Types Of Questions
Every person has and asks different types of questions.
The types of questions asked may vary from one person to another and while in some cases the questions may be asked of others, in other cases a person tends to ask himself certain types of questions when he/she is sitting alone. The kinds of questions people ask also depend upon their purpose in asking those questions. A simple “How are you?’ may be a genuine question that one person asks another. The same question may even be asked of a friend whose mother may have died a few months ago. The circumstance dictates the type of question asked as well.
Then, there are those types of questions that are related to existentiality.
People tend to ask these types of questions of themselves or of religious leaders usually.
These include questions such as “Why do we exist?’ or “What is the point of life?’ or “If God exists why is there so much chaos and sadness around us?’. These types of questions are pondered over by people when they are in a certain frame of mind- possibly, either due to a certain situation or merely because one is actually an existentialist wanting answers to his questions. Such people usually ask philosophical questions of themselves or of others. They tend to be deep thinkers.
Another of the various types of questions is evaluative ones.
These enable us to evaluate a situation. We look into the “why’ of a situation rather than analyzing other aspects such as the “how, where or when’ and this helps us get to the crux of the matter. The “how, where or when’ do not help much when evaluating a situation because the main answer lies in the how. “Why did A hit B?’ would help get a more conducive answer than “When did A hit B?’ because the former helps understand the purpose behind the fight and then, evaluate the situation itself. Usually the ‘why’ requires one to think more and we may need to use our emotions and cognitive abilities to get our answers.
Scientists and children tend to ask evaluative questions because they want to understand why something happens or happened and then, they may dig into the matter more on their own. Once they get their answers, they are satisfied.
The “what’ aspect is one of those types of questions that help us think factually.
The answer is simple and straightforward and there is no more to the question than the “what’ unlike the “why. For example, “What happened when Bob hit Carl?’ would help you understand the events that followed after Bob hit Carl. Now, if you were to ask “Why did Bob hit Carl?’ you would get an answer as to the purpose behind the fight and then, you could evaluate the whole situation on your own and ponder over it.
You could even blend different types of questions together in order to get different types of answer to understand everything in totality.
