A comment by Francis Berger yesterday included the significant statement that wrong questions rarely, if ever, lead to right answers.
This is important, because the opposite is so often assumed: for instance, the idea that it doesn't much matter what is our question, because all paths will eventually lead to the truth. Or the related idea that a good way to lead someone to follow Jesus, is to encourage him to ask questions - and answer each of them as they arise. Another version is the idea that the open arena of public assertion, counter-assertion and debate, will tend to lead (by a kind of natural selection) to the emergence of truth.
But if wrong questions do Not lead to right answers; then these common assumptions are dangerously false.
If, instead, truth is to be known by asking the right question; then this frantic business of challenge and response needs to stop; and people should instead be thinking about the questions they are asking - why they ask this question, what assumptions it is based-on, what kind of answer they seek, and what they propose to do with an answer...
Instead of comparing and critiquing; we need to focus primarily on asking the one right question.
The business of a spiritual or philosophical quest - indeed the whole business of mortal life itself! - takes on a transformed complexion when we recognize that the question is more important than the answer; and that wrong questions don't lead to right answers, no matter how many times they are multiplied.
We shouldn't "crack our brains" puzzling over answers - but over questions.
A properly-formed question will answer itself; and in ways that we understand immediately (although implications of the answer will unfold through time).
Furthermore; this explains why we cannot rely on external authorities to supply us either with questions, or with answers - since we our-selves must fully understand the question, in order fully to understand the answer.
If we do not do it for ourselves, it will not be done.
3 comments:
"Another version is the idea that the open arena of public assertion, counter-assertion and debate, will tend to lead (by a kind of natural selection) to the emergence of truth."
In the past I didn't realize how mistaken this idea is. The public arena of debate only leads to truth if the debaters and listeners are motivated and able to determine truth from falsity. (And also that the open public arena isn't overrun by con men who aren't arguing in good faith).
In general, there's a lot of things like that, where people describe the dynamics of a particular society at a particular time and then think it's a universal law. When in fact, the situation is caused by a special confluence of circumstances and if those change, it would change as well.
@NLR "The public arena of debate only leads to truth if the debaters and listeners are motivated and able to determine truth from falsity. (And also that the open public arena isn't overrun by con men who aren't arguing in good faith)."
Yes. Both the poorly-motivated and the malign-motivated (e.g. trolls) often ask A Lot of "wrong questions" - and if they get any answers, don't think about the answers but immediately ask a whole lot More questions; and therefore they can (whether accidentally or by design) easily become a significant drain on effort and time.
I also noted that when someone doesn't want you to be right, he simply dismisses all of your arguments one way or another(pretending you didn't say anything meaningful, or that your source is non - authoritive meaning it's a lie, or that you misunderstood it and his interpretation is more sounding, etc)
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