[MD] Are There Bad Questions?: Rorty

[Steven Peterson]

Hi Matt, DMB,

I was involved in one of those "bad questions" debates on-line
recently with some Catholics about the question "why does anything at
all exist?"  I was arguing that this is a bad question for various
reasons when I recalled your ideas in this thread.

It was asserted that the universe needs to have a Supreme Being to
have created it, and I tried to argue that such a being would then not
answer the original question. It would just complicate matters by
adding one more part of "all that exists" that would need to be
explained. We would have to then ask, "why does the Supreme Being
exist?"

The Supreme Being was then asserted to be a necessary and uncaused
being that requires no explanation. At that point, I remembered your
post about claims that something is a bad question are claims that
"you will be very disappointed with the answer." I decided to just
give a bad question an unstatisfying answer. I said that if
"necessary" is a way to side-step the original question, then the
universe too is necessary. It is necessary because we need it to be
able to do all the things we want to do.

Of course that answer was not supposed to be aceptable. "Necessary"
has all kinds of Aristotelian meaning for Catholic apologists that I
have no use for, so the issue comes down to some irreconncilable
differences in choice of vocabulary.


DMB said:
To examine the validity of your vocabulary, don't you need to specify
the particulars? Don't we need to define the point and purpose, the
work we're trying to get it to do before we can say anything about its
validity and appropriateness? In the abstract, in the absence of a
concrete context, such a discussion is simply meaningless. And that's
what I'm saying about the way you do philosophy. It's full of
emptiness.

Steve:
I actually get a lot out of the way Matt does philosophy. I don't know
anyone more ithoughtful and knowledgable on this forum--even in all
the history of this forum.

Best,
Steve