Summations Only

Well I'm glad we agree that science can answer why questions. It's a shame you decided to avoid answering any of my questions about the 'actual why', since it means we can't continue discussing it. That was probably your intention. Yes, it is personal to you, and it is also determined by a physical system which is amenable to empirical study.

The system can be studied yet still never explain why I like the blue sky.

Yes, there is empirical evidence for why, and getting a subject to explain their reasoning can be used as evidence. We don't have to believe them, but it is evidence nevertheless. Interviewing subjects is an accepted scientific protocol for gaining evidence for reasons why someone did something, even if we take the heterophenomonological approach that they are not authoritive sources on their own motivations. Indeed. Science can infer why people make decisions. If we abandon ethics, and with sufficient equipment and background information we might also be able to infer details about why a specific individual made a specific decision. Sure, poetry could hand you an answer too. But the claim is that science cannot hand you an answer...when in fact it is not only capable, but probably the most capable methodology for so doing.

I don't think its making a claim about the ultimate capabilities of an emprical investigation, in the sense that we could clone some girl 10 times and let them age to Grandma status, and then perform a controlled experiment on them to determine which things cause these individuals to choose that particular tea... Its about what science does, and science doesn't answer questions like that.Too, I read it as talking about scientific questions, not empirically investigatable questions. In that sense, an anecdotal answer would be empirical but not scientific.

Science can study any reason or cause that is physical. Right?So if science is unable to study the cause of your preferences (i.e. why it is that you hold the preferences that you do) then your preferences must have either a non-physical cause or no cause at all.Can you elaborate as to what you think the basis of your preferences actually is (rather than what it isn’t) and explain why it is that science cannot study this?

If you just want an answer to Why are we here? then the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy provides an answer to the meaning of life the universe and everything (it’s 42 to the uninitiated). Does that suffice? Will any old answer do as long as there is one? Is the answer god superior to the answer 42?

I understand exactly what you're saying. So far, you're the king of the apologists for statement 3 in the O.P.However, supposing someone wanted to express the view that there are certain questions that science doesn't ask. They could, for the sake of clarity, phrase it like this: There are certain questions science doesn't ask.Easy, eh?And they could put in the addition to the claim: There are certain questions science doesn't ask which are answered by religion/philosophy.I'm not making that claim, but I'm pointing out that there are easy ways of making it without being ambiguous or linguistically incorrect.For the purposes of this thread, that's my main objection to question (3). As phrased, it can lead to people making statements that are often put forward as if they are facts. Statements 1 and 2 in the O.P. are examples.Whenever I read the phrase: science doesn't ask "why" questions on the internet it makes me cringe. It's as literally incorrect as saying "there's never snow in Canada". But I think you agree with that.As for your examples of broad and narrow questions, they'd make for interesting discussion elsewhere, and for practical purposes, sure, you would break the broad ones down into narrower ones. The broad ones can potentially be given broad answers though.But I don't think that the religious people who put statement 3 forward are really inspired by practicality. In fact, I'm sure they're not.Edited by bluegenes, : No reason given.

I don't see why it is in principle impossible to empirically determine the reason why your brain or mind shows a preference towards blueness of sky.I'd ask you to explain yourself further, but I now realize that is not your goal in this thread.

We don't need to perform trials like that to determine answers. If we are examining the evidence that is available and using reasoning to infer to the most probable answer - we're doing science. It might not be reliable science, it might even be a little informal, 'soft', 'primitive' or the like.We can use evidence and reasoning to determine the reason that exists behind preferences.Perhaps we learn in our investigations that grandma has a certain inherited brain structure that gives her preferences for a certain flavours. We might learn that her mother used to make this brand of tea, so there are positive associations with it. We might even discover that the particular brand of tea has an addictive quality to it. We might find out that grandma is poor and its the cheapest tea available, and she thinks she prefers it but it is just a bias inherent in human brains to 'make the best of what we can'.We can gather this kind of evidence and infer why grandma likes that tea.We might be wrong, the uncertainty in our answers may be high - but we infer to the best explanation we can given the evidence we have managed to acquire. An anecdotal answer would be one piece of evidence we could gather in a complete scientific investigation using all the tools of science that we have at our disposal. We may not be able to get aboslute answer, indeed the tentativity may be quite large.

Right, but love, preference, ideals are not physical.And the cause is of course irrelevant to the preference.

It is irrelevant what the cause is and ephemeral as well. In fact knowing the cause quite often destroys the very thing studied.

Really? I could see that knowing the cause of delusions, for example, might help destroy them. But it's hard to think of anything much else that would be destroyed by knowledge, apart from ignorance.Do you think that science should stop studying the causes of things? Or perhaps just certain things?

I don't think science should stop studying anything.It is always neat to know more as long as you remember that some knowledge is irrelevant to the reality.

Where did you demonstrate this? Why can't these be physical things? For example, why can't a preference be a specific physical network of neurons in a specific chemical state? Why is it that chemicals can alter our preferences? Have you ever had the munchies?Edited by Taq, : No reason given.

That is like saying that is a particular series of brush strokes.Sure it can be done but does it have the same meaning as the object itself?