Brave questions. A response to Sara Uckelman

Sara Uckelman has great advice for new students: be brave and ask questions! Even and especially those questions that you might find silly. Why should you? “Because I can guarantee you that every question you have, someone else in the class is going to have it too, and they’re not going to be brave enough to ask, and they will be so grateful to you that you were.”

Going from my own experience as a student and professor, this is quite true. The only thing I’d like to add is that this advice applies not only to beginners but perhaps especially to advanced practitioners. The reason is that there is no such thing as a question that is both genuine and silly. Why? Because at least in philosophy nothing is ever justified by itself.

Nevertheless, asking questions is difficult. As Sara Uckelman points out, it involves bravely embracing “your ignorance and confusion”. Moreover, questions are almost a textual genre unto themselves. (See Eric Schliesser’s advice on how to develop more elaborate questions.) Therefore, I think it’s worthwhile to acually practise asking questions. Here are a few ideas how to get started:

(1) Write down your question! You don’t even need to ask it if you’re unsure. But writing it down will enable you to keep track of your concern as the discussion moves on. You can perhaps see how close your question is to other questions (which might be variants of your question). And you can still choose to leave it at that or ask it later or even after the talk or class.

(2) Figure out what kind of question you have! Back in the day, I often felt stupid because I couldn’t actually pin down what to ask for in the first place. Asking for the meaning of an unfamiliar term is fairly simple (and it’s always a good thing to ask, because terminology is often used in specific and different ways by different people). But more often than not, I just felt like saying “I don’t understand that passage at all.” If you feel like that, it might be a good start to figure out more clearly what exactly you don’t understand about it: a word, a certain argumentative move, the relation between two sentences etc. You can then begin by stating what you do understand and then move on to saying where exactly you lose track. It locates the problem, makes one feel less helpless, and will help your interlocutor.

(3) Structure your question! Sometimes you might just want to get it out and over with. But if you feel comfortable enough it might be helpful to raise a question in a more elaborate manner. I find the following parts useful:

• target: say what the question is about
• state the actual question
• give a brief explanation why the question arises
• perhaps provide a brief anticipation of possible answers (at talks this is helpful to prepare follow-up questions)

Of course, it’s not necessary to do all of those things. But bearing such a structure in mind often helped me to prevent myself from losing track of where I actually am. Sometimes even the mere act of talking might seem difficult. In such cases, this structure might help you to say some things without having to think (which is difficult when you’re nervous). So you might begin by saying “I’d like to ask a question about this … (insert term or phrase)” or by saying “I have a question. Let me explain how it arises.” Uttering such (or other) words will perhaps make you feel more at home in the space you’re inhabiting.