Unanswerable Questions

"I would rather have questions that can't be answered than answers that can't be questioned." - Richard Feynman, Physicist

Let's consider today’s meetup as a 3-hour celebration of unanswerable questions.

Our goal will be to identify, explore and list as many unanswerable questions as we can (possibly including the very question - answerable or unanswerable? - how many unanswerable questions exist...?)

Each proposed question we can unpack, examine and attempt to ascertain how it might be in fact answerable after all, or if it does indeed truly qualify as "unanswerable".

In the process, we may likely be confronted by other (again, answerable or unanswerable?) related questions, such as:

-What determines whether answering any particular question is 1) difficult 2) impossibly difficult or 3) impossible?

-Is there something that all unanswerable questions have in common (besides their being unanswerable) that precisely makes them unanswerable?

-Can unanswerable questions be both closed-ended ("yes-no") and open-ended in form?

-What's the difference, if any, between unanswerable and unverifiable?

-How can we know whether an answer is answering an answerable question or is in fact impostor-answering an unanswerable question? (Or even impostor-answering an answerable one?)

-(How) is it even possible for an unanswerable question to exist?
Is it possible for unanswerable questions not to exist?

-If a question is unanswerable, does this make the matter that that question questions unquestionable? Should we restrict all our inquiries only to matters that can be answered?

-And, speaking of matters, is "It doesn't matter" a legitimate and valid (or at least sufficiently acceptable) answer to unanswerable (or even answerable) questions? (Related topic: What makes an answer acceptable?)

-Likewise, is "I don’t know" in certain - even all? - contexts truly acceptable as a valid answer? Or is it rather always only a meta-answer, in essence a cop-out? What alternative answer(s) could there be that is not framed in terms of the answerer but remains truly an answer to the question?

-The flip side of this is the possible concern and suspicion that many "I do know" answers (and then going on to answer) may be equally ad hominem, revealing more about the answerer than truly answering the question. Indeed, we can argue that unanswerable (and even in principle answerable!) questions throughout human history have frequently, if not typically(!), led to overly-simplistic answers whose logic, not to mention proclaimed "truths", can be just as questionable as the questions they were designed to answer... How do we deal with this problem?

-Exactly oppositely to unanswerable:
Is a fully convincing answer one that by definition then becomes unquestionable? What would Feynman's quotation have to say about this?

Acknowledging and accepting, even celebrating, the unanswerability of certain questions (excuse the ironic double meaning of this last expression) can be extremely liberating - without a doubt epistemologically and most probably psychologically too - and can therefore provide us with a most optimal departure point for science, philosophy and the creative imagination.

Just as Descartes focused on ascertaining what we can truly know, our task here will be to identify what we cannot truly ever know.

So let's all enjoy exposing, acknowledging and honouring the unanswerable!

Charles Ives, "The Unanswered Question"
https://youtu.be/X046G4Hv-pw?si=ESgk-fWVzFQALLf5

Image: "Telescopic Trumpet" by Alan Woo, executed by ChatGPT