What assumption am I making when I ask 'do trees exist?' — Welkin Rogue

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 would say that my motivation to post the question might rely, psychologically, on these assumptions.
— Welkin Rogue

...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. — Banno

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.

. I can recognise that a creature is a horse without assuming that it is a horse, can't I? — Welkin Rogue

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.

And in order to make boundaries and discriminate between things one must assume such boundaries are true and not manufactured by the mind. — Benj96

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.

But first, I wonder whether recognising the sense in the question entails making the assumption that it does make sense. — Welkin Rogue

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

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. — Adam's Off Ox

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.

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. — Benj96

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.

Then the sceptic is also assuming the theory of probability.

The idea is that if you ask, you're presupposing. If you're not presupposing, then it's a statement in the form of question, but not really a question, therefore nonsense. And not really a question because you're not really presupposing anything; i.e., the question is not about anything. — tim wood

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.

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." — Adam's Off Ox

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.

Then your statement has the form of a question, but not the substance. You have to decide what a question is.

Then your statement has the form of a question, but not the substance. You have to decide what a question is. — tim wood

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.

@ Wittgenstein aficionados

Is the Tractatus a good place for the OP to find a comprehensive answer?

Is the Tractatus a good place for the OP to find a comprehensive answer? — dex

Ah, a comprehensive answer...

Is there such a thing? Anyway, I think W's later stuff might be better on this issue.

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. — Adam's Off Ox

:up:

Nuh. Go to a tertiary text. Kenny's is my choice for a first.

Thanks


Also thanks
Is that because it's easier to understand or it's more specific to the OP?

The Tractaus solved all the problems of philosophy. The Investigations showed where it went wrong. But it's On Certainty that starts to deal with doubt.

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.

Any utterance can be categorised like that.

I wrote this, more or less, for the WIki article on J L Austin

For example: John Smith turns to Sue Snub and says ‘Is Jeff’s shirt red?’, to which Sue replies ‘Yes’. John has produced a series of bodily movements which result in the production of a certain sound. Austin called such a performance a phonetic act, and called the act a phone. John's utterance also conforms to the lexical and grammatical conventions of English—that is, John has produced an English sentence. Austin called this a phatic act, and labels such utterances phemes. John also referred to Jeff's shirt, and to the colour red. To use a pheme with a more or less definite sense and reference is to utter a rheme, and to perform a rhetic act. Note that rhemes are a sub-class of phemes, which in turn are a sub-class of phones. One cannot perform a rheme without also performing a pheme and a phone. The performance of these three acts is the performance of a locution—it is the act of saying something.

John has therefore performed a locutionary act. He has also done at least two other things. He has asked a question, and he has elicited an answer from Sue.

Asking a question is an example of what Austin called an illocutionary act. Other examples would be making an assertion, giving an order, and promising to do something. To perform an illocutionary act is to use a locution with a certain force. It is an act performed in saying something, in contrast with a locution, the act of saying something.

Eliciting an answer is an example of what Austin calls a perlocutionary act, an act performed by saying something. Notice that if one successfully performs a perlocution, one also succeeds in performing both an illocution and a locution.

In the theory of speech acts, attention has especially focused on the illocutionary act, much less on the locutionary and perlocutionary act, and only rarely on the subdivision of the locution into phone, pheme and rheme.

How to Do Things With Words is based on lectures given at Oxford between 1951 and 1954, and then at Harvard in 1955.[17]

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.

Meaning, the OP is ironically asking a meaningless question, as questions make no assumption of truth, merely they seek truth or falsehood in the answer?

The core of a question would involve the completed proposition's being true. That is, there may well be examples where this is not the case, but they would be in some way infelicitous.

The incomplete proposition must presumably be assumed. So...

• ‘Is Jeff’s shirt red?’ - seeking confirmation?
• ‘What colour is Jeff’s shirt?’ - asked in order to complete the proposition "Jef's shirt is..."
• ‘What colour is Jeff’s shirt?’ - asked to find out which of those folk over there is Jeff.
  
• ‘Is Jeff’s shirt red?’ - asked by a teacher to find out if you know what "red" is.

The OP suggested that questions do contain propositions/assertions/'presuppositions'. I still haven't been convinced that they do. — Welkin Rogue

You have to make up your mind as to what a question is. If it is just sounds with an uplift at the end, or marks on paper with a question mark, e.g., wie ouk glark ousia?, then you can have your question without presuppositions - or anything at all. But that's not what most people think a question is, nor is it a useful model.

Maybe this way. A question is a peculiar sort of something that can be written down on a piece of paper, although often isn't. What is peculiar about it? What make it a question? In these two cases, the presupposition that it is peculiar, and one wants to know in what way. And in the second, that it, a question, has some general quality that makes it a question. Were these not somehow presupposed, then these questions never arise. (For example, you probably do not usually ask whether questions are mauve or puce. And why not?)

You might think of a question as something for which its subject is logically prior to its asking. "Where did I park the car," presupposes a lot of things. How many can you think of (presupposing that you can think)?
1) There is such a thing as a car and I have one, or at least I parked one.
2) I parked it somewhere.
3) Where is meaningful in the context of the question, i.e., it's where I parked it
4) I know how to operate a car.
And so forth.

And none of them needs be true. They need only be presupposed. An important point about presuppositions often not grasped.

Now, you can goggle at the idea of presuppositions all you want. You can even call them something else. But by any name, they are that which makes a question a question, and lacking which, the question is no longer a question.

Doubt can only take place against a background of certainty. — Banno

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:

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? — 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.

"Philosophy complains that Custom has hoodwinked us, from the first; that we do everything by Custom, even Believe by it; that our very Axioms, let us boast of Free-thinking as we may, are oftenest simply such Beliefs as we have never heard questioned. Nay, what is Philosophy throughout but a continual battle against Custom; an ever-renewed effort to transcend the sphere of blind Custom, and so become Transcendental?"

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.

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. — Yellow Horse

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.

Would you be able to expand on how trust in the language of a question involves doubt in asking it? — dex

Sure, but note that I said (in different words) that articulate doubt trusts/obeys sociolinguistic conventions that make it intelligible, even for the questioner.

"What is nothing?" is only senseless to a laymen; a theoretical physicist, on the other hand, will probably make sense of it. — 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!) '

Under what principle of language do we appeal to to ensure sense in a question? — 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.

The Tractatus appears to offer a cohesive foundation for this stuff. — 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.)