Why we shouldn't ask why

Humans are a curious bunch. We love to figure out how things work, where things are, and what people are like. When we hear on the news that a bomb has gone off or a plane has gone down, or a robbery has occurred, we usually want know more. Who set off the bomb? Where did the plane crash? What was taken during the robbery?

But there is one question that cuts right to the heart of things; “why?”.

When we ask “why” we are usually trying to determine the reason or motivation that lead to an event. For every day events, it usually seems easy to figure out why something happens. Why does the sun set? Because the earth rotates on an axis. Why does the tide change? Because the moons gravity exerts an influence on the ocean.

But these answers do not actually explain why these things happen, simply how they happen. If you take the word why to mean “for what purpose” and the word how to mean “by what means”, it becomes clear that the tilt of the earth’s axis explains how, and not why, the sun appears to set.

This is a semantic argument for sure, but it highlights an important distinction. If asking “why” is taken to be an inquiry into the purpose of some event, than it stands to reason to only pose this question when discussing the actions of sentient beings. In order for an action to have a purpose, the perpetrator of that action must be able to envision the outcome of the action beforehand and decide to bring that outcome about. When the moon pulls on the oceans, it does not due so in order to accomplish a goal, it simply happens to have a gravitational field that affects the oceans in a certain way.

In other words, only actions carried out by conscious entities can be said to have a purpose, and it is of these actions only that we can logically ask “why?”. And here we arrive at one of my main points. If you accept the fact that consciousness arises from a complex biological system, than it is clear that consciousness could not have existed before such biological systems existed. And for this reason, no events that occurred before the advent of biological systems can be said to have any purpose. If no consciousness existed to envision or intend the events that eventually lead to the appearance of consciousness, than such events cannot be said to have occurred for any reason. Clearly, these events occurred by some process, but that process was not initiated with any intent behind it.

And so, to ask why does life exist is entirely illogical. Asking how life came to exist makes sense, and this question is being considered by scientists the world over who study early microbial life. But it is ridiculous to ask what the purpose or intent of life is, because the processes which lead to the existence of life were set about long before any consciousness existed to impose an intention or purpose upon them.
Obviously many religious people would claim that the purpose of life was decided upon by God, whose existence pre-dates the physical universe. But consciousness as we understand it results from physical phenomena, and so it seems impossible that consciousness could pre-date the physical universe itself. Many have argued that there must be some “first-mover” which initiated the existence of the universe, but there is no reason to believe this “first-mover” was a conscious being.


Why does the universe exist? Why do we as a species exist? These questions have never, and I believe will never, be answered. Science has brought us closer to understanding how the amazing things that exist came to be, but to try and derive the purpose for which these things were brought about is apparently an exercise in futility. For certain, people will continue to ask these questions and search for answers. I hope that someday answers are found, but I see no reason to believe that they will be.

Even the idea of asking why about the actions of conscious beings is precarious. Although it appears that people and animals are in control of their behavior, this idea is being continually eroded by new discoveries in the fields of psychology and neuroscience. We may believe that we know the purposes behind our actions, but it seems increasingly possible that our free will is a complex illusion.

At first this idea may seem preposterous. But it follows logically from the previous argument. Simple physical interactions (like the pull of the moon on the oceans) cannot be said to have a purpose or intent behind them. But consciousness, the things that endows actions with a purpose, is itself the result of physical processes. While we may seemingly intend to perform an action, the individual neurons that fire during the performance of that action are not aware of any underlying purpose for their activity.

If I were to decide, for example, to throw a baseball, I would first have to determine which actions I have to take in order to propel the ball through the air. These determinations would happen largely on an unconscious level, and they would result in me having a sense of intending to throw the ball. Once I have carried out the steps required to pick the ball up and send it flying through the air, it could be said that I performed these steps for the purpose of throwing the ball.

But all of the neurological processes involved in my decision to throw the ball were carried out unconsciously, with no individual cells aware of the reason for their activity. Not only are the individual physical components of consciousness excluded from the very awareness that consciousness brings about, but the drives and motivations of conscious beings are pre-determined by evolution.

And so we as individuals have an apparent degree of freedom to make choices, but the overall process of life seems to be as devoid of reason as any other physical process. Just as galaxies and planets form simply because the laws of physics dictate that they will form in such a way, life forms propagate themselves simply because physical processes have lead to a chain reaction which causes them to do so. The addition of consciousness into the equation simply allows for these processes to be observed, but in no way necessitates that there be any fundamental purpose guiding the actions of life forms.