complex strata of social experience as mediated by aesthetic culture Garrison draws heavily from Li Zehou. Li is suspicious of a Maoist model of conflating theory and practice, subject and object, especially when the treatment is part of a civic and political religiosity that renders the Great Helmsman a supreme leader and unilateral decision-maker in a Marxist-Leninist vanguard of the historico-teleological revolution. For Li, aesthetic sensibility is the "manifestation of the sedimentation of society in nature, and the sedimentation of humankind as a species in the individual."1 And moreover, the "animal structure and quality of psychology" is "transformed into something that has a human nature, in which sensation and rationality are dissolved and combined."2 This complex process of dissolution and combination is more like a Hegelian dialectic of spirit than it is a linear-totalitarian realization of Maoist voluntarism. However, this is what I want to begin challenging by asking what degree Garrison draws upon this aspect of Li. I would suggest that Maoist voluntarism can be read as part of a traditional Chinese philosophical problematic that prioritizes practice in order to realize the truth of nature (gongfu jishi benti 功夫即是本體).This way of approaching the Maoist dynamic of voluntarism seems much closer to the Expansive Learning 《大學》 dynamic of "from the King to the commoners, everyone takes self-cultivation as the root," but would avoid any problematic Maoist hubris regarding the limits, methods and confines of class "struggle." The post-linguistic turn and then return to a Deweyan process metaphysical and creatively democratic inquiry into experience to garner more intelligent methods for critiquing and cultivating embodied and relationally configured habits of perception, speech, and thought via the vocabulary of... (shrink)

The notion of a community of inquiry has been treated by many of its proponents as being an exemplar of democracy in action. We argue that the assumptions underlying this view present some practical and theoretical difficulties, particularly in relation to distribution of power among the members of a community of inquiry. We identify two presuppositions in relation to distribution of power that require attention in developing an educational model that is committed to deliberative democracy: (1) openness (...) to inquiry and readiness to reason, and (2) mutual respect of students and teachers towards one another. Our contention is that these presuppositions, presented as preconditions necessary to the creation of a community of inquiry, are not without ideological commitments and dependent upon the ability of participants to share power. Using group dynamic theories and the ideas of Hannah Arendt, we argue that behaviours commonly interpreted as obstacles to dialogue or reflective inquiry could provide opportunities for growth. (shrink)

Social entrepreneurship activity continues to surge tremendously in market and economic systems around the world. Yet, social entrepreneurship theory and understanding lag far behind its practice. For instance, the nature of the entrepreneurial discovery phenomenon, a critical area of inquiry in general entrepreneurship theory, receives no attention in the specific context of social entrepreneurship. To address the gap, we conceptualize social entrepreneurial discovery based on an extension of corporate social responsibility into social entrepreneurship contexts. We develop a model (...) that emphasizes mobilization and timing as underpinnings of social entrepreneurial discovery and offer distinct conceptual aspects and theoretic propositions instrumental to future social entrepreneurship research. (shrink)