1

I was reading an article, and the writer used “with respect to” in a way I’ve never seen it before; it came at the end of a question. See it here (emphasis mine):

When assessing arguments of this sort, some important questions for consideration are these: What is the claim probable or improbable with respect to? And what is the relevant background information with respect to the claim?

The writer is talking about different arguments that each one of them says that its argument is more improbable than the argument of the other.

So my question is: to what “with respect to” refers in this question?

Improve this question
1
  • 'In what respect is the claim probable or improbable ?' is what I think the highlighted sentence is supposed to mean.
    – Nigel J
    Commented Nov 1, 2017 at 16:31

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
0

If you write the first occurrence of with respect to, using the proper punctuation, it becomes a little easier to follow:

What is the claim, probable or improbable, with respect to?

In other words:

Regardless of plausibility, to what does this claim relate?

Improve this answer
4
  • You can assume the original punctuation is correct, which would be my default assumption, and interpret the sentence as “What does the probability or improbability of the claim relate to?” or simply “With respect to what is the claim probable or improbable?”
    – Jacinto
    Commented Nov 1, 2017 at 11:58
  • Note the book’s following sentence: “God’s existence is improbable with respect to the evil in the world”.
    – Jacinto
    Commented Nov 1, 2017 at 11:59
  • @Jacinto As far as punctuation goes, the past decades have seen a definite disregard for it, so I would not advise assumptions of correctness, regardless of where it was written. Aside from that, thank you for your example sentence, which can be rephrased, to match the pattern of the original question: "What is God's existence improbable with respect to?"
    – Peter Abolins
    Commented Nov 1, 2017 at 12:23
  • 1
    I also interpreted it like @Jacinto. You should post an answer to that effect.
    – Barmar
    Commented Nov 2, 2017 at 19:56

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .