Questioning and addressee knowledge

Haziza, Eliran

doi:10.1007/s11229-023-04113-6

Synthese

2023

DOI: 10.1007/s11229-023-04113-6

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Questioning and addressee knowledge

Eliran Haziza

Abstract: There are norms for asking questions. Inquirers should not ask questions to which they know the answer. The literature on the norms of asking has focused on such speaker-centered norms. But, as I argue, there are addresseecentered norms as well: inquirers should not ask addressees who fall short of a certain epistemic status. That epistemic status, I argue here, is knowledge.

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Cited by 3 publications

References 48 publications

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Interrogatives, inquiries, and exam questions

Gaszczyk

2023

Erkenn

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The speech act of inquiry is generally treated as a default kind of asking questions. The widespread norm states that one inquires whether p only if one does not know that p. However, the fact that inquiring is just one kind of asking questions has received little to no attention. Just as in the declarative mood we can perform not only assertions, but various other speech acts, like guesses or predictions, so in the interrogative mood we can also make various speech act types. I propose a speech-act-theoretic account of a distinct kind of question that I label exam questions. According to the proposed account, one performs an exam question p only if (i) one has access to the answer to p, and (ii) one does not officially know whether the hearer knows the answer to p. Exam questions satisfy all the necessary requirements of being a distinct kind of speech act. Additionally, my proposal contributes to the recent expansion of the normative approach to a variety of speech acts.

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Interrogatives, inquiries, and exam questions

Gaszczyk

2023

Erkenn

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Ignorance, soundness, and norms of inquiry

Willard-Kyle

2024

Philos Stud

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The current literature on norms of inquiry features two families of norms: norms that focus on an inquirer’s ignorance and norms that focus on the question’s soundness. I argue that, given a factive conception of ignorance, it’s possible to derive a soundness-style norm from a version of the ignorance norm. A crucial lemma in the argument is that just as one can only be ignorant of a proposition if the proposition is true, so one can only be ignorant with respect to a question if the question is sound.

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The Informativeness Norm of Assertion

Gaszczyk

2024

Rev.Phil.Psych.

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Although assertions are often characterised as essentially informative speech acts, there is a widespread disagreement concerning how the informativeness of assertions should be understood. This paper proposes the informativeness norm of assertion, which posits that assertions are speech acts that essentially deliver new information. As a result, if one asserts something that is already commonly known, one’s assertion is improper. The norm is motivated by appealing to unique conversational patterns associated with informative and uninformative uses of assertions, an analogy between assertions and inquiries, and a distinction between assertions and uninformative speech acts. By focusing on the normative approach to speech acts, the paper discusses how particular norms of assertion deal with the data supporting the norm of informativeness. To be informative, the speaker must consider the epistemic position of the audience. Since the majority of norms proposed in the literature are speaker-centred, they fail to explain the submitted data. Looking more broadly, focusing on the informativeness of assertions underscores the crucial role of the audience in construing adequate speech act accounts.

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Questioning and addressee knowledge

Cited by 3 publications

References 48 publications

Interrogatives, inquiries, and exam questions

Interrogatives, inquiries, and exam questions

Ignorance, soundness, and norms of inquiry

The Informativeness Norm of Assertion

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