Asking a question can change your mood, and having a questioning mindset can change your life \u2013 or, as the philosopher Lani Watson, an honorary fellow at the University of Edinburgh, is more likely to put it, \u201ccreate change in your life\u201d. When you live in an answer-oriented world, your phrasing tends towards the glib certainty, which is one of the things Watson \u2013 speaking to me from her home in Edinburgh \u2013 seems quite naturally to avoid.<\/p>\n
Questioning fosters exploration and curiosity, she says. It changes your relationship to yourself and to others: it can make you fall in love; it can stop you going to war. Watson\u2019s challenging book, Q: The Hidden Power of Questions in a World that Wants Answers<\/a>, is written with a deceptive simplicity and an almost kindly encouragement, so you\u2019re knee-deep into her proposition before you have even considered that it might turn out to be quite hard work.<\/p>\n The book is unusually interactive, asking the reader to read a sentence out loud, count the number of questions in a conversation between Watson and her wife, ask basic questions of themselves and stop to think about whether they can be answered. There\u2019s an appendix at the end that promises to get you into a questioning frame of mind, which it turns out you have to write yourself (to be fair, there\u2019s no trickery here; she does say that it\u2019s empty \u2013 but in my reflexive quest for answers, I didn\u2019t notice).<\/p>\n Here are some brass tacks, what you might coarsely call proof. From the world of neuroscience and evolutionary biology, we can see that asking questions stimulates dopamine, she explains, and \u201call that reward circuitry activates regardless of whether you get the answer, because the brain is trying to encourage you to continue exploring your environment\u201d.<\/p>\n There is a deep-seated desire for \u2018cognitive closure\u2019, says Watson. Photograph: Katherine Rose\/The Guardian<\/p>\n Watson divides questioning into four stages. First is proto-questioning, common to all organisms, which is \u201cexploratory information-seeking, tiny little nematodes seeking nutrition\u201d. Then there\u2019s private questioning, which connotes some intentionality, such as asking for information from your environment in a directed and deliberated way \u2013 in Watson\u2019s example, you might see it in a penguin leaving its enclosure in Edinburgh zoo just because it\u2019s figured out it can.<\/p>\n Then there\u2019s social questioning, asking a question of another, which creates layers of joint attention and joint intentionality, and which, as far as we know, only humans do. \u201cWhat\u2019s over that horizon?\u201d would be a classic example of social questioning sparking migration and changing human history. Finally, there is spoken questioning, which builds whole new layers of complexity and abstraction, since now we can jointly approach matters that aren\u2019t right in front of us, that we may only have imagined.<\/p>\n If it sounds intuitive that questioning would be so pleasurable and generative, Watson\u2019s book wonders, how did we end up in such an answer-oriented world? Education is measured in what we know, not what we ask. Our social norms guide us away from direct questioning, in case we look dumb, or intrusive. The overriding drive of our technological experimentation is towards directing all our questions to a machine and none to one another. And so-called \u201cwhy-chaining\u201d \u2013 repeatedly asking \u201cwhy?\u201d to whatever answer you get \u2013 is universally agreed to be the most annoying thing about a three-year-old.<\/p>\n double quotation markYour reward circuitry activates regardless of whether you get the answer to a question<\/p>\n There is a deep-seated desire for \u201ccognitive closure\u201d, Watson says, or, put more simply, knowing. Aporia, the state of bafflement or confusion, is uncomfortable, though some people tolerate it a lot better than others. Watson is an epistemologist by training, \u201cso I\u2019m invested in questions about knowledge. And I do regard myself to be a pretty extreme sceptic with respect to that tradition. I really don\u2019t think we actually do come to know anything, truly, and I\u2019m OK with that. It\u2019s a really interesting conversation to have in a classroom with undergraduates; you have a huge range of levels of comfort with that conclusion, and its implications.\u201d<\/p>\n I\u2019m personally in the cognitive closure camp: I hate an ambiguous ending; I hate agreeing to differ. Someone\u2019s four-year-old on social media the other day had a tantrum when he discovered infinity \u2013 he just wanted numbers to end \u2013 and I could hard-relate. But you can learn to live with aporia and be richer for it, Watson says. \u201cIt\u2019s all about exposure \u2013 spending a lot of time confronting big unknowns. A theoretical physicist would be in a similar position.\u201d<\/p>\n She grew up in Southampton, her father a geologist, her mother a researcher in social housing policy, and studied philosophy for her bachelor\u2019s degree at the University of York, before becoming a research fellow at Oxford. \u201cThis questioning mindset that I look at is so fundamental to philosophical thinking that when I advocate for it, maybe I\u2019m trying to introduce philosophy through a back door.\u201d<\/p>\n \u2018Questioning itself creates intimacy, symmetrical questioning is more intimate still.\u2019 Photograph: Westend61\/Getty Images; posed by models<\/p>\n While Watson\u2019s academic discipline came to her so naturally, she\u2019s not blind to its faults. \u201cPhilosophy has an identity crisis,\u201d she says, \u201cthat\u2019s been formed by 2,500 years of it being done by people who want to make it seem really difficult \u2013 abstract, complicated and not for you. When, in fact, it really is something we\u2019re all doing all the time.\u201d It\u2019s sometimes called the \u201cgenius only\u201d discipline, but it isn\u2019t only that intimidating intellectual granite face that puts people off, Watson says; it\u2019s also the idea of utility. \u201cWe have an aversion to abstraction that is ultimately driven, to some extent, by that problem of: what good is it to me? Why do I need to worry about that?\u201d<\/p>\n Early in Watson\u2019s consideration of what a question was, she stopped using question marks. This made her consider the history of this punctuation mark (it\u2019s more recent than you would think: the court of Charlemagne), and its variations in other languages (there is one that just puts a circle above the salient word, which is cute), but she never went back to using question marks, and it never made any difference. \u201cThe only place where I feel an impulse to add a question mark is if I\u2019m indicating that what looks like a statement is, in fact, a rhetorical question, which told me a lot about what the question mark was doing: it\u2019s signalling something, rather than being a part of what a question is.\u201d<\/p>\n But the other thing punctuation is good for, the reason you would have to prise it from my dead hands, is that it speeds up the eye, surely? \u201cYes, the lack of a question mark helps people to slow down, around this key moment of a question, which is exactly how you develop this questioning mindset.\u201d<\/p>\n double quotation markI really don’t think we come to know anything, truly, and I\u2019m OK with that<\/p>\n You\u2019ll need that patience for the process Watson calls \u201cassumption mining\u201d, questioning yourself more deeply about what you think you already know. She describes this as a habitual intellectual exercise, almost deliberately casting yourself back into aporia. \u201cI always think, when I do it myself, that when I get to space and time as my grounding assumptions, then I\u2019ve reached the bottom. If we go beyond that, we\u2019re back into theoretical physics.\u201d Funny how we keep ending up there.<\/p>\n The spouse-psychologists Arthur and Elaine Aron came up with the 36 questions<\/a> two people could ask one another that could make them fall in love \u2013 anyone, even strangers. Some questions are closed but searching (\u201cBefore making a telephone call, do you ever rehearse what you\u2019re going to say? Why?\u201d), while others are open (\u201cWhat do you most value in a friendship?\u201d). That was back in 1997, and three decades of speed dating have cast some doubt on the inevitability of love as the outcome of the process (which, to be fair, the Arons never claimed), but the idea has endured that questioning itself creates intimacy, symmetrical questioning is more intimate still, and open-ended questions flip you into a more vulnerable, receptive frame.<\/p>\n The philosopher Peter Worley devised the question X manoeuvre, a closed question followed by an open one. \u201cThe first is the easier to answer,\u201d Watson explains, \u201cand once you\u2019ve committed yourself to that, you\u2019re happier and more comfortable exploring the area around it.\u201d<\/p>\n It sounds so simple as to be self-evident, but try it for yourself, and try the counterfactual. If someone bowled up with the question: \u201cDo you enjoy what you do?\u201d there\u2019s something simultaneously condescending about it (\u201cLittle man, have you found satisfaction in your pursuits?\u201d) and faux naive (\u201cWhat is this thing called adulthood? Is it enjoyable?\u201d). Try the X technique \u2013 \u201cWhat do you do? Do you enjoy it?\u201d \u2013 and not only does the second question follow more naturally from the first, but it gives you the impression that your first answer was interesting enough to have spurred the second.<\/p>\n \u2018Only someone else can ask a question that you weren\u2019t expecting, push you into a different space and make you feel cared for,\u2019 says Watson. Photograph: Katherine Rose\/The Guardian<\/p>\n Question Y is the \u201cdivergent\u201d sequence, starting with something easy, closed (\u201cDid you vote in the referendum?\u201d), then following up with something more open, likely to provoke difference but in a precinct you have already established as friendly \u2013 \u201cDo you think referendums are a good idea?\u201d Question Z is a line of inquiry that will change direction or the tightness of its focus over its course (think of the shape of a Z). I\u2019m not wild about Watson\u2019s example (\u201cDo you like chocolate?\u201d; \u201cGiven that coffee also comes from a bean, doesn\u2019t it follow that you also like coffee?\u201d), but you can see the potential: for unpredictability, as well as a certain inviting quality \u2013 part of what puts people off being questioned is the thought that they will be wrong or humiliated. A set of questions that slaloms all over the place is unlikely to have right answers.<\/p>\n Unavoidably, questioning feels as if it drives towards politics of a certain kind. If, as Watson writes, cognitive closure is heightened by stress and drives in-group identification and, with it, suspicion of others, then breaking out of it with a questioning disposition would send you in the other direction, towards (broadly) philosophies of unity and hope. \u201cI really take seriously the project of trying to write for a very broad audience,\u201d Watson says, \u201cso I want to be in a politically neutral space, which is not where I am myself, personally.\u201d<\/p>\n Right, I say. You literally have blue hair. Kemi Badenoch would probably write a speech about you. Unavoidably, she says, \u201ca questioning mindset will bring us a lot closer together, wherever we are, because essentially you\u2019re just opening up space to explore the possibility that you\u2019re wrong about something. That you might not know what you thought you knew.\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s a mistake, though, to think curiosity and certainty are utterly at odds, let alone that the first has a monopoly on harmony and the second drives division. \u201cYou build curiosity by coming to be an expert and pushing yourself to the edge of your knowledge. So certainty and curiosity can\u2019t be diametrically opposed in that way, because you build curiosity on a foundation of certainties. But there is also a dynamic where you can close down curiosity by being certain.\u201d Nor is she saying that there\u2019s no value in knowledge: \u201cAnswers are good; we do need answers. That\u2019s just not my job.\u201d<\/p>\n One of the first examples Watson writes about, almost the definitive question whose purpose doesn\u2019t lie in an answer, is from a therapist: \u201cWhat is the one thing now that you want to be able to do in the future?\u201d It has elements of a few of those 36 questions to make you fall in love \u2013 inviting what might be a painful reckoning with reality, softened by the branching possibilities of the future, and the knowledge of your own agency (the more parlour-game version of this is, \u201cWhat would you do if you had 12 months to live? Why aren\u2019t you doing it now?\u201d).<\/p>\n \u201cYou find a new understanding as an exclusive result of that question,\u201d Watson says, \u201cbut not because you\u2019re secretly answering it in your head. That\u2019s a big part of the reason why therapy is such an effective form of healing, because you could ask yourself a bunch of questions and try to solve your own issues, but only someone else can ask a question that you weren\u2019t expecting, push you into a different space and make you feel cared for.\u201d<\/p>\n If interpersonal instances land the most convincingly or recognisably, the credit Watson pays to the question reaches back into decisions we could only guess at, and out into realms we can\u2019t know. \u201cI started to think about what encouraged human migration out of Africa,\u201d she says. \u201cCould it have been that questioning: \u2018What\u2019s around the corner? What\u2019s over the horizon?\u2019 The combination of curiosity and exploration, but also the capacity to form those into questions, is integral to moving out and moving forward.\u201d It sounds likely, but we cannot know it for certain. \u201cIf you\u2019re just interested in the answers, you are missing out on a form of power,\u201d she says, which is as certain as you\u2019ll find Watson about anything.<\/p>\n Q: The Hidden Power of Questions in a World That Wants Answers by Lani Watson is published on 27 August (Bodley Head, \u00a322). To support the Guardian, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com<\/a>. Delivery charges may apply.<\/p>\n Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters<\/a> section, please click here<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Asking a question can change your mood, and having a questioning mindset can change your life \u2013 or,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":745239,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[59,102,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-745238","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health","tag-gb","tag-health","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/745238","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=745238"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/745238\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/745239"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=745238"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=745238"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=745238"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}