Quentin Pharr: “Inquiry and the Art of Methodology”

Quentin Pharr, Uppsala universitet och St Andrews University: “Inquiry and the Art of Methodology”

Abstract

In writing about its aims, Jane Friedman (2023) has recently suggested that inquiring is a natural phenomenon, rather than an artifactual one. As presented, it is primarily intended as an objection to constitutivist accounts of the aim(s) of inquiry – according to which inquiring, like chess or snooker, has both some aim(s) and rules/norms that are constitutive of it and are thus normatively proper to it. But indirectly, her suggestion is also a partial defense of both a quietism about the aim(s) of inquiry, as well as a pluralism about the many ways in which inquiring can improve us epistemically. Despite its simplicity, then, it is ultimately quite a powerful suggestion. All the same, we should reject it. And, to make my case for why, I am going to draw on one of philosophy’s greatest methodologists, Aristotle, in order to suggest that, while basic cognition is natural and thus allows for some forms of inquiring to be deemed natural, methodical inquiring is ultimately infused with various psychosocial artifacts – namely, methods – and thus allows for some forms to be deemed artifactual.