Month: March 2014

Exercise #3

Apply the Casuist’s Razor to an explanation, judgment, or argument of your choice. Suggestions from answers to “What is your favorite deep, elegant, or beautiful explanation”: Marti Hearst, Stuart Pimm, Laurence C. Smith, Evgeny Morozov. Bonus points for an evenhanded application to your favorite argument on copyright, piracy, software patents, drug use, abortion, free speech, or another potentially value-laden topic. What […]

The Casuist’s Razor

“Casuistry” is today a near synonym for “sophistry”: a certain kind of intricate, deceptive reasoning; highly pejorative. The word originally referred to case-by-case moral analysis (and, as philosophical jargon, still does). But the casuist, evidently, abused the rich particularities offered by reality to justify his prior intuitions. With a torrent of excuses and exceptions he […]