Yes.

Nope, that’s not it.

A dumb riddle with no philosophical implications.

Anything. You didn't say it had to be correct.

“The” answer to a question is the correct answer to it.

What if there was only one answer ever given to it at any point in time. It would be a question without an answer wouldn't it?

The answer to a contextless supplementary followup question is either a question or a statement. Any of the following.

What question? Or what are you talking about?
I don't know (what question you mean). Or I don't know what you're talking about.

The person does not know what you're talking about, hence any of the following would be correct or true.

The answer to a contextless supplementary followup question is either a question or a statement. — Outlander

An answer has to be a statement, but the statement you gave as an example is not an answer, it's just a response.

The whole "contextless" thing is really getting to the point though. What exactly is the question asking? What would an answer to a question like that look like?

I'll give an hint. Or maybe an anti-hint, as it were. This riddle was adapted from a much dumber joke riddle someone one asked me many years ago. The question was the same: "What is the answer to this question?" After a bit of thought I gave an answer -- the answer I'm hoping someone gives here -- and they said no, that's not it. They said that "what" was the answer to that question, treated the question as though it was a statement, telling you its answer, which... no. That annoyed me and reminded me of this xkcd / the "joke" it's about:



I think there is a much more actually-clever answer to that dumb riddle question, and the question/answer pair shed a bit of interesting light on a few philosophical issues about linguistic meaning and the act of inquiry.

I get it!! Doesnt that mean Sir2u was right? Punctuation marks do matter. Take the case of some guy or whatever. He declared "Pardon Impossible. To be sent to Siberia!" however the scribe wrote it as "Pardon, Impossible To be sent to Siberia!". As one example.

Definitely a good one.

I think the thing that you get is the old joke riddle that was told to me, where the answer to the question was "what". This isn't that riddle. I don't like that riddle. This is a version with an answer that actually makes sense, and isn't just unclear communication pretending to be clever like that "words that end in -gry" joke.

'Nother hint pls.

Does the topic title relate to the answer?

Besides there being philosophical allusions, no.

As for hints, hmm...

Crap I think I got it. Will check back on this thread tomorrow. As inactive as the 'lounge' is.

Curious there are no threads posted here in the entirety of PF that cannot be seen either in 'All Discussions' or 'The Lounge' are there?

You may want to delete that hint btw. It was pretty good.

I've hidden it now, just in case.

I'll go with the quotational approach - that's the opposite of disquotational, as in the disquotational theory of truth.

The answer to this question is "The answer to this question."

Very, very close.

What.

No, that’s the answer to the even dumber old version of the joke that I hate and invented this one to replace.

Odd, isn’t it? The answer is given in the query, but stating the answer extinguishes the query.

What’s the older version?

That is the older version. “What is the answer to this question?” “‘What’ is the answer to that question.” That’s not how language works though.

Is it the same as the answer to this question?

So....”What” is the answer to that question.....satisfies the query?

I’m ok with that; I just left out the rest of the declarative.

"This is the answer to the question"

:100: :clap: :up:

To elaborate:

“What is the answer to X?”
“Y is the answer.”

X = “What is the answer to X?”
Y = “Y is the answer.”

So X = “What is the answer to “What is the answer to “What is the answer to [...]?”?”?”

And Y = “““[...] is the answer.” is the answer.” is the answer.”

Nope, that’s not it. — Pfhorrest

Please explain you reasoning.

See just above.

“What is the answer to X?” — Pfhorrest

The only answer possible to this question is X itself.

“Y is the answer.” — Pfhorrest

How did you get X from Y?

X can only be equal to X and Y can only be equal to Y.

So again, explain your reasoning.

Ah. My guess was 'what' as a concept along the lines of who, when, where, and how.

So 'what' would not be the answer to that question rather what would be a question where 'what' is the answer.

So what I thought was the answer would be a referenced question though not asked as one therefore a statement. Which would be...



Would this not also be correct? :D

:100: :clap: :up: — Pfhorrest

SophistiCat put me on the right track...