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What is the relation between philosophical questions and answers?

Psyduck

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Feb 24, 2008
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1) What is the relation between philosophical questions and answers?
2) Does every question have an answer? (Presupposing that the question is formulated in a semantic/syntactical meaningful way)
3) Are questions without an answer meaningful?
4) Does western rationality (i.e. "everything can/will be given an answer") exclude other more poetic ways of thinking?

Discuss. :)
 
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I think that the method of asking a philosophical questions is one of search for paradox in sets of generalized structures of knowledge we have describing our experience. The method is one of finding seemingly dichotomous pairs of conceptual oppositions and then claiming that the state of affairs is neither of these cases. The rough logical form would be positing something like the following:
1. p
2. not-p
3. not(p or not-p)
(remember, that this is a striving to move beyond the seeming limits of logical derivation, so the above set of logical propositions appears 'invalid')

For example, one could begin fashioning an answer to the question of whether reality is discrete or continuous by claiming it is neither discrete nor continuous. The next step is fashioning a new set of conceptual structures that makes such a thing possible (eg, reality is processural and functions to condition our experience of apprehending phenomena in terms of mediation between the discrete and continuous).

2) Does every question have an answer? (Presupposing that the question is formulated in a semantic/syntactical meaningful way)

No, because we emerge as parts of the system which we're attempting to investigate, there are likely limits to the scope of what we can formulate about this system (delineated by how that system structures how we apprehend it).

3) Are questions without an answer meaningful?

They all are, in an arbitrary extendable way (i am just guessing), as finding the limits of knowledge is an important part of knowledge accrual.

4) Does western rationality (i.e. "everything can/will be given an answer") exclude other more poetic ways of thinking?

I reject this (implicitly Orientalist) dichotomization. Both Western and Eastern philosophy have grappled with mysticism, and both have employed logical analysis (and pressing its limits) in doing so (particularly with Hindu logicians). It's just that the West sort of forgot about this during the modernist period (or at least beginning with the Cartesian moment of this).

ebola
 
What I am trying to get at, and what is implicitly a dialectical model of embodied investigation, is detailed in my paper found here:

http://www.bluelight.org/vb/threads/190128-On-self-reference-contradiction-and-logic

Pertinent is this excerpt:

Royce’s contradiction of disjunction also shows our experience as underdetermined by our choices and descriptions of it, always presenting an indeterminate number of future possibilities in spite of the constraints placed thereon by the choices we have already made. Recall, again, the disjunctive contradiction. Because our logical description of this disjunction is contradictory, this shows the failure of our logical distinctions to wholly capture the continuum of experience before us. Thus, even though certain distinctions we have made render parts of our experience determinate and certain choices we have made constrain future options open to us, the continuum of experience still serves as a context for future choices. Not having been captured by our description of it, the continuum of experience continues to be ripe with an indeterminate number of possibilities. For example, even if we have chosen join a rural commune, this choice having constrained a number of future possibilities, there is still an indeterminate number of future possibilities open to us. Although we could not get a job as an investment banker, we can still choose whether to farm, build houses, pick flowers, run wildly, our mouths agape and screaming, murder our house-mates, etc.


This notion of the field of experience as presenting an indeterminate number of possibilities for choice and distinctions is further exhibited by the boundless number of logical borders we can create from the fundamental disjunctive division. Recall our continuum of experience divided into p and not-p, its border symbolized as not-(p v not-p) or simply p . not-p. We can see that additional divisions can be made between p and p . not-p or between not-p and p . not-p. These divisions can each be symbolized as not-(p v (p . not-p)), i.e. p . not-(p . not-p), and not-(not-p v (p . not-p), i.e. not-p . (p . not-p), respectively. These secondary borders too are contradictory, again displaying our logical system’s inability to capture the whole of experience. Furthermore, we see that we could also make tertiary borders between our secondary borders and the first border or the secondary borders and p or not-p, quaternary borders, fifth-order borders, and so on. There is an infinite regress of borders we can make. What this shows us is that, even given the constraints previous distinctions and previous choices made place on our experience, there are still an indeterminate number of possibilities for choices and future distinctions open to us.

(first-order logical notation chosen: "." means "and". "v" means exclusive disjuncture (either p or q, but not both))

ebola
 
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1) What is the relation between philosophical questions and answers?
2) Does every question have an answer? (Presupposing that the question is formulated in a semantic/syntactical meaningful way)
3) Are questions without an answer meaningful?
4) Does western rationality (i.e. "everything can/will be given an answer") exclude other more poetic ways of thinking?

Discuss. :)

2. Assuming the question is clear and concise then i believe there can be an answer to any question - sometimes the answer will be that "we cannot know".

3. Technically speaking if a question is spoken in a language/writing we can understand then yes, it has a certain signification to the reader or self and in that sense any question that makes sense has a sort of semantical meaningfulness.
 
1) What is the relation between philosophical questions and answers?
2) Does every question have an answer? (Presupposing that the question is formulated in a semantic/syntactical meaningful way)
3) Are questions without an answer meaningful?
4) Does western rationality (i.e. "everything can/will be given an answer") exclude other more poetic ways of thinking?

Discuss. :)

1. What is the relation between non-philosophical questions & answers?
2. Does every answer have a question?
3. Likewise, are answers without questions meaningful?
4. Does Western rationality exclude more poetic ways of thinking while redefining poetry?

The Socratic Method, the highlight of the pursuit of philosophy. Questions w/ questions to fuel food for thought ~.^
 
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