Why? The Philosophy Behind the Question

Philosopher Huneman (Death) muses in this esoteric outing on “what the question ‘why?’ is actually asking.” Grappling with different meanings of the interrogative, Huneman suggests that answers to “why” usually assert causality, describe the justification of a belief, or explain motivation. It’s often unclear which of these three a query intends to solicit, a point Huneman illustrates by positing that the hypothetical question “why is [Oscar] Pistorius guilty?” (in reference to the South African Paralympic runner convicted in 2015 of murdering his fiancée) might entreat an imagined interlocutor to justify their belief in his guilt or to speculate on his motive. The arguments are straightforward enough, but they’re needlessly complicated by rambling digressions. For example, Huneman points out that a typical answer to “why do triceratops have horns?” (“to defend themselves from the T. Rex”) conflates causes with intentions because triceratops didn’t choose to grow horns, but the subsequent extended discussion of René Descartes’s understanding of animals as machines adds little. General readers will want to take Huneman’s advice to “skip more technical sections,” which get into the weeds of such topics as the equation biologists employ to express cooperation, and those without a background in the philosophies of Kant, Leibniz, and Nietzsche will find the ruminations on their ideas inscrutable. It’s hard to get into this. (July)