Abstract
In recent years, the effort to formalize erotetic inferences (i.e., inferences
to and from questions) has become a central concern for those working
in erotetic logic. However, few have sought to formulate a proof theory
for these inferences. To fill this lacuna, we construct a calculus for (classes
of) sequents that are sound and complete for two species of erotetic inferences
studied by Inferential Erotetic Logic (IEL): erotetic evocation and regular erotetic implication. While an attempt has been made to axiomatize the former in a sequent
system, there is currently no proof theory for the latter. Moreover, the extant
axiomatization of erotetic evocation fails to capture its defeasible character
and provides no rules for introducing or eliminating question-forming operators.
In contrast, our calculus encodes defeasibility conditions on sequents and
provides rules governing the introduction and elimination of erotetic formulas.
We demonstrate that an elimination theorem holds for a version of the cut
rule that applies to both declarative and erotetic formulas and that the rules
for the axiomatic account of question evocation in IEL are admissible in our
system.