The "Wrong" Questions
Offline Every known fact is divided from reality itself (i.e. Wittgenstein's "facts not things" line). It is a representation that seemed plausible, and will continue to until otherwise known. But in these cases, beliefs cling to the contours of apparent reality; and though the data could be corrupt, or the interpretation wrong, no deliberate rift is created between them. There is the sense, or the trusted data; and belief follows helplessly behind it as though tethered. That is, I guess, rationality.
But it is possible to ask a question that precedes senses and trusted data, and for which none is available. When this happens, one can try to imagine a scenario that connects two known points via some unknown, theoretical path in space. In this instance the potential difference between belief and reality becomes more significant, and the belief as a representation of reality becomes impossible.
So this all calls into question whether many questions can themselves be rationally justified as questions at all.
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I argued with a friend of mine about 9/11, and he asked me whether I believed that the terrorists could have pulled off such an ambitious scheme without "inside help." Though he asked me repeatedly, I would simply say I didn't know, and had no basis to speculate. The grand flights of speculation necessary to turn in an answer made any answer I could give worthless; and I'd imagine, whatever answer he was planning as a rebuttal, worthless as well. If many things were known about the details of this event, and the events leading up to this event, a picture would form immediately of it. I'd argue that posing such a question to me is not rational; that entertaining this question, without access to the data, is not rationally justifiable. Here the impulse to form a belief betrays us because it provides a false impression of the world; it is belief bridging over missing information, preceding data.
FWIW, Nietzsche criticized the impulse to form worthless opinions and lauded the discipline of withholding judgement until justified, in his complaints, IIRC, about institutionalized learning.
magilum,
I know this gem you wrote wasn't precisely your central point but this....
was exactly the refreshment I needed to hear today.
Thanks man
It's pretty close to the central point of the second post, I'd say.
If it's not too much of a tangent, do you consider this "belief bridging over missing information" to be noise, strictly speaking? (I mean noise in the noise-vs-signal sense.)
Saint Will: no gyration without funkstification.
fabulae! nil satis firmi video quam ob rem accipere hunc mi expediat metum. - Terence
I think you are going too far with your last sentence in the quote. I don't think questions need to be somehow 'justified'. In my view it is fair to ask any question. I guess the only caveat is that, as you said, you shouldn't always expect a definite answer, and you should be prepared to entertain purely speculative answers without giving them too much weight. But to discourage someone for asking a 'stupid question'? I'd say that's going too far. People wonder about things, and there's nothing wrong with that.
As to how to answer the question, I agree with you that it would require undue speculation. But on the other hand, if both people in the conversation understand that it is pure speculation (unlike a lot of Truthers), then there's no harm done making up wild and crazy scenarios to try to connect the dots, so to speak. This is simply an exercise in imagination.
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