What is the meaning of "There are questions that science can't answer"?

Question

I've recently come across several statements to the effect "there are questions science can't answer", mostly from proponents of religion and mysticism, but also from scientists and secular philosophers as well.

However it seemed to me that there was an inherent contradiction in statements of the type "Science doesn't have all the answers" or "Science can't answer all questions". This is hinged on what is meant by "answering a question". It seems to me that to answer any significant question is to provide 2 things:

• An accurate and objective explanation of the current state of affairs, in terms of relationships, causes and effects.

• Based on that explanation, a method for making decisions if one is faced with future scenarios similar to or related to the current state of affairs, and for predicting future states of affairs with a certain amount probability, i.e the explanation is useful for future purposes.

But then if a field of inquiry is able to provide accurate, objective and useful information regarding a question, doesn't that field simply become part of science?

As examples:

• If some school of mysticism is demonstrated to truly improve the happiness and well being of it's practitioners, then wouldn't that school's mystical teachings simply be incorporated into mainstream psychology and psychotherapy?
• Similarly, if a political ideology is proven to provide better economic conditions and less crime, less pollution, etc...then this ideology's principles would become an accepted part of social sciences?

To put it more simply: Science has all the answers, because science IS anything that can provide objective and useful answers to a question.

Am I not talking about the demarcation problem per-se (at I least I think I am not), because even disciplines which are agreed upon as failing various demarcation criteria (such as astrology or intelligent design) are still trying (and failing) to be scientific in the sense I mentioned above. If they did start to provide answers, science would have to take them into account. Moreover, various philosophical schools of ethics are trying to be scientific in their explanatory framework, they are just not able to provide verifiable and falsifiable statements to prove their precepts (and probably would do so if possible).

My questions then are:

1. Per those who claim that science can't answer all questions, what type of question are they talking about? Do they have a demarcation criteria for such questions? (I'm not asking for examples, there are already plenty in the links I posted above).

2. If a field starts providing objective, accurate answers, doesn't it just become a subfield of science?

3. Is there a second demarcation problem between "carckpot" pseudosciences (such as astrology or numerology) which are providing the wrong answers and legitimate fields of inquiry (such as political theory or ethics) which are trying to provide answers but so far have failed to provide verifiable and falsifiable statements or accurate predictions?

Answer 1

For 1) I would go with Wittgenstein's notion that some things cannot be said but must be shown, and the most basic aspects of ethics are among those. Science might tell us why we think killing one another is wrong, but it will not tell us whether that sense is right or not. At some point you have to give in to some sense of intuitive faith, and just accept deep moral sense, but as consistent as the answer might be from human to human, it is not scientific, because it is not discovered, it is just decided irrespective of experience. Science might say that now is the time to start thinning the population aggressively, or we will go extinct. And we would ignore it based upon genetic intuition.

About 2) Feyerabend would say yes, but he is kind of alone in insisting all demarcation criteria are ultimately flawed, and we just shouldn't choose one. From most normal perspectives, science has to be sort of democratic in the sense that it can be reasonably understood by everyone with a given level of intelligence.

(Feyerabend's primary counterexample to this is Chinese medicine that involves sensing 'chi', which cannot generally be felt by everyone, and is not detectable by any physical device. The effectiveness of the resulting medicine proves, for him, this is science despite the presence of a privileged perspective. But we know how other forms of highly articulated placebos, like hypnosis or narrative therapies, can be more effective than better-grounded medicine. And we know privileged authority amplifies their effects ('sensitive-looking' women and older men make better therapists).)

If we accept that (rejecting the counterexample as otherwise explained), an oracle from heaven that simply always gave the correct answer, would, in that sense, not be scientific, because it is privileged access to truth that is not readily passed along or elaborated for other people, or future understanding.

That same sense applies to 3). I would say that making sense is scientific, whether or not you get to the point of application. If nothing else, formal theoretical manipulation proceeding from shared intuition is mathematics, and that is still science of a sort.

The rest of 3) seems equally obvious. The predictions of ethics and other 'modal' disciplines (religion, literary theory, depth psychology) cannot be disproven in the way that the predictions of astrology can, because they are always suspended in modal logic, implicity wrapped in 'oughts' or 'mights' or 'woulds'. So I am not sure we need a different demarcation criterion, because the nature of the predictions themselves are different and the methods of challenge are totally disjoint. If I am predicting a certain class of people are going to have better communication skills during a given week because of the position of Mercury relative to the house of their birth, that is a statistical statement that can be disproven. But I cannot prove infanticide is wrong without some context.

The predictions of political and historical theories can be tested. The fact that failure does not dissuade anyone, is human psychology dismissing uncomfortable logic, rather than some magical difference between a fact and an opinion. Other weak disciplines like social psychology are still required to beat the odds, and they manage to do so by checking themselves against the odds in artificially statistical inquiries. So whenever you are addressing a prediction, wrong is wrong and weak theories should give way to more successful ones, but they can only do so when better ones actually exist.

Answer 2

When you say that answering a question involves giving an objective explanation of the current state of affairs in terms of causes and effects, you are implying that questions that do not concern objective states of affair or facts are meaningless. This begs the question against non-scientific Q/A. Questions that science could not answer could be precisely those that do not fall under this scope, for example ethical or metaphysical questions.

Your examples of a succesful mystic theory/political ideology assumes that ethical and metaphysical questions could be amenable to factual questions but again this is question begging. How would you evaluate happiness objectively, without presupposing a definition of happiness in factual terms? And how would you know that your definition is the right one? Relying on the success of your happiness evaluation would be circular. All you can know is that your framework is succesful by its own standards but the viability of these standards (that happiness thus defined is really what we should aim at) would remain disputable. You'd have a sub-field of science indeed, but the foundations of the field (including the route from facts to values) would remain open to criticism.

This is actually a problem for science as a whole. When a conceptual framework happens to answer questions in a systematic, objective and empirically accurate way, then indeed you can call it science. However there always remains questions regarding the foundations of this conceptual framework (what is a cause? An explanation? A fact? Can we distinguish facts from theoretical assumptions? Theoretical/methodological principles from metaphysical assumptions? From values/aims/intentions? What is truth? Etc.). These are not scientific questions, but the philosophy of science has shown that there is no straightforward answers and that facts, theories, metaphysical assumptions and values are much more interwined than one could naively think. There is always room for questioning the foundations of any scientific field, and these are the questions that science cannot answer.

Your question seems to concern the use of such arguments to promote religious or magical thinking. Indeed religion often attempts to answer metaphysical and ethical questions, and this is the kind of questions science doesn't directly answer (for the reasons mentioned above: they are implied in the very foundations of science). However the fact that science doesn't answer everything certainly doesn't imply that religion or mystical intuition does, and arguably, dogmatism is no more desirable in ethics and metaphysics than it is concerning factual judgments.

Answer 3

One simple kind of question that science cannot answer because of the methodologies involved (in sciences) but yet can be known certainly by at least the subject, is the content of the mind. Science is not capable of analyzing ideas. I.e. it works by using ideas, but cannot empirically or objectively analyze certain ideas and or thoughts. For example, does the idea of redness appeal to this man? One can only indirectly try to ascertain this, for example by asking the person and looking at his physiological responses, however this is still not a direct observation of the content of the mind. So in general science can only study that which is observable to anyone in some way. 1+1=2 is observable by the definitions that are available to everyone. There exist things which are not observable to everyone in principle.

Answer 4

It means whatever you want it to mean, but:

I take it to mean that science is largely amoral. Science, at it's most basic, is a method of piecing together how objective reality works. What it doesn't do is answer moral or ethical questions.

Answer 5

I asked in comments for a definition of science for purposes of this question/answer, because the best answer to your question varies depending on which definition of science is the most meaningful to you. Reproducing your answer below:

...because science IS anything that can provide objective an useful answers to a question.

By that definition, your first question is easy: "But then if a field of inquiry is able to provide accurate, objective and useful information regarding a question, doesn't that field simply become part of science?" The answer is "yes, because you defined science to be as such."

What I do find interesting is the natural corollary to this, which is that science cannot answer questions which cannot be phrased objectively. Subjective questions are those whose answer must necessarily be relative to the self. By the definition provided, science cannot answer these questions because science only answers objective questions with objective answers. Science can peel layers away from the Self, but it cannot actually reference it per the particular definition we are using here. Doing so would violate its objectivity.

One question which must be important, by this definition, for which science cannot have an answer is "Are there any questions which cannot be phrased objectively that matter to me?" Such a question is inherently subjective by my word choice. I have found sidestepping this sort of question particularly tricky, so there is a high likelyhood that it qualifies as "a question science can't answer" from your point of view.

Answer 6

In 19th century a famous speech was given by Du Bois-Reymond entitled "Limits of our knowledge of nature". Its last passage culminates in confronting "ignoramus"(we do not know) with "ignorabimus" (we will never know).

Du Bois-Reymond stays completely in the domain of science, mysticism or spirituality was not his topic. For him, two scientific questions remain unanswerable: 1. What are matter and force? 2. How to derive consciousness from its material substrate?

In modern terms the first question could be stated as the search for the origin of energy at start of the cosmic evolution? The second as the explanation of subjective feeling on the basis of its neurological substrate. In short: How to explain mental properties by the methods of neuroscience?

Du Bois concludes: But as regards the enigma what matter and force are and how they are able to conceive, he [the investigator of Nature] must resign himself once for all to the far more difficult confession - "IGNORABIMUS!"

https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Popular_Science_Monthly/Volume_5/May_1874/The_Limits_of_our_Knowledge_of_Nature

Note. The linked English translation of the German text contains an error. I tried to correct it above.

Answer 7

Generally and in most practical usages I've come across, it means that a particular kind of (generally unstated) "science", namely, empricism, can't answer (because they rely on something subjective or "on faith").

This is the problem with both religion and science: they both favor their own methods and cannot or do not breach into each other`s domains.

Answer 8

Is science just a more refined and effective method of philosophy? As I explained in my answer to that question, philosophers tend to disagree on the matter and are (more or less) split between two camps here: Atheistic naturalists and its opponents.

According to Atheistic naturalists, only those questions that involves whatever exists beyond the observable, testable segments of the universe can't be answered be science. However, also according to Atheistic naturalists, such questions are fundamentally unknowable, can't be answered with any degree of reliability by any non-scientific means either and are therefore moot.

Others, who reject Atheistic naturalism, typically argue either that moral questions (and often questions of meta-physics) cannot be answered by science. Religion or philosophy are usually invoked to either answer such questions or to qualify them as unknowable.

Answer 9

It seems to me that to answer any significant question is to provide 2 things:

An accurate and objective explanation of the current state of affairs, in terms of relationships, causes and effects.

Your first requirement may not be wrong, if it includes the ideas that people have about what they should so and the means available to do it.

Based on that explanation, a method for making decisions if one is faced with future scenarios similar to or related to the current state of affairs, and for predicting future states of affairs with a certain amount probability, i.e the explanation is useful for future purposes.

This requirement is wrong. What will happen in the future depends on what knowledge we will have in the future. If we knew what knowledge we will have in the future we would already have it, and we don't. So predicting future states of affairs is impossible in problems where people are involved.

You ask for a demarcation criterion between rational and irrational ideas. It is possible for a person to adopt an idea that stops the correction of errors in some or all of his ideas. One example of this is not holding claims to make predictions to a high enough standard. People who think astrology is valid are making this mistake since its predictions are either vague, or rely on information supplied by the person for whom the prediction is being made.

You might want to read "The Beginning of Infinity" by David Deutsch for more on the issues raised by this question.