The demand for a reason behind everything is a confusion, not a puzzle

The argument

A second argument offered for this position is about the shape of the question rather than the merits of the answers. Why questions work, proponents observe, by placing the thing asked about against a background that is taken as given. We ask why a bridge fell and the answer appeals to loads, materials and the rest of the standing world. The background is what makes the question answerable, and every ordinary explanation uses one. The argument is that asking why there is anything at all, or why we exist rather than not, removes the background while keeping the form of words. There is nothing left to explain against. What results looks like a question because it is shaped like one, but the machinery that gives such questions their sense has been taken away. On this reading the sensation of confronting the deepest of all problems is the sensation of a sentence running with nothing to grip. Holders of the view draw two conclusions and are careful to distinguish them. The first is that the question needs no answer, which is different from saying that the answer is nothing or that existence is absurd; both of those are substantive claims and the position does not require them. The second is that the unease the question produces is real and worth addressing, but as unease rather than as an unsolved problem. What people usually want when they ask why they exist, proponents argue, is not a proposition but a place, a reason to get up, something to be part of. Those are findable. Treating the want as a request for information about the ultimate reason for things sends it looking in the one direction where nothing can be found.

Premises

Counter-arguments

Opponents reply that the test proves too much. Many legitimate questions have been pronounced meaningless on similar grounds and later answered, and the fact that a question strains ordinary usage is a poor guide to whether it has an answer. They also argue that the position cannot be stated without contradiction: to say there is nothing to explain against is already to make a claim about how things ultimately are. Others add that if the unease is real and persistent, the simplest explanation is that it is tracking a genuine question rather than a grammatical illusion.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P2] The background may be removable without the question collapsing, since asking why there is something rather than nothing contrasts two intelligible alternatives. [Rejecting P3] Questions that strain ordinary usage have repeatedly turned out to be answerable, so unusual form is weak evidence of defect. [Rejecting C] Dissolving the question is itself a claim about how things ultimately are, and so cannot be offered as a way of avoiding such claims.