Posted: Apr 06, 2012 12:05 pm
campermon wrote:UndercoverElephant wrote:
The explanatory gap is the "hard problem" and if you don't understand that by now then you ought to be ashamed of yourself, given the length of time you've been posting on this board.
Yes, there is always the 'hard problem'.
Science can explain the 'how' bit, but 'why' will be still there for the philosophers to muck about with.
Much in the same way we are getting pretty near to answering 'how' the universe started but have no idea 'why'.
In a way, these aren't two different questions but different aspects of the same question. One of them is about why there is any such thing as consciousness and the other is about why there is a physical universe, but the only reason we know there is a physical universe is because we're conscious of one. They are both fundamental questions about the nature of reality, and both ultimately boil down to "why does anything exist?" Put it this way: I suspect that if and when an answer is found, it will end up covering both questions.