There is obviously a sense in which the second question presupposes an answer to the first — you need to know what a statement means before you can ask whether it's true — and we will begin with the interpretation question.
Ever since Plato, philosophers have been trying to answer the question "What is a good life for a human being?" This question presupposes that one size fits all -- that we all have the same built-in mechanism ("reason," "human nature") that steers us toward the same goal.
Of course, this question presupposes a fairly careful analysis of the facts and circumstances, but if we do not try to get a handle on the emotional part of an ethics problem, we run the risk of just intellectualizing it.
Not surprisingly, since the question presupposes a God, only 39percentt of people who don't identify with any particular religion (the so-called "nones") agree with that statement.
The "What for?" question presupposes that a purpose exists and thus the question requires a teleological explanation.
All too often I have been asked: "Do you consider yourself a black columnist, or a columnist who happens to be black?" The question presupposes that you cannot be both black and a columnist, but must chose between one and the other.
Your question presupposes that there is a silver bullet.
LESLIE K. JOHN: So in situations where someone may be tempted to lie to you, if you ask a question that presupposes the thing that they don't want to tell you to be true, that's a more effective strategy to getting them to tell you the truth than a question that does the opposite.
When he sees the desperate conditions in which construction labourers in Bangalore live, he asks how long it would take to turn them into software engineers – a question which presupposes that they will turn into engineers and that India's transformation into an egalitarian society is somehow inevitable.
The good, in short, exists independently of God and can be invoked as a check on his actions, as Abraham does when he protests God's plans to slaughter everyone in Sodom and Gomorrah, the righteous and the unrighteous alike: "Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?" (Genesis 18 25), a question that presupposes the independence of right from the pronouncements of deity.
