1)Does God Exist?
2)Creation or Evolution?
3)Why are we here?
Add on…
do you believe in a soul?
Let me help you out Bill.
You never ask 1) because one dosen’t arrive on a new planet and ask if there are any Kangaroos. One starts with more simple questions like, about the presence of life, or the breataibilty of the atmosphere.
You never ask 2) because its a false diacotomy. The better question is:
“What caused life to exist?”
of course don’t be surprised if someone responds with
“Does life exist?”
Finialy number 3) the question is just plaing vauge. There are at least three dozen reasonable interpretations of what you might be asking.
The first three that Bill Walton mentions are my pet peeves, but I’d like to add, if they count,
- does consciousness exist?
- is there anything real?
There are no questions that philosophers shouldnt ask. This isnt religion u know 
And Luke gets the prize. To suggest there are questions too stupid to be raised in a philosophical discussion is condescending and borne of one who supposes himself to already hold the answers.
so Prolificisticationist, shouldn’t the question “is there any question that no one should ask?” be the question that no one should ask?
Stop it!!
No. That question could only arrive at a question that should not be asked. In and of itself, it does not presuppose that there are questions that should not be asked, rather it attempts to arrive at such a question.
If you follow the various questions listed above you may notice that the answers (as predicated on the reason that they should not be asked) are built on the is/ought problem. None of them, in themselves, address why anyone should or should not ask a question.
Example:
A is ____. You should not ask about A.
How does anyone go from “is” to “should” or “should not”?
Uhm, yeah! What he just said, yan.
I anticipate being called out on this, sooooo
1)Does God Exist?
a) God is not real (God’s existence is a matter of fiction) You should not ask about God’s existence
b) God is unknowable (God’s existence is beyond your ability to know). You should not ask about God’s existence.
2)Creation or Evolution?
a) Creationism is the truth. You should not ask about evolution.
b) Evolution is the truth. You should not ask about Creationism.
c) This questions arising between creation and evolution are unanswerable. You should not ask these questions.
3)Why are we here?
a) Why we are here is ___ (fill in whatever ya want). You should not ask why we are here.
do you believe in a soul?
a) Your belief is/ your beliefs are____. You should not ask bout beliefs.
b) The soul is/ our souls are ____. You should not ask about the soul(s).
-
does consciousness exist?
a) Consciousness is/ is not ___. You should not ask about consciousness. -
is there anything real?
(directly) You should not ask if anything is real.
b) There is nothing real. You should not ask…
c) everything is real. You should not ask…
That’s just the more direct connections. You could just say.
All human knowledge, all human ability to reason all etc etc etc is X. Therefore we should not ask anything, ever.
No question is completely answerable. We should not ask any question.
Does it necessarily follow that if any X is ___ we should or should not do any Y?
Allowing the questions to be asked creates the possibility for a dialouge in which a satisfactory answer may arise.
A and B may consist of two alien cultures who have disagreed over X for 100 Million years. Time spent arguing the answer does not preclude that an answer (whether being undeniably true or just satisfactory to both parties) might come about the day after the 100 Millionith anniversary.
But that is apart from the issue. To dictate should or should not as the only course resulting from is or is not, one must answer WHY. And, alas, one cannot answer why if one cannot ask the question to start with.
You shouldn’t touch the stove, it is very hot.
Why (not why is it hot, but why should I not touch it because it is hot)?
Because it will burn your skin.
( if this answer is not sufficient then the process will repeat itself) Eventually the original speaker must resort to the time honored tradition of parents… “Because I said so.”
This still doesn’t answer why, however.
with all these listed here, i am kinda wondering what is a good question to ask in philo. I mean, so far, we can’t ask various questions on reality, God, and humanity. but other than that i am sure we still have a rich, full world of philosophical questioning
No. That question could only arrive at a question that should not be asked. In and of itself, it does not presuppose that there are questions that should
not be asked, rather it attempts to arrive at such a question.
now you’re confusing me. what do you mean by my question “could only arrive” at a question that should not be asked?
I was merely trying to formulate a question that should not be asked, I was not presupposing anything.
anyway, I was only making a bit of fun. perhaps the question “is there any question that should not be asked?” turns out to have a meaning and should be asked. at least three posts have been written about it and I know that you’re going to reply.
Damn right bill!
lemme explain. I’ve noticed a VERY irritating tendency on this site. People that don’t READ jump right in to discussions about philosophy. Philosophy is NOT random assed navel gazing unread THINKING. That is mysticism. Philosophy is based in reading. If you haven’t read, don’t post. I respect amateur philosophical inquiry. But when I say amateur, I don’t mean unstudied foolishness where people don’t even have enough technical vocabulary to distinguish between materialism and materialistic. I mean damn! How basic can we Make it? By amateur I mean reading and thinking and applying thought to the World, all of this done without the guiding hand of a university department. I do not mean “Well last week I was sitting at Barnes and Noble With my friends and we were like what good is being here. I mean were all here to be cool man. Like I think Blink-182 has the meaning of life.” All olympic boxers are amateurs; tough man boxers are unstudied punks. Be an olympic boxer, not an unstudied hack butterball toughman who’s unfamiliar with the technical vocabulary. You don’t have to be Mike Tyson, but please don’t be Bubba Smith, the Clewiston FLorida city backyard scrapping champion.
These questions of “Is there a god?” and “what is life?” are abstract and unanswerable postulations that are best approached by determining certain other questions: Do I believe all things are in flux or all things are static? Do I respect suffering or do I respect desiring? What effect would the belief in God have on my life? you understand how and where things are located by READING. And don’t lie to yourself when you apply it to your life. Most people bend themselves to some damn ideology like Buddhism or some such thing. Don’t do that bend the world to yourself. Be a man.
“is there a god” is abstract indeed, whether it is “unanswerable” or not is debatable. one can say that religious experience is direct proff of god’s existence, one might say that prayers being answered is direct evidence of god’s intervention. even an abstract and “unanswerable” question can be asked, and should indeed be encouraged and appreciated when it is asked, as long as it has some values for discussion.
if no one has ever asked the question " is there a god?", you wouldn’t have been able to ask the question “what effect does it have on me if I believe in god?”. so I would say that the former question is more fundamental than the later question. therefore if you think that the latter question is the one that should be asked, you are really implying that the former question should be asked too, and indeed has to be asked before the latter question.
Yan
oh and, do not say things like damn ideology like buddism, it does not make you a “professional philosopher”
The question that you should never ask is the one that doesn’t haunt you. You’re compelled to answer those philosophical questions that gnaw at you - that won’t leave you alone. Those questions for which you’ve no burning need to answer should be left for those who are burned by them.
Philosophy wasn’t misnamed; it’s not fundamentally about reason nor is it about wisdom - it’s about the love of wisdom. People occasionally turn up on this forum saying that the rest of us must be out of our minds. I wonder as well if people sometimes show up outside the Uffici in Florence to ask if those waiting to be admitted are similarly crazy? Indeed, the love of wisdom is not so different than the love of beauty. If we are crazy to love, then my wish is to be insane.
A lover of the world will find beauty in the most barren desert, while a mere inhabitant of the world might pass through a tropical garden without so much as lifting his head to notice. A philosopher finds reason for wonder in what others pass over without notice. Confucious supposedly said that “A common man marvels at uncommon things; a wise man marvels at the commonplace.” A philosopher goes further in coming to value, perhaps even to love, those things so close to us as to be normally overlooked.
Members of a more advanced, alien civilization might laugh at all of our questions as hopelessly naive. But then, they might think our love for each other is equally naive - and that’s where we could laugh at them for their naievete. In a like sense, I’m terrible at philosophy. I couldn’t philosophize my way out of a wet paper bag. And yet I’m confident that no one takes more pleasure and meaning from doing philosophy as I do. I would much rather have my own mediocre, weedy, bug-eaten garden and love it, than to take for granted having the Royal Botanical Gardens as my backyard.
To the non-philosophical, most of us here are only drowning in a glass of water. My reply is that we all are drowning, and yet some of us will drink deeply before we drown. Emily Dickenson wrote in a poem that “water is taught by thirst.” If I think of the world as water then love is my thirst: love of people, love of beauty, love of wisdom.
Michael
huh?
Four-hundred posts! By God Polemarchus you’re now a real Philosopher!
He means that diss’ing an entire group of people isn’t going to make them any “better read” - same as I’ve tried to get across to Polemarchus about being mindful of the followers of Christianity and other religions: Talking down to half your audience will generally serve to alienate them, not teach them in your superior, uhhh, knowledge. Hermes I’ll politely suggest that if you want to frequent a board of academic Philosophers who know all the Words to capitalize and are up on the Proper terminologies, you may be better served by scrapping your efforts on this one and creating another, perhaps password-protected board for those who know the language. Because ILP, I’m afraid, is hopelessly corrupted by the commoner like yours truly. 
Dream on. 
[no hard feelings Hermes]