Abstract

Religious positions can differ more deeply in asking rival questions than in offering rival answers to a common question. What is the logic of basic question rivalry? Questions are rivals when they make incompatible assumptions and one has to choose between them. The more basic the questions the greater the discontinuity that switching between them might bring to one's life. Choice of questions must fit the overall aim of whichever question is taken to be least avoidable. Avoidableness depends partly on the subject's attitude; for a subject with pious scruples, a religious question shift entails a revolution of loyalty that a "paradigm shift" does not.