Focus on the “how”, not the “why” 12 Aug 2009 [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kH40zaUxTTE&hl=en&fs=1&] Philosophy Politics Religion Science
Biology Book reviews 24 Apr 2010 Several interesting book reviews arrived in my feed this morning, of books I have not read. Jerry Coyne reviews FAPP’s What Darwin Got Wrong alongside Dawkins’ The Greatest Show on Earth. I cannot help but think that he is on the one hand very easy on Dawkins and fails to… Read More
Biology Reduction and emergence 8 Aug 20118 Aug 2011 I have been having a metaphysical debate on Twitter, which is more surreal than reading the Tractatus. My interlocutors said a few things which leads me to want to clarify my views a little more than Twitter allows. Hence… My thesis is this: Emergent properties are no different, ontologically speaking,… Read More
Politics Are Americans clinically insane? 12 Sep 200818 Sep 2017 I think they are: they give credence to verbal slips, egregious misinterpretations of ordinary phrases, take words out of context, and ignore what really matters in the most important political competition in the world. How can a nation be clinically insane? By listening to what the media tell it. And… Read More
Me too. I met him back around 1982, when he was doing a college tour of Australia. I worked for the local student union and had to shepherd him for ten minutes before his act. He was pretty distracted, so I didn’t get to talk to him much. He also wasn’t yet famous, so I didn’t know I had to.
If you want to hear a Celtic comedian making the case for critical thinking, then Dara O’Briain is your man. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIaV8swc-fo “But there’s a kind of notion that ‘Every opinion is equally valid.’ My arse! Bloke who’s a professor of dentistry for forty years does not have a debate with some idiot [eejet] who removes his teeth with string and a door, right? It’s nonsense. And this happens all the time with medical stuff on the television. You’ll have a doctor on talk and they’ll to the doctor and be all ‘Doctor this’ and ‘Doctor that’, and ‘What happened there?’, and ‘Doctor, isn’t it awful?’, right? And then the doctor will be talking about something with all the benefit of research and medical evidence, and they’ll turn away from the doctor in the name of ‘Balance’, and turn to some — quack — witch doctor — homeopath — HORSESHIT peddler on the other side of the studio. . . .”
I sympathize with Connolly’s sentiments of course, but “how” and “why” can often be used interchangeably. Why did the Cambrian explosion occur, vs How did it occur? Why is the sky blue, vs How is it that the sky is blue? You can argue that “why” often suggests teleological origins, but isn’t that just a subset of “how” that emphasizes subjective rather than objective causes? For example: Why do you believe in god, vs how is it that you believe in god?
In such cases, “why” just is a “how” question. Why questions are pleas for justification – give me a reason why that happens, or give me a reason why it should. Reasons why are calls for something beyond the how it happens. I think Billy is using this in the journalist’s sense of the five questions: how, when, where, who, and why?