Summations Only

Really? because it seems to me that you have been asking meaningless questions about unevidenced purposes. When you ask "Why are we here?" whose purpose are you seeking as an answer to that question? Because there is no evidence of anything (i.e, trolls in this particular instance) with this purpose. When you ask "Why are we here?" whose purpose are you seeking?If you are seeking my stated purpose or yours or the the thoughts of any other purposeful being which demonstrably exists then we can physically investigate the 'why' of that purpose by investigating physical brains and suchlike can't we?If you are seeking the purpose of some immaterial entity such as some godly being or some cosmic consciousness or an immaterial soul that exists independently of one's brain - Then you are asking questions of purpose for things which we have no reason to believe exist as purposeful agents. You might as well ask why God rested on Sunday or why Immaterial Pink Unicorns prefer cricket to rugby. Then do you accept that the questions of purpose which religion purports to answer are meaningless questions? Whose purpose are religious answers seeking to determine?

Yes - It demands (assumes?) that there is a purposeful agent that is not itself subject to physical cause and effect.Whose purpose are the "woo inspired" religious questions seeking?

You might be right. But I optimistically have higher hopes for Chuck. And even when my optimism fails me I try to think of the others reading the thread that might be swayed by better arguments.But - Ultimately - I am here for my own entertainment and people like Chuck, Buz etc. provide a useful foil for that. Plus I am increasingly fond of the silly but familiar devils (Chuck, Buz, ICANT, Dawn Bertot etc.) no matter how silly I think they might be.

But whose purpose are you seeking when you ask that question? And why cannot the cause of this purpose be investigated?I think Cavediver has best summed up the problems with the teleological approach you seem to be advocating: Message 30This thread seems to have revealed that any insistence that "why" questions cannot be answered by science is ultimately based on the assumption that there is some non-physical thing imposing purpose on the physical world. Whether it is the assumption that human minds are dualistic in the sense of not being reducible to physical brains or the assumption that there exists some materially inexplicable higher being imposing purpose - That is what it boils down to.

This seems to be the main reason for invoking or assuming conscious purpose in the sort of cases under discussion.

As has been pointed out - Nobody is saying this at all. There are lots of questions science cannot answer. Whether or not they are phrased as 'Why' questions has little to do with anything. I would not look to science to answer questions of morality or aesthetics or to address whether or not one epistemology can be considered as superior to another etc.But - Most relevant to this thread - Science certainly cannot address questions pertaining to things that are not in any way demonstrably real. But the inability for science to address questions pertaining to evidentially baseless conjectures has absolutely nothing to do with the questions being formatted as ‘why’ questions.How vampires transform into bats. Where hell is. When it was that Apollo fell off of his chariot. Who made unicorns pink. Which one of the seven dwarfs most likes cheese. Etc. etc. None of these are 'why' questions. None of these questions can be addressed by science because none of these entities demonstrably exist.Likewise if you are going to ask "Why is the sky blue?" and insist that this question pertain to some sort of conscious purpose you must first demonstrate that there is some reason to think that there is a purposeful agent behind the colour of the sky.Otherwise your question is as meaningless as any other question (whether it be 'how' or 'who' or 'what' or 'when'....) pertaining to any other unevidenced entity isn't it?

I can think of lots of reasons people might be inclined to invoke such purpose. None of them anything other than demonstrably misleading in terms of reliability of conclusion however. It might well be all but inevitable that humans will ask silly questions and provide themselves with emotionally satisfying answers. Because the same sort of woo has a long record of failure and the methods of science are designed to eliminate as much as possible the human tendency to woo ourselves with such woo.Science is the most reliable method we have of objectively seeking an answer to the question of why it is humans seek woo woo answers to invented questions.

I think we have already established in this thread that those who deny that science can investigate the causes of human purpose are adopting an evidentially unjustifiable position on the mind-body issue.As long as such purpose is a product of physical brains there is, in principle, no reason science cannot study it and answer the question as to 'why' people have the purposes that they state and/or exhibit.

As has been discussed numerous times elsewhere previously - Falling back on the argument "Well you can't prove it isn't true" and then insisting that the claim in question be taken seriously on that basis is just about the last gasp of a discredited argument.

I think Gould's "Non Overlapping Magesteria" has a lot to answer for on this. I doubt he invented the whole How Vs Why thing that so many non-fundamentalist theists/deists cling to. But he certainly seems to have amplified the whole thing.Here is a link on NOMA for the uninitiated.It all sounds very reasonable superficially. But falls apart upon any serious analysis.

Well OK. But this thread was borne from RAZ's rather explicit assertion that "The proper use of "why" is to answer questions of purpose". And his insistence that science doesn't address 'why' questions on that basis.Given that science demonstrably does address 'why' questions, including some pertaining to purpose where a purposeful agent demonstrably exists - This is factually wrong and blatant nonsense. I think we have established in this thread that the type of answers that science cannot provide, but which religion claims to, are answers to those questions which pertain to things which are not demonstrably real.It doesn't matter whether the question is who, what, where, when, why etc. It matters whether it pertains to something that demonstrably exists. The sort of 'why' questions that religions claim to answer are those where the assumed purpose of some un-evidenced entity (whether a higher being or the dualistically assumed disembodied minds of men) is implicit.

So all religion is essentially a "something of the gaps"........?

The only context RAZ ever mentioned was the context of science and it's inability to answer 'why' questions because he had already defined 'why' questions as pertaining to purpose. Yet in RAZ's actual posts questions like 'Why are plants green' and 'Why is the sky blue?' are being pointlessly and clumsily rephrased as 'How is the sky blue?' and 'How are plants green'.Did you actually read his posts in the thread this one is a spin-off from? An example of science studying human purpose? Isn't that what a large part of psychology is innately about? Are you sure that you are not conflating practical limitations with what science can in principle study? The fact that we are not all walking around with sophisticated MRI scanners attached to our heads recording every neurological event doesn't mean that our thoughts and associated purposes are inherently beyond the scope of scientific enquiry (not unless you are adopting the dualistic position already discussed anyway) You blatantly are conflating existing practical limitations with what science can in principle explore. Why can't we scientifically investigate a "paricular human's purpose for doing a particular thing"......? Imagine everyone walking around with tiny MRI recorders in their head sending the results back to a lab. These 'why' questions that you are talking about above - Whose purpose are you referring to exactly?

OK. I suppose it boils down to being able to be objectively evidenced (in principle even if not in practise for mundane reasons of technological limitation or absence of equipment or whatever). Scientific hypotheses are not limited to that which is demonstrably real. But scientific answers are. Given the thread topic - Pointing out that the reason science cannot answer questions pertaining to the purpose of purposeful agents which don't demonstrably exist is because they don't demonstrably exist seems fair enough. Call it tautological if you will. But there seem to be enough people who don't realise this and who want to grant 'why' questions some special status for the point to be relevant. Science cannot answer who what when or why questions about the motives or actions of imagined entities. The phraseology as 'why' has nothing to do with it.When people ask "why" in such a way that religion can (apparently) provide an answer but science cannot whose purpose are they purporting to have found answers for? For every purposeful "why" there must be an agent of purpose must there not? And if they are found to be false models they will be abandoned by science. If they are found to be in accordance with reality then science will have provided answers about the nature of these things. Scientific hypotheses are not limited to that which is demonstrably real. But scientific answers are.We can all ask "are quarks real or just models borne of our perceptual limitations". But equally we can ask "are bananas real of just models borne of perceptual limitations". But what matters in both cases is that the "model" is based on demonstrable aspects of reality. Whether there is or not can you explain how anyone claiming to know anything about this immaterial reality could possibly do so?

I think you are being particularly charitable to RAZ and that your interpretation of his position isn't justified by his actual responses to bluegenes. Why don't you explicitly ask RAZ himself if science can and does answer 'why' questions and if it does what sort of 'why' questions it can and cannot answer? Whose purpose? If there is purpose about which questions can be asked then there must be an agent capable of purpose behind the phenomenon in question must there not? If you ask "Why are plants green?" and demand an answer involving purpose there must be an agent of purpose behind the colour of plants in order to make the question meaningful - Right? It is entirely the point. Hold on - Are you seriously claiming that science cannot investigate and answer questions pertaining to individual one-off events? Even if all the data pertaining to that event has been recorded? Science can and does study why it is that people come up with teleological answers to questions of why natural events happen. With detailed enough knowledge, recorded neuron level information of brain activity and full data of sensory input, why not?You are simply going down the substance dualist path without realising it......