Orientation

What, Why & How

What:  Inquiry is the process of producing or obtaining knowledge by representing the world. That world is taken to be 'reality'. The existence of such a world is accepted not only by you and I, but also by most scientists and philosophers.

Why: Inquiry is necessary to support action of any complexity. Neither reflex reactions nor spontaneity require conscious inquiry. However, complex endeavours require multiple courses of action, some of which demand inquiry to avoid failure. Inquiry also supports learning from experience and from failure.

How: This question reveals a simple classification between ordinary and specialist, and within specialist between scientific and expert.

  • «Ordinary» inquiry is a natural personal function commonly needed to achieve results within a practical endeavour, or used as a matter of personal interest.
  • «Scientific» inquiry is divorced from immediate personal or social needs and focuses on generating knowledge. (A scientific project is a specialized form of endeavour whose action and achievement centres on obtaining knowledge rather than immediately practical results.)
  • «Expert» inquiry draws on scientific methods to use inquiry in ways that enhance effectiveness in a practical context.

The success of any form of inquiry cannot be forced or guaranteed. In philosophy, how the world can be known with confidence is the concern of epistemology. In science, how the world can be investigated with confidence is the concern of methodology

Problems in Social Science

Physical and biological scientists have largely left it to philosophers to worry about fundamental issues. Social science disciplines, by contrast, have spawned numerous, often acrimonious, debates on methods and related issues.

Many of the underlying preoccupations are not, strictly speaking, a feature of the Inquiry Domain RL2. They are related instead to:

  • recognition of personal functioning and psychosocial reality as a world-sui-generis and distinct from the impersonal empirical world (social or physical);
  • the objectivist-impersonal-social versus subjectivist-personal-idiosyncratic duality applied to inquiry within the social world.

These distinctions were originally analysed to explain this taxonomic project. That analysis still stands and it is re-offered in the Review section of this Satellite.

The THEE Online Project is itself a social scientific inquiry. So this Satellite makes it possible to be far more explicit about what is happening here. You will be able to see the assumptions and beliefs in play: the research methods being used (or being downplayed), and how the development of knowledge occurs and is evaluated.

Knowledge: Truth and Reality

Knowledge claims about reality and the nature of truth are a much bigger subject than inquiry. It is evident, for example that people possess or claim knowledge without necessarily engaging in any inquiry e.g. supposed knowledge may have been obtained via hearsay or via cursory inspection or via an authoritative statement.

Going back to the Root in the  Will Domain, although inquiry-RL2 is shown to be intrinsic to endeavour-RHK, it is evident that inquiry can be by-passed.

So the present focus on inquiry is narrow and bounded. It will only clarify elements and frameworks within the Inquiry Domain (RL2).

As part of this focus, there will be a concern with science and scientific research, because this activity is uniquely dedicated to inquiry for its own sake. Science should be driven by a search for truth and it should attempt to penetrate the mystery of reality. However, science is a distinct perspective: one not shared by everyone despite its claims and successes.

It emerges that functioning within each of the Primary Domains, leads to a distinctive perspective on truth and reality—a perspective that adapts to the particular psychosocial pressure in play and the specific evolutionary need being met.

These perspectives are not isolated: they cumulate. The full account is rather complicated because it requires viable conceptions of all the Domains. This has been recently achieved and so, for those interested, the analysis is provided here.

Originally posted: 16-May-2015. Last amended: 21-Feb-2022.