I’m guessing that what you think is that every question has a satisfying answer — an answer that explains what we wanted explained or tells us what we wanted to know. And so my question is: why do you think that?

For the record, I don’t think it’s true, or at least I don’t see any good reason to suppose that it must be true.

Here’s an example. We can send electrons, one at a time, through a certain sort of magnetic field (one oriented “inhomogenously” in a particular direction.) The electron will respond in one of two ways: maximum upward deflection or maximum downward deflection; nothing in between. So suppose a particular electron passes through the field and is deflected upward. You ask why up rather than down.

The most widely-held view among physicists is that there is no answer. The most widely-held view is not that we just don’t know, but that which way the electron went is a matter of pure chance; nothing explains it.

Now this may be wrong, but there are serious reasons for thinking it may be right. It’s not just a matter of “We’ve tried to figure it out and we can’t.” It’s a matter of the deep way that probability is built into quantum mechanics at the very bottom. And whether it’s right or not, it’s a perfectly coherent view. So my answer to the first of your questions is that there’s plenty of room to think some questions just don’t have answers at all.

As for the cow… There may be a good answer, though I’m a philosopher and not a cowologist. But any answer will depend on details of evolutionary history, and it’s entirely possible that some of those details involve pure, random chance & mdash; a stray cosmic ray inducing an unpredictable mutation, for example. So my answer to your first question could have a bearing on your second question: if we push the “why” question back far enough, we may reach a point where answers just run out.

My understanding is that Buddhism teaches the doctrine of anatta — "no self." This doesn't mean that there aren't people in the ordinary sense. It means that there is no underyling metaphysical substance that amounts to the self. But I'm not aware of anything in Buddhism that would fairly be described as solipsism. So "the internet" got this one wrong (except for the thousands of places where it gets it right.

as for thoughts, feelings, emotions, etc., people do think, they do feel, they do have emotions. Or better, perhaps, there are thoughts, there are feelings, there are emotions. But they aren't tied together by some underyling soul or mental substance. The Scottish philosopher David Hume held a similar view. On Hume's view, a person is a "bundle of perceptions," though that's a bit too crude to get it right. In recent philosophical history, Derek Parfit developed a view that he would be the first to admit owes a great deal to Hume and to Buddhism.

As for minds and consciousnesses, it depends on what you mean. If by a "consciousness" you mean some sort of entity above and beyond the brain/body complex, I take the Buddhist view to be that there isn't such a thing. But if you want a more informed and detailed answer, you might take a look at this from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy:

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/mind-indian-buddhism/

Here's a way that might help. Suppose there are two pieces of paper in front of you. One of them is a genuine $5 bill. The other is a perfect counterfeit. In fact, suppose that it was illicitly created by the very same equipment that created the real bill. The point is that the difference between the real $5 bill and the fake isn't a matter of the physical properties of the piece of paper.

A similar point holds for the home run. There are certain things that have to happen physically for something to amount to a home run. But with a little imagination, we can tell a story on which what's "really" going on has nothing to do with baseball. It just looks for all the world like a real baseball game. But to be a home run, the physical events have to be part of an honest-to-Babe-Ruth baseball game. Without the right intentions, rule-following, etc., no set of physical events amounts to a baseball game. There are physical regularities in a baseball game, but some of the most important things have to do with explicitly, intentionally, following a set of rules or norms.

Does this mean that there's something spooky about signing checks and playing baseball? I don't think that's the intent—or at least it shouldn't be, Physics has lots to say about the physics of spheres colliding with bats and so on. But physics has nothing to say about stolen bases, designated hitters, and the like.

Also: while it may be true that the immediate physical facts about the ongoing events in the stadium don't make something a home run, facts about baseball "supervene" on broadly physical facts. The difference between a real home run and something that merely looks like one may not be found in the physical properties of what's going on in the moment. But it's pretty plausible that there can't be a difference between a real home run and something that just looks like one unless there is some physical difference somewhere in the history of what's going on right now. Even if some of the things that make home runs home runs have to do with minds, it doesn't follow that mental facts float free of physical facts.

That said, and I assume this is somewhere in the ballpark (heh...) of Prinkard's point, no amount of sheerly physics-y knowledge will add up to an understanding of baseball. Or paying a bill. Or meaning what you say. Prinkard is pointing to the way that norms, rules and practices enter into making certain things and events that things and events they are.

When I was a young man, I knew someone who was, in the phrase that might have been used at that time, "mildly retarded." He was married. And he understood his condition. And he struck me as a happy man. He certainly wasn't leading a life of misery.

In the neighborhood where I now live, there is a young man who is even more intellectually challenged. I doubt that he understands his condition. But he does not strike me as unhappy at all. To be sure, he lives a simple life. And no: he couldn't live on his own. And he also won't have "accomplishments" in the sense you have in mind. But near as I can tell, he's not miserable at all. He's happy. In his case, I don't think marriage is an issue. But the larger point is the important one: intellectual ability and happiness are quite different things. There are sad, miserable geniuses and thriving, happy people whose IQ scores are well below 100.

So what I'm saying is that I don't accept the premise of your question.

If the woman meant (a) "I can't utter the word no in response to any request from you," then she can't abide by her companion's request (to say "no") without falsifying what she has just said. Still, I agree with you that there's no paradox here. The woman can abide by the request to say "no" by saying "no" in response to it. As far as I can see, the appearance of paradox depends on supposing that the woman meant both (a) and also (b) "I can't deny any request from you." But, as you suggest, she can't have meant both (a) and (b). All that follows is that (a) and (b) can't both be true if her companion asks her to say "no." Nothing especially interesting about that.

It is possible to say, just as you do, that the US legal system has been designed to try to get us justice, we hope, where and when it is to be had and to the extent that it can be had. We can say that what the legal system gives us is not always perfect justice for all parties, as one might very well think in the Cosby case, for obvious reasons. There were over fifty allegations made against Cosby, in addition to the ones that resulted in the cases leading to Cosby’s convictions in Pennsylvania. The mountain of indirect and other evidence is more than enough to convince reasonable people that Cosby should indeed have been convicted on at least some of the charges that were overturned by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court in 2021. But the Court took into account the fact that the Attorney General of Pennsylvania had promised Cosby that there would be no criminal prosecution if Cosby would testify in a civil lawsuit, which Cosby did. The Attorney General then prosecuted Cosby anyway, using some of the testimony from the civil case. What six out of seven of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court justices found was that Cosby's due process rights had been violated as a result. The evidence from the civil case amounted to a kind of self-incrimination. The Court’s finding is not in itself an unreasonable one, and the purpose of due process protections is also a reasonable one, as it serves justice according to the Fifth Amendment of the US Constitution and other resulting provisions. So justice was done in this case, it could be said, and the CNN commentator was wrong. It could also be said that Cosby escaped on a “merely” procedural issue. In some of the other allegations against Cosby in other States the issue was a statute of limitations, which is also procedural. (We should not slide from "procedural" to "merely procedural" and then to "unimportant, trivial, and having nothing to do with justice.") So the justice that should have been delivered was not delivered, a very serious matter indeed. But as the law stands the due process violations were enough to counterbalance the probable outcome. The decision to respect that balance was made in the interests of justice and the existence of a fair and universal functioning judicial system. There are not two "logics" here, one of law and one of justice. What we have overall is a wider justice in the case, representing a success for the judicial system as a whole, but an almost intolerable injustice in the narrower sense in the particular case. That is the moral, I think. The wider and narrower considerations of justice must both be considered, but justice is what both are aiming it. It can often be tempting to wish that the narrower considerations would in some particular case override the requirements of the overall judicial system, but that is a mistake, unless the procedural commitments of the system are themselves unjust. It also occurs to me that a special rule to override procedural considerations could be contemplated for very exceptional cases of a manifest injustice, but it would be a nightmare to write. Which cases are cases of manifest injustice, and how do we decide? We would seem to be trying to duplicate the legal system here.