ABSTRACT
This chapter investigates what makes questioning bad. It offers a taxonomy of bad questioning practices. The chapter argues that bad questioning is an intellectual failing often expressed in intellectual vices such as negligence, closed-mindedness and arrogance. In much the same way, bad questioning is an intellectual failing found in the exercise of many of the intellectual vices including, for example, carelessness, dogmatism, prejudice, arrogance, closed-mindedness and negligence. Insofar as the intellectual vices 'impede effective and responsible inquiry', bad questioning is a mechanism of intellectual vice. This will allow reader to better evaluate questions, determine where they can and do go wrong and, ultimately, identify what is required in order to ask better questions, in our personal interactions and in public discourse, and so to diminish intellectual vice.
