Language

Can a question be a question without an answer?

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Confession: I badly wanted to leave your question without an answer (hence making it not a question?)!

Butit was too good a question. Or two good questions: (1) could there bequestions to which there are no answers? And (2) could there bequestions which have answers which we will never know?

Ifyouthink that it makes sense to say that reality isn't always determinate,isn't always a particular way, then the answer to (1) would be Yes.There are some questions in mathematics, for instance, to which some(but not all)mathematicians believe there is no correct answer; the ContinuumHypothesis is a famous example. Some (but not all) physicists hold thatsomefeatures of the physical world are indeterminate as well, for instancethat there simply is no right answer to the question of what preciselyaparticle's position and velocity are at a particular moment. On theother hand, if you believe that if a question is fully meaningful, thenthe relevant reality it concerns must settle the matter one way or theother, then (1) would have to be answered No.

The question (2) also gives rise to heated debate. As you can see elsewhere on this site,there are philosophers who believe that the fact that our minds havethe particular structure they do makes it inevitable that some truthsabout our world will remain forever beyond our grasp. On the otherhand, there are philosophers who think that any question whoseanswer is in principle not knowable by us is really not a clearquestion. The great American philosopher W.V. Quine (1908-2002) puts it in his inimitable way:

Questions,let us remember, are in language. Languageis learned by people, from people, only in relation, ultimately, toobservable circumstances of utterance. The relation of language toobservation is often very devious, but observation is finally all thereis for language to be anchored to. If a question could in principlenever be answered, then, one feels that language has gone wrong;language has parted its moorings, and the question has no meaning. Onthis philosophy, of course, our central question has a sweeping answer.The question was whether there are things man could never know. Thequestion was whether there are questions — meaningful questions — thatman could in principle never answer. On this philosophy, the answer tothis question of questions is no. [From "The Limits of Knowledge" in his The Ways of Paradox and Other Essays (revised and enlarged edition).]

I very ordinary example of a question without an answer might be a question with a false presupposition. Suppose the question is whether you have stopped beating your dog, where in fact, kind soul that you are, you never started beating your dog. In that case I think we still have a question, but although it has a good reply, it has no answer.

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