Neutral Question Essay

Humans ask questions on a daily basis. We have a natural urge to understand our surroundings and to develop knowledge about different issues. However, how do we know that the question we create does not have some sort of bias? How do we know that the questions that we create are not already anticipating a certain answer, as we immediately create a scope of possibilities where the answer may be? Before we question the possibility of neutrality in a question, we first have to define what neutrality means. Neutrality can be defined as, unbiased, without predetermined judgements, not creating a framework (consciously or unconsciously) and not steering a question into a certain direction of the answer. As humans naturally have the tendency to create

Ideally, neutral questions would exist and people would have the ability to raise questions without having predetermined judgements and ideas. This would make knowledge without any bias and would therefore be more valid. However, this is, unfortunately, not the case in real life. Naturally, humans have thoughts and ideas on certain issues. These thoughts and ideas automatically generate a (subconscious or conscious) judgement towards a question. This judgement leads into a framework, narrowing unpredicted possibilities down and therefore limiting possible answers. Also, every question that is being asked is asked for a reason. If there were to be such a thing as a neutral question, why would anyone feel the need to ask it? Thus, all questions that are being asked, are asked with an intention, and are pointed in a certain direction of the answer, which limits the possibilities of finding the answer.

Firstly, we can look at the natural sciences. The natural sciences try to understand,

Philosophy is defined as: “the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with reality, existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind and language” Philosophy aims to find an understanding and enlightenment on certain issues. Therefore, one would expect the field of philosophy to be able to create a neutral question, using a neutral method. Descartes, for example, most famous for his quote “cogito ergo sum” (I think, therefore I am), wrote the book ‘Meditations on First Philosophy’, which aimed to find the foundation of truths for knowledge. Descartes did this through doubting all existing theories and building up knowledge from scratch. His method of gaining knowledge was simply to start from the bottom and work his way up. Descartes, also, emphasized the fact that human beings often make mistakes in their beliefs. Additionally, Descartes mainly used deduction to get to his answers, which could increase validity. The way Descartes created questions, building up his knowledge from scratch and doubting everything that was previously said and done, can arguably be considered as neutral. However, as a counterargument, his intent could be considered to not be neutral, as he clearly makes a statement on how knowledge should be perceived; based on sense perception and reasoning as ways of knowing only, and his way of leading a discussion, with language as a way of