We know the answer to why uniform radiation propagates due to an inverse square law. We know when and why conservation laws exist. The are many, many examples of this.

Examples like these refute your claim about the limits of science.

Claims like yours are common, though - you're probably just repeating what someone else has told you, perhaps without thinking very deeply about it.

This position seems to have arisen as a result of some of the limits of science that were encountered last century. The "shut up and calculate" mentality was a kind of reaction to the philosophical problems with quantum mechanics. But the defensive reaction that "science is just about theories that make predictions" is incoherent.

If it were really true, then science would be utterly dependent on philosophy to come up with new theories, because a prediction-generating machine isn't going to help you with that.

Ironically, the very people who make these claims would be the last to accept that progress in science is utterly dependent on philosophy - but that's the consequence of their own attempt to make a sharp delineation between, essentially, thinking and just crunching numbers.

The point is that every update of a scientific theory shifts old "why" questions to new ones. Science will not ever and does not aim to provide an answer to the ultimate question of why anything exists at all or why a given theory of everything applies rather than another (indeed, string theory for example posits a possible, if not actual theory of everything).

In this sense, in the scientific study of consciousness, we do not aim for an ultimate account of why the laws of nature give rise to consciousness. Instead, it is about explaining a natural phenomenon within a theoretical framework that allows us to make predictions with respect to experimental outcomes.

I don't see how any of that is relevant.

The examples I gave are so definitively answered that we can derive the relevant laws mathematically, and prove that they must apply in all universes with the necessary properties. I've provided such a derivation in this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27336901

There are many other examples along these lines in science.

Even if scientists tomorrow decided that some variant of string theory is a more accurate model of the world than quantum field theory, it wouldn't affect these answers.

There's no aspect of the explanations of inverse square laws or conservation laws that have had their answer undermined by updates to a theory, or are less explanatory because we e.g. don't know the origin of all existence.

Science has definitively answered "why" questions in those cases, and many others.

This idea has been around for thousands of years and is similar to the central teaching of Advaita Vedanta. Indeed, we are continuing a truly great tradition of inquiry in our natural philosophy of science.

Nope, science is just shifting the perspective.

There is a nice video of Feynman about it, appropriately titled "Why":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=36GT2zI8lVA

That's an incorrect assertion based on cherry-picked evidence.

The Feynman video is a perfect example of this. He gives examples of cases where deep "why" answers aren't easily found. But those examples don't cover the entire field of science.

All you need to refute cherry-picked examples is a single counterexample. I've provided two counterexamples. I've also provided a derivation for one of them, here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27336901

The point is that science can and does answer "why" questions, and in many cases does so very definitively - so much so that we can predict behavior in other universes that we've never seen.

This is an answer to a "how" question rephrased (incorrectly) as an answer to a "why" question.

First, the "inverse square law" isn't a law in the colloquial sense (like a maximum speed limit law) where the universe is forced to obey it. Instead, "law" is just a conventional phrase indicating what the consensus among scientists is regarding certain observations.

So it's really an answer to the question of "how does [our current observations of how] radiation propagate?": "according to the inverse square law".

Future observations of radiation propagation might run completely contrary to those we've had up to now, and it is scientific explanations that will have to be modified to accommodate those observations.

But the inverse square law does not explain why radiation has been observed to propagate in this way.

For such an answer you'd have to resort to a much grander explanation of the universe, involving all sorts of other theories involving many other observations, back to the big bang, which is not yet fully understood and may never be (even if we assume that the big bang theory itself won't be replaced by some other origin theory in the future, and not to mention what happened "before" the big bang, which may be even more impenetrable still).

But even were there to be some comprehensive "theory of everything" (in the larger sense), that doesn't mean the why of it has been explained, as there'll still be open questions like: "why something rather than nothing?" or "why this universe and not another?"

"But," some may object, "I just wanted to know why radiation propagates as it does, not why there's something instead of nothing." Well, I'm afraid that science can't answer your little question without answering the big questions. Religion or philosophy might, but they're also seen as unsatisfactory to many, so such why questions might never be answerable to everyone's satisfaction.

Harder questions, like those about consciousness, are even less likely to be satisfactorily answered, as touching them immediately lands one in to the morass of assumptions, definitions, points of view, and perspectives.

Half the time people are completely speaking past each other because they've never agreed on or even stated what their definitions or assumptions are, so are going off about two or more completely different things. Consciousness itself is notoriously difficult to define, so when two or more people are talking about something that they "know it when they see it," they're bound to talk past each other half the time, whether they agree or disagree.

Some philosophers are better at setting the ground rules and making their fundamental assumptions and defintions explicit, but they're usually pretty balkanized, and you'll find plenty of other philosophers disagreeing with their assumptions and definitions.

I personally see little hope of this thorny problem ever being resolved to everyone's satisfaction, but there'll surely be plenty of arguing about it until the end of time.

That's incorrect in this case. It's a hard requirement that can easily be mathematically derived, so easily that I'll do it here:

1. The surface area of a 3D sphere, 4πr^2, is proportional to the square of the radius.

2. Radiation from a point source that is evenly radiating outward is therefore spread out over an area that increases in proportion to the square of the distance from the source.

3. Therefore, such radiation must obey an inverse square law, in any universe in which the preconditions -even radiation from a point source through 3D space - are true.

> Future observations of radiation propagation might run completely contrary to those we've had up to now

That's provably not the case, and I've just proved it beyond doubt. From this proof, we know what kind of situations are subject to this law, and can even determine what kinds of situations might not be subject to it.

A similar point applies to conservation laws, such as conservation of energy and conservation of momentum. Noether's theorem shows us that such conservation laws must hold, again in any universe where the preconditions around differentiable symmetries hold.

With that in mind, I don't think the rest of your comment makes much sense. Not only does science answer "why" questions in many cases, it can answer them so definitively that we can apply that knowledge to other universes.

Same goes for the Noether theorem. It shifts the question from "why do we have certain conservation laws" to "why do we have certain symmetries".

That's not "shifting the question", that's a different question.

The point is that there is a meaningful sense, discovered by scientific study, in which we understand why there is an inverse square law for radiation.

If the examples I've given are not answers to "why" questions, how would you characterize them?

In any case, the idea that we can never know the answer to any "why" question because there's a causal chain that goes back to the creation of the universe is silly. We can understand the connection between parts of a chain without knowing where the chain came from, and that's exactly what science has done, so successfully that some people are now complaining that we don't know how the universe began.

Besides, the question of why we live in a 3D universe has a similar answer - see Max Tegmark's "On the dimensionality of spacetime": https://space.mit.edu/home/tegmark/dimensions.pdf

Given that, where do you think "I've shifted the question" now? At some point, do you not recognize that the question being asked really has no meaningful relevance to the original question?

In fact, examples like these go beyond just answering "why" questions - they tell us that this universe, and even other universes with similar properties, couldn't be any other way!

Brain conjoined-twins can do it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Craniopagus_twins

For example, there are twins that can see with each other eyes or feel each other body.

You could try, in principle, to create a chimera from your brain and a brain of some other animal.

That's not the same as directly observing someone else's consciousness. That's just two people sharing some I/O devices.

In fact, one could argue that the inability to directly observe another consciousness is a necessary condition for being an individual: the limits of your direct observation is the definition of where "you" stop and the rest of the universe (including other people) begins.

If you bother to delve into this idea you will see that there is no real boundary. Is the oxygen I breathe in part of "me"? If it gets used in a metabolic process, I would say yes. If it gets breathed straight out again less so. Are my gut bacteria part of me or not? There is more and more research that implies that they have an important effect of my well-being.

Second, I used to believe that there is no real boundary, but upon reflection realized that this is completely wrong. Not only is there a physical boundary, this boundary is essential because living systems must distinguish between themselves and the things in the universe that are potentially available to be used as resources to stay alive.

In fact, there are multiple physical boundaries in living systems at various levels of hierarchy, starting with the defining characteristic of most life on earth (by number of species, not total number of individuals or percentage of biomass) which is that it is eukaryotic and so has a boundary around the cell nucleus. Then there are cell walls, the segregation of cells into organs, and finally, your skin, which delineates a physical boundary around you. Yes, some of these boundaries are a little bit fuzzy. But that doesn't mean they don't exist.

A virus RNA in nucleus of neurons in your brain is part of you or not? Is that alive or not? Conscious or not?

The same way as an idea of a point particle breaks down in quantum physics, the idea of binary "you" and "not you" breaks down due to nature of reality.

Depends on the virus: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endogenous_retrovirus

> Is that lump of physical matter conscious or not?

Depends on the lump. The only lump of physical matter that I know with 100% certainty is conscious is me. But my consciousness produces behavior in me that is similar to behavior I observe in other lumps of physical matter. Furthermore, there's a lot of evidence that my consciousness is somehow bound to a particular physical structure, namely, my brain. So it seems reasonable to suppose that other lumps of physical matter that have brains and exhibit the kinds of behavior that I associate with my own consciousness also possess consciousness, and that lumps of physical matter that lack these things don't.

No. ERVs are part of your genome.

It looks like think something that is part of your genome is part of "you" - I won't argue that it isn't, it certainly is from one point of view. I don't plan to have children, so I have a different perspective on things.

> Though Krista and Tatiana Hogan share a brain, the two girls showed distinct personalities and behavior. One example was when Krista started drinking her juice Tatiana felt it physically going through her body. In any other set of twins the natural conclusion about the two events would be that Krista's drinking and Tatiana's reaction would be coincidental. But because Krista and Tatiana are connected at their heads, whatever the girls do they do it together.

I also recall examples where one girl does not like eating something and so the other girl can not eat it because the other can feel it.

Concept of an individual is not a fundamental property of the universe. It is an emergent, fluid and complex concept.

There are people with multiple personality disorders. There are brain conjoined twins. There are people with severed corpus callosum.

E.g. here is report about one person [1]:

> After the right and left brain are separated, each hemisphere will have its own separate perception, concepts, and impulses to act. Having two "brains" in one body can create some interesting dilemmas. When one split-brain patient dressed himself, he sometimes pulled his pants up with one hand (that side of his brain wanted to get dressed) and down with the other (this side did not). He also reported to have grabbed his wife with his left hand and shaken her violently, at which point his right hand came to her aid and grabbed the aggressive left hand. However, such conflicts are very rare. If a conflict arises, one hemisphere usually overrides the other.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Craniopagus_twins#Media [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Split-brain

How do you know? How could you possibly know?

I don't dispute that there is not a one-to-one correspondence between consciousnesses and bodies. Multiple consciousnesses could inhabit the same body (multiple personality, split brain, conjoined twins) and a single consciousness could be distributed across multiple bodies (I don't know of any examples but I can't think of any reason this should be impossible in principle). But there's a difference between receiving input from someone else's sensors and experiencing their qualia. It's the difference between, "This ice cream tastes like pistachio", and "This ice cream (which tastes like pistachio) tastes good." To demonstrate someone experiencing someone else's qualia you'd have to find an example where the two individuals had different preferences about something (like pistachio ice cream) and having one of them simultaneously experience liking it and not liking it. I don't see how that could be possible even in principle.

> there's a difference between receiving input from someone else's sensors and experiencing their qualia.

There can not be clear difference if you are not able to even fully separate two different personalities.

If distinction between personalities is fluid, then distinction between personalities qualia also has to be fluid.

> If distinction between personalities is fluid

But it isn't. It might be vague but it isn't fluid. If two personalities are distinct then they remain distinct. It might be difficult to decide whether two different kinds of behavior are manifestations of two different personalities, or the same personality behaving differently from one moment to the next. But whatever criterion you apply, the situation is not going to change from one moment to the next. This is one of the defining characteristics of personalities. It is what allows you to say that a person is the same person as they were yesterday, despite their behavior today being different in some respects from what it was yesterday.

Additionally, the process of separating parts of a brain is also continuous in time. People could be experiencing qualia when then brain is being damaged and the process could take long enough for them to register the states in between.

With regard to reports, here:

> He also reported to have grabbed his wife with his left hand and shaken her violently, at which point his right hand came to her aid and grabbed the aggressive left hand.

And here: https://youtu.be/N1Mac4FeKXg?t=124

With regard to definition of personalities - definitions created for an average case are often not sufficient to describe the reality. Quantum physics is a perfect example how reality can break old definitions.

I see that as evidence of two consciousnesses/personalities sharing one body (i.e. one set of I/O devices), not two personalities sharing qualia.

When you go to a large event such as a concert, there is an "atmosphere". Do you think this could be considered a collective consciousness? You might dismiss it straight away, but this would be like a single neuron assuming that there isn't a higher level of consciousness built on top of it (assuming that the neuron is responsible for part of the consciousness).