question the question

English

WOTD – 20 March 2010

“I must question your question: is it ‘what exactly did this 1470 fresco represent?’, or ‘what did it try to symbolize?’”

Pronunciation

• Audio (General Australian):

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Verb

question the question (third-person singular simple present questions the question, present participle questioning the question, simple past and past participle questioned the question)

1. To ask that a proposed question's presuppositions be explicitly justified, especially as a preliminary to answering it, for example a complex question or loaded question.
   • 1989, Douglas N. Walton, Informal Logic: A Handbook for Critical Argumentation, →ISBN, page 58, →ISBN:

     To say that a question is fallacious is to say that it is objectionable to the answerer because it is constructed to force him to accept a proposition that he should not. This problem is compounded if the question is also semantically complex. A semantically complex question is one that contains a connective, ‘and’, ‘or’, or ‘if–then’ in its presupposition. Once again, the answerer must question the question by requesting that the propositions in the presupposition be separated into units that he can reasonable deal with.

Translations

to ask that a proposed question's presuppositions be explicitly justified

• Finnish: kyseenalaistaa kysymys
• French: mettre en question la question, remettre en question la question, mettre en doute la question, remettre en cause la question
• German: die Frage infrage stellen

See also

• beg the question