The Perils of Why

Why Prioritizing What Requires Ignoring Why

A number of readers here have admitted that they struggle with focusing on the What of things rather than the Why. But there is a reason that we relentlessly focus on the What, and it is because it is very common for people to fall for a variant of the logical fallacy known as argumentum ab incredulitate, or the argument from incredulity. From Wikipedia:

Arguments from incredulity take the form:

I cannot imagine how P could possibly be true; therefore P must be false.

I cannot imagine how P could possibly be false; therefore P must be true.

These arguments are similar to arguments from ignorance in that they too ignore and do not properly eliminate the possibility that something can be both incredible and still be true, or appear to be obvious and yet still be false.

Arguments from incredulity assume that one's own deductive logic is the ultimate, universal scale upon which all ideas must be judged. For example: "I've never seen God, so God must not exist." This assumption of absolute logic also tends to go beyond the individual, elevating current human knowledge and logic to a supreme status in the entire Universe (and beyond): "The existence of a God cannot be proven using our scientific method. Therefore, God does not exist." These arguments eliminate the possibility that there could be a reality outside of space, time, and matter. Throughout history, however, human knowledge has necessarily been consistently revised in order to align with the facts that each new discovery reveals.

The variant to which I refer is the argumentum ex motivo. This is a remarkably stupid argument that is nevertheless appealed to on a regular basis by midwits, who will quite seriously argue that because they cannot imagine a motivation for an action, the action itself did not take place.

The more one delves into the motivation for an action, the more one focuses on the Why instead of the What, the more likely one is to fall into the error of the argumentum ex motivo. I suspect this is because all actions require motivation, therefore the absence of known motivation is confused with an actual absence of motivation, thereby justifying the midwit mind’s conclusion that there was, in fact, no action.

The flaw in this erroneous reasoning, of course, is that an absence of known motivation != an absence of motivation.

Furthermore, it is the action itself that is far more relevant to our subsequent reaction than the motivation for the action. While the motivation may color our understanding of the action, and thereby affect our reaction, it cannot ever be the basis for the reaction.

After all, Isaac Newton did not declare that for every motivation, there is an equal and opposite reaction. Motivation sans action is nothing, therefore it is the action, or the What, that merits our attention, not the motivation, or the Why.