Babz asked:

I came across this philosophy paper...this was the only question on a university term paper:

(1) WHY?

How would you go about answering this question?

My answer would be, "Why not?" What do you think?

============

My first, perhaps unkind thought was that you submitted this question out of sheer boredom, for a
laugh. As your suggestion shows, you're not looking for an informative answer!

How about, "Because"? — Ha Ha!

However, you say that you actually saw this question on a university term paper. I believe you. I like
one word questions. My favourite essay topics are "I" and "S" (on the nature of the self and
self-reference; and on Wittgenstein's private language argument concerning the indefininable
sensation "S"). So let's do some lateral thinking.

Consider the possibility that you are not being askedthe question, "Why?" You are being asked, by
the person who set the paper, to considerthe question, "Why?", or rather, questions which begin
with, "Why...?"

Now, we're getting somewhere. That looks like an interesting question. What is it that especially
distinguishes, or is characteristic about questions which begin with, "Why..."?

Cub reporters are taught to always ask the six questions: Who, What, WhyWhere, When and How?
Five out of the six can be answered very simply: The butler (Who) murdered the housekeeper (What)
in the library (Where) last night (When) with a samurai sword (How). The odd one out is "Why?" The
question, "Why?" seeks an explanation.Whole books can be written seeking to give the explanation
for something. Whereas there is only one right answer to the other five questions, there can be
different, equally valid, ways of understanding the question "Why?":

*
Why did the butler murder the housekeeper, instead of paying her to keep quiet about his affair with
the maid?

*
Why did the butler murder the housekeeper with a samurai sword, instead of poisoning her?

*
Why did the butler choose the library to do the evil deed?

And so on.

So one point to make about explanations is that they are, as Hilary Putnam argues in Meaning and
the Moral Sciences'relative to interest'. There is no such thing as theexplanation of something.

The explanations I have listed above all refer to human motives. But there are other kinds of
explanations, for example, scientific explanation. Or is this a different kind of explanation? Some
philosophers would argue that the explanations we give in 'folk psychology' aren't real explanations at
all, but mere descriptions which cover up the real causes of human behaviour of which we remain
blissfully ignorant.

Come to think of it:

What is a historical explanation?

What is a philosophical explanation?

— Plenty of meat there, don't you think?

Geoffrey Klempner