This book is a study in the logic of questions (sometimes called erotetic logic). The central topics in erotetic logic have been the structure of questions and the question-answer relationship. This book doesn't neglect these problems, but much of it is focussed on other issues. The main subject is the logical analysis of certain relations between questions and the contexts of their appearance. And our aim is to elaborate the conceptual apparatus of the inferential approach to the logic of questions. Questions are asked for many reasons and for different purposes. Yet, before a question is asked or posed, a questioner must arrive at it. In many cases arriving at a question resembles coming to a conclusion: there are some premises involved and some inferential thought processes take place. If we agree that a conclusion need not be "conclusive", we may say that sometimes questions can play the role of conclusions. But questions can also perform the role of premises: we often pass from some "initial" question to another question. In other words, there are inferential thought processes - we shall call them erotetic inferences - in which questions play the roles of conclusions or conclusions and premises. The inferential approach to the logic of questions focusses its attention on the analysis of erotetic inferences. This book consists of eight chapters.

Klappentext

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.

Inhalt
Introduction. 1. Erotetic Inferences and How Questions Arise. 2. Logical Theories of Questions. 3. Questions. 4. Semantics. 5. Evocation of Questions. 6. Generation of Questions. 7. Erotetic implication. 8. Erotetic Arguments. Bibliography. Index of Symbols. Index of Subjects. Index of Names.