1. Subject of the Inquiry
When a subject asks a question in which another subject or an object is considered through a particular category, they are already in an actual relationship with that subject or object through an admitted possibility.
“Are you deceiving me?” is not an empty form waiting for an answer before it acquires meaning. The questioner is already considering their interlocutor as someone who may be deceiving them. The possibility of deception has already entered their relationship.
The subject of this inquiry is the potential categorical attribution that actually exists in the very act of questioning, and the reality of meaning that this act creates or reveals.
Principal Formulation
When a subject poses a question about the applicability of category C to object X, they already actually relate to X as something for which C is being considered as a possible determination.
Potentiality applies to the category’s application to the object. The questioner’s own relationship to the object through that possibility is already actual.
2. Two Levels of Potentiality and Actuality
Consider a question from A to B: “Are you deceiving me?”
There are different relationships here:
- The possible attribution of B to the category of someone who deceives. It is precisely this applicability that is being questioned.
- The actual relationship of A to B as potentially deceptive. This relationship is already expressed through the selection and posing of the question.
The second relationship does not arise after the first has been confirmed. It already exists at the moment the question is posed.
The potentiality of a determination of the object is not the potentiality of the questioner’s relationship.
This boundary constitutes the central distinction of the document. Losing it leads to the erroneous inference that, because deception has not been established, no relationship of suspicion, verification, or doubt about sincerity exists.
3. Why Asking a Question Is Itself a Relationship
A question is an action by a subject. Through it, the subject does not merely perceive an object, but distinguishes it, brings it into relation with a particular distinction, and directs attention toward the possibility of the corresponding attribution.
The question “Are you deceiving me?” already contains operations that have taken place:
- A particular other subject has been distinguished.
- The category of deception has been distinguished.
- The subject and category have been connected in the modality of possible applicability.
- This connection has become significant enough for the questioner to pose it as a question.
- In an intersubjective address, the other subject has been confronted with this possible characterization as something to be examined.
This has already happened. The answer will be a subsequent event relative to the actuality of the act of questioning that has occurred.
The category does not remain abstract: it is directed toward a particular subject or object.
4. Example: Sincerity and the Question of Deception
Imagine A relating to B as an entirely sincere person, that is, the possibility of deception by B is not included at all in A’s operative relationship to B.
When A seriously asks B, “Are you deceiving me?”, that relationship has already changed: deception has been admitted as a possibility applicable to B and deserving consideration.
One cannot simultaneously maintain that this possibility is completely excluded from one’s relationship to B and genuinely investigate its applicability by asking the question.
This is where the irreducible meaning of questioning becomes apparent: the category of deception already exists in A’s relationship to B even before B answers.
If B answers “no” and A accepts the answer, the subsequent relationship may change. But the answer does not retroactively rewrite the fact that A has already considered B through the possibility of deception.
Relationships have a history, not just a final established value.
5. A Question Does Not Wait for an Answer to Become an Event in a Relationship
The sequence can be represented as follows:
Distinguishing a category → admitting its applicability to an object → actual relationship through possibility → posing the question to another subject → subsequent change in the relationship through an answer, refusal, action, or inquiry.
Posing the question is itself the manifestation of a distinction already made and, when addressed to another person, a new event in their relationship.
Even if the question remains unanswered, the categorical connection has been posed.
Even if a negative answer is received, the question has already been posed.
Even if the subject later changes the relationship, the previous relationship does not become something that never existed.
The existence of a relationship and a subsequent change in that relationship are different events.
6. From a Question About a Property to the Questioner’s Own Relationship
Let:
- A denote the questioning subject;
- X denote the object, which may be another subject, A themselves, or a non-subject object;
- C denote the category distinguished;
- ◇C(X) denote the possibility under consideration that C applies to X.
Then the question “Does C apply to X?” has an independent result in terms of meaning: A’s relationship to X through ◇C(X).
Schematically:
A asks: C(X)? → A actually considers X through ◇C(X).
The possibility symbol here expresses the modality of the relationship, not a numerical probability. The question need not assign category C any percentage, probability, or position on a scale.
The meaning is that this particular C has been selected for possible attribution to this particular X.
This is not merely an information structure. It is a way in which a subject relates to a distinguished object.
7. Not Only Questions About Deception
7.1. “Did You Act Out of Envy?”
The other subject has already been considered through the possibility of envy as the ground for their action. Envy has entered the questioner’s relationship to that action.
7.2. “Do You Even Understand What You’re Talking About?”
The questioner considers lack of understanding as a possibility applicable to the interlocutor. In a particular conversation, such a question can shift its subject matter from the proposition being discussed to the other subject’s ability to understand it.
7.3. “Did You Do This for Personal Gain?”
The other person’s activity has already been connected to benefit as a possible source. A relationship to that activity through the category of benefit has arisen, even though the subject themselves may have given the action an entirely different meaning.
7.4. “Was This Act a Manifestation of Cowardice?”
The subject introduces cowardice as a potential characteristic of the act. The subject matter is not only the act itself, but also the act of considering it through cowardice.
7.5. “Is This Device Defective?”
The mechanism also applies to objects. The device is already being considered through possible malfunction. No intersubjective address is necessarily involved here, but there is an actual relationship of the questioner to the object through a category.
7.6. “Could I Myself Be Mistaken?”
The subject matter may be the questioner themselves. They relate their own judgment to the possibility of error and thereby change their relationship to it.
In all these cases, the content of the relationship differs. What they share is the operation of actually relating an object to a category in the modality of possibility.
8. Not Knowing the Answer Does Not Eliminate Knowing the Relationship
A question can leave it unknown whether C applies to X. At the same time, another content is already available to the subject: they themselves are considering X through C.
This means that different unknowns must not be collapsed into one another:
- it is unknown whether X corresponds to category C;
- it is known that A has placed the applicability of C to X under consideration;
- A’s own relationship to X through such a possibility has already occurred.
If a researcher answers only the first point, they miss the second and third.
For example, a discussion of “Are you lying to me?” may not concern whether there was a lie at all. It may be directed toward why and how the interlocutor came to be considered through the possibility of lying in the first place.
Such an inquiry has its own subject matter. It does not require the first question to be resolved.
9. The Space of Admissible Answers as a Space of Relationships
The question “Is this A, B, or C?” organizes more than the future choice of an answer.
It introduces three potential attributions of the object, each of which becomes part of the questioner’s actual relationship to the object.
This makes the choice of alternatives significant. If the subject proposes considering another person’s activity exclusively through benefit, fear, or the desire for recognition, they are thereby actually considering it through those three grounds.
The question may leave undetermined which of these applies. But the set of potential relationships has already been specified.
No numerical probability model follows from this. Potentiality need not have a probability measure. The possibility of a category entering into a relationship to an object must be considered as an independent distinction.
Furthermore, the proposed space of possibilities primarily characterizes the questioner’s relationship and the construction of the question. Its boundaries do not thereby become the boundaries of the object under investigation.
10. Interaction with Two Modes of Questioning
The typology of questions distinguishes two basic modes:
- Discovering the unknown.
- Determining something within a given space of possibilities.
The potential categorical relationship is particularly apparent in the second mode. There, the categories through which an object is to be determined have already been named.
However, in a question aimed at discovering the unknown, too, the subject distinguishes an object and enters into a particular relationship with it. The difference is that the content of the future determination remains open to the emergence of a distinction not previously anticipated.
Therefore, the investigation of a relationship cannot be reduced to counting the alternatives offered. A question has a subject matter, a direction, and a real action on the part of the questioner, even when there is no catalog of future answers.
11. Relationship to Another Subject and the Transformation of Dialogue
In a relationship between two subjects, a question may be not only a manifestation of A’s relationship to B, but also an event that changes their interaction.
When A asks B, “Don’t you understand even elementary things?”, B encounters the fact that their capacity for understanding has already been included in A’s space of doubt. The question may replace a discussion of content with an examination of the interlocutor’s ability.
When A asks B, “Are you deceiving me?”, the interlocutor encounters the already expressed possibility of deception as part of the relationship to them.
What matters here is the very fact of addressing the other. The questioner presents to the other person not only a demand for an answer, but also the categorical relationship through which they now propose considering what is happening.
The other person’s answer can change this relationship, but it does not undo the fact that it was presented.
12. Why an Appeal to the Interrogative Form Eliminates the Subject of Inquiry
A common response to pointing out such a relationship is: “I never said that’s what you are. I just asked.”
This formula shifts the inquiry from the actual relationship through possibility to an established property.
The interlocutor says, “You are already considering me as potentially deceptive.”
They are answered, “I didn’t say you were deceiving me.”
But the subject of the conversation was already different. The question concerned what relationship is expressed by the act of questioning.
As a result, the subject’s independent relationship ceases to be visible. To eliminate it from consideration, there is no need to deny that the question was uttered: it is enough to declare significant only what can be established as a final answer.
This mechanism is investigated separately in “The Ideology of Assertion: Excluding Actual Relationships from Consideration”.
13. Actualization and Discovery of a Relationship
Two related aspects must be distinguished:
- The question expresses a relationship that has already arisen within the questioner through admitting the applicability of the category.
- The question becomes an action in relation to the other person when this possibility is presented to the interlocutor, enters the conversation, and begins to determine its subsequent content.
Thus, a question can both reveal an already existing orientation of the subject and become an event that changes intersubjective relationships.
This is not a dispute over choosing between the words “creates” and “expresses.” These are two distinguishable moments of activity.
14. Principal Propositions
- A question already contains the questioner’s actual relationship to the object.
- Admitting the possible attribution of X to category C is an actual relationship of the subject to X through C.
- The potentiality of applying a category does not make the questioner’s relationship itself potential.
- The choice of a category for a question has meaning even before an answer is received.
- An answer changes the subsequent relationship but does not negate the act of questioning that has already taken place.
- The modality of possibility must not be replaced with a probability distribution without independent grounds.
- A question about another subject can change the content of communication between the subjects at the very moment it is spoken.
- Investigating the object of a question and investigating the relationship arising when it is posed are different subjects of inquiry.
- An appeal to the absence of an established property does not eliminate the actual relationship through the possibility of that property.
- The questioner is the subject of an action performed, not a neutral channel for obtaining a future answer.
15. Questions for Further Inquiry
- When does the relationship through an admitted category first arise within the subject, and when does it arise specifically at the moment of addressing another?
- How can a categorical relationship expressed by a question be distinguished from a relationship consolidated by subsequent behavior?
- What changes does a question cause when another subject refuses to accept the given categorical framework?
- How does the potential categorical relationship relate to other modalities: doubt, suspicion, hope, expectation, and fear?
- Can an act of questioning generate a new distinction without containing a preselected category for the answer?
- In what cases does an examination of the question itself become necessary for understanding an intersubjective relationship?
