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The paradox of the question

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Abstract

What is the best question to ask an omniscient being? The question is intriguing; is it also paradoxical? We discuss several versions of what Ned Markosian calls “the paradox of the question” and suggest solutions to each of those puzzles. We then offer some practical advice about what do if you ever have the opportunity to query an omniscient being.

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Notes

  1. In Markosian’s paper, the question appears as Q4.

  2. Here, we follow Sider (1997, p. 98).

  3. As Sider (p. 98) points out, one might argue that there is no such ordered pair on the grounds that there are no self-membered sets. But it is unclear how this helps. If there cannot be such a set, then it is hard to see how there could be a truthful answer to Q1. And a question with no answer is no better than a question with a useless answer.

  4. One might question this premise, since the quality of a question is presumably determined by the interests of the questioner. If philosophers have no interest in knowing which question is the best, then one might argue that Q1 is no better than Q*. To avoid this complication, let us stipulate that this knowledge is in the best interests of the philosophers.

  5. It also presupposes that there is a unique answer to the unique question, which is also questionable.

  6. In Sider’s paper, this question appears as Q5.

  7. More carefully, the angel will give the answer to Q4; we might not get that answer, since we might not be around by the time the angel gets around to that particular truth.

  8. Here we simplify Varzi’s suggestion in various ways. Moreover, Q6 is not Varzi’s final answer to the question of which question to ask. Fortunately, we can ignore these complications since the objection that we raise below applies to all of the questions that Varzi considers.

  9. More carefully: the standard semantics entails as much given the plausible assumption that there is some world in which the angel tells us something about Darrel.

  10. This scenario is not very far-fetched. Several customer service representatives in New Jersey are actually like that.

  11. We treat Q10 as a single (complex) question, rather than a complex of many simple questions. That choice might be challenged, but we doubt that this issue is central to the puzzle. On this point, see Sider (1997, p. 97).

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Acknowledgments

Thanks to Aaron George, Adam Elga, Dan Howard-Snyder, Frances Howard-Snyder, Hud Hudson, David Manley, Joshua Schechter, Ned Markosian, Shieva Kleinschmidt, Steve Steward, Ted Sider, Achille Varzi, and an audience at Western Washington University.

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Correspondence to Ryan Wasserman.

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Wasserman, R., Whitcomb, D. The paradox of the question. Philos Stud 154, 149–159 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-011-9706-5

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