Nornagest comments on Rationality Quotes November 2014 - Less Wrong

8 Post author: elharo 07 November 2014 07:07PM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (337)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: Nornagest 05 November 2014 09:50:35PM *  4 points [-]

How many creationists are subconsciously confused by the fact that "from what cause?" and "for what purpose?" are treated in English as identical questions?

Interesting. I was going to point to "how come?" and "what for?" as examples of this distinction being made in English, but after a bit of thought they don't actually work as such: "how come you gave me a dollar?" is a linguistically valid question and could be validly answered by something like "so you can buy a candy bar". Using "what for" to point to a cause rather than a purpose is more dialectical, but I have heard it.