**Links to**: [[Postulate]], [[Philosophy]], [[02 Introduction to the Poltergeist]], [[Language]], [[05 Prediction]], [[Dialogue]], [[Dialogical]]. %% Page 8 for question, in dennett center of narrative gravity text Check Deleuze on the question %% ### [[Postulate]]: Appearing, existing and learning what this appearance and existence entail, is a path littered with _bifurcations_. Questions prolong/make apparent the predictability of these bifurcations.^[A.k.a. critical points, moments in dynamical systems where a change occurs: phase transitions, changes in attractors, etc.] This happens in dialogue. Below follow a series of observations on the phenomenon that is _questioning_, and how this project structured itself around that. ### What is a question? If it was obvious, we wouldn’t ask. To ask is, first and foremost, to be indebted to an environment were reliance upon others is possible. We learn, from the people around us, that we may inquire and expect novelty from their answers. Secondly, it is to be indebted to a framework (language, sociality, etc.) that has made the intelligibility of existence a systematic, functional affair. There are _ways_ which have become standardized in order to probe reality and make it predictable in ever different, non-prestatable ways. Thirdly, to ask is to desire for a certain kind of intelligible stability (the ability to predict a (self-)model, a project, desire, etc.) which becomes challenged by incessant stochasticity. To ask is thus a predictive strategy to temper contingency.^[Nicely presented by Felin and Kauffman here, questions also do this: “Any environment—visual scene, situation, surrounding or context—features an innumerable number of things. If one asks, “How many things are in this room?”, the question is systematically vague and unanswerable. We might of course list various obvious things, but even this quickly becomes complicated. After all, what constitutes a “thing”? We might readily agree that the chair in front of us is a thing. But is the distance between the chair and the fireplace a thing? Or for that matter, is the distance between the chair and the moon a thing? What about the luminance, color or visible electromagnetic radiation of objects in the room? And is the crack in the wood top of the table a thing? The crack in the table complicates things, as not only are there objects but there are also varied possible uses and functions. Thus the question “how many things are there in this room?” is radically expanded by the implied “a thing for what purpose or use?”-question. After all, the crack in the table, just as anything else, might be used in different ways.” (2019, p. 6). See also: [[Who is we and what is why]]: “On what falls through the cracks.”] ### What just happened? Did the paragraph above answer what a question is? No, the list presented is certainly rather limited, and inexhaustive. However, what it did do was try to provide a sense of orientation (predictable _impetus_) with regard to the places from which the question emerged, and how it might affect the bifurcations that proceed (in this text and beyond). If appearing and existing is a series of bifurcations (which are certainly very complex, multidimensional and not just binary, but can be exemplified by moments where **wrong-right**, **yes-no**, etc., limits emerge, see: [[Choice]], [[Choice sequences]]) then questions (by asking for reasons, causes, possibilities, etc.) seem to illuminate aspects of _how_ these bifurcations happen. Like mentioned in the paragraph above, this is only possible because the fabric of language has evolved this function. (See also: [[What is happening]]). Does a _how_ hide behind every _why_? We think so (see also: [[Principle of Sufficient Reason]], [[06 Principle of Sufficient Interest]], [[Principle of Sufficient Cortisol]]). ### What language? This work is written in English, from an originally Spanish-speaking perspective. Questions have many shapes in different languages. ***Whence*** is a beautifully pedantic word we rarely use, but it’s rather useful: it desires a specific point of origin as an answer, a principle of sufficient reason, even. We often seem to reduce questioning to the pillars of _what, when, who, where, why, how_, but if we look closer we can also see that compound question-expressions such as the well-known discourse markers: _you know what I mean?_ or _is that it?_ certainly reveal less direct question-structures which are not necessarily questions but rather _affirmations_ that “we are in this (prediction) together”. In other words, that we assume this implied dialogical background uniting the very questioning that is happening. The question loops back on itself as if it doesn’t _need_ an answer. Sometimes, if these types of questions are answered, it is when something needs to be made really explicit, and this is often in disagreement. (See also: [[Language-modulating]], [[Language is music]]). ### What do you mean? Walter Benjamin wrote: > The Socratic inquiry is not the holy question which awaits an answer and whose echo resounds in the response: it does not, as does the purely erotic or scientific question, already contain the methodos of the answer. Rather, a mere means to compel Conversation, it forcibly, even impudently, dissimulates, ironizes—for it already knows the answer all too precisely. The Socratic question hounds the answer, it corners it as dogs would a noble stag. The Socratic question is neither tender nor so much creative as it is conceptive; it is not genius-like. Like the Socratic irony which lies hidden in it—if one allows a terrible image for a terrible thing—it is an erection of knowledge. > >Walter Benjamin, _Selected Writings_, p. 53 (see [[Socrates]] entry for extended quote). The Socratic question is not just the—by Žižek so-called—idiot who wants literal, clear and distinct answers.^[The ‘idiot’ who tells someone about their day when asked “How are you doing?” We disagree with this use of the word/concept of “idiot” and also think that people can twist, turn, interpret and otherwise _polycompute_ this question as they please. Žižek’s frequent focus on social conventions borders on what could be read as an etiquette manual. We prefer Stengers’ idiot (2005), the one who slows things down.] Benjamin destroys the Socratic asker by painting him as a(n epistemological) rapist. To Benjamin, the Socratic question already knows the answer and is just toying with its prey. But there’s more to it than just coercion, if we reduce all philosophical inquiry to the generally observed fact that people plan things (in philosophy) before they pronounce them (books, speeches, conversations, etc.),^[Although see, e.g., [[Improvisation]] for some thoughts on this, based on Gary Peters’ [[Improvising Improvisation]] (2017).] then we’re all in the game of fooling others into thinking we might be essayistic while in fact, we’re Socrates in disguise (_especially_ ironic Nietzsche). And ultimately, because all affirmation (as pronouncement) is permanently catastrophic coercion (telling others how to live), then we might as well decide to become radically committed to continue to revise the very structures of questioning in order to see how this can be evolved in less oppressive ways. ### [[What is philosophy]]? / [[What is grounding]]? To ask what a question is, is a matter of grounding (the question’s) philosophy. Philosophy being a highly _questionable_ endeavor. The two entries above go into a deeper level of analysis than the one presented in what follows, but they are headers here because they need to be presented as part of the context of _questioning the question_. To ask what philosophy is can have the unfortunate effect that something predictable, functional and otherwise strategic should emerge from the answer (as mentioned above: questions probe predictive affairs). Philosophy being, for the purposes of this project, that which _includes and does not include itself_, that which destroys itself eternally in its own pronouncement, that which functions as the border of all that is statable, knowable and questionable, should not have a “task” or prescribed script. Saying this, is a problem, as it scripts philosophy. But not saying it allows it to become dogmatic (choose your preferred version: boring nihilist, elitist, populist, abandonist, etc.). And, it should also be mentioned: criticisms, mostly of a political vein, that this antidogmatic proposal results in a relativist, individualist liberalism, are **correct**. To say that, at the very foundation of things, “everyone is entitled to their opinion” is a dangerous move in a political world with the clear necessity for shared purposes, narratives and logics. But at core, *really* at core, in the structures of behavior there can be no other starting point than the awareness of _any behavior_ to begin with. This behavior is not individualist (as it is _compiled_ by a multidirectional relationship of everything with everything), it is not voluntarist (as it is the effect of effects knowable but combinatorially unobservable: chemical processes, historical stratifications, etc.) and it is not liberal: there is no way to act other than collectively, we exist enmeshed, embedded and entrained. Paraphrasing P. Skafish in the introduction to E. Viveiros de Castro’s of _Cannibal Metaphysics_ (2009, tr. 2014): what is the compatibility between the type of questioning being done in “committed” anthropology versus “transpararentist” philosophy?^[These terms, _committed_ and _transparentist_, are not Skafish’s. We introduce them here to imply the purported neutrality and objectivity he points at in his preamble, regarding much of contemporary philosophy: “few people claiming the mantle of philosophy prove sufficiently adept at critique to not end up treating modern liberal ideological values as profound truths, or misconstruing the most simple actualities in their reflections on them.” (Skafish 2014, p. 9).] “Such questions might be lamely disciplinary were it not for the symmetrically unimaginative, joint response they still receive.” (p. 9). Those responses being: philosophers seek x-rays in the skeleton of the anthropos, and anthropology is deeply specific, to the point of 1:1 resolutions. In the context of this work, we are deeply committed to a merger between disciplines, all of which do philosophy (see also: [[Hierarchies of fields of investigation]]). As S. van Tuinen explains: “The art of philosophy is a matter of different, relative speeds. ... Throughout, philosophy constructs conceptual lines of flight where standardized language and readymade judgment tends to block the immanent process of production or creation of our modes of living.“ (2024, p. 19). Every pronouncement is a philosophical commitment, therefore: every dialogical act is a philosophical act and the unecessary (unimaginative) lack of collegial collaboration between them is, as Skafish reminds, _lame_. Elsewhere, following to T. Adorno, van Tuinen proposes language to consciously remain critical _at the margins_, as it _is_ the margins, that is criticality: >The critical task today, then, is the same in philosophy as it is in psychology and technology; it is to jam the smooth functioning of schematism and turn the imagination into the broken mirror of reality. ... As with the essay, the aphorism, and the miniature, it is rather a matter of being incomplete and knowing it. In particular, critical language must stray from the demands of straight talk, that is, the total equivalence and interchangeability of language – its policed insignificance. Against the ‘secularist’ defence of the freedom of speech, it upholds language’s non-innocence. Against ‘progressive’ attempts at explicitly codifying and designing linguistical behaviour, it maintains ambivalence and ambiguity. And against the ‘egalitarian’ pretension to analytical clarity, it asserts the rights of a philosophy that swims beyond the shallow end of the pool of language. Aesthetic Theory: the free use of the imagination in experimenting with non-indifferent modes of schematization. > >S. van Tuinen, “Transparency and its Schematism”, _krisis_, 2021, p. 86. This is what, for Adorno, defines philosophy as a negative process. This is also exactly what we could define as critical in complex dynamical systems: moments of change. To ground, thus, to begin from a perspective, is to accept the fact that the _observation and analysis of (embedded) behavior_ will be engaged, so that its possible bifurcations may become elucidated by questions and answers, which we treat in dialogue. Dialogue expands predictive possibilities beyond the singular predictive agent: who is otherwise no-one. More on this in [[Dialogue]], [[Dialogical]]. ### What questions? To finalize this brief entry: these are some of the questions I’ve used to structure this entire project, I present the ‘general’, abstract version of the questions, plus examples so that it may become clear how some of these are (and aren’t answered) throughout the project. They are questions I ask myself when I don’t know what’s going on but want to begin carving out a perspective. **Where and how is the/this/a lack of *knowledge* happening?** E.g., How come the human project of AI does not know what AI is? See reflections on this in the [[02 Introduction to the Poltergeist]]. **Is it something else? Not a ‘lack,’ but a confusion of terms/histories/understandings?** E.g., How do the concepts of “agency” and “control” function differently in contexts such as cybernetics and politics? See [[11 Post-Control Script-Societies]] for a partial perspective on this question. **Which language are we speaking? Who modulates it? How?** E.g., Why has _Natural Language Processing_ ignored so much philosophy and linguistics? What can we gain from deconstructing some of the historical stepping stones that have led to current language models? See [[03 Semantic noise]] for an account of this. **Are there atlases, anthologies, typologies, classifications, etc. out there that we can probe for answers?** E.g., Wikipedia should not be considered a ‘proper’ academic source, yet: it is what, by and large, most of the world is using as a daily reference point for “objective” information. How to deal with this? **Are there unavoidably forgotten aspects?** E.g., We exist in a zeitgeist/paradigm unavailable, perspectivally, to us right now. How does this question reframe our questioning? See: [[12 Negintelligibility]] for some thoughts on this. **How is this experienced as something needing a question/answer?** E.g., [[Question]] this entry through this question. **Is it something else?** E.g., [[Something]] that doesn’t require a question. **Might something better than a question be in place?** E.g., A [[Hypothesis]], a [[Speculation]] or crass fascist formulation? **What is it that needs description?** E.g., Any of the concepts above. **Is it something else?** E.g., [[Disorientation]]. **Is description different than explication?** E.g., [[Map-territory]], [[Explanandum]]/[[Explanans]]. **What has been written/said/asked about this x, y, z in question?** E.g., [[Line]], [[Refrain]], [[Collective intentionality]], [[Entropy]], etc. **Why? What caused it? What reasons? Necessary/sufficient?** E.g., [[Necessity]], [[Determinism]], [[Principle of Sufficient Reason]]. **Why causes and why reasons?** E.g., [[Reason]], [[Cause]], [[Substance]]. **What constraints?** E.g., [[Constraint]]. **What do the answers to these things imply?** E.g., [[02 Introduction to the Poltergeist]]: why this research? **What aspects need further description/explication?** E.g., [[Future]]. **What questioning-limits does all of this imply?** E.g., [[Metalogue]], [[Metalearning]], [[Dialectic]], [[Dialogue]], [[Dialogics]], [[Neologistics]]. And a lot more. These are, again, very general questions presented here in order to orient the reader into the guiding framework overseeing the full project, to follow more specific themes please see the list of topics presented in [[02 Introduction to the Poltergeist]]. <div class="page-break" style="page-break-before: always;"></div> ### Footnotes