When the Answer Answers Itself

In the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, Ludwig Wittgenstein challenged philosophical logic by suggesting that the method of presenting the answer to the problem was inherent in the statement of the problem.  Philosophers of course like to believe the opposite to be true.  They like to believe logic can prove the validity of the statement.  Now I am aware that in his posthumous writings that were collected there is some doubt if Wittgenstein himself still believed that to be true.  But this column is not to debate the philosophy of Wittgenstein, because I wish to parse the idea whether we learn from the questions we are asked or the answers we are given.

Now supposing that every question ends in the answer to the question, could any more questions ever be asked?  So let’s look at the historical development of science.  If we accepted scientific answers, where would we be?  It’s not that anyone has never tried to suppress questions in science by assuming  the answers were not already known.  But if any of the scientists that have expanded scientific knowledge did not continue to question,then the sun would still be circling the earth (not saying that was ever true, but it was the answer one was supposed to accept and the knowledge of those who perceived it as the answer.)  So of course today scientists are continuing to question and continuing to find new questions to ask.

Now let’s enter into the question our educational processes where one is rewarded by knowing the right answer.  Answer the question with the answer, one moves forward to the next level.  When one has learned the answer, one has learned the answer.  But little children, toddlers, never seek answers, they ask questions.  Answering the question does not provide the solution but requires another question.  Sometimes just “Why?” We become impatient in answering “why?’  After all the answer is supposed to answer the why and end the question.  

Well in education if you learn enough answers, if you can progress to a certain level of answers, you might be allowed to continue to question someone else’s answer.  You now have the credentials to ask questions, but you’d better be able to answer your questions with a new answer,  Because if you can’t answer the question you posed, then you are not allowed to ask the question, you are a nutcase.  Despite the common parlance that Socrates walked around Athens questioning everyone without providing answers, Socrates actually walked around making fools of everyone else’s answers and forced them to see his answers were more logical than theirs (or attempted to do so).  The point of the socratic dialogue is not to not provide the answer, but a different answer, and of course in every socratic dialogue, Socrates’s answer is inherent in the initial question. So, to return momentarily to Wittgenstein, the logic, or manner of the Socratic dialogue may not be to state and then prove a premise, but is to state and then disprove the opponent’s premise.  And that is something of an improvement, but often difficult to actually accomplish, which we will momentarily attempt to show.

But let’s first go back to education, and question whether we really have learned anything by learning answers.  What if instead, we promoted the student because he asked the most questions.  Because ultimately knowledge is advanced not by what we know; but what we do not know.  If we are taught though, that the answer suffices, that the answer is the answer and questions are subdued beyond the answer that is given, the learning ends.

Except in a human being it does not. And if it does not; if we soothe internally and continue to question the answer, and we have been taught that questions must be answered not by more questions, then we seek the alternative answer.

If my “why” is unsatisfied, if your answer to my “why” is unsatisfactory, but the question is dumbed into submission, the answer I apply may not be your answer.  If your answer is unsatisfactory though, the individual has two routes open to him.  He can pursue his questions.  But as I’ve stated, one is expected to know a lot of answers before he is permitted to question, then that route is frequently denied. And too often parents begin the child’s right to not accept the parental answers at an early age.  Unpermitted to continue to question unsatisfactory answers, he seeks alternative answers.  But often those alternative answers require more restrictions to the questions he may have. 

For instance, one is seeking questions about the impermanency of life, one hears of scientology.  One begins to learn about scientology, one presents a question to the scientologist leader, the scientologist leader tells him he is only continuing to question because he has not yet learned the answer but the answer is not to question the leader who has the answer because if the answer is questioned, it is only because you have not learned the answer.  Once again the deficiency is in questioning the answer, once again we are being taught to learn the answer. 

But of course the answer of the scientologists is not the answer and so they are extremists, they are weird, they are a cult, and they are trying to bend your will and demand your obedience to their will.  Cults are bad.  They practice mind control to subdue your will to their answer. And the answer, of course, to the answer of the scientologist is to make a fool of the scientologist, as Socrates did to his opponents.  But of course those others’ answers (although some did) cease.  And so Socrates continued to ridicule but truly could not conform everyone to his answer.  Eventually he became a thorn and he was plucked away. 

I tend to think the scientologist’ answer is ridiculous because it lacks evidentiary support.  I could say the same thing about a thousand other “false” answers.  Flat earthism , spacemen built the Pyramids and Stonehenge.  (If they did, why was their technology so crude).  Jesus hears our prayers in heaven. (If he does, why does he reward one with wealth when he claimed no one could own anything if he wished to go to heaven? If he is rewarding the poor by not making them wealthy to enable greater poverty so more poor can go to heaven, then why pray for something if we are supposed to have nothing?)  All answers open the door to more questions.  But if we must not ask questions but accept the answers given, and if we do not accept those answers and continue to ask questions, then there are now again two routes open.  We can submit to mind control to be part of our group, or we can be cast adrift from our group and be forced outside of our group.

But if we depart our group, then where do we go to find our next group?  We go primarily to others who have been cast adrift , and from those cast adrift we find answers we must accept to be a part of the group. 

But this is the way we are taught from early youth when we are supposed to learn the answers to be considered knowledgeable.  Isn’t that in itself a form of mind control?

Is any belief open to questioning its own belief?  Is belief in anything not abandoning oneself to stop questioning what one is supposed to believe?  Is whatever one believes is a denial of questioning that belief in order to believe what one believes. If you feel elections are stolen do you believe evidence that says it wasn’t.  The question isn’t whether it was stolen or not,  but why some may believe it was.  It is not whether one is unintelligent if one doesn’t accept the evidence of your answer, I suppose most consider John Eastman intelligent, the question remains the imperviable denial against asking “why?” because it is not what they believe that is important but why your answer is not acceptable. So it is cast upon the believer that the election was not stolen, not to prove it was not, but to understand why some believe it was. 

Is it possible to suspend all belief? I doubt that.  I imagine even those that continue to question have certain beliefs.  I imagine evolutionary scientists or other contemporary scientists believe in evolution or in the foundations laid by the past scientists.  But what the questioner is able to do is continue to question their own belief.  But in science, that is acceptable, the scientist who is incapable of questioning his own belief stifles science; in essence, there is no science if one cannot question the science of the past.  But after all, the scientist is taught to question the science, to suspend his belief by questioning prior belief, and perhaps his own.  But sometimes that becomes more difficult and the scientist is left behind when he refuses to question his own answers.

But once we leave the realm of science where you are supposed to question the answers given, where the entire realm of learning denies the answer inherently solves the questions, once we enter the body politic, not the field of politics, but the political interaction of our daily lives  we aren’t supposed to question the body politic.  We aren’t supposed to believe Hitler had it right, we aren’t supposed to believe in anti-semitism. But those who do, those who believe in anti-semitism, those who believe in racism, those who believe what is currently being tossed around as fascism; can we merely assume their belief is wrong and that  they should believe in democracy, they should believe in tolerance and acceptance, that they are just unruly extremists who believe against the grain of belief.  Or can we once again toddlerize ourselves and question, “Why?”  But not just the why of their intolerance, the why we fail to meet their expectations that create that intolerance.

Because otherwise we merely are answering the question with the answer.  The question is why do they not believe our answer?  And maybe that question leads us to question our answer, that “our democracy” is not a satisfactory answer.  Maybe the answer needs to be questioned.  Maybe we need to see if “our” democracy has ever been a satisfactory answer. Maybe we should throw away the entire notion that “our” democracy is the answer.  Maybe the political body (those who proclaim they have the answer) needs to question how to become more satisfactory to those to whom it is not a satisfactory answer.

Because if democracy, or at least our current incarnation, is being challenged, then maybe instead of shrugging about autocratic leanings in others, maybe we need to question if we actually have the solution.  And maybe the body politic cannot be answered by any political body.  Maybe it is a process that continually questions itself.  

Maybe every election must be different, maybe every year democracy shouldn’t focus on “how to rule”, maybe that is the wrong answer.  Maybe the question is how do people want to be ruled?  

But if that is the question, is that not anarchic?  To a certain extent freedom demands anarchy, there’s no way around that.  So maybe the question is how do we utilize individual anarchic behavior into a body politic of social interactions and yet not “rule”.  Maybe the answer does not lie in governments, or at least the permanency of “government institutions” and focuses more on leadership that is ruled by the ruled instead of the rulers.  

Ostensibly that is what democracy is.  We talk frequently about what the people want.  But how can democracy be about what the people,  unless either the people all want the same thing or are somatized into wanting the same thing.  But even attempting to somatize John Savage did not make him want what Mustapha Mond desired.  

Maybe the answer is that there is no solution but the acceptance of continued questions that never find “the solution.”  Maybe we need to question not the impracticality of 1000’s of representatives in a democracy and question how we can make it so.  Maybe we don’t find the answer, but we can’t learn through answers that can’t be questioned.  Maybe the political body needs to question itself as being the ruling solution to the body politic.  

And maybe you think I don’t know what I’m talking about.  Maybe you don’t even think I know what I’m talking about.  That’s fine.  That is exactly what I am trying to present to you. 

Shall we meet with swords to settle our differences?  Or should we look for a different way?  Can we ever really pledge allegiance to any answer?  Can we even make that pledge to our own answers?