This book symposium comprises a précis of André J. Abath’s book Knowing What Things Are: An Inquiry-Based Approach (Springer, 2022) together with five critical commentaries on different aspects of the book-written by Veronica Campos, Guilherme Araújo Cardoso, Giulia Felappi, Ernesto Perini-Santos and Leonardo de Mello Ribeiro-, and the author’s replies.

This paper critically engages with André Abath’s Knowing What Things Are: An Inquiry-Based Approach (2022), which develops an erotetic account of knowledge about what things are. According to Abath, to know what X is, one must know propositions that serve as appropriate answers to the question “What is X?” within a given inquiry context. While this view successfully accommodates variations in epistemic demands across contexts, I argue that it overlooks the role of deal-breaker propositions - false claims that fundamentally undermine (...) knowledge ascription, even when surrounded by otherwise accurate information. By introducing the notion of relative essences, I propose an amendment to Abath’s account that accounts for the epistemic weight of these propositions. This refinement strengthens the erotetic view by addressing cases where misleading assertions obstruct knowledge transmission. (shrink)

This submission is addressed to the symposium on Prof. André Abath’s book “Knowing What Things Are: An Erotetic-Based Account” (2022).

While philosophers are and have always been interested in, if not obsessed by, questions of the kind What is x?, somehow ironically, the question What is knowledge of what x is? did not receive much attention. Thankfully, to properly answer this question, André Abath suggested his erotetic view, according to which S knows what x is in context c if and only if S knows a proposition (or propositions) that properly answer (that is, provide a proper answer to) the question (...) of what x is in c, where for a proposition to properly answer a question in a context it should be such that, in that context, it settles the question, it brings the inquiry to a close. In my commentary, I will discuss whether the erotetic view might be taken to give us too few or too many knowers. During such discussion, I will investigate into Abath’s notion of partial knowledge and his sophisticated rejection of the claim that his view is excessively intellectualist. (shrink)

In Knowing What Things Are, Abath shifts the focus of epistemology from propositional knowledge to the capacity to answer questions, emphasizing knowledge as an outcome of human activity. He highlights the role of interrogatives in epistemic evaluation. However, his emphasis on Socratic questions ("What is X?") overlooks the interconnectedness of different types of questions within an inquiry. This paper examines two Socratic questions: "What is a gene?" and "What is a marriage?" In the case of "What is a gene?" advances (...) in molecular biology challenge the classical molecular gene concept, leading to a pluralistic or emergent definition. Inquiry into genes involves meta-level questions concerning the concept’s definition and the role of related terms such as "heritable." Similarly, "What is a marriage?" encompasses both descriptive and normative dimensions, requiring an understanding of legal, social, and cultural definitions. Abath’s erotetic framework, which aims to refine answers to Socratic questions, must account for these meta-level inquiries and the various ways an inquiry can be directed to provide a more comprehensive depiction of knowledge as an activity. (shrink)

In "Knowing What Things Are", A. Abath’s account of knowledge has two main features. Firstly, it is inquiry-based or erotetic: knowledge is to be understood in terms of answers to questions of the form “What is x?” Secondly, it is contextualist: answers to questions of the form “what is x?” are dependent on contextual factors, as they should be evaluated as true and satisfactory given the specific purposes (or goals) of an inquiry. Here I focus on the contextualist component of (...) Abath's account. I argue that there is a tension between the descriptive account Abath advocates in chapters 1-5 and the normative account developed in chapters 6-7. I argue, in particular, that Abath's contextualism faces trouble when applied to knowledge of strongly social kinds and moral/political obligations, which are inherently normative. (shrink)

When one speaks duplicitously one performs a (risky) speech act and at the same time intends that one have deniability regarding that speech act. What is it for a speaker who performs an illocutionary act to have deniability regarding that act? I first review an answer to this question proposed by Alexander Dinges and Julia Zakkou. According to them, deniability is “an epistemic notion. A speaker has deniability if she can make it epistemically irrational for her audience to reason in (...) certain ways” (2023, p. 373). I argue, however, that the epistemic account is refuted by a counterexample, and informed by the counterexample, I propose an alternative. According to my alternative account, deniability concerns illocutionary norms: a speaker has deniability regarding an illocutionary action iff (i) she is permitted to deny having performed the action, and (ii) if she denies having performed the action, she thereby avoids being responsible for it. I conclude by considering the implications of illocutionary norms account of deniability for the vexed issue of the determinants of illocutionary force; I argue that the illocutionary norms account of deniability provides evidence in support of McDonald’s (2021) “collaboration” view. (shrink)

Foreword The reasons that encouraged me to propose a Special Issue for Manuscrito on processual thought in the philosophical-scientific perimeter are primarily rooted in the naturalist spirit intrinsic to process models. The appeal these models have had on my academic and research journey stems largely from their emphasis on the dynamism and relationality of entities, their mutual interdependence, and their contingency, which simultaneously allows for avoiding both reductionist and/or foundationalist approaches and those uncomfortable dualistic fragmentations or “bifurcations” of nature, as (...) Whitehead (1920) would put it. Furthermore, in my view, processual thought revives the original core of the philosophical and scientific approach to understanding natural reality, which is essentially transient, transformative, and evolutionary.1 Today, this kind of theoretical model plays an important role in the ongoing debate across many scientific disciplines, from physics (Rovelli, 2016) to biology (Dupré, 2012; Landa et al., 2024), chemistry (Stein, 2004; Córdoba et al., 2024), and cognitive and psychological sciences (Bickhard, 2024), to name just a few examples. In short, the processual approach is increasingly recognized as a capable and suitable conceptual framework for describing complex and inherently dynamic, interactive natural phenomena. For these reasons, together with the entire Editorial Board of Manuscrito, and in collaboration with all the authors who participated in the Call for Papers for this Special Issue, as well as all the reviewers involved- to whom I extend my heartfelt thanks and my apologies for my inexperience and any mistakes-we aimed to offer a modest contribution to the processual philosophical-scientific thought. The following thematic introduction is intended to offer some general coordinates, to provide the interested scholar with the conceptual framework necessary for a proper understanding of the contributions in this volume.2. (shrink)

This paper argues that embryonic development is best understood through the lens of process philosophy rather than traditional substance metaphysics. Drawing on both contemporary developmental biology and process thought, I demonstrate how key phenomena in embryogenesis-including morphogenesis, cellular differentiation, and organismal integration-align naturally with process-philosophical principles. Through critical engagement with major figures in developmental biology and philosophy of biology, including Turing's mathematical theory of morphogenesis and autopoietic approaches to biological organization, I show how persistent difficulties in developmental biology stem from (...) implicit substance-metaphysical assumptions and demonstrate how a process framework better captures the dynamic, relational nature of development. Furthermore, I argue that this perspective provides novel insights into emergence in biological systems while resolving longstanding theoretical difficulties in developmental biology. This theoretical framework has important implications for both biological understanding and experimental practice. (shrink)