If we know we exist why don't we know why we exist and how we existed?

But we don’t we? Procreation, generation of the species, is both the why and how. I bet you want us to be more existential than that though.

Why should we?

Why not? It’s our genetic imperative. We are adaptive creatures.

How do you know that we exist? If all of your thoughts are electrical impulses and everything that you feel is the result of a chemical reaction in your brain… how do you know that you’re not just your own imagination? And how can you possibly know that anyone else is real?

Maybe you should have taken the BLUE pill.

We exist, Descartes established that, as ourselves. Whether everything else does is a whole issue in its own right, but since we’re all in the same field of existence, that’s irrelevant. But we don’t know because we aren’t meant to know at this time. I feel that mankind is mentally unprepared for this, I feel we’ll learn the truth in Nirvana.

“Cogito ergo sum.” (I think therefore I am.) A quote attributed to Rene Descartes…..or was it Homer Simpson? Anyway yeah, sums up nicely my opinion on this, I think.

It could be that there is no reason. That we are just the result of chance in the chaos.

We don’t know why or how because to know these things we need history. We don’t have the history on these things because we are evolving creatures that evolved from beings that did not have the aptitude to understand such things or to record those ideas to pass down and end up in our possession. To know these things we would have had to start existing with nothing before us and with the ability to understand out situation. Our ancestors where not able to do this.

Simply put, we evolved from microorganisms that had no way to comprehend anything including their existence. Our mental abilities did not suddenly appear; they progressed over millions of years of evolution.

Let me ask you a question. Is there anything to give you a reason to believe we should know why and how we exist? Perhaps we exist in order to drive ourselves crazy wondering about why we exist? Maybe we exist so that the holey diaper bugs have a reason for sloe gin fizzes.

The reason is perhaps because we can actually ask the question.

Dig around here.

And maybe read here.

Both positions are articulated elsewhere. These are just what are at hand.