We are inquirers. Most, or at least a large part, of our beliefs and actions follow from our having asked ourselves, and tried to answer, more or less consciously and conscientiously, a question we had previously opened in thought, which can be characterised as having inquired into the question at issue. However, despite its pervasiveness in our intellectual and practical life, inquiry, until very recently, has received very little attention in the philosophical literature. Things are starting to change however with Friedman’s contention that normative epistemology should move away from its “doxastic paradigm” according to which epistemic norms are norms of belief and doxastic states only, and take the “zetetic turn” (Friedman 2020) according to which bringing out the norms of inquiry is part and parcel of its business, or with Kelp’s claim that we should “take inquiry (or finding out about things) as the starting point for epistemological theorizing” (Kelp 2021b; cf. also Kelp 2021a). 

The aim of the project “The Varieties of Inquiry” is to contribute to this change of paradigm by elucidating the nature, aims and norms of inquiry through the examination of its different varieties. One crucial point is that inquiring into a question can both designate a mental activity (such as mentally examining whether p) and a practical activity (such as gathering evidence apparently relevant for deciding whether p). The aim of this project will then be, more precisely, to understand each of these two dimensions of inquiry, and how they articulate with each other. 

Elucidating the nature, aims and norms of the mental activity of inquiring into a question will centrally involve elucidating those of the different interrogative attitudes involved in this activity (e.g. wondering, being curious, examining, deliberating, or suspending judgement). This is what subproject A “The Variety of Interrogative Attitudes” will be devoted to. This subproject will itself be split in two subparts. A1 will be about the metaphysical nature of our various interrogative attitudes, how they differ from, or are similar to, one another, whether they aim at anything, and which of them are necessary and/or sufficient for an inquiry to take place. A2 will be about the norms of these interrogative attitudes – more specifically, about what non-interrogative attitudes are normatively incompatible with them, and what non-interrogative attitudes are required for having them.

Elucidating the nature, aims and norms of the practical activity of inquiring into a question will centrally consist in elucidating those of our diverse inquisitive undertakings, as we may call them, and the various inquisitive actions they involve (e.g. allocating or not a certain amount of time, attention, energy, or money to the treatment of a given question – for instance, to the exploration of a given hypothesis, or to gathering more evidence about it). This is what subproject B “The Variety of Inquisitive Undertakings” will be devoted to. More precisely, this subproject will focus on two different major forms of inquisitive undertakings: scientific inquiry and legal inquiry. Subpart B1 will be about scientific inquiry, and more particularly about how it teleologically and normatively differs from “ordinary” inquiry, whether “non-epistemic values” are admissible in scientific inquiry, and how to understand the normative nature of the considerations of pursuitworthiness that are central to its regulation. Subpart B2 will be about legal inquiry, and more specifically about the question of how it resembles or differs from scientific inquiry, both teleologically and normatively. This last question will be addressed, in the main, via the elucidation of two paradoxes of statistical evidence: that about racial or social profiling, which rather concerns early stages of legal inquiries; and the “puzzle of statistical evidence”, which rather concerns, in the literature, late stages of legal inquiries – trials, typically.

Even though the two subprojects A and B can and will be carried out separately – which is safe methodology –, one of the major aims of the Project is to combine their results so as to decisively clarify the nature and norms of inquiry in its mental and practical dimensions, and then to understand how they articulate with each other.