Questions as the object, method and space of thought
“I want questioning to be seen as a space of thought. How do you ask a new question, and what happens when you are able to do this? What is made available or possible by a new question?” asked Bruce Janz of the Department of Philosophy at the University of Central Florida.
“How does 4E cognition force us to entirely rethink how we do philosophy, in particular how we question? What does the questioning of questioning in philosophy have to do with other spaces of questioning in other disciplines?”
In his seminar Janz gave an overview of how philosophy has historically engaged questions and questioning (as objects and methods of thought) and argued that philosophy’s attention to our lived world can be accomplished through a renewed understanding of questions (as the basis for a space of thought).
He started by tracing his academic journey from growing up in the Baptist Church as a Mennonite and completing his undergraduate degree in theology at a Bible College. “I found there were no questions. The church had the answers but no questions.”
“When I signed up for philosophy, I found questions were everywhere. But not all were good questions. So instead of answering them, I analysed them. Asking what were the assumptions? What were the options for defining the central concept? I needed to know why questions mattered and what assumptions were made,” he said.
Questioning the question meant it took Janz 10 months to figure out the question for his PhD “then I wrote the 100 pages quickly because I knew what I had to do”.
Janz also sought other seekers who were often “not respected as philosophers but were asking questions. I found Jakob Böhme.” (Böhme was a German philosopher and mystic.)
He came to understand that philosophy is both a noun and verb. “Philosophy is a discipline and a practice. A way of thinking, but more, a way of engaging life.
“As a discipline, we think about questions as an object of thought,” he continued.” As a practice, we think about how questions enable us to think – a method of thought. Questions also provide a space of thought.”
As he looked for what philosophers had said about questions and questioning, he found that there were different theories about different questions – perennial, erotetic logic, language and rhetoric, epistemology and science, dialectics and hermeneutics, ontology and problematology, but discovered these all think about questions as either objects or methods of thought. “None pay attention to the mechanisms of questioning. The philosophical method was assumed to be universal and not open to question itself. Michel Meyer’s explanations of problematology coming closest to treating questions as something in their own right.”
“I realised my questions disguised a mistaken assumption. It wasn’t about philosophy, it was about cognition. It was about coming to know, not just knowing.”
He explained that as our models of cognition have changed, philosophy has not kept up and asked what it would look like for philosophical thinking to consider new insights in cognition. But cognition itself also threw up challenges because in the mainstream it is thought of as computationalist (how a computer processes information) and representational (requiring mental representation). These have been questioned in what has been come to be called enactivist or 4E cognitive science.
The 4Es
The 4Es are – embodiment which stresses that we think with our whole selves, not only our brains; embeddedness which highlights that we are part of social connection and relationships and therefore our practices matter; extension which recognises that cognition extends into technology and our built environment; and, enactivism which points out that we do not first form concepts that cause action – it works both ways – our actions also make available concepts and ways of thinking.
“Under a representational or computational theory of mind questions are necessary components that lead to mental concepts. Questions exist to produce something we can possess – knowledge. This knowledge is abstract, individual, represented in the mind and the cause of our actions. Once knowledge is achieved there is no more need for questions.
“This misunderstands what knowledge is. In enactivism knowledge is not a property of the mind but generated in an embodied and social world. Knowledge is not possessed but continually created, renewed and shared.”
Janz also explained that under representationalism questioning is a step on the road to answers which can be possessed and those who have more have more power. “While under enactivism questioning stands on its own – not only there to produce answers. It does not disappear once the answers appear. Engaging the questions on questions not as producers of answers enables a different kind of philosophy. Using the question as the gold standard means we invest in spaces of thought rather than conceptual property ownership.”
“Answers are then explorations of a space of thought, an opening for action and also responses to actions. Instead of focusing on answers as a stopping point of enquiry, we should focus on questions as relational connectors between the snapshots answers provide.”
He also noted that sometimes we only know the question in the rear-view mirror. “We often recognise only later that a new question was being asked. And sometimes history is written to make is seem like we knew at the time.”
‘If we consider African Philosophy – the central question shifts from is there an African Philosophy which implies it’s something to be proven to what is it to do philosophy in this (African) space? The question is what happens when we see philosophy as articulating cognitive strategies for establishing and deploying concepts in a place, rather than a search for first principles that have a uniquely African foundation.”
And what about AI?
Janz explained that AI uses collective practice to predict the most likely answer to a question but this means humans must ask the right questions. An AI database is not relational but vectoral. Each object has a set of semantic characteristics that are encoded with embeddings that determine its proximity to other objects. A query attempts to locate results that are as close as possible to it.
“With AI we must think about how we question and the desired results. It’s not that the AI knows everything and our job is to formulate a query that extracts what it knows. The mechanics of questioning are more complicated than we assume. We are a long way from AI having all knowledge.”
He also delved into the realm of the ability of non-humans to ask questions. “Does questioning require consciousness, self-consciousness, self-awareness, mere sentience, a system of knowledge, some motivation?”
“We know, for example, that animals can make requests but are they questions? Is there a distinction between the two?”
Lastly, he looked at questioning as religious practice – “Questioning in religion often does not assume that the purpose is to produce an answer – it might be about retelling stories; freeing our minds from unexamined ways of thinking; interpreting the past for the present; or, establishing a space of thought and action. Unlike philosophy there is something at stake other than winning an argument.”
So where does this leave philosophers?
“Philosophers must think what it means to question as an act of philosophy itself,” said Janz. “What it takes to get to the question. Refocusing on the question makes us focus on aspects that get ignored. Questions are at the centre.”
“What would it mean to earn universals through questioning rather than presuming them? What would it mean to think about principles currently rooted in liberal ideas (freedom, rights) as always tied to an emergent space of new questions.”
Janz said he is asking philosophers to pay more attention to questions than answers; question questions; be clear about the concepts that scaffold the question; include the path to the question; understand the uses of questions; be clear about what space the answer opens to new questions; be clear about why a question matters; and, to engage other places and disciplines for questions.
“The bottom-line is that we systematically misunderstand the nature of questions in philosophy because we don’t understand the cognitive process we are engaging in as philosophers.”
“The question is the place where fundamental difference becomes creative. It is the border between philosophy and non-philosophy. It is the way we return to the wellspring of thought,” he concluded.
Michelle Galloway: Part-time media officer at STIAS
Photograph: SCPS Photography