First we will examine briefly the interrogation of Chinese texts against the background of the problems, patterns of argument and standards of rational justification in the Western philosophical tradition; its "grammar", so to speak (Makeham 2012: xii).
Rationales for not believing in any supernatural deity include the lack of empirical evidence; the problem of evil; the argument from inconsistent revelations; the rejection of concepts which cannot be falsified; and the argument from nonbelief.
A second difference between Chinese philosophers and Western comparativists is that the Chinese do their work in accordance with their own "grammar", their own questions, definitions of problems, methodology, patterns of argument and standards of justification.
It does not even make a special problem of smoking.One last argument is left, ever the final redoubt of illiberalism: protection of the young.
Alvin Plantinga's version of the free will defense is an attempt to refute the logical problem of evil: the argument that the existence of an omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent God in an evil world is a logical contradiction.
The problem with this line of argument, as the WTO panel noted, was that although China restricted the export of these commodities, it had done nothing to reduce their actual production.
The problem with this line of argument, I think, is that even if it doesn't presuppose motive on the part of Band Aid's organisers, it narrows down Band Aid down to being a phenomenon controlled by them: here comes the leader to dispense his paternalistic solution from on high.
The fundamental problem with this line of argument in the case of precedent is that it suffers from a type of circularity.
But it is a problem for this style of argument because there will be a tendency for it to be least successful where it is most needed (Radcliffe Richards 1996, 2009, 2012; Wilkinson & Moore 1999).
The problem with this line of argument, of course, is that emissions could very well bounce back to 2008 levels in a year or two as the economy recovers and could in fact then rebound to continue the growth in greenhouse emissions that have marked the last 50 years.
