Minimal Rationality and the Web of Questions
Daniel Hoek · 2025
Abstract This chapter proposes a new account of bounded or minimal doxastic rationality, based on the notion that beliefs are answers to questions. The core idea is that minimally rational beliefs are linked through the thematic connections between them, rather than entailment relations. Minimally rational beliefs are not deductively closed, but they are closed under parthood (where a part is an entailment that answers a smaller question). And instead of avoiding all inconsistency, minimally rational believers only avoid blatant inconsistencies (where some beliefs are blatantly inconsistent when they contradict one another on a particular question). Rather than cohering into a single overall world view, beliefs are more loosely connected in what is best described as a web of questions. This view of minimally rational belief naturally gives rise to an account of deductive inquiry on which deductive reasoning is a matter of posing new questions.