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[Andir]

Sorry, ambiguity there.  I mean "Why?" as in the deep sense employed by theologans and philosophers, rather than the "Why?" questions a scientist can answer.

What makes you think they are different?

[redacted123]

Well, "why?" in the sense of a question a scientist could answer is just a grammatical difference to the same "how?" question. When in the sense of a philosophical question, it assumes the existence of some sort of instigator, "how?" never carries that meaning.

[Sergius]

Sorry, ambiguity there.  I mean "Why?" as in the deep sense employed by theologans and philosophers, rather than the "Why?" questions a scientist can answer.

It's the same sense I was employing ("for what purpose?") but for some reason it's always assumed to mean "what causes X".

[Andir]

Well, "why?" in the sense of a question a scientist could answer is just a grammatical difference to the same "how?" question. When in the sense of a philosophical question, it assumes the existence of some sort of instigator, "how?" never carries that meaning.

That was my point earlier.  You stop at the personal level.  It ignores the underlying answer.  If you go beyond the person in your question, you will find the answer.  Too many people assume that there must be intent.

You are assuming.  Just as you put it in your post.  Assumptions are guesses and not the real answer to why or how which is where the fault lies.  The questions CAN be answered.  You CHOOSE not to.

[Andir]

Sorry, ambiguity there.  I mean "Why?" as in the deep sense employed by theologans and philosophers, rather than the "Why?" questions a scientist can answer.

It's the same sense I was employing ("for what purpose?") but for some reason it's always assumed to mean "what causes X".

Because that's how we tick.  There are some of us who want to know what it is that makes that happen.  There is always a cause.  I could go back to the "Ignorance" issue and just leave it with "Ignorance is Bliss."  You don't want to know the answer for fear that it might make you unhappy that you either wasted your life, were wrong, or generally picked the wrong side.

[redacted123]

Well, "why?" in the sense of a question a scientist could answer is just a grammatical difference to the same "how?" question. When in the sense of a philosophical question, it assumes the existence of some sort of instigator, "how?" never carries that meaning.

That was my point earlier.  You stop at the personal level.  It ignores the underlying answer.  If you go beyond the person in your question, you will find the answer.  Too many people assume that there must be intent.

You are assuming.  Just as you put it in your post.  Assumptions are guesses and not the real answer to why or how which is where the fault lies.  The questions CAN be answered.  You CHOOSE not to.

What do you mean? All I'm stating is the difference "Why?" and "How?". They're different words for a reason. What do you mean "stop at the personal level" and "go beyond the person in your question"? They are both statements that mean nothing but pretend to have meaning. Why don't you do it yourself instead of telling me to? Explain properly what you mean.

Because that's how we tick.  There are some of us who want to know what it is that makes that happen.  There is always a cause.  I could go back to the "Ignorance" issue and just leave it with "Ignorance is Bliss."  You don't want to know the answer for fear that it might make you unhappy that you either wasted your life, were wrong, or generally picked the wrong side.

Now you're assuming, you're assuming that all answers are out there and that we don't know them because we refuse to look. That is not the case, the answers are not easily available, if it was really a case of giving up insecurities, then why don't you have all the answers?

[Andir]

I'm saying that you are being slightly egotistical.  You are relating all questions to the human level and not beyond.  The only way I know how to explain this is the example of feelings.  Feelings are a chemical reaction in your brain, a firing of neurons to trigger a response that is either learned or programmed at birth via genetics.  If you stop at the "personal" level of the question where you state someone "feels" like doing something or why did they think that way instead of understanding that there was an underlying cause for that reaction... it's easy to see why people have a hard time with these "philosophical" questions.  It's merely your brain trying to solve problems it doesn't know the answer to.  All of them can be explained, if you are willing to study and examine it far enough.  Religious people tend to stop evaluating situations when it starts to relate to the human element of the question.

I said Ignorance.  I never said refusal.  There is a difference.  One can just ignore that there's deeper evaluation to something and write it off as either too complex for them to understand or that they were never intended to know.

The answers are out there.  We need to study them, and yes, people refuse to look sometimes because they stop at the human element of study.  In the above questions, it was assumed that the questions were unanswerable or needed no answer because it was the intention of a "person" (God) that they not be known.  "That's just the way it is and it needs no answer."

It's like the stories of civilizations/tribes who (used to?) think blood was your soul and by drinking it, containing it or using it in some ceremony you can tap into the person it came from in some way.  That's simply not the case and I'm glad we got past that, but then again there are still people that think taking a picture of them is unholy witchcraft.

People tend to stop at the human level (ego) of many things when it comes to emotion.  Racism is one example.  Someone recently sent me a video of Barack Obama getting "snuffed" by some Russian diplomats and one of the many comments in this email was that the person must be racist.  They formulated a response to the situation by stopping at the human in the situation and injected their own reasoning.  They couldn't see, analyze or evaluate why that person didn't shake his hand... but they could damn well come up with their own reason because they stopped looking and used an evaluation that pleased them.

[LegoLord]

The answers are out there.

But how can you be sure of this?  Is it not true that, so far as we know, there is no way to pinpoint the exact position of an electron and its velocity at the same time?  At the moment, there is no evidence suggesting that we ever will be.  All there are are past situations in which we thought something was possible, which only hint that other thing now thought impossible might one day not be.  These past situations do not prove anything because they are fundamentally different from what we think is impossible now (which in some cases includes things that were thought impossible long before things that were eventually found to not be impossible).  We can only be certain that all the answers are out there when we have all the answers.  Which we don't.  So we can't assume that they are all out there; all we can do is search for them, with varying degrees of success, and of course sometimes even total failure (though failure does not prove the answer isn't out there, either).  Uncertainty is even a basic principle of physics on the atomic level, as previously mentioned with the electrons of an atom.  Anything we could use to detect the particle will change its trajectory in an unpredictable way, as we cannot see where from the photon that strikes it will strike it.

[Andir]

The answers are out there.

But how can you be sure of this?  Is it not true that, so far as we know, there is no way to pinpoint the exact position of an electron and its velocity at the same time?  At the moment, there is no evidence suggesting that we ever will be.  All there are are past situations in which we thought something was possible, which only hint that other thing now thought impossible might one day not be.  These past situations do not prove anything because they are fundamentally different from what we think is impossible now (which in some cases includes things that were thought impossible long before things that were eventually found to not be impossible).  We can only be certain that all the answers are out there when we have all the answers.  Which we don't.  So we can't assume that they are all out there; all we can do is search for them, with varying degrees of success, and of course sometimes even total failure (though failure does not prove the answer isn't out there, either).  Uncertainty is even a basic principle of physics on the atomic level, as previously mentioned with the electrons of an atom.  Anything we could use to detect the particle will change its trajectory in an unpredictable way, as we cannot see where from the photon that strikes it will strike it.

What part of "The answers are out there.  We need to study them, and yes, people refuse to look" was hard to understand?

[LegoLord]

The fact that we don't yet have all the answers and, for many of them, haven't got the faintest inkling of where to start or what will lead us to those answers.  As I just said.

[RAM]

All I'm stating is the difference "Why?" and "How?". They're different words for a reason.

A man gave me his sausage. I put it in a barbecue. It got burned. That made him sad...

A word is just a word, it has no meaning without interpretation. It is possible to have purpose without intent, and it is possible to have a world without purpose. What is the difference between why and how? Why seeks cause, how seeks ability.

[Andir]

The fact that we don't yet have all the answers and, for many of them, haven't got the faintest inkling of where to start or what will lead us to those answers.  As I just said.

I never said we have the answers... but they are out there.  I thought that was obvious.

[Neruz]

It's possible they aren't you know.

[Andir]

It's possible they aren't you know.

Ok.  I thought it was.

[Ampersand]

It should be obvious that any claims made about the nature of the unknown are rather silly.