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DSimon comments on Rationality Quotes: January 2011 - Less Wrong
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I see your point, but I also think it's problematic when people say "why (implication: cause-why)" instead of just saying "how".
When I hear people saying "Why did Mt. Everest form?", I can substitute "How did..." in my head, but it also makes me wonder why they used "why" in the first place. No biggie, but that's only because we know a fair bit about geology and how mountains form.
When it comes to broader questions like "Why does the universe exist?", then the equivocation problem becomes much severer. I think in that particular case, there's a good chance that the questioner is genuinely meaning to ask "purpose-and-cause-why", because the concepts of "purpose-why" and "cause-why" are equivocated (since there's no clear answer for the latter and blank spot for the former, as there is for Mt. Everest).
To me it seems a proper use of 'why'. It means: consider the world as it was at some time in the past before Everest existed. Had we been alive then, we could imagine a future where Everest would form, or a future where it (counterfactually) would not form. The correct prediction would have been to say that it would form; we know that in our own present. But of a person reasoning only from what existed in the past, we can ask, why do you predict that Everest will form?
That is, to me, the meaning of the world "why" used about objects: it asks why the past evolved into our present rather than into a counterfactually different one.
My point, though, was that by assuming the other, rationalists are unnecessarily antagonizing people. Assume the person meant the "how" and answer that. If they meant the other, they will say so, then you can complain that it is an illegitimate question.