Questioning, Context-Sensitiveness and Philosophical Inquiry

2011

This paper argues in defence of the thesis that philosophy (metaphysics) is the most basic and fundamental of all scientific knowledge and is presupposed by all systematic human inquiries. At the beginning of the history of knowledge, the paper opines, philosophy (Metaphysics) was the one and only science. Thus the questions asked by philosophers at that early stage, later became the property of different fields of knowledge and inquiry. The paper maintains that it was only after the rise of modern science in the seventeenth century that the lines of demarcation between areas of investigation became more obvious and more permanent. Since it is clear, from the above, that the so-called “exact sciences” are not the most basic and fundamental sources of knowledge, what they produce have to be scrutinized and be solidly established in the light of the vision of things entire, provided by a well grounded philosophy, the paper argues. Our justification therefore, the paper maintains, for ...

2007

Epistemic contextualism (EC) is primarily a semantic view, viz. the view that ‘knowledge’-ascriptions can change their contents with the conversational context. To be more precise, EC is the view that the predicate ‘know’ has an unstable Kaplan character, i.e. a character that does not map all contexts on the same content. According to EC, ‘know’ is thus an indexical expression. Notwithstanding this purely linguistic characterisation of EC, contextualists have traditionally argued that their views have considerable philosophical impact, this being due to the alleged fact that their linguistic views about ‘know’ provide the resources for a resolution of sceptical puzzles. In this paper I will address an objection to EC claiming that, as a linguistic view about the term ‘know’, EC cannot be of any epistemological significance.

Argumentation, 1994

In this paper a dialogical account of begging the question is applied to various contexts which are not obviously dialogues: -reading prose, working through a deductive system, presenting a legal case, and thinking to oneself. The account is then compared with that in chapter eight of D. Walton's Begging the Question (New York; Greenwood, 1991).

I seek to demonstrate how Peirce’s ‘pragmatic maxim’ can be used to inform a model of inquiry (and thus of thought) that extends knowledge seeking beyond deterministic goals and end-results. My hope is that recognizing the essential open-endedness of the pragmatic conceptions of understanding, truth, reality and cognition, can be used to foster a discourse that places thought and reflectiveness itself (that is apart from any ulterior motivations) in a central role. In the archaic form of a fictional dialogue, I present Peirce’s “3 grades of clearness” as a ‘rough and ready’ pedagogical model that displays these values.

Revista EntreLínguas, 2021

The article discusses the epistemological foundations of the study of the interrogative in linguistics and humanities. The purpose of the article is to identify semiotic correlations between the interrogative and the language thinking of native speakers of national languages: Russian and French. The hypothesis is put forward those interrogative constructions serve not only for the direct formation of interrogative statements, but also perform a secondary function of transmitting pragmatic information. Several semiotic correlates of the interrogative and discourses of various types have been revealed. An important element of the found correlations is the belonging of nonverbal and verbal discourses to the phenomenon of interrogative creativity, in particular, the French semiotic tradition. The results of the conducted research can be applied in further research in the field of synergetic correlation of the interrogative and the linguistic picture of the world of national languages. KEYWORDS: Interrogative. Language picture of the world, semiotic code. Verbal. Non-verbal. Discourse analysis. Semiotics of interrogative constructions. RESUMO: O artigo discute os fundamentos epistemológicos do estudo do interrogativo em linguística e humanidades. O objetivo do artigo é identificar correlações semióticas entre o pensamento interrogativo e linguístico de falantes nativos de línguas nacionais: russo e francês. A hipótese é apresentada de que as construções interrogativas servem não apenas para a formação direta de enunciados interrogativos, mas também desempenham uma função secundária de transmitir informações pragmáticas. Vários correlatos semióticos das interrogativas e discursos de vários tipos foram revelados. Um elemento importante das correlações encontradas é a pertença dos discursos não

Facta Philosophica, 2005

Philosophical Studies, 2009

Systems Research, 1988

The total framework for inquiry is formulated as consisting of seven hierarchical levels. The lower five, as described previously (Syst. Res. 2 (1985), 95-104), are concerned with representing knowledge: the sixth level has the function of testing and contains 'inquiring systems'; and the seventh level contains the function of wonder. The inquiring systems are an image of the framework and therefore also form a seven-level hierarchy in which the lower five levels have been identified previously by Churchman (The Design of Inquiring Systems, Basic Books, New York, 1971). Two further inquiring systems are described: the sixth is the 'dialogic' and the seventh is the 'contemplative'. The core testing processes which underlie each of the seven inquiring systems and provide each with its different guarantee of truth are distinguished. Each core testing process (and hence each inquiring system) is shown to be underpinned by a particular level in the inquiry framework. Various symmetries and the possibility of homology between the two hierarchical structures are briefly explored.

Jonathan Ginzburg and Ivan Sag (2000) Interrogative Investigations: The Form, Meaning and Use of English Interrogatives. Stanford: CSLI. 359pp.+ 76pp. three appendices+ index. Interrogative Investigations (II) is a big, important book about the syntax and semantics of questions. It suggests innovations in a part of semantic theory in which consensus has reigned for fifteen years, placing its motivation moreover in the programmatic views of situation theory (ST).