> You just shifted the question from "Why do we have an inverse square law for radiation" to "Why do we live in a 3d universe".
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.
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!
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!