PT108 · S3 · Q23 Commentator: A political constitution that

If we switched "political leaders" for "authors of the constitution", then this answer would be pretty close to reflecting the conversation. Today's political leaders have to pretend like their interpretations of the constitution express the intentions of the authors of the constitution, or else we don't feel like laws are the bequest of a long tradition, and thus we lose political stability. If we think laws are just the preferences of contemporary politicians (i.e. political leaders), the necessary fiction "would vanish".

This is very, very similar to (B). However, in (B), we only lose our illusion and our stability when we start to believe something pretty significant -- "the constitution is no longer being interpreted consistently with the intentions of the authors!" In (C), the trigger is too easily fired, because all you need to trigger this is a belief that there is any difference (divergence) between the beliefs of contemporary leaders and those of the constitution's authors. This rule doesn't limit that divergence to political / moral beliefs. Like if modern politicians believe that the Sun is primarily hydrogen/helium whereas the authors of the constitution believed (in the 1800s) that the Sun was primarily iron, that would trigger this rule. People could be fine with accepting that their political leaders have some differing beliefs with the authors of the constitution, as long as people still believe that the leaders are consistently upholding the constitution.

Out of Scope: written constitution Wrong Causal Factor We never specify whether a written or oral constitution is being authored, so that specificity is out of scope. Moreover, the paragraph identifies that the causal factor that preserves the illusion of a long standing legal tradition is "making it seem like modern interpretations of novel situations are in fact embodying the intentions of the authors".

This answer does a little word salad with the three concepts in our conditional chain. Here is what we were able to derive: If they didn't we'd lose illusion lose make it sound → that laws are → political that (fictional) way part of tradition stability A → B → C And this answer is saying that B is what causes A to require C. That's actually kind of tempting, because in a conditional sense, B is what links A to C and thus B is what makes C a necessary implication of A. But the problem is the causal verb "makes", not the conditional logic. Suppose we said this: Getting into Harvard requires a good LSAT score, which requires that you can read/write in English. Is it fair to derive from that "The need for a good LSAT score makes getting into Harvard dependent on being able to read/write in English"? No. That need may exist independently of needing a good LSAT score. After all, getting into Harvard requires submitting personal statements, which requires knowing how to read/write in English. Even though 3 things are all connected in a chain of requirements, we can't automatically say that the second thing is what causes there to be a dependent relationship between the 1st and 3rd.