No. I don't believe that a question needs to be asked to be a question. I could create a computer program to make a random question, but that doesn't mean the question has been asked. The question would exist physically either as a series of bits on the hard drive, a charge on the ran, or even as an electrical signal in the wires, but at no point would it have been asked. This is similar to me writing a question on a piece of paper and then burning it. Nobody would ever see the question so the question cannot be asked of someone. Even if you claim that by writing it I have asked the question (rhetorically or of myself I suppose) a computer has no will an cannot ask a question; it can only manipulate data. There is no ego there to ask a question. There for a question can be made without it being asked, and so the asking is not a necessary element of a question's existence.
PS: Sorry for the late reply. LJ was suffering fail yesterday and wouldn't let me post.
Ah, but the computer isn't the one asking the question, it it? The computer is not capable of thought. It is an inanimate object. It is, in fact, you who is asking the question and using the computer as a tool to do so. A computer can only do what the user asks of it. If the user has made a program to create a random question, and has not ever run the program then it is true that no question has been asked. It is only when the program has run that a computer will generate the random question. While the computer then now has the capability to create a random question, it is only when the program runs will the question be asked. Just because the user makes it so the question can't be seen, doesn't mean that a question hasn't been asked (unless of course the program was not written well and does not actually work). If the user had wanted to ask a random question and communicate that question to something with the capability of answering it, s/he should have written the program in a way that would allow for that. As it stands,
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So a computer program that creates questions is asking the questions in place of the creator of that program. What then about a question created by natural forces. You might remember in Hitchhiker's Guide God's last message to his creations (“Sorry for the inconvenience”) written in stone twenty miles high (I'm sure that I'm off by some detail, but you get the idea). What if by shear chance there is a question written in stone on the moon Io? It might not be very probable, but it could happen. In fact if you go with the Copenhagen interpretation is must have happened. So this question with a completely natural and by-chance origin, that has not been observed by anybody, how has it been asked?
And sir; ad hominem... even theoretical... for shame.
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I could create a computer program to make a random question, but that doesn't mean the question has been asked. The question would exist physically either as a series of bits on the hard drive, a charge on the ran, or even as an electrical signal in the wires, but at no point would it have been asked.
This is similar to me writing a question on a piece of paper and then burning it. Nobody would ever see the question so the question cannot be asked of someone. Even if you claim that by writing it I have asked the question (rhetorically or of myself I suppose) a computer has no will an cannot ask a question; it can only manipulate data. There is no ego there to ask a question.
There for a question can be made without it being asked, and so the asking is not a necessary element of a question's existence.
PS: Sorry for the late reply. LJ was suffering fail yesterday and wouldn't let me post.
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What if by shear chance there is a question written in stone on the moon Io? It might not be very probable, but it could happen. In fact if you go with the Copenhagen interpretation is must have happened. So this question with a completely natural and by-chance origin, that has not been observed by anybody, how has it been asked?
And sir; ad hominem... even theoretical... for shame.
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