Do you think all questions are valid? If not, what makes a question stupid?
Thank you, Angela Geronimo, for this obviously valid and clever question. (While we could certainly differentiate validity and non-stupidity, I will here treat them as one.) Whether a question can to be considered stupid depends on what we mean by “stupid” – duh!
If we were to consider stupidity as a personality-trait or suchlike, we could simply agree with Mr Garrison: “there are no stupid questions, just stupid people” (South Park, S1, E8). But we do often call questions stupid or dumb (I do, at least), so here are my thoughts on how to explicate and justify such evaluations.
Firstly, stupid questions mostly gain their stupidity from the act of posing them; secondly, whether posing a certain question is stupid depends on the context; thirdly, stupidity is expressed in many ways (to rephrase Aristotle), and a question might be stupid in one way but not in another. I will very briefly discuss five examples.
a) Suppose that you have repeatedly explained something to someone; that they put the lotion in the basket, say, but they still ask you where to put the lotion! Either they have not been paying attention, in which case the question is stupid as much as it is an expression of their inattentiveness, or they have been paying attention but have failed nonetheless to understand what you were saying, in which case the question is an expression of their slow uptake or lack of intelligence.
b) Mary’s little lamb has died. She is understandably distraught. Upon witnessing the sad scene you proceed to ask, “Who’s up for lamb-chops?!” Such a question might well be called “stupid” insofar as it is utterly inappropriate, and thus taken as an expression of a stunning lack of empathy or emotional intelligence.
c) Now suppose that you are gunning for a promotion and want to appear especially competent. A rookie-question like “Oh, should I have known this?” might then be called stupid in as much as the very act of asking it could be detrimental to achieving your goal.
d) Imagine yelling, “Why is my freedom to publicly ask questions oppressed?” while you are publicly asking that question without being oppressed. Such performative contradictions surely deserve to be called dumb – right?
e) In a context where the existence of crab-people is still up for debate, a loaded question like “Why aren’t we rising up against the crab-people?” could be considered stupid, as it fallaciously presupposes what is still being discussed. If we were sure that crab-people did not exist and secretly rule over us, it could also be considered stupid in as much as it contained a meaningless or non-referring term, namely “crab-people” (as in “How many crab-people can dance on the edge of a pin?”). It is also a stupid question because who are we to rebel against our crabby rulers?
To conclude, I reckon stupidity can be expressed in many (more) ways – of people, as well as questions and answers – but here, as elsewhere, context matters.
What do you think? What makes something “stupid”? Let us know in the comments.
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Image: Extracting the Stone of Stupidity, by Hieronymus Bosch (c1500)
I received my PhD in philosophy in 2017; my dissertation was called “Plato's Bastard” (published as “Phenomenology as Platonism” [Phänomenologie als Platonismus]). My areas of interest are phenomenology, metaphysics and their overlap; but I dabble in whatever field I feel like – and with whoever's up for it. Philosophy to me means questioning our presuppositions, which fascinates me because it is something we can do whenever anyone says anything about anything and it never gets boring or old; it's also something that's painfully absent from public discourse, but easily learned. Enter: public philosophy!