Meno Dilemma: Questions and Answers

Meno Dilemma: Regarding the Nature of Questions and Answers

Janpha Thadphoothon

This is a kind of riddles. People often ask questions and they expect to get some answers.

In education and many aspects of life, people are expected to answer the questions. In exams, students are considered excellent if they could answer the questions.

However, as we know, questions themselves are, sometimes, more interesting than answers.

Photo credit: www.antiqbook.com

Let's learn from one of the most brilliant minds, Ludwig Wittgenstein, see what he had said about questions and answers in the context of logic.

In  Tractatus logico-philosophicus or the "Treaty of Logical Philosophy"

Section 6.5

For an answer which cannot be expressed the question too cannot be expressed.
The riddle does not exist.
If a question can be put at all, then it can also be answered.

Elsewhere it is put this way:

6.5 When the answer cannot be put into words, neither can the question be put into words. The riddle does not exist. If a question can be framed at all, it is also possible to answer it.

This is also known as MENO dilemma  It goes something like this. If you ask a question, you already know the answer. You may argue you do not know the answer. Then, again, how can you ask the question in the first place.

In 6.522, he put it that:


There are, indeed, things that cannot be put into words. They make themselves manifest. They are what is mystical.

Even in places where all scientific rules as we know them seem to be obsolete, humans may als attempt to raise questions: why? how or what?

References

http://sqapo.com/wittgenstein.htm