Summations Only

That's one point I was trying to get to: that the catchphrase should be looked at superficially. Its not proclaiming some limit of science's ability to answer certain semantic structures, but rather, its trying to clarify the differences in the kinds of answers that science and religion try to provide.

Yeah, and I agreed with you in Message 71:

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you writes:

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Science can succesfully answer purpose questions, where purpose exists. It cannot answer purpose questions where there is no evidence of any purpose.

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Right, there you go. I think that's a great way to phrase it.

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Further, I think that's what the catchphrase is getting at. From Message 192:

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Its setting up a dichotomy that is practically taughtological - the why-questions that science cannot answer are the ones being referred to that religion can.

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I read him as saying that the proper use of why, in the context of this catchphrase, is one of purpose, not that he was speaking generally. Most why-questions that are not about purpose can be better expressed with a different question, so even generally, its not a terrible point if you try to get what he's saying rather than try to make him out to be wrong. Has there been an example given? Are you sure you're not conflating strict scientific testing with simple empirical investigation?As I said earlier, a paricular human's purpose for doing a particular thing isn't something that you can scientifically control in order to properly test, although you can investigate it empirically. When I'm investigating something in our lab, I never get into the why's of things and I don't care at all about them. I want to figure out how things are happening, the conditions that cause them to happen, but any underlying purpose behind all of it is totally irrelvant to my scientific tests. In that sense, science does not answer the why-questions.

I don't exactly know, but I suspect that those don't make the point that I think is trying to be made: that the kinds of answer that science and religion provides are different in the way that you can discribe how something occurs or you can speculate on what purpose it serves, i.e. the how and the why.Like I said, its not about proclaiming a limit on the abilities of science to answer specific semantics. Because what people mean by "why", in the context of "for what purpose", is what the catchphrase is trying to touch on.

The context I saw was DB saying that the TOE wasn't falsifyable because it didn't address the purpose behind evolution and then RAZD countering that by saying that, as a scientific theory, it isn't supposed to be addressing that question because, in general, science doesn't address the why-questions. That was to distinguish between the question of the conditions and functions of plants being green with the question of some underlying prupose for plants being green. I'm not sure. Can you come up with an example? That's true, but beside the point. With which we can make theories about why people do things in general, but you wouldn't be able to determine why a specific individual made that particular choice. Without multiples of that individual, how could you introduce a scientific control to eliminate other variables in the decision making process? I'm not referring to anyone's exact purpose...

The reason that I think the interrogatives are brought into it is that that's how people think about it. When they're looking for some underlying purpose or meaning behind some phenomenon, besides an otherwise mundane mechanical explanation, they'll ask themselves why its happening. For what reason does this occur... not under what conditions, i.e. how it occurs.That's just how some people think and those are the ones who take the most meaning from the statement. I think you're over-analyzing it.

As I said in Message 129:

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Suppose a Canadian said: "It never really snows in the U.S.". Now, if I wanted them to be wrong, I could assume they were saying something stupid because of course it snows down here. But giving them the benfit of the doubt, and assuming they're not just saying something stupid, I could parse the phrase as saying that, compared to the ridiculous amounts of snow they get in Canada, what little bit we do get down here doesn't really count as snowing.

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In Message 25, RAZD wrote:

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I do believe you and Catholic Scientist got it.

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Nobody in particular. I haven't gotten that specific. That's neither here nor there. I'm not demanding an answer, nor that a meaningful purpose actually exists. I'm just explaining what I think the phrase means. Not the point I'm making... from Message 70

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Science can investigate damn-near everything, but this doesn't include a certain kind of why-questions (I'd call how a subset of why). With science, you need to be able to control an experiment. Some things can't be nailed down enough for scientific controls. Other things are too broad to be defined well enough for a proper scientific investigation.

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-why did Grandma X choose that tea?
-why are we here?

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You don't have multiple Grandma X's to set-up a controlled experinment with.
"Being here" doesn't necessarily imply some purpose with which to answer the question "why".

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And further in Message 79:

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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.

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You cannot set-up a proper scientific experiment without scientific controls to eliminate the variables and one-off events do not allow for that luxery. That is not a claim about what is empirically investigatable tho. No, you're just trying to force me down that path. My position has nothing to do with dualism.

Whether or not that's proper is a subjective opinion. He's basing his on the primary dictionary definition of "why". You tried to show that the primary dictionary definition included other uses because it had the "or" in there, but I don't think you were correct about that assessment. The defintion read as: for what reason, for what cause, or for what purpose. "For what cause" being a different question than "how" in the sense of how it was caused.I don't care about what's proper, but regarding the catchphrase of this thread, with it distinguishing between why and how, I think it assumes that the definition of why is different from how. Arguing about whether that is the proper defintion seems pointless. I think you're making it more confusing. Questions of purpose are on a different level than asking about how things happen. You're trying to blur that line and its obuscating the point being made in the catchphrase. I presume that "not" I added should be in there... (I forget them too)I think you're approaching it wrongly (rather than from their point of view).There's some questions that people ask that try to get to an underlying purpose for existence. They're "doing religion" when they do this. They typically use why-questions. Some might feel that this is the most appropriate usage of that word.That you can blend the definitions and blur the line between it and other words does not mean that they are wrong for it.

I understand that, I just don't care if you think it has meaning. Some people understand the catchphrase from a dualistic standpoint, some people attribute all purpose to God, I'm sure others have their own ways. I'm just explaining what meaning I can pull from it. I've already told you that I'm distinguishing between laboratory science and general empirical investigation. Too, that I don't think the catchphrase makes sense as a claim on the limits of science to answer certain semantic structures. Also, that I think its talking about the kinds of answers you get from religion and science more than limiting the questions they can ask. I don't have time to explain why your opponent is a strawman. My poisition doesn't rely on such data.

From dictionary.com:

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reason
noun
1. a basis or cause, as for some belief, action, fact, event, etc.: the reason for declaring war.

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So, the reason for declaring war wouldn't be a scientific description of the way that cultures interact, or how the brain makes decisions. It'd be something like "for their oil". It'd be the purpose of the war. Here's the first definition of "why:

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why
adverb
1. for what? for what reason, cause, or purpose?: Why did you behave so badly?

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The primary definition is one of purpose. The answer to "Why did you behave so badly?" is not a scientific explanation on how the brain causes certain behaviors, nor is it asking about the phycological cause of said behavior. Its asking your purpose behind your behavior. Yeah, I misread that as your counter. You're point wasn't lost tho. In that case, I do think he's right: that the proper definition of "why" is a question of purpose. Especially when contrasting it against the other interrogatives. Sure, the meaning can be others and the word can be used differently, but the most well established meaning behind the word is a question of purpose.

But to do that to test why Grandma X chose that particular tea, we'd have to have multiple Grandma X's, or put her in the exact same situations multiple times - which is impossible. Actually, I wasn't. In fact, I was specifically avoiding it. Re-read my posts without this bias and see if you can make more sense out of them. Presuming about people makes you look like an ass.

Unless we're talking about purpose... But you're answering the question of what conditions lead to thunderstorms, or how they are caused. That doesn't address any purpose to the thunderstorm occuring. The fundamental aspects of Grandma X's brain that lead to her decision making do not address the purpose for her picking that particular tea.

I dunno, what?

Because a scientific investigation relies on running controlled experiments. How are you going to control the experiment to eliminate other variables? She only did it once. You can't even repeat it. Good data. Data from a controlled experiment that has eliminated variables. Yes, they can. But I was addressing what Taq was talking about with the hurricane. I could have worded that better, and would have if I knew you were just going to quote mine me and throw it back so you could try to push me into dualism again. I'm not. Let me know now if that is that all you got is to keep repeating "Dualism" to me and I'll stop wasting my time. Right. The actual purpose for Grandma X choosing that particular tea is going to have some fundamental aspect in her brain. But without the ability to set up a controlled experiment, you're not going to be able to scientifically investigate why this particular Grandma chose that particular tea in this particular circumstance. You could figure conditions that cause brains make decisions, but that's not an answer to the purpose in this situation. The purpose relies on the idividual and you can't control that. Its not about some dualistic data that science cannot touch, its about the limits of the methodology.