Inquiring to understand

Abstract We often inquire not just to know, but to understand. In this paper, I give an account of inquiries that aim to illuminate or makes sense of their object and argue they don’t reduce to inquiries which concern forming beliefs or acquiring knowledge. My core claim is that inquiry aimed at understanding is a constructive and generative process, unlike inquiry aiming at knowledge acquisition, which culminates in the representation of pre-existing facts. Central to this process are sensemaking frames—representational devices that interpret their target by structuring and organizing information about it. To that end, I propose and defend the noetic account of inquiry, according to which epistemic improvement in inquiry is a matter of structuring information to illuminate and make sense of the object of inquiry. I conclude by explaining how inquiring to understand is distinctively open-ended, a constructive process of structuring the information landscape, a landscape which isn’t always readily given to us.