Inquiring Attitudes and Erotetic Logic: Norms of Restriction and Expansion

Abstract

A fascinating recent turn in epistemology focuses on inquiring attitudes like wondering and being curious. Many have argued that these attitudes are governed by norms similar to those that govern our doxastic attitudes. Yet, to date, this work has only considered norms that might prohibit having certain inquiring attitudes (“norms of restriction”), while ignoring those that might require having them (“norms of expansion”). We aim to address that omission by offering a framework that generates norms of expansion for inquiring attitudes. The framework draws on inferential erotetic logic, which we explain and augment with some theorems. We explore several of the norms that it yields—some sympathetically, others unsympathetically.