Elizabeth asked:

I believe most of the questions we ask to ourselves are "irrelevant". When I say "Does anybody know
why we are living?" what I am doing is just mixing up wrong ingredients to make a cake. And believe
that the cake I made is really a cake!

Let me give an example to elaborate on this. Think of a machine that can make up questions by
selecting words from a categoried list and putting them together. One question it might come up with
by putting random words besides each other is: "why", "wood", "sing". Makes no sense huh?

We use a pretty good intelligence in eliminating such questions, however when we come to questions
like "Does anybody know what we are living for?" we do "believe" that this is a relevant question and
there should be an answer to it. Hence we search for one.

Let me turn back to the "Why wood sing?" question. After coming up a question like the above, our
machine gets at certain possible answers to it using some rules until an algorithm feedbacks that a
satisfactory answer is found, during its trials.

I call this the "fit". It is some statement that we come up with after a mind exercise, and that pushes
us to a certain anxiety level which we associate with the occurrence we label as "finding a solution".

"Because wood burns" might be an answer that our machine finds. Though it does not make sense to
us, what matters is whether the answer obeys the rules of the "fit" conditions. If we define "fit" as: if
you can make a statement that would relate the attributes of wood and singing in "any way" then your
statement is accepted, you can believe that it is a right answer, our machine thinks that it came up
with a right answer.

Are there any articles, books that you might lead me revolving around these ideas?

============

Because you asked for references, I am going to start with this quote from Wittgenstein. From what
you have said, I think you might see its relevance:

"The Earth has existed for millions of years" makes clearer sense than "The Earth has existed in the
last five minutes". For I should ask anyone who asserted the latter: "What observations does this
proposition refer to; and what observations would count against it?" — whereas I know what ideas
and observations the former proposition goes with.

"A new-born child has no teeth." — "A goose has no teeth." — "A rose has no teeth." — This last at
any rate — one would like to say — is obviously true! It is even surer than that a goose has none. —
And yet it is none so clear. For where should a rose's teeth have been? The goose has none in its
jaw. And neither, of course, has it any in its wings; but no one means that when he says it has no
teeth. — Why, suppose one were to say: the cow chews its food and then dungs the rose with it, so
the rose has teeth in the mouth of a beast. This would not be absurd, because one has no notion in
advance where to look for teeth in a rose.

Ludwig Wittgenstein Philosophical Investigationspp.221-222"

Here's a recipe for a cake: Take two squirts of liquid detergent, a cup of flour, a dollop of tomato
ketchup and a large packet of salt. Put the mixture in a baking tin and leave out in the sun for four
hours.

No? Why isn't that a cake? It is a 'cake' that a child might bake. A make-believe cake. Human beings
might not find it edible but then again — you never know — ET might find the 'cake' delicious. Then
again,in what sense could something be 'cake' for an alien being? We have to contrive a sense.

Not every sequence of words that sounds like a question is a question. Sometimes it's just obvious
that the 'question' is not a real question, and sometimes it isn't so obvious. But what is a 'real
question'? If someone utters a sequence of words that sounds like a question, and then someone
else comes up with an answer that satisfies us, reduces our anxiety level or whatever, doesn't that
prove that the question was a real question?

Now we're right on the edge of the precipice. Because if one accepts that, then it seems that
philosophy is reduced to a trivial game.

Let's get back to the rose. In what sense is 'In the mouth of a cow' an answer to 'Where are a rose's
teeth?' There's a 'fit' there, you can see the point. But it wouldn't even make a good riddle. The same
is true of 'Why does wood sing?', 'Because of the whistling sound it makes when it burns.' What is
characteristic of questions posed in genuineriddles is that while many possible answers might 'fit' one
way or another, some particular answer impresses us as being the rightanswer. Riddles have a
solution.

Here's a riddle from a Christmas cracker. 'Which flowers like to kiss?' 'Tulips.' Suppose someone
asked you this and you thought, 'Orchids.' Why? 'Because of the "kissing" movement the orchid
makes when the bee enters it.' The answer fits, but it won't do. On the other hand, there might be
another 'right' answer to the question which flowers like to kiss (see if you can find one) so it isn't
necessarily a matter of uniqueness. The distinction between the answer that merely 'fits' the riddle
and the answer that 'solves' it might be difficult to define in the abstract, even though we intuitively
grasp the difference. First, one has to ask what makesa riddle, which I suspect is almost as hard as
defining a 'joke'.

In philosophy, 'solutions' don't come easily, but one recognizes the difference between answers that
you can make a rational casefor, and answers that merely 'fit' in some looser way. Similarly, it is a
matter of philosophic judgement, not any set of fixed rules or precepts, let alone a universal theory of
philosophical questions, that decides whether a question — like your example of 'Why are we living?'
— is worth taking the trouble to answer.

Geoffrey Klempner

You're in good company, already Nietzsche and Wittgenstein considered most questions as
nonsense, triggered by a wrong use of language. Even most questions that were bothering
philosophers at their time.

You define the mechanism 'fit'. It supposes inherently that truth is recognized by the emotion
associated with a 'correct' answer. But what does such an emotion tell me about your opinion of
truth? Does this emotion depend on the system of thought used (relative), or not (absolute)?

Machines only execute commands so there must be rules leading to your emotion. Try to make these
explicit.

To recognize Truth it takes an opinion about it. That is an essential question that still divides the
philosophical community.

Henk Tuten

The only thing that I can think of that is relevant to what you're asking is the late Wittgenstein (and of
course his students). Try:

Wittgenstein, L. The Blue and Brown Books.New York, NY: Harper & Row, 1965.

Wittgenstein, L. Philosophical Investigations.Edited by G. E. M. Anscombe. 3rd ed. New York, NY:
Macmillan Publishing Co., 1968.

Wittgenstein, L. Remarks on the Philosophy of Psychology.Vol. 1. Translated by G. E. M. Anscombe.
Edited by G. E. M. Anscombe and G. H. von Wright. Vol. I. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago
Press, 1988.

Wittgenstein, L. Remarks on the Philosophy of Psychology.Vol. 2. Translated by G. E. M. Anscombe.
Edited by G. E. M. Anscombe and G. H. von Wright. Vol. II. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago
Press, 1988.

Steven Ravett Brown