Why?

[cowiz]

This is a serious discussion. Answer the fucking question!

[rachelbean]

Because

[Gawdzilla Sama]

I knew a lady named Wyoming Knot. But we never used her whole name.

[JOZeldenrust]

This is a serious discussion. Answer the fucking question!

Serious answer:

You should differentiate between two different meanings of the word "why". There's the teleological "why", which means "to what purpose", and there's the ontological "why", which means "from what cause".

Teleological "why" is a meaningful question in any field of knowledge that pertains to agents, conscious beings who choose their actions. Outside of those fields, only ontological "why" is a meaningful question: why does heat disperse? Because hot particles move faster then cold particles, so the net result of large numbers of particles moving in random directions will be eventual even distribution of heat.

Ontological "why" suffers from regression, though. You might know what causes heat to disperse, but what causes hot particles to move faster then cold particles? You might find an answer to that question, but ontological "why" can be applied to the answer again. Ultimately, there is no answer, but there's no way of knowing whether you've reached that point.

[hiyymer]

This is a serious discussion. Answer the fucking question!

Serious answer:

You should differentiate between two different meanings of the word "why". There's the teleological "why", which means "to what purpose", and there's the ontological "why", which means "from what cause".

Teleological "why" is a meaningful question in any field of knowledge that pertains to agents, conscious beings who choose their actions. Outside of those fields, only ontological "why" is a meaningful question: why does heat disperse? Because hot particles move faster then cold particles, so the net result of large numbers of particles moving in random directions will be eventual even distribution of heat.

Ontological "why" suffers from regression, though. You might know what causes heat to disperse, but what causes hot particles to move faster then cold particles? You might find an answer to that question, but ontological "why" can be applied to the answer again. Ultimately, there is no answer, but there's no way of knowing whether you've reached that point.

I chose to get the chocolate ice cream cone instead of the vanilla ice cream cone. Teleological why? Because I thought I would like the taste of chocolate more than the taste of vanilla. Ontological why? Because my body is a physical organism whose actions are determined by the brain following the known laws of science. In the moment of making the chocolate "choice" the thoughts in the consciousness created by the brain of "I liking chocolate" were just part of a caused mechanism. If the ontological "why" is a valid question, then the teleological why doesn't exist. It's just patterns of neurons firing. There are no actual existing agents.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

The answer to "why" can be found here.

[JOZeldenrust]

This is a serious discussion. Answer the fucking question!

Serious answer:

You should differentiate between two different meanings of the word "why". There's the teleological "why", which means "to what purpose", and there's the ontological "why", which means "from what cause".

Teleological "why" is a meaningful question in any field of knowledge that pertains to agents, conscious beings who choose their actions. Outside of those fields, only ontological "why" is a meaningful question: why does heat disperse? Because hot particles move faster then cold particles, so the net result of large numbers of particles moving in random directions will be eventual even distribution of heat.

Ontological "why" suffers from regression, though. You might know what causes heat to disperse, but what causes hot particles to move faster then cold particles? You might find an answer to that question, but ontological "why" can be applied to the answer again. Ultimately, there is no answer, but there's no way of knowing whether you've reached that point.

I chose to get the chocolate ice cream cone instead of the vanilla ice cream cone. Teleological why? Because I thought I would like the taste of chocolate more than the taste of vanilla. Ontological why? Because my body is a physical organism whose actions are determined by the brain following the known laws of science.

But are the "known laws of science" all there is to it, or is there an answer to the ontological why of the laws of science? We might discover that there are underlying laws of science that determine why the known laws of science are the way they are. There's just no way of knowing if this is the case until we find out.

In the moment of making the chocolate "choice" the thoughts in the consciousness created by the brain of "I liking chocolate" were just part of a caused mechanism. If the ontological "why" is a valid question, then the teleological why doesn't exist. It's just patterns of neurons firing. There are no actual existing agents.

I don't quite agree. The existence of agents is a matter of perspective. Agents might not exist in the perspective of physics, but neither do numbers, or migration. Still, those things are "real", existing things in most contexts.

[hiyymer]

I don't quite agree. The existence of agents is a matter of perspective. Agents might not exist in the perspective of physics, but neither do numbers, or migration. Still, those things are "real", existing things in most contexts.

They may be "real", but do they exist other than in our experience? Do they exist like photons bouncing around in certain ways, or are they real like the experience of red and blue and green. You can't get away from the problem that physical existence is the premise of everything and our experience is a result of it. The brain/body invents the agent because it works to keep the brain/body in a state of aliveness so that it can replicate. The agent represents something, but it's characteristic of self-causation does not really exist, except in our heads, just like the experience of blue does not really exist, except in our heads.

[JOZeldenrust]

I don't quite agree. The existence of agents is a matter of perspective. Agents might not exist in the perspective of physics, but neither do numbers, or migration. Still, those things are "real", existing things in most contexts.

They may be "real", but do they exist other than in our experience? Do they exist like photons bouncing around in certain ways, or are they real like the experience of red and blue and green. You can't get away from the problem that physical existence is the premise of everything and our experience is a result of it. The brain/body invents the agent because it works to keep the brain/body in a state of aliveness so that it can replicate. The agent represents something, but it's characteristic of self-causation does not really exist, except in our heads, just like the experience of blue does not really exist, except in our heads.

I don't think photons exist. The matter that we call photons does exist, but the distinction between photons and other matter is a distinction made in the minds of agents. We could model the material world using other distinctions, with equal validity, though likely it would be even more counterintuitive then particle physics is already.

The world consists of stuff. We have created a system for modeling this stuff, but this model relies on decisions to call subsets of the stuff different things. These distinctions aren't part of the world. They're arbitrary decisions by agents. This means that from some perspectives it's useful to treat "photons" as "things that exist" and in other perspectives it's useful to treat "conscious agents" as "things that exist".

[hiyymer]

I don't quite agree. The existence of agents is a matter of perspective. Agents might not exist in the perspective of physics, but neither do numbers, or migration. Still, those things are "real", existing things in most contexts.

They may be "real", but do they exist other than in our experience? Do they exist like photons bouncing around in certain ways, or are they real like the experience of red and blue and green. You can't get away from the problem that physical existence is the premise of everything and our experience is a result of it. The brain/body invents the agent because it works to keep the brain/body in a state of aliveness so that it can replicate. The agent represents something, but it's characteristic of self-causation does not really exist, except in our heads, just like the experience of blue does not really exist, except in our heads.

I don't think photons exist. The matter that we call photons does exist, but the distinction between photons and other matter is a distinction made in the minds of agents. We could model the material world using other distinctions, with equal validity, though likely it would be even more counterintuitive then particle physics is already.

The world consists of stuff. We have created a system for modeling this stuff, but this model relies on decisions to call subsets of the stuff different things. These distinctions aren't part of the world. They're arbitrary decisions by agents. This means that from some perspectives it's useful to treat "photons" as "things that exist" and in other perspectives it's useful to treat "conscious agents" as "things that exist".

I still think that some model of physical reality which is arrived at inductively, excluding the subjective experiencer, and is consistent (for the most part) with all other models of physical reality, is quite different than the representations created by the brain that we experience in consciousness (with characteristics that need not exist in the physical thing represented as long as they work to keep us alive). There are no "conscious agents" in physical reality in the way physical reality is defined by science. If something is self-caused there is no way to explain it inductively.

[Gallstones]

Fuck why, I want to know; How come?

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Fuck why, I want to know; How come?

Do nasty.