Asking a Question is a Proposal in Shared Inquiry

What is it to ask a question? We might think about asking a question as the expression of an interrogative attitude towards a question that articulates the speaker’s aim of resolving their ignorance, and directs the hearer to provide the answer. Call this the default view of asking. This paper argues that the default view faces serious problems accounting for the diversity of asking; in particular with what I’ll call teachers’ asking, self-directed asking, and shared asking. In place of the default view, I suggest that we think about asking as a proposal in shared inquiry that aims at shared knowledge, by means of either the hearer, the speaker, or both answering the question. This view helps explain some problems about the norms of inquiry, creating a gap between the norms of inquiry and the norms of asking, and suggesting that the norms of asking will involve collective states.