Lexicon of Arguments

 

I 72ff
Questions/Prior: difference:
a) questions,
b) the questioning
c) interrogative sentence,
d) the things which they are about.
>Levels/order, >Description levels
To assume never asked questions is quite reasonable.
Problem: "For some p, no one has ever asked if p" is not the same as "There are questions that were never asked". Because there are other kinds of questions than that of the "if" variety. - It is arbitrary, to single one out
a) "if p"
b) " what is p ", etc.
Possible solution: then variable for questions:" for some p: it was never asked p "(here no longer" what "or" "if"). - The argument is not a name but an interrogative sentence.
>Names, >Names of sentences.
Problem: "There are questions that were never asked" cannot be represented formally as "For some p, no one has asked if p". - Because that only covers the specific question type "if", and not for example: "which are?" or "Who has stolen my pencil?".
Interrogabilia/Medieval/Prior":" the questioned"," the questionable "(platonic).
>Platonism, >Medieval philosophy.
PriorVs: do not need to be considered as "part of the sentence" as if there were names.
>Clauses, >Objects of thought, >Objects of belief
PriorVs: asking is no relation between questioning and Interrogabilia.
Question/command/Prior: there are no special features, which account for a content, nothing "behind" the indicative sentences.
>Content, >Thought content.
I 73ff
Questions/David Harrah: thesis: A question is simply an indicative statement which is the disjunction or the set of possible answers - Harrah thesis: any issue is identified by an implicit statement that it presupposes. E.g. the question whether I come or go presupposes that I either do one or the other. That would be the statement "You are coming or going." - The answer is then a statement that contains the statement which is the question, but is not included in it. - E.g. that I sit is less specific and includes the fact that I sit on a chair - (presupposition: that I sit at all).
>Presuppositions, >Answers, >D. Harrah.