How much do questions assume?
It seems ridiculous - the thought of a question assuming anything. How could a request for information that you do not know be assuming anything? Well the truth is all questions assume. They must. In order to have any meaning at all.
Who, what, when, where, how and why all make assumptions about the universe. About causality, time, location, mode, observation etc.. they work well in questions because they are so general and dont conflict with themselves very often.
But even they too can conflict with their own assumptions even if a sentence is grammatical correct. For example; What is nothing? When did time not exist? Where is the universe? How does energy happen? Why are there reasons? All of these are pretty senseless and vague questions which ironically makes them seemingly profound and difficult to answer.
The best question to ask would be one that does not assume anything about existence. Perhaps the best question is the one that does not assume the need to question in the first place?
Because to posit a question is to create a void in answers. To not question at all is to not require answers.
Who, what, when, where, how and why all make assumptions about the universe. About causality, time, location, mode, observation etc.. they work well in questions because they are so general and dont conflict with themselves very often.
But even they too can conflict with their own assumptions even if a sentence is grammatical correct. For example; What is nothing? When did time not exist? Where is the universe? How does energy happen? Why are there reasons? All of these are pretty senseless and vague questions which ironically makes them seemingly profound and difficult to answer.
The best question to ask would be one that does not assume anything about existence. Perhaps the best question is the one that does not assume the need to question in the first place?
Because to posit a question is to create a void in answers. To not question at all is to not require answers.
Comments (64)
I agree. They assume language and a world for it to be about, or something along those lines.
I don't understand what you are saying in this paragraph. What makes a question best versus worst?
I understand what you are saying about a question contradicting its very nature. For example "Is there existence?" seems to undermine itself.
But asking a person to explain the nature of existence, or define what constituents make up an ontology, while certainly making an assumption, does not seem limited or vacated by its own scope.
Or for example, a question about what an individual believes makes up "truth", may not assume that "truth" somehow exists, but could rather be inviting the subject of interrogation to explain how they use the word when they include it in their speech. In that way, asking about a word, or how it gets used, does not necessarily make an assumption about the nature of what is signified by the word in question.
An important outcome is Wittgenstein's claim that all doubt is embedded in underlying beliefs and therefore the most radical forms of doubt must be rejected since they form a contradiction within the system that expressed them.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_Certainty
In your opinion, what is the demarcation between healthy doubt and the kind of most radical forms of doubt that must be rejected? Do you find my question meaningful?
That's a difficult question. There's a whole philosophical tradition of unhealthy doubt from Sextus Empiricus and his Pyrrhonism, to modern philosophers such as Descartes and Hume.
I suspect you do not believe all doubt is unhealthy. You point out a few examples of what you find to be unhealthy traditions, but I wonder what you believe makes them unhealthy. Is there some boundary, where a philosopher may remain confident that their question is in the healthy realm, without engaging in the sins of the unhealthy traditions?
Also, what are the consequences of engaging in an unhealthy skeptical tradition?
It all depends on your tolerance for anxiety. Anyone with an anxiety disorder will do well to stay away from those philosophers.
Most of the time it is harmless.
Mind blown
Quoting Benj96
What assumption am I making when I ask 'do trees exist?'
Quoting Banno
What certainty does it require?
I could go on at length, setting out the context in which the question has meaning. For:
All questions assume. At the very basis of a question is the assumption that it was worthy of asking in the first place/ may have an answer.
You assume that the question is coherent and sensible. You assume the rules of the English language - grammar, syntax, pragmatics etc. You assume that I may have an answer/response or you wouldn't have asked it. You assume that the internet will work and carry the information to my screen. You assume that I speak English. You assume the extent of my vocabulary- that I know what "tree means". You assume that trees can only either exist or not exist and that there is not multiple other alternative or intermediary states that would negate the valid and sensible use of either of the first two concepts. You assume the qualities of "existence" can be reasonably define to a degree accurate enough to permit its use in a sentence regarding trees.
I'm not saying whether these assumptions are well reasoned or not. Most if not all are. As it's clear I speak English because I'm demonstrating it. But no less they are assumptions that you must apply to construct such a question. All questions assume.
Superb
I'm not certain about any of that. At most, I would say that my motivation to post the question might rely, psychologically, on these assumptions. But it seems possible for an agent to raise a doubt without having certainty that there is a language called 'English', or that their question even makes sense. Why not?
We've been taught, erroneously, that we should doubt everything. It's a truism. But that's not rational possible. Just as one can ask for a justification for a belief, one can ask for a justification for doubt.
...that is, you rely on not doubting them, or in other words you treat them as certain.
Of course you might bring one or two into doubt; but in order to do so, you must hold firm to other beliefs.
I can agree that it is impossible for a person to intentionally pose a question that they don't recognise as being sensible or coherent. This is because, in order to recognise some speech act as a question, one must be able to make some sense of it (and doing something intentionally requires a level of awareness of what it is that one is doing).
But first, I wonder whether recognising the sense in the question entails making the assumption that it does make sense. I can recognise that a creature is a horse without assuming that it is a horse, can't I?
Secondly, there is a distinction between the question and the questioner. A questioner can make assumptions that the question doesn't. For example, the question 'does you car have petrol in the tank?' assumes that there is a car, that it has a tank, that it is yours, and so on. But the question 'are there trees?' doesn't itself make assumptions like that. At most, the questioner putting it might make certain minimal assumptions in order to engage in the practice of asking the question.
Okay, interesting. So as my reply to Benj96 suggested, perhaps I am making more of the distinction between question and questioner than you are. I want to bracket out all the assumptions/certainty that is causally/psychologically required, and focus on the propositions expressed and what claims they entail.
But if the end goal is to refute global scepticism, then this distinction isn't very important. The anti-sceptic just needs to show that the global sceptic is themselves making some assumptions, and showing that doing X requires assumption Y seems to be enough.
"Are there trees?" is closer to a metaphysical question. What is it that you are asking here... well, one interpretation would be that you are asking how we use the word "tree", and so the answer might be to take you for a walk through the garden pointing out various shrubs, flowers, rocks... and trees.
Dissolving metaphysics into language use is a powerful philosophical tool.
Global scepticism is self-refuting.
The philosophical method becomes just keeping an eye on what is being held certain in order to acheive doubt.
One sort of certainty is institutional; it is assumed in what we are doing. So that the bishop moves diagonally is an institutional certainty. Doubt it, and you cease to be playing chess.
That there are trees relies partially on the institutions of English and how they set out the use of "tree", but also on there being trees, as shown in our walk around the garden.
I'm still confused, Banno.
I don't know how much I need to assume in order to pose a question. Here's my attempt to reconstruct the argument. I think I'm not entirely getting the point.
If I were to say that when I ask 'are there trees?' I'm not even assuming that my question is meaningful, then I am not really asking a question at all. Suppose I just like the sound of my own voice, or enjoy the look of the markings that I can make appear by typing. I am not really asking a question. I am doing something else - something aesthetic, perhaps. Questioning is a social practice. In order to pose a question, I must also make the assumption that my speech act will be effective in various ways. (I was going to say that it has meaning... but that seems to theoretical. Can't you doubt that there are meanings and yet ask questions? I'd hope so, for the sake of meaning sceptics). This assumption seems to entail the further assumption that there is a world in which my question can be effective - that there are listeners with a capacity for understanding and responding etc. (even if that's just me, or some collection of thoughts existing in the future).
I wouldn't say that I presuppose that it has a purpose. It remains open, for instance, that it could be a bit of useless shrapnel.
All I know is what it would be for something to have a purpose. That does seem required for asking the question (reasonably).
But what presupposition I am making in knowing what it would be for something to have a purpose? (All I need to have is a certain concept. Does having that concept require a presupposition about the world?)
Yep. So I am not presupposing anything. Right? My claim was that in asking the question "What's that, what is that for?" I am not presupposing that X has a purpose.
I don't know how you achieve this exhaustive binomialism without defining doubt away. How can one doubt something? It's not saying X is not the case, nor saying that X is the case.
So to say that speaking requires that one holds the mutuality of the language to be 'certain' denies the possibility of one simply holding it 'more likely than not'. If you then go on to say "well, the belief that it's 'more likely than not' is that which you hold to be certain", then, as per above, you've removed the definition of doubt.
The asking of the question presupposes that some answer will satisfy the inquiry. But it does even more than that. It not only assumes that an appropriate response, such as "Trees exist", can be articulated by the interrogated, but that it sets itself apart from some other meaningful response, such as "Trees don't exist."
If for example, the interrogator does not accept any alternative response like "Trees don't exist" (by say, making some argument about the predicate '___exists' violating the square of opposition) then the formulation of the question that can only accept one answer becomes a rhetorical language move, and gets convicted of assuming its own answer.
I'm not sure you've refuted the method of global skepticism here, though. One could take the approach that the assumptions Welkin Rogue mentions are treated like axioms in a kind of logical proof. The approach goes along the lines, "If A, B, and C are assumed, and question Q is asked, what subsequent statements are consistent with the model", where A, B, and C are not known for certain by the skeptic, but only posed as hypotheses.
You haven't necessarily pinned the skeptic down to a conviction, yet. At least you haven't explicitly stated what conviction the skeptic must hold in order to perform the language move of presenting a sentence that begins with "who", "what", "when", "where", or "why".
A skeptic could be performing an experiment, with all the underlying assumptions still "in play", so to speak, and still treat all the underlying assumptions as probable, not certain.
In other words you can recognise that the term horse is applied to this creature without assuming the word horse is applied to this creature?
Can one naturally recognise the term "horse" when you they see a horse? As in you look at this creature for the very first time as a baby and you know it is a "horse" and not "caballo" or "cheval" or "Pferd"?
Words are used to define. And to define something is to delineate a boundary between it and something else that distinguishes it by some parameter - a quality, behaviour, mode etc. And in order to make boundaries and discriminate between things one must assume such boundaries are true and not manufactured by the mind.
When I use the word "horse" or any language for that matter I- I must assume i have an audience which can mutually relate otherwise I'm talking to myself. Interestingly if I am making reference to a horse for solely myself I could use a different word every time because I know I am thinking of a horse. But tomorrow it's a bromboline and the next day it's a terracclerometrex.
I don't go along with this sentence.
When I use the word "horse", I don't assume my audience has the same exact intuition about horse-ness that I do. Rather, I only hypothesize that my audience will use the word "horse" in similar sentences, or will utter sentences with "horse" in similar situations that I do.
This is correct. You have to assume a question makes sense in order to recognise the sense in it. If I ask the question "do you prefer the colour green or blue?" I think it's fairly sensible. But to a tribal man in Namibia - the question is illogical and impossible to ask, as in their tribal culture green and blue are not distinguished from one another. The sky and a leaf and the same category of colour.
Here we see how language - that is to say mutual agreement between a collective as to how the world is described - influences the sensibility of questions.
If someone says "do you own this land?" I could either say "yes I own this land" or "no" or "what do you mean 'own ' land?" If I am from a nomadic people that do not possess territory. And my answers give information as to what my beliefs are -ie. What assumptions I have accepted about how the world works
Then why use the word "horse" at all? If you dont use the word horse because you know that others apply it to the same object then how would you ever be sure you are even communicating at all? For all you know horse means nothing to anyone except you. So, It's less of a hypothesis and more of an observable, repeatable phenomenon amongst people with your language.
I didnt get born and decide I will use the term horse for this object. I was told what it was and expected to not invent other words for it but to conform and accept its use as standard.
I could make my own language or slang terms. I could even teach that language to others. But then I have rejected the belief that horse = horse and put another word in its place. It doesnt negate the fact that i must make the assumption that the word will be useful or should exist. That i should even articulate the experience in the first place as something distinct and defined which demands a word.
When I say "horse" I don't refer to the thing-as-it-is as some object nature has prepared for my consumption whole-hog. Rather I say "horse" in conjunction with the phenomena as I experience them and hope that the utterance will produce a desired outcome from my audience. I don't need for my audience to have the exact same concept of "horse" that I do to get by in a specific language game.
If I want "that set of legs" to stop "plodding on my daisies" and you are willing to take your "thing that I saddle and ride" out of the "garden" the language game is successful, even if we operate with different ontologies, logics, or grammars. The objects don't have to be the same for me as they are for you, or even the same as nature intends them, for me to get my desired outcomes met. If saying "gavagai" gets me fed, I don't have to care what it means to you, or means objectively, or even if "a language" exists.
Yes. You presented an example of a putatively genuine question and suggested that, as such, it contained presuppositions. I argued that it didn't contain any such presuppositions, and was therefore in fact a counterexample to your claim. You're just reasserting your claim, not defending the existence of presuppositions in the example.
I think that's true, although it isn't obvious. You could argue that you don't need to presuppose that some answer will satisfy the inquiry. Maybe there are questions without answers.
That seems wrong, though. I would argue that the content of a question is its set of possible answers. Therefore if the questioner knows the content of their question, they know what its possible answers are (and that they are distinct). They are seeking to discover which among those possible answers is true.
But this is trivial.
If I say "some apples are red", and I know what I mean when I say that (i.e., I know English), there is a trivial sense in which I assume that those words have those meanings. It seems the same with what you are saying regarding questions. It is required to reasonably ask a question (to understand it) that I assume that it has a certain meaningful content, and that this involves various possible answers.
I repeat: You're just reasserting your claim, not defending the existence of presuppositions in your example of a question.
But I'll bite. How's this? A question presents a certain set of possibilities and asks its audience which is actual. In presenting those possibilities, it is not affirming that any of those possibilities are true. That is, it is not presupposing any answer. It is not itself a proposition. It is not an assertion. That is a different sort of speech act.
The OP suggested that questions do contain propositions/assertions/'presuppositions'. I still haven't been convinced that they do. However, I can see how in order for the questioner to ask her question, she might have to assume certain things to be true (i.e., subscribe to certain propositions). But this seems different to the content of the question containing assumptions.
Is the Tractatus a good place for the OP to find a comprehensive answer?
Ah, a comprehensive answer...
Is there such a thing? Anyway, I think W's later stuff might be better on this issue.
:up:
Thanks
Also thanks
Is that because it's easier to understand or it's more specific to the OP?
Kenny's book consolidates Wittgenstein's development neatly.
But if you want to jump in the deep end, https://prawfsblawg.blogs.com/files/wittgenstein-on-certainty.pdf
Cheers for the link.
Can questions not be categorised into sense, senseless, and nonsense? Seems like that's what the OP is asking.
I wrote this, more or less, for the WIki article on J L Austin
It's not peculiar to questions, but they are perhaps the simplest example of an locutionary act that has a reasonably direct perlocution.
Quality read :)
Sounds like it's addressing definition rather than whether the content of the illocution is logical, though?
Maybe I read it wrong, but seems the OP wants to know more about the border between truth-based (sensible) and senseless questions; predications on truth defining sensible, on falsehoods defining senseless.
Well, Searle's rules, mentioned earlier, develop on Austin's ideas in that direction. I'm just loath to type it all out here.
Roughly, a question has the intent of eliciting a missing piece of information. Searle frames this in terms of completing a proposition. So truth enters into questioning in the truth or falsehood of the completed proposition. Searle point out that some questions - asked often by teachers - are not seeking information but seeking to determine if the person providing the information has the specified information.
Test in the morning, folks.
The incomplete proposition must presumably be assumed. So...
How would you say doubt is implicit in a question?
[Edit: removed a quote & paragraph as answered my own question.]
The OP seems to be looking into the limits of language specific to questions: "Where is the universe?" is meaningless as we the questioner understand properties of the universe making it so. But a child doesn't ask something because they understand logical context, similarly if Max Tegmark's 3rd order multiverse exists, asking where the universe is then becomes valid and meaningful. So validity depends on axioms that are open to change in some cases, which restricts meaningful questions to our present knowledge base, even if newly discovered axioms eventually make presently meaningless questions meaningful.
Truth-based questions are therefore relative. To me this means questions are essentially abstract and rather than being objectively meaningless, illogical sounding questions are working with propositions beyond our knowledge (so long as the syntax is correct). Truth-based equates to knowledge-based; meaninglessness applies only within a framework of knowledge.
So in response to the OP: meaningful questions rely on prior knowledge of axioms contextual to an answer; where that knowledge is absent, questions become abstractive, which abstractiveness can render them meaningless.
By analogy, consider an amateur rock climber scaling a cliff using ropes. They can only ascend -- gain knowledge -- in incremental sections defined by the safety -- logic -- of bolt anchors -- axioms -- as free soloing past those anchors renders the ascent unsafe, such that further ascent becomes practically impossible. Asking questions that are abstract from knowledge adds nothing to the ascent, but it may be possible that future axioms allow the climb to incorporate a previously unsafe foothold.
The last paragraph of the OP is confusing though:
Quoting Benj96
Seems incoherent/contradictory with the rest.
One way to make sense of 'doubt depends on certainty' is to emphasize that the questioner enacts a trust in the conventions of language as he questions. As Witt demonstrates, a private language does not make sense.
So we get a world and a language at the same time, even if we are never done co-making sense of our situation.
Carlyle (Sartor Resartus)
'Custom' includes the conventions of our shared language/world that we never bothered to notice as we question as fiercely as possible. Without such currently-unquestioned conventions, no questioning of convention seems possible in the first place.
Would you be able to expand on how trust in the language of a question involves doubt in asking it?
That last post I wrote isn't worded well. Was attempting to say: a question is an abstraction falling between meaningful and meaningless (further broken down as sensible and senseless/nonsensical) however it's only meaningless when not underlied by a certainty of knowledge. Even though there's an infinity of nonsense questions which are unknowable, asking senseless questions isn't necessarily pointless, as they might simply be outside our current knowledge.
Probably I'm being stupid here, but the abstract rules of language within a certainty framework don't appear to be addressing the OP's curiosity.
"What is nothing?" is only senseless to a laymen; a theoretical physicist, on the other hand, will probably make sense of it. But something like "When is colour?" involves a more faulty proposition rendering it nonsensical.
Under what principle of language do we appeal to to ensure sense in a question? Haven't worked all the way through Oxford's Modern Grammar yet but it seems like less abstract grammar/syntax rules might help margin the parameter.
"How much do questions assume?" -- in general, nothing; a question can be sensible or senseless or nonsensical. If the OP is specifically asking about sensible questions, however, then there's no spectra of 'amount' in assumptions being made, rather we're assuming the entire body of axiom-based knowledge.
The Tractatus appears to offer a cohesive foundation for this stuff.
Sure, but note that I said (in different words) that articulate doubt trusts/obeys sociolinguistic conventions that make it intelligible, even for the questioner.
Quoting dex
Personally I'm wary of calling expressions senseless. In context, 'what is nothing' might be in pursuit of a clarification of what we even mean by 'nothing.' Clarification in general would be a kind of reduction --- and not the elimination --- of fuzziness, often connected to action.
'I understand you now (well enough to get back to work!) '
Quoting dex
That is (or perhaps was) the question. At least one philosophical project has been the construction of a nonsense detector.
Is this not equivalent to a philosophical revolution that installs itself securely against all further revolutions?
If you will pardon the poetry: to dream the nonsense detector is to dream the death of philosophy as its completion.
Quoting dex
The TLP is great...and too complex for me to be done with. But Philosophical Investigations and On Certainty are texts that more directly influence my approach to this thread.
Here's a sample from P.I. from around section 257, which gets at the point that meaning is public or between rather than inside us.
***************************************************
"What would it be like if human beings shewed no outward signs of pain (did not groan, grimace, etc.)? Then it would be impossible to teach a child the use of the word 'tooth-ache'.
...
Let us imagine the following case. I want to keep a diary about the recurrence of a certain sensation. To this end I associate it with the sign "S" and write this sign in a calendar for every day on which I have the sensation.——I will remark first of all that a definition of the sign cannot be formulated.—But still I can give myself a kind of ostensive definition.—How? Can I point to the sensation? Not in the ordinary sense. But I speak, or write the sign down, and at the same time I concentrate my attention on the sensation—and so, as it were, point to it inwardly.—But what is this ceremony for? for that is all it seems to be!
****************************************************
There's plenty more, but in the end even concepts like 'consciousness' and 'meaning' lose their familiarity (in a good way that lets us see the fuzz.)
(There's a pdf online, btw.)
So therefore, doubt here simply means 'uncertainty' -- questions are uncertainties -- the asking of a question involves trust in the certainties of linguistics?
Quoting Yellow Horse
I kind of agree. 'Senseless' (lacking in agreed upon axioms, but still following linguistic convention) needn't mean pointless, though, don't you think? Pointlessness more relates to nonsense utterances that are linguistically inane.
Perhaps clearly defining the border between senseless and nonsense questions is where the solution rests.
Haven't finished the On Certainty pdf Banno shared yet, but seems it couples well with the Tractatus in that regard?
Quoting Yellow Horse
Nicely put. What if we look at it with a scientific mindset: rules and principles of language are open to change, if and when a better theory comes along. Simply they're helpful as scaffolds of logic that ensure meaningfulness.
Distinguishing sense and senseless from nonsense might be achieved through knowing where that logical scaffold ends; distinguishing sense from senseless, through knowing where knowledge ends.
Seems like this stuff is Wittgenstein's meat and gravy. Thanks for the excerpt -- will read the pdf in the next week or two.
What I have in mind is a radical interpretation of this famous Neurath quote.
***
We are like sailors who on the open sea must reconstruct their ship but are never able to start afresh from the bottom. Where a beam is taken away a new one must at once be put there, and for this the rest of the ship is used as support. In this way, by using the old beams and driftwood the ship can be shaped entirely anew, but only by gradual reconstruction.
***
If I ask some question about what a word means or how things stand in the world, this asking depends on a 'fixed' background or unquestioned meaning/world to make it intelligible (in our case here, 'knowing English,' which also means sharing a world in and for which English makes or has sense. Here's a quote from W from On Certainty.
***
All testing, all confirmation and disconfirmation of a hypothesis takes place already within a system. And this system is not a more or less arbitrary and doubtful point of departure for all our arguments; no it belongs to the essence of what we call an argument. The system is not so much the point of departure, as the element in which our arguments have their life.
***
Quoting dex
Right, and I think that's context dependent. If somehow a time machine could send back out-of-context quotes from 23rd century philosophy, we might call them pointless nonsense.
They would not make sense to us against the background of our current way of living and thinking. 'If a lion could speak, we would not understand him.'
It's also possible that today we could feed all of Wittgenstein's works to AI and get surprisingly insightful output that did not (as far as we know) originate from some consciousness.
Quoting dex
Right, and this is like conquering the future from the present. If we can discover the 'eternal' structure of all possible experience or all possible scientific thought, then the future is essentially already here --and we are essentially in eternity with all of the other metaphysicians that came before (who we also reject as having not got it quite right, unlike ourselves of course.)
Quoting dex
I agree. Let me also add that I'm aware that my take on W is just my take. To me his work has radical implications, especially through his behaviorist streak on the issue of meaning.
Usually, if someone doesn't assume the need to question, the person is informed by facts.
If i'm assuming the need, then there is no question, no subjective perception but generalized castles. If on the other hand, i assume the need to question, then an answer is two steps away.
The latter paragraph implies the reputation of philosophy. A philosopher on the outset of his journey, doesn't know what a question is. If this concept is learned, the very first questions are targeted at specific perceptions, which brings us back to specifics, not to basics,
That's the irony, we can't understand the fundamentals but on the "other side" we can.
If a question assumes anything, it's the combination of axes that we're interested in. A given line of inquiry maybe focused on where? (loci) , and when? (time) e.g. physics of motion, other fields of inquiry may want to know who? (people), when? (time) and why? (reasons) e.g. history, and so on.
That said, there's a particular type of question that appears as a fallacy in logic viz. the complex question, an example is the well-known "have you stopped cheating on your tests?"