Best Response Functions for Cournot
In general a best response function returns a set of best responses. This can be seen in much simpler games than Cournot.

To give a degenerate example, if a player is always indifferent between their strategies, their best response function will always return the set of all their strategies.

When you have best response functions that give sets with more than one element, Nash equilibrium happens when each player's play is contained in the other player's best response set.