Finding the Right Answer: Choice Points for an Account of Success in Inquiry

ABSTRACT This paper concerns zetetic success , or success in inquiry. Recent work in epistemology largely assumes that zetetic success is a matter of learning the “complete answer” to one's question. Unfortunately, a natural way of understanding this claim renders it false. This paper instead starts with the suggestion that zetetic success is a matter of learning the right answer to one's question, where this claim may be understood as context‐sensitive in ways that parallel the (apparent) context‐sensitivity of knowledge. The paper then develops three possible views: Zetetic Invariantism, Zetetic Contextualism, and Zetetic Interest‐Relative Invariantism (IRI), and tentatively comes down in favor of Zetetic IRI.