Concept tag
#explanation
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“Because that’s how it works”: when is that an explanation and when is it a refusal?
I run a kitchen of twenty-two people. New cooks ask why a lot. Why rest the meat? Why salt the pasta water and not the sauce at the start? Why does this sauce split if you rush it? When I was an…
Started by Joel D'Souza5 replies251 views -
Is ‘why is there something rather than nothing?’ a real question or just a very good bit?
I do stand-up, mostly in northern clubs, and I've got a bit about "why is there something rather than nothing". The punchline is that the universe exists because somebody forgot to cancel the booking. It does all right. Afterwards a bloke in…
Started by Gemma Pritchard4 replies180 views -
What is the anthropic principle, and is it an explanation or a polite way of not explaining?
I drive a bus in Ankara and listen to lectures between stops. One lecture said that the physical constants of the universe seem "finely tuned" for life, and then mentioned "the anthropic principle", saying something like: of course we observe a universe…
Started by Serkan Aydoğdu4 replies174 views -
Why does ‘the shape caused the door’ sound so wrong if Aristotle meant it?
I make cedar doors and ceilings in Tetouan, in the Andalusian style my father taught me. When I was an apprentice he explained Aristotle's four causes to me with a door: the cedar is what it is made of, the design is…
Started by Hicham Ouazzani4 replies132 views -
Splitting causation from explanation was a modern mistake, not an Aristotelian one
I study kelp forests on the Chilean coast. I came to philosophy through Maturana and Varela, the Chilean biologists who described living things as self-producing systems in the early 1970s, and I keep running into the same problem. To explain why a…
Started by Ignacio Fuenzalida6 replies212 views -
“Why did this happen to me?” What does a doctor owe a patient who asks?
Last month a patient of mine, a woman in her forties who has never smoked, was diagnosed with lung cancer. When I explained the diagnosis she asked: “Why did this happen to me?” I gave her a good answer, I thought. I…
Started by Omar Farouk5 replies239 views -
Why did argument appear in Greece, India, China and Israel in the same few centuries?
I'm an economist, so when someone shows me a pattern I want a mechanism. Granting for the moment that something similar happened in several regions between roughly 800 and 200 BCE, with no documented transmission between them, the explanations I've seen are:…
Started by Javier Morales5 replies164 views