Good Questions, Bad Questions
Asking the right questions is often the hardest part of the task
Good Questions:
- Open-Ended and Insightful: Questions that lead to a deeper understanding of phenomena, such as “Why do we perceive a distorted image as a perfect shape, like a triangle or a cube?”
- Simple yet Surprising: Questions about ordinary things that we take for granted, which invite us to become surprised, like “Why does an apple fall to the ground?”
- Seeking Hidden Realities: Questions that look beyond the surface, aiming to uncover the underlying principles of phenomena, for example, “What are the innate structures of the mind that allow us to perceive shapes and objects?”
Reinforcing these points:
- Questions that challenge common sense and invite us to look for deeper explanations, such as questioning why we perceive a certain shape despite the actual stimulus being different.
- Questions that lead to the development of new theories or models, like Descartes’ rejection of the form theory of perception in favor of a mechanistic theory.
- Questions that recognize the complexity of phenomena and seek to understand the underlying processes, for instance, why we perceive a consistent object despite receiving…
