The Nature of Questions

[Elena]

Questioning is perhaps one of the primal acts of mind, aside from the even more primitive acts of representation, symbolization, and conceptualization. Yet what happens when we direct questioning upon itself? What can we discover thus? Socrates was wise to direct us ever back to the source of our questioning.

As I understand it, and please offer your own perspective, questioning seems to be the directing of mind through a theoretical patterning that precedes and guides inquiry in order to yield intelligible and meaningful results to the inquiring mind. As Langer aptly put it, "A question is really an ambiguous proposition; the answer is its determination." and
"A philosophy is characterized more by the formulation of its problems than by its solution of them. Its answers establish an edifice of facts; but its questions make the frame in which its picture of facts is plotted. They make more than the frame; they give the angle of perspective, the palette, the style in which the picture is drawn - everything except the subject. In our questions lie our principles of analysis, and our answers may express whatever those principles are able to yield."

If this is so, then our questions are the real ground we stand on, and it is this ground that is most needful of scrutiny for those who seek "the examined life." Yet how do you question the questioner and examine the examiner? Can there be any discovery involved here, or is this ground merely posited through a creative act of thought that defies critical reflection? Is it the case that, as Wittgenstein put it, this is one of the situations in which we reach bedrock and the spade merely turns, with our having to say merely "This is what I do?"

Furthermore, if questions so profoundly predetermine thought and inquiry, then it would seem to make sense to get them right lest our searching become a blind man's groping. Knowing what the real, the true, and the important questions are would seem to be 90% of the work thought must accomplish. What then are the valid, the important, and the most revealing questions and how can we come to know them?

And what of questions that are "meaningless" (a popular and handy term of rejection used in modern and postmodern thought)? If thought can breed monstrosities that have no relation whatsoever to being (except the being of minds), then presumably it can breed questions that are similarly "monstrous," misdirecting mind and sending it out on wild-goose chases into ontological dead-ends. Is a question such as the question "why" when applied to the brute, factual existence of the universe such an inapplicable monstrosity? Or does its enormous phenomenological validity imply also an ontological validity, by revealing something of the nature of questioning creatures such as we are?

And lastly, can we spot such dead-end-yielding monstrosities in advance through a radically self-critical act of thought? Or must we just take the empirical trial-and-error route? If the questions set up the walls, can blind experiment smash through them and let in the light?

And the ends of questioning? Is there an end, some ultimate consummation of thought?

[Cliff]

I definitely agree with you that a most vital task is discerning which questions are worth being asked. The simple fact that a question can be formulated is no evidence at all of its epistemological worth. Along those lines however, it is interesting that you point out the possibility of even the so-called "meaningless" (viz. epistemologically worthless) questions exhibiting an alternate ontological validity insofar as they undoubtedly reveal an aspect of ourselves as questioners. I believe that this is a completely valid point, and that - accordingly - it is erroneous to dismiss such questions outright. While someone operating within an epistemological perspective might try to avoid such questions at all costs, someone more concerned with human nature might instead focus attention upon them (or more accurately, upon the state-of-mind of the questioner in the very moments these particular questions are being asked).

That being said, from my personal perspective the answer to your question

"Is a question such as the question "why" when applied to the brute, factual existence of the universe such an inapplicable monstrosity?"

is "yes". In my view our very ability to ask why at all is absolutely dependent upon (and in a sense an effect of) the universe's existence. In other words, the act of asking the above question involves a blatant misunderstanding the fundamental causality involved, specifically to the extent that such asking posits the universe as an effect.

While I must admit that it is possible that the universe is an effect of some metauniversal cause, I believe that if such a cause did exist it would represent not only something upon which we are transitively-dependent [in the sense that we are dependent upon that which is dependent upon it] but also - and partly as a consequence of the transitivity - something the nature of which would have to be even further-removed from our conceptualizing powers than that of the universe itself. For these reasons (and likely some unstated others) I view the above question as paradigmatic of an entire set of questions not worth asking.

Epistemologically speaking then, it is a very significant question because it clearly functions as a 'Do Not Enter' sign, one of those "dead-end-yielding monstrosities". But now how is it that I am asserting the question to be not-worth-asking and at the same time significant? Interestingly, the nature of its significance appears to be its unworthiness.

[Pavel]

Elena, I think the topic you opened is of extreme importance for philosophy and I cannot resist adding some brief observations (sorry for rather undisciplined terminology). You outlined a technical view of questions as organon for arriving at answers and they really seem to be both tool and trap. Maybe it was this frustrating discovery that made Socrates, master of questions, give up investigating the things over the air and beneath the earth. This particularity of questions that could be answered in one or another way was no longer of any concern for him. For he discovered question much greater that from now on consumed all his life - question that embraces totality of being and that has no answer. He was able to detach questioning from contingency of particular questions, he even used these particular questions as a tool for arriving at - unconditional question. For me, this question is the crucial ontological category.
With this view in mind, I would take up the same sentence as Cliff, namely: "Is a question such as the question "why" when applied to the brute, factual existence of the universe such an inapplicable monstrosity?" What Cliff says is quite logical. But since we know how much the answer depends on question, let us take a closer look at the question. It presupposes there is some brute, factual existence that, in the beginning, is not in question and only afterwards some question is applied to it. Moreover the question runs "why" and this presupposes answer from the realm of causality. I agree, as such it is wrong question. But it doesn't mean there is no question at all. On the contrary, I think it is just wrong articulation of question inherent in being and in the existence of the universe.
In my view, this question is not only possible, but even necessary. We could not ask particular questions if basically the question were not about everything. The reality is not closed totality, where we had a firm starting point and from there deduced answers to our particular questions. In the ground of reality there is a crack, an insurmountable gap dividing it from itself. We are standing here, but we know neither beginning nor the end. The reality, the being itself IS the question.
From another point of view: In a monolithic, determined block of being, there is no consciousness. In order to be conscious of anything, we must be open for it, we must be ready to receive anything that comes. There must be an empty "place" where being could be posited and it must be this emptiness greedy for being. Just like hearing is greediness for sound and vision greediness for visible. Isn't this fundamentally structure of question?
Or look at the structure of temporality: present and past are understandable only from openness for future. The present, which we know, in a way, comes from the future, which we do not know. And again: Isn't this fundamentally structure of question?
Quite different issue is whether it is sensible to expect an answer to this question. On one hand, the answer is the being we see, the life we live, the presence we experience. On the other hand, we crave for more. For we question this questioning itself and it answers still with the same old song of being, which we found unsatisfying. But it cannot give a better answer. If the questioning itself could be ever answered, there would be no answer any more. Answers unconditionally need question. It is as if we wanted to make the future present - it would mean abolishing time.
So is it sensible to ask question which cannot be answered? Yes, after all we have no choice. It is question that gives us every particular answer we can have. And when turned to itself, it gives us even itself as answer of a kind. We wanted to be answered with answer, but now lo and behold - the answer is question. Naturally, we tend to be disappointed, but in fact, it is a reward for those who can appreciate it, for here we get the highest degree of intimacy with being we can have. We have no ultimate answer, but we have the source of answers.
For a long time, I could not understand how could be Socrates so content and alleviated if he had just questions? But the question properly questioned has something divine in itself. Although it withholds itself from us, it is most generous. It withholds from us a single answer, but gives us everything there is. There is some solace hidden in this silence. It can be interpreted not only as dead silence of nothingness, but also as a warm embrace.

[M]

Isn’t it the nature of an introspective mind to be at home with uncertainty and tentative answers, to be unburdened by the craving for closure that demands the unequivocal?

[Duffy]

M wrote: "Isn’t it the nature of an introspective mind to be at home with uncertainty and tentative answers, to be unburdened by the craving for closure that demands the unequivocal?"

You want a 'yes' or 'no' answer to that?

[M]

Whichever you’re in the mood for. It seems to me that if it’s a thoughtful answer, whether it’s a yes or no answer doesn’t matter much.

[Kamakana]

“If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts; but if he will be content to begin with doubts, he shall end in certainties.”
― Francis Bacon