Do you NEED an explanation for "everything"?

[charlou]

I only use the vacuum occasionally .. and a broom and mop on other occasions. Enlightenment amounts to transfering the trekked in dirt, crumbs and unfortunate lego bits (they're like fucking gold nuggets ) to landfill.

[Bella Fortuna]

Science doesn't fill a god vacuum. Magic filled the knowledge vacuum for primitives. Unfortunately it still lingers

Yep - knowledge eliminates a vacuum. The vacuum is the lack of real explanations- even if the knowledge is vicarious it's still a description of how something in the universe functions based on evidence. I'm terrible at science and maths but just knowing that someone knows that stuff is good enough!

Bollocks. I read a book, gained knowledge and my vacuum cleaner remains.

You're doing it wrong, then.

[cowiz]

Science doesn't fill a god vacuum. Magic filled the knowledge vacuum for primitives. Unfortunately it still lingers

Yep - knowledge eliminates a vacuum. The vacuum is the lack of real explanations- even if the knowledge is vicarious it's still a description of how something in the universe functions based on evidence. I'm terrible at science and maths but just knowing that someone knows that stuff is good enough!

Bollocks. I read a book, gained knowledge and my vacuum cleaner remains.

You're doing it wrong, then.

Shit, life sucks

[Bella Fortuna]

Science doesn't fill a god vacuum. Magic filled the knowledge vacuum for primitives. Unfortunately it still lingers

Yep - knowledge eliminates a vacuum. The vacuum is the lack of real explanations- even if the knowledge is vicarious it's still a description of how something in the universe functions based on evidence. I'm terrible at science and maths but just knowing that someone knows that stuff is good enough!

Bollocks. I read a book, gained knowledge and my vacuum cleaner remains.

You're doing it wrong, then.

Shit, life sucks

Your life is a vacuum.

[cowiz]

Your life is a vacuum.

Hoovery true

[Xamonas Chegwé]

Do you NEED an explanation for "everything"?

More DEMAND than NEED, actually.

[cowiz]

42

[Bella Fortuna]

42

With an IQ like that the explanations will take a bit longer, but we'll give it a try...

[charlou]

No, it's 53 ... 53 virgins on detonation.

[cowiz]

No, it's 53 ... 53 virgins on detonation.

I thought it was 72 virgins. Are you trying to shortchange me?

[Bella Fortuna]

No, it's 53 ... 53 virgins on detonation.

I thought it was 72 virgins. Are you trying to shortchange me?

72 small ones or 53 large?

[charlou]

I go by the creed of Billy

[charlou]

Creed of Billy ... fire breathing whores and books.

[Pappa]

I am perfectly content that the biggest question, of life the universe and everything will never have a more satisfactory answer than 42. It doesn't bother me at all that we will never understand exactly how or why the universe came into being. As for the smaller (but still great) questions, such as how the human mind works or the intricacies of genetics and a load of other things... yes, I'd love to have an answer to them all, but I'm happy with the fact that most of those things won't be unravelled in my own lifetime, even though they are essentially knowable.

[apophenia]

I think you're conflating three phenomena. First, do we need explanations? Yes, we do. Explanations are how we simplify complex behaviors in the environment into simple rule governed behaviors that allow us to predict responses in our environment. We are problem solvers, and while we're able to do so at a high level of abstraction, it happens all up and down the animal kingdom. Now I'm going to introduce an example that is stretching it, but is most interesting on its own. The Aplysia or sea slug has been extensively studied neurologically because it's nervous system is simple (~10,000 neurons iirc) and the neurons are relatively large, so they're easy to probe. The Aplysia has receptors in its gut that sense when algae is being digested, and these receptors connect up to the ganglions in the head and cause it to chew faster. Thus, when the Aplysia finds food, it increases its eating behavior. Now this is not mere stimulus-response, it's an example of classical learning, as the Aplysia will continue to chew faster even after the signals from the gut cease, eventually dying out ("extinction"). The Aplysia has a hard wired prediction wired into it, where there is food, there is likely more food. I don't want to cast aspersions on people's views, but I think it's perfectly legitimate to view human behavior as simply a more complex form of hard wired predictions about the environment (Do you have to continually ask yourself, are there 3 dimensions or 2? No. That set of "explanations" is hard wired into you. What should I do when I feel hungry?). In a nutshell, yes we need explanations -- finding explanations and using them to make successful predictions about the environment is how we survive.

Now, that does not necessarily imply a specific emotional or propositional attitude towards explanatory behavior. As a Taoist, Supposedly I am to be somewhat aloof, non-committal and agnostic towards the utility of explanations (consider me a work in progress). Scientists, so the stereotype goes, should be fundamentally detached from their explanations, yet I think many good scientists ARE good scientists because of their passion for explaining the world. In a sense the scientist is doing the same thing a theologian is, taking the facts of experience and trying to find a cohesive explanation of the facts that unifies and makes intelligible the unintelligible.

The second sense of explanation which you reference, which I must confess I am not well read on, has to do with two neurological "phenomena". The first is mirror neurons, which, when we see an action being performed, invoke neurological patterns similar to as if we were doing it ourselves; mirror neurons are strongly implicated in learning, language, empathy and a whole host of phenomena. However, I'm spacing on the connection, so I'll just leave it as food for thought. The second is what's known as agency detection. Based on properties and behaviors of a thing in our environment, we assign agency ("self-hood" like we have) to objects in our environment. This is most useful in assigning agency to other humans like ourselves, but it has other legitimate uses -- forming bonds with a hunting animal or pet, predicting the behavior of prey such as a deer, even assigning agent specific behavior to non-agents if necessary (my car doesn't like it when I step on the gas hard, so I won't do that). This of course naturally plays into religion when we apply this agency detection to phenomena that it will not profitably apply to. I make no judgement about the Shinto religion, but that appears to be a case of agency detection run amok -- everything becomes a kami or spirit, dead ancestors, a waterfall, the wind, etc. It's been theorized that originally Yahweh was a nature god, specifically a storm god, and that Judeo-christian monotheism developed out of belief in a set of nature gods (and I think there's plentiful support for this; why would an omnipotent god who could kill all but Noah's family just by blinking need to use rain to accomplish his task [unless of course he derived perverse pleasure from drowning things, which I am told is one of the more awful deaths to experience]). But long story short, gods are just another way of unifying the behavior of complex empirical facts by grouping them under an instance of the concept of agency.

The third aspect relates to the core of your question, not only why are explanations useful, but why do we feel an emotional need to find, acquire and possess them. This is simply a specific case of a more general phenomena. We are wired to experience emotions of anxiety and fear under certain conditions, and to respond to those feelings, not by abstractly pondering them, but by trying to find behaviors or information which lead to a reduction of the feeling. Being out of control commonly results in anxiety -- and with good reason, if the environment has taken over and we aren't in control, unpleasant results are likely to follow. We act to minimize the cause of fear or anxiety -- be it lack of control, a mysterious animal or whatever -- in order to minimize the potential for unpleasant and deadly consequences. It's a survival mechanism. I'd like to point out an example in modern life that is most telling. People frequently go to psychotherapists because they are distressed about the happenings in their life. One avenue of exploration, is to identify patterns of behavior that lead to pain. But identification is just the first step, as the behaviors yield pain, but often the experience of trying to change is also painful, and in comparison of equal pains, sloth wins, and we continue the dysfunctional behaviors. A therapist's task, among other things is first, to increase insight -- help the person connect their behaviors to see them and the pain as cause and effect; the second though, is to heighten the existential anxiety the patient feels about their behaviors, so that their motivation to change is amplified. Now back to the original question, explanations reduce fear and anxiety which we are hard wired to recognize as reducing unpleasant experiences, so yes, we seek them out, with a vengeance.

But your query raises an interesting dilemma. How is our existential experience being changed by the supply of tools we don't understand or feel particularly strong control over, yet which deliver concrete control of the environment. Have we simply replaced one experience of 'the magical' with another (and I'm talking about the"experience" not the efficient causes.). I don't know. I would say yes and no, but I'll leave that for another day.

Btw. Nice thread topic.