 Kitcher and Salmon (1987) were early critics of van Fraassen’s theory of why-questions as a theory of explanation. They object (1987, 319) that the lack of constraints on the relevance relation \(R\) “allows just about anything to count as the answer to just about any [why-]question.” Other critics of van Fraassen’s theory include Ruben (1987) and Temple (1988), who argue that explanatory contrast is an unnecessary complication because any contrastive why-question ‘why \(P\) (in contrast to \(Q)\)?’ is equivalent to the non-contrastive why-question ‘why P&amp;\(\neg\)Q?’. Risjord (2000, 70) rebuts this reduction of the contrastive to the non-contrastive by arguing that it leads to the untenable result that whenever \(P\) entails both \(\neg\)Q and \(\neg\)R, ‘why \(P\) (in contrast to \(Q)\)?’ must then be logically equivalent to ‘why \(P\) (in contrast to \(R)\)?’, since \(P \amp \neg Q\) is logically equivalent to \(P \amp \neg R\) if \(P\) entails \(\neg Q\) and \(\neg R\). But questions of these forms need not be equivalent, since they may call for different answers. For example, if Art is a vegan and is allergic to chocolate, a correct answer to ‘Why did Art eat fruit for dessert (rather than eating ice cream and skipping the fruit)?’ will cite his being a vegan and not his chocolate allergy, whereas a correct answer to ‘Why did Art eat fruit for dessert (rather than eating chocolate and skipping the fruit)?’ will cite his chocolate allergy but not his being a vegan.