h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Here's a good answer to "Why?": "Why not?"

Doc,

My friend, one cannot answer a question with a question. If that were possible, there would be no distinction between questions and statements.

Why?

Indeed. 'Why shouldn't you answer a question with a question?'
Which isn't *really* a question about causality, nor about purpose, and thus conclusively disproves this entry's main thesis.

Congratulations Shinryuu - I think that's the fastest time to disprove an entry on record...

Why doesn't "What makes you believe that you shouldn't answer a question with a question?" work?

Or "What causes you to believe you shouldn't answer a question with a question?"

"What is the reason for stating that you shouldn't answer/not answering a question with a question?"


I liked the entry
It seems to me the idea of there being no absolute causality as a basis for not asking why questions depends on time being infinite and linear, as well as perhaps taking causality to an extreme - after all, identifying causality is important, up to a point. The difficulty sometimes, I suppose, is knowing when to stop...

Which is the point of the last paragraph

He just did, answer a question with a question. Weren't you paying attention??

As far as distinguishing questions from statements, that's easy as pie in spoken English at least. In spoken English, there are 3 modes of utterances: statements, questions and commands. The distinction is in the final voice inflection. A rising inflection is commonly understood as a question. A flat inflection is commonly understood to be a statement. And a downward inflection is commonly understood to be a command. In this paragraph inflection is defined as pitch change. Rising inflection means that the average pitch rises for the last word or two. Flat inflection means that the final words of the utterance stay at the average pitch of the preceeding words. A downward inflection means the pitch drops on the last couple of words.

Punctuation marks are poor substitutes for the richness of the spoken language. Merely adding a "?" mark to the end of a sentance does not make it a question in speech. You can make it a statement, or command if you wish.

IMNSHO, any answer to the question "Why?" is logically equivalent to any other answer. As you're merely inventing mythical answers whatever you do. Some mythical answers can be more usefull perhaps under certain conditions than others, but that doesn't keep them from by mythical.

42

I am afraid that "Why not?" cannot be an answer to the question "Why?" even if one declines to place a question mark after it. "Why not." is not a statement, it is a malformed sentence.

To answer "why not?" or "why not" provides no answer to the question "why?", as it simply refers the question back to person who asked it. An answer is required to be a statement, be it in spoken English or otherwise, and as "Why not" cannot be a statement, it cannot be an answer.

Inflexion is unfortunately not a good criterion for judging the meaning of an utterance as it is not definitive. While it may do very well for the most part in aiding understanding, it does not make a sentence correct or incorrect. Only proper construction can do that, and to miss off the implicit question mark in "why not" by stating that one meant it as a statement is utter nonsense and cannot be regarded as English of any sort other that plainly wrong. One still understands non-native speakers of one's language even when they use unusual inflexions, and while their speech may sound different, it does not lose any of its meaning, which proves that the source of meaning is not in the inflexion. Inflextion is merely functional.

Thank you all for your comments so far; but alas, there have been no answers. I hope you enjoyed the entry.

By the way, the trick was peformed by your mind. It made you believe that causality was real.

Matt

That'd work if the question was 'why do you believe that you shouldn't ...?' - but it isn't.

I think there's a third meaning of 'why' which is at issue here: 'why' as justification. You're not asking for the cause of something, or its purpose, but what justifies it.

Matt Berry paused a while in uffish thought then posted:

"I am afraid that "Why not?" cannot be an answer to the question "Why?" even if one declines to place a question mark after it. "Why not." is not a statement, it is a malformed sentence."

I reply - Following that logic. "Why?" isn't a question because it's not a sentance. Where's the subject? Where's the predicate? For that matter, "Why not?" isn't a sentance either, for the same reason - no subject, no predicate. "Why?" then reverts to nonsense as does "Why not?"

I contend that "Why?" is word salad - there is no meaning to it. Granted, it sounds like proper English, but so does this concantation of words: "Colorless green ideas sleep furiously?" Neither helping of word salad confers any information nor makes any sense. For that matter, I say replying to "Why?" with "Colorless green ideas sleep furiously." is logically equivalent to any other concantation of words you might choose to fling into the fray. Therefore, answering "Why?" with "Why not?" is fine. The so called question "Why?" is irrelevant nonsense, and so is any conceivable "answer" that it provokes.

That's my opinion and you're welcome to it.

I gotta say that I agree with DenverMan on the answering a "why" with a "why not" issue, but on the other hand it's kind of hard to make word salad when you've only got one word.

Unless of course you want lettersalad...

Well, I've always thought that seeing as "Why?" isn't necessarily a sentence, but a word with a question mark, then it can only be answered with a word and an exclamation mark,
Because!

It works for me...

Both the questions "Why?" and "Why not?" are (at least in most events that they are used in) ellipsisisisis (or whatever the plural is..):
they are shortenings for the questions: "Why is it so?" or "Why is it not so?" or any other more complicated sentence. Thus they are proper questions and can be answered.

And "Why not?" then is a question and therefore cannot be an answer to the question "Why?"