RESEARCH PROGRAMME 01
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How can we know?
How can we know?
Philosophy of Inquiry examines the conditions under which a claim can responsibly be treated as knowledge.
The programme investigates how evidence supports conclusions, how inference moves beyond what is directly observed, how competing explanations should be compared, how uncertainty should be represented, and when new information should require us to revise what we think we know.
It is concerned not simply with what is true, but with the reasoning that allows us to say that something is known, probable, uncertain, contested or not yet established.
EVIDENCE
What information actually supports the claim?
INFERENCE
What reasoning connects the evidence to the conclusion?
UNCERTAINTY
What remains unknown, ambiguous or open to revision?
Knowledge should be proportionate to the evidence that supports it.
WHAT THE PROGRAMME STUDIES
WHAT THE PROGRAMME STUDIES
Philosophy of Inquiry is organised around a set of connected epistemic problems.
KNOWLEDGE
When does a belief become sufficiently supported to count as knowledge?
EVIDENCE
What counts as evidence, how strong is it, and what does it actually justify?
INFERENCE
How do we move from observation to conclusion without smuggling assumptions into the reasoning?
EXPLANATION
What makes one explanation stronger, more coherent or more defensible than another?
COMPETING ACCOUNTS
How should rival interpretations of the same evidence be compared?
UNCERTAINTY
How should incomplete, conflicting or ambiguous information affect confidence?
REVISION
When should new evidence force us to alter, weaken or abandon a conclusion?
EPISTEMIC LIMITS
What can the available evidence support, and where must inquiry stop?
The programme is interested not only in reaching conclusions, but in making the route to those conclusions visible, challengeable and revisable.
RESEARCH DIRECTION
RESEARCH DIRECTION
As the programme develops, Philosophy of Inquiry will examine questions concerning the relationship between evidence, reasoning and justified knowledge.
Particular attention will be given to how conclusions are formed under conditions of incomplete information, how competing explanations can be evaluated, and how confidence should change when the evidence changes.
The programme will develop through formal research questions, working papers and other governed research outputs as appropriate.
Status: Programme development.
RELATIONSHIP TO g² RESEARCH
RELATIONSHIP TO g² RESEARCH
Philosophy of Inquiry provides the epistemic foundation for the wider g² research architecture.
It asks what can responsibly be claimed from evidence, while Science of Investigative Reasoning examines how investigations are conducted and Complex Human Systems examines the systems being investigated.
Together, the three programmes address different parts of the same problem:
What can we know? How do we investigate? How does the system behave?
PROGRAMME STATUS
PROGRAMME STATUS
Philosophy of Inquiry is currently in development.
The programme has not yet formally launched. Its research direction, questions and publication pathway are being developed within the governance framework of g² Insight Lab.
Future outputs may include working papers, conceptual papers and other governed research publications as the programme matures.
Programme status: In development.
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