ULTIMATE QUESTIONS - ULTIMATE VACUITY ?


May 15th 1999


The next issue, Number 36 will appear on June15th 1999.





It is certainly the case that many a windbag goes on and on about what he calls ultimate questions but that fact of experience does not lead validly to the conclusion that ultimate questions are always pure windbaggery ..... but they might be.

Questions and answers are in chains - often branching chains - but before asking a question it is necessary to determine two things:

1) Whether, in asking it, we are taking something for granted that perhaps we should not take for granted. If we do not take this into account then we may easily be guilty of question-begging. Thus, if I ask "Did you enjoy your holiday in Greece last year?" I am taking for granted that you had such a holiday; if you did not then the question of your enjoying it simply does not arise - in asking "Did you enjoy etc etc?" I am begging the (logically prior) question "Did you have such a holiday?"

2) What, in principle, would count as a feasible answer? In asking the way to Timbuctu, from wherever you happen to be, an answer that begins "take two dozen eggs" would not be taken to count as a feasible answer while an answer that contained map references and particulars of transport services would, while it might be wrong, certainly count as an answer worth pursuing further.

Having guarded against question-begging and, equally importantly, having some idea as to what might be a feasible answer ........ we can then ask our question and, we hope, elicit an answer. If this answer has any genuine meaning then it will prompt further meaningful questions - it will be "worth pursuing further" - leading to further questions that can, in principle, elicit meaningful answers.



We learn by pursuing question/answer chains - the answers being derived either from observed data, or from logical inference from data or from hypotheses that we wish to test. So, from any question, we can proceed backwards to logically antecedent questions or forwards to an answer and thence to logically consequent questions

Suppose someone poses what, it is claimed, is an ultimate question - a question that supposedly elicits a final answer from which, it is claimed, no further question is needed - then there are two possible outcomes:

One possible outcome is that the answer is meanungful, in which case the answer is bound to prompt further questions arising from its meaning, in which case, the original question ceases to be ultimate, it becomes merely an 'ordinary' question - one that is an intermediate link in a question/answer chain.

The other possible outcome is that the answer is a 'dead-end' answer in which case it is not worth asking; it is thus a silly question. Generally, (perhaps always?) it is this sort of thing that people are up to when they go on about 'ultimate questions' An ultimate question is one that is almost, I suggest, designed to terminate the very process of learning by question and answer. The alleged answer to an allegedly ultimate question is, effectively, simply a move designed to wrap up the matter and forbid further questions.

The classic, allegedly, ultimate question is "who made the universe - the totality of all things?"

This question can be faulted, as a legitimate inquiry, on several grounds: one is that it begs the questions 'was the universe actually made ? (as distinct from "did the universe simply happen to be ..... or happen to come into being ?"). Another is that the nature of the assumed maker is assumed to be that of a personal being of some extraordinary kind - the use of the word "who" clearly carries this question-begging assumption as well as the confusing notion that any person of the kinds we actually meet could possibly have made anything even remotely like a universe. The possible question 'what caused the universe, as we now observe it, to be' ...... containing as it does the word "what" rather than the word "who" ..... carries no such built-in prior assumption that a Person is involved.

The classic, allegedly, ultimate question ...... "who made the universe - the totality of all things?" ....... seems to have been framed to elicit a prejudged answer that discourages further questioning. That answer, the one the asker of the question evidently wishes you to give, is "the universe was made by a unique Person, the Creator". The alleged ultimate question is little better than a 'stitch-up' designed to give the answer the questioner wishes to emerge from it.

Even so, the classic, allegedly, ultimate question ...... "who made the universe - the totality of all things?" is not even an ultimate question because, following from the stitch-up answer set out above, anyone might ask such things as 'how did the alleged creator come into being ?" To answer this by saying 'the Creator is eternal or perhaps brought Himself into being', serves, at first sight, to close off further questioning; actually, it simply prompts us to ask 'if such possibilities are real ones, truly to be entertained, then why can we not simply attribute eternal existence, or self-generation, to the universe we have before our very eyes and of which we are a very part ?'

The classic, allegedly, ultimate question ...... "who made the universe - the totality of all things?" has, we might claim, yet to be authenticated as other than mind-sealing windbaggery.

There are many questions that actually are worth asking ..... questions admitting of meaningful answers that can lead to further question-answer-question sequences that can, if we pursue them, get us somehere.





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