ThirstyFish

They are known as the "Five Ws and one H": Who, What, When, Where, Why and How. It is said that, if you have answers to all of them, you have a "complete story". There are no simple "yes" or "no" answers to these questions. They are said to give us the "facts". But, most facts are dubious at best.

At the atomic level, it is somewhat absurd to talk about Who, What, When, Where, Why and How. "Yesterday morning, in his New York apartment, in a fit of anger, John picked up and threw his desk out of the window" has no meaning whatsoever at an atomic level. Concepts such as anger and consciousness are unrepresentable at that level. Even a desk is an inane construct. There are, give or take, 100 elements which constitute the atoms that make up everything in the known universe, including John, but there is nothing distinguishing John from Jane, or a desk. Even the simple question, "Who is John?", is unanswerable. John is a mental construct. The John of two seconds ago, is not exactly the John of this moment. Why John does anything that he does, is not exactly causal in a way a third "intelligent" entity can comprehend. That too is a construct.

"Who" signifies intelligence or consciousness. Although the answer generally identifies a human being, "who?" can be extended to all living things who are capable of changing what they are doing; All living things are "intelligent" to some degree. "Which" references a selection from a finite set of things. Linguistically, "Which dog?", "Which person?", "Which book?", are all equally meaningful. "Why", the hardest of all questions to answer, often raises more questions than it answers. It either seeks a "motive" or a "consequential relationship between two events". When it comes to non-living things, causality might or might not be easy to establish; "Why did London Bridge fall down?" usually has an answer. But, when it comes to living things and their "motives", causality quickly turns into blind-guesses. Therefore, I suggest that we split "why?" into separate questions - one seeking "physical causality", the other "motives of the intelligent"...