Normal conditions are a restriction on philosophical arguments, especially in epistemology, in order to avoid objections perceived as digressive. As a reply to objections to an explanation of a phenomenon, e.g. a hypothesis or a theory, it is said, argument X holds under normal conditions. In some cases, the concept of normal conditions tends to be rather blurred and the reply under normal conditions can tend to extend to everything that contradicts an argument. In cases, when the argument of normal conditions comes too often, according to the principle of Occam's Razor another explanation X' has to be found.
Famous quotes containing the words normal and/or conditions:
“Everyone in the full enjoyment of all the blessings of his life, in his normal condition, feels some individual responsibility for the poverty of others. When the sympathies are not blunted by any false philosophy, one feels reproached by one’s own abundance.”
—Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815–1902)
“Statecraft is soulcraft. Just as all education is moral education because learning conditions conduct, much legislation is moral legislation because it conditions the action and the thought of the nation in broad and important spheres of life.”
—George F. Will (b. 1941)