The Epistemological Significance of the Interrogative

James Somerville

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN:
  9781138727595
• eBook ISBN:
  9781351748636
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Philosophy History & Theory

This title was first published in 2002.This book challenges prevalent assumptions regarding questions and enquiry. It argues that instead of trying to understand questions by reference to knowledge, knowledge can be conceived by reference to the distinctive logical form exhibited by questions. Interrogative logical form has not hitherto been recognised by logicians or philosophers generally. By providing an analysis which can serve as the basis for a fresh start in epistemology, this book breaks new ground.

Chapter 1
Introduction

Interrogative Clauses Following Know

When Austin condemned as ‘barbarous’ the expression He knows his pain in a way we can’t, he argued that I know what he is feeling means I know the answer to the question ‘What is he feeling?’ The what, he pointed out, is not a relative but ‘an interrogative (Latin quid, not quod)’ pronoun.¹ ‘No one before Austin, it is fair to say’, John Passmore observes, ‘has ever illuminated such a topic by means of so nice a grammatical point’.² The failure in the main of epistemologists previously to take note of the interrogative clauses following know is more astonishing than the paucity of those who have subsequently taken at least some notice of them. One exception is Ryle, who, a few months earlier, had complained that philosophers ‘have not done justice to the distinction which is quite familiar to all of us between knowing that something is the case and knowing how to do things’.³

Although Ryle’s paper aroused some interest in the interrogative clauses taken by know — it may, indeed, have prompted Austin’s remarks — his notion of ‘knowing how’ is narrower in two respects. First, the interrogative construction with how selected by Ryle is only one among others: one can also speak of knowing what to do, besides knowing where, when, to whom, whether, and so forth, to do it. Second, these constructions are not simply interrogative but also infinitive in accordance with Ryle’s evident concern with what may be called practical knowledge, knowledge bearing on action. At the end of his paper Ryle indeed suggests some link between knowledge generally and the answering of questions when he argues that even knowing that should encompass knowing ‘how to answer particular questions’ since it ‘involves knowing how to use that knowledge’. Yet in his book, in his desire to ‘correct’ what he calls ‘the intellectualist doctrine’ — which misconstrues exercises of the intellect as ‘the apprehension of truths’ — he takes ‘finding the answers to questions’ to ‘constitute theorizing’, ‘the knowledge of true propositions or facts’ or ‘knowledge of truths’.⁴ He noted, however, that besides know, other verbs such as learn and find out take the same how to construction, whereas believe cannot.⁵

It looks as if Ryle were distinguishing between, on the one hand, knowing how to answer particular questions, which might be thought generally to comprise a piece of practical knowledge, or knowing how to solve problems,⁶ which clearly comprises specific pieces of practical knowledge, and, on the other, finding the answers to questions, the aim of ‘theorizing’ whose successful outcome is the knowledge of truths. There would thus be some difference for Ryle between Austin’s ‘knowing the answer to the question’ and his own ‘knowing how to answer’ the question. Both phrases, however, employ interrogative constructions. For ‘knowing the answer to the question’ is to be construed as being elliptical for knowing what — occasionally which — the answer to the question is.

Somebody might know how to answer a particular question without being asked that question and thus without being put to the test of having to say what the answer to it is. But somebody who knows what the answer to the question is should be able to say what the answer to it is when called upon to do so. Now, the answer to a question is supplied by a word or phrase. If one knows how to answer a question, one will know what to say in answer to it — know what word or phrase to give in answer to it, which is to know what word or phrase supplies the answer to it. But to know what word or phrase supplies the answer to a question is to know what the answer to it is. Any contrast between a piece of practical knowledge and the knowledge of truths, the aim of ‘theorizing’, then, cannot turn on any difference between knowing how to answer a question and knowing what the answer to it is, for there is no difference.

Yet when one knows how to answer a question, or — what amounts to the same thing — knows what the answer to it is, one knows that what some word or phrase, taken in the light of the question, says is so is true, which is the knowledge of a truth falling, in Ryle’s view, within the province of the aim of ‘theorizing’. Thus, although people might often know generally what others are feeling, or know how to do something, without necessarily knowing that some word or phrase when given in answer to a question says truly that something is so, they could not know what the answer to a question is without thereby knowing that some word or phrase when given in answer to the question says truly that something is so. If intellectualism is taken — admittedly more narrowly than it is by Ryle — as the position that all knowledge is ‘the apprehension of truths’, then knowing what the answer to a question is in requiring such a knowledge of truths bears out intellectualism. For knowing what the answer to a question is requires being able to say what the answer to it is, which requires knowing what word or phrase supplies the answer, which in turn involves knowing that what the word or phrase, taken in the context of the question, says is so is true. What promised to be a fresh start in epistemology has only led back to intellectualism, taken for granted by most epistemologists — namely, that all knowledge is the knowledge of truths.⁷

The objection to intellectualism that arises here is illustrated by the knowledge possessed by non-human animals. Cows and sheep undeniably see, smell and hear what or where things around them are; but to see, smell or hear what or where things are is to know what or where they are. A cat knows when it is usually fed, a dog knows who is at the door; they are thus certainly capable of factual knowledge, if not the knowledge of truths. Even an account restricted to human knowledge has to accommodate such rudimentary instances of knowing, since human beings are not constantly exercising their intellectual powers but share many of their life-depending accomplishments with their non-human fellow animals. Like the cat, I unthinkingly and unerringly home in on the ’fridge door when I feel need of sustenance.

What has gone wrong with Ryle’s talk of knowing how to answer particular questions? Though intended to deflate some kind of intellectualist doctrine, it has unwittingly only reinforced it. Some exercise of the intellect is needed for both asking and answering questions: in particular, the ability to understand and speak a language. It might be open to doubt whether persons really did know how to answer a question if they never actually said what the answer to it is. Ryle, indeed, appears to qualify his previous position that knowing that requires knowing how to answer various questions when he later observes: ‘Not all knowing is knowing what to say.’⁸ Cats and dogs do not give the slightest indication of knowing how to answer any questions, because since they cannot speak they cannot say what the answer to any question is, or even understand what an answer says. But they do know where things are, when regular occurrences take place, whether their human keepers are pleased or displeased with them, and so forth. Some other account of the interrogative clauses taken by know is required: the gloss on them as knowing how to answer questions, or knowing what the answers to questions are, must be flawed.

The flaw involved can easily be seen by considering again Austin’s formulation. It contains a reduplication of interrogative clauses, disguised by the partial ellipsis of one of them. Knowing what he is feeling is presented as being equivalent to knowing the answer to the question ‘What is he feeling?’ — an ellipsis for knowing what the answer to the question ‘What is he feeling?’ is. The what now occurs twice in the formulation; which is accordingly open to the challenge that, if it were adequate, knowing what the answer to the question ‘…?’ is ought to be expandable as knowing what the answer to the question ‘What is the answer to the question “…?”’ is. And so on. The interrogative clause can be no more eliminated than the allusion to the question. The accounts offered by Austin and Ryle only presuppose rather than explain the interrogative clauses taken by know.

Austin’s general point was that the verb know only exceptionally takes a direct object. It is more usually followed by a clause; and he draws attention to the interrogative clauses that often follow it. His point is not invalidated by the convenient way of speaking of knowing, believing or doubting ‘a thing’. Somebody might respond to another’s remark that something is so with I doubt it. The ‘thing’ here that is known, believed or doubted, is only a stand-in for some clause. Similarly, to ask a question, to ask ‘something’, is to ask what is expressed by an interrogative clause. Hence the rather contrived examples philosophers come up with of know followed by a relative what as distinct from an interrogative what tend to obfuscate the point Austin was making.⁹

To take an earlier instance, Reid speaks of a child’s act of asking a question presupposing ‘a desire to know what he asks’.¹⁰ Unless he has forgotten, the child will know what he asks (the interrogative what); but Reid evidently means the what to be a relative — that is, desires to know ‘the thing which’ he asks. The ‘thing’ here is a proxy for an interrogative clause, such as asking where the cat is; so what the child desires to know here, Reid supposes, is where the cat is. The formulation ‘a desire to know what he asks’ on either interpretation of the what presupposes rather than explains the interrogative clauses taken by know: the first directly, the second because the relative what only stands in for some interrogative clause which complements the verb ask.

It was seen that those credited with knowledge characterised by an interrogative clause need not in virtue of exhibiting their knowledge, let alone in virtue of possessing it, answer a question. Indeed, if they have not the use of language they will be quite incapable of saying what the answer to any question is. It follows that there need not have been any question put to them or even asked by anybody. Consequently, interrogative clauses taken by verbs conveying knowledge need not express a question either actually asked by anybody or actually answered by those credited with the knowledge. How, then, is the allusion by these clauses to a question to be accounted for? Although speakers readily avail themselves of this facility afforded by language without feeling any disquiet, having had one’s attention drawn to it one might on reflection find it puzzling: how does knowing come to be associated with questions? The exact nature of the association requires examination.

If the actual asking or answering of a question in some language by some person must be excluded in accounting for these interrogative clauses, the only explanation is that the question alluded to by such clauses somehow serves as a way of conceiving the knowledge. For when the asking and the answering of questions by persons are put to one side, all that remains is the thought expressed by the clause — a thought abstracted from the thought of anybody’s asking or answering the question alluded to in the clause. When knowledge is characterised by an interrogative clause it is being conceived through an allusion to a question, even although no question may have been asked or answered by anybody so that no words need have been uttered by anybody. Accordingly, the wider term interrogative is appropriate for this way of conceiving knowledge: the knowledge is being conceived by means of the interrogative.

The epistemological significance of the interrogative lies in the interrogative clauses, ignored by most epistemologists, taken by know and other verbs conveying knowledge. An adequate account of these clauses will establish the general relevance of the interrogative to epistemology. They invoke an interrogative, not a propositional, conception of knowledge.

Now, there is a minimal and a non-minimal way of taking both propositional and interrogative characterisations of knowledge. The knowledge credited to non-human animals no more consists in an ability of theirs to judge that what various propositions say is true than it consists in an ability of theirs to answer various questions; for lacking the use of language, they possess neither ability. Yet their knowledge can be conceived by others crediting the knowledge — that is, by human beings generally, including epistemologists — both propositionally and interrogatively. Knowledge can be characterised in a minimal way as propositional or interrogative merely in the conception of others and not necessarily also by those in possession of it. For one can know without forming a concep...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• 1 Introduction
• 2 The Interrogative
• 3 Questions and Enquiry
• 4 Asking Questions
• 5 Stating Answers
• 6 Interrogation
• 7 Requesting
• 8 Interrogative Form
• 9 Logic and the Different Types of Question
• Appendix: The Logic of Questions
• Epilogue
• Bibliography
• Index