I thought science does not answer "Why?"
Quoting Daniel Sjöstedt
But if somebody asks why things are not another way, the response he/she will get is "Because of A". But then there's the question, "Why A?". Whatever response you get, there's the question why that is the case. And so on. It seems we have an infinite regress and no definitive, conclusive answer to any "Why?".
No matter what answers science--or any kind of inquiry--produces, "Why?" remains. Why does 2 + 2 = 4? Whatever the answer to that is, "Why?". And so on.
I thought that science, therefore, just focuses on what is and ignores or dodges "Why?".
Evolutionary theory does indeed answer the question of why things act as they do.
But if somebody asks why things are not another way, the response he/she will get is "Because of A". But then there's the question, "Why A?". Whatever response you get, there's the question why that is the case. And so on. It seems we have an infinite regress and no definitive, conclusive answer to any "Why?".
No matter what answers science--or any kind of inquiry--produces, "Why?" remains. Why does 2 + 2 = 4? Whatever the answer to that is, "Why?". And so on.
I thought that science, therefore, just focuses on what is and ignores or dodges "Why?".
Comments (75)
I would think that, when pelted with a series of "why" questions, scientists would just answer until their explanations bottomed out at whatever level of analysis at which they were working. For instance, a biochemist might be able to give an exquisitely detailed explanation of some biochemical reaction, but keep asking "why" long enough, and he will just say "that's a matter for physics to answer."
It's a matter of emphasis. In the end, science can't avoid teleology in some form. Analysis must break causality into two general parts - the what part which covers material and efficient cause, and the why part which covers formal and final cause.
But scientific explanation as a social activity brings society the most concrete rewards when it focuses on what style, or mechanistic rather than organismic, models of causality.
Forget about the reasons for things, or the design of things. We humans can supply those parts of the equation when applying scientific knowledge to creating a technological world. Just give us what type analysis that we can use to make machinery - or closed systems of material efficient causes.
So big science would be all four causes. Techno science fetishises what questions as it operates with a less ambitious, but more everyday useful, purpose.
It might be interesting to consider the origin of the word 'teleological' and why it is considered 'baggage'.
There is an interesting account of the origin of 'telos' in Aristotle's politics in an IETP article on that subject:
I think that passage also nicely ties in the ideas of 'purpose' and 'ethics', which is basic to Aristotelian ethics.
The reason that 'telos' or indeed purpose is taboo in scientific discourse, goes back to the 'scientific revolution' of Galileo and Newton, and the rejection of Aristotelian concepts that was part of this. Aristotelean physics, which was indeed archaic and factually incorrect in most respects, also incorporated the idea of 'telos', a classic example being that stones are naturally inclined to be drawn towards the Earth as that is their 'telos'. But along with the rejection of such Aristotelian concepts from physics, there was also a general rejection of the Scholastic metaphysics in which these ideas were embedded, including the ideas of 'formal' and 'final' ends.
With the advent of scientific materialism, explanations were sought which could understood solely in terms of physical, material and efficient causation. That is how the notion of 'purpose' came to be rejected entirely from the scientific account. And that is what being 'shorn of teleological baggage' means, isn't it?
Quoting WISDOMfromPO-MO
There are two answers to the question 'why is the water boiling'. One is: it has been heated to 100 degrees celsius, and as the kettle is at sea level, that is causing it to boil'.
The other is: 'because I want to make tea'.
They're both valid answers.
Well, for one thing, physics probably will never be complete. Most likely (most here probably would agree), there is an infinite regress, even within physics. Something unexplained will be explained by a new theory, invoking new facts. But then those new facts call for explanation...and so on, ad infinitum.
But it's still valid to say that physics or other science answers a "Why?" question, when it explains one fact in terms of other facts. It certainly isn't an ultimate "Why" answer, but it's still a "Why"-in-terms-of-something-else answer. That's all I'd ask for in physics or other science.
Sure. Physics will probably never get to the end of its own "Why" explanations, an infinite-regress of them. ...and can't apply to metaphysics at all.
But I claim that, not in physics, but in metaphysics, there is an end to the "Why" explanations. ...because, in the metaphysics that I propose, it's all based on something inevitable and not needing explanation. So, metaphysically, it's all explained. (...even though that probably can't be achieved within physics)
It can be demnstrated, based on the axioms of the integer number system, and the definition of the numbers,
It can be regarded as an "if'then" fact, with the "if" clause consisting of the integer number axioms and the definitions of the integers in terms of those axioms.
It can be regarded as a mathematical theorem, an if-then fact.
...whose "if" clause, as I said, consists of the axioms of the integer numbers, for the operations of multiplication and addition...and the definitions of the integers in terms of those axioms.
In terms of those axioms:
0 is the additive identity (if I remember the right word). 1 is the multiplicative identity. From those, all the numbers can be defined, by addition. And 2 + 2 = 4 can be demonstrated in the same way.
2+2=4 is true if the integer number axioms are true, and if the numbers are defined as described above. So 2 + 2 = 4 can be regarded as an "if-then" statement, whose "if" clause includes, but isn't isn't limited to, a set of axioms. (what that "if" clause also includes is the definitions of the integers as described above.) The "then" clause is that the result is 4.
In the metaphysics that I propose, our whole physical world is a system of inter-referring if-then statements, and nothing more.
Science can't answer an ultimate "Why?", but it can answer relative "Why", explaining one physical fact in terms of other physical facts, which is usually all that's asked or needed or expected.
Michael Ossipoff
The entire physical world consists of nothing more than statements? That's an odd sort of metaphysics
(I've gone through this post of mine, changing "statements" to "facts". "Facts is what I've meant when saying "statements". Replace "statements" with "facts" in my posts on this topic.)
Yes, but everything we experience or observe can be explained in that way.
Phyisical laws are if-facts that are part of if-then facts. A physical laws is an if-fact that relates some other facts called quantity-values. Together, the physical law and some of the quantity-values that it relates are the if-clause of an if-then fact. ...whose "then" clause consists of values for the other quantities that the physical law includes in its stated relation.
If-then facts involving physical laws and the quantities that they relate. The if-then facts with those as its "if" clause. Mathematical theorems whose "if" clause includes axioms and other if-facts.
Such an if-then system can fully describe a physical world. ...and is consistent with our experiences and observations.
Of course we experience the physics mostly via what physicists tell us they've found. But if-then applies to ordinary statements and observations too:
Say I tell you that there's a traffic roundabout at 34th & Vine. That's equivalent to telling you that if you go to 34th & Vine, then you'll encounter a traffic roundabout.
We're used to declarative grammar because it's convenient. We tend to believe our grammar. But I suggest that conditional grammar is what validly describes out physical world.
Michael Ossipoff
I like the video, it's a paradox. But Plato and Aristotle proved Pythagorean Idealism wrong, a long time ago, by appealing to substance dualism, and that's how we get beyond these apparent paradoxes.
A physical law is a description of the physical world, one produced by human minds, it is not the physical world itself.
Quoting Michael Ossipoff
See, the system describes the physical world, but don't you recognize a difference between the description and the thing described? How do you make this leap, to saying that the physical world is nothing more than the description?
Krauss: Well, if that hook gets you into the book that's great. But in all seriousness, I never make that claim. In fact, in the preface I tried to be really clear that you can keep asking "Why?" forever. At some level there might be ultimate questions that we can't answer, but if we can answer the "How?" questions, we should, because those are the questions that matter. And it may just be an infinite set of questions, but what I point out at the end of the book is that the multiverse may resolve all of those questions. From Aristotle's prime mover to the Catholic Church's first cause, we're always driven to the idea of something eternal. If the multiverse really exists, then you could have an infinite object—infinite in time and space as opposed to our universe, which is finite. That may beg the question as to where the multiverse came from, but if it's infinite, it's infinite. You might not be able to answer that final question, and I try to be honest about that in the book. But if you can show how a set of physical mechanisms can bring about our universe, that itself is an amazing thing and it's worth celebrating. I don't ever claim to resolve that infinite regress of why-why-why-why-why; as far as I'm concerned it's turtles all the way down. The multiverse could explain it by being eternal, in the same way that God explains it by being eternal, but there's a huge difference: the multiverse is well motivated and God is just an invention of lazy minds...' (emphasis mine)
Like I said, science is ultimately not concerned with why. Above it is implied that "Why?" does not matter.
So if someone asks you why 1 +1=2, then you would reply that it is necessarily so. It has mathematical inescapability.
What then when fundamental physics discovers the same lack of alternatives? Particles like quarks and leptons simply have to be as they represent the simplest possible symmetry states. Nature can't be broken down any further. Like cubes and tetrahedrons, ultimate simplicity has mathematical inevitabilty. And that is then the why. It is just a formal constraint that something has to be what is left after everything has got broken down to the least complex possible basics.
This isn't the ordinary notion of a telic goal or purpose. But it is a scientific one. And it places a limit on infinite regress. There actually is a simplest state in the end. You wind up with quarks and leptons as they are as simple as it gets.
But the question of "Why?" remains. People want to know the truth and the complete truth. People want the whole story of reality.
Instead of playing word games saying things like "How" questions are the only ones that matter, why can't people just be honest and say that science can't answer every question we have?
This is one of the many ''problems'' I'm facing. I'm totally confused on the matter.
I think the question ''why?'' is ambiguous. It has two meanings on a superficial analysis:
1. Asks for reasons - logic
2. Asks for explanations - science
1 clearly leads to an infinite regress. We all know that. However, it's not totally unscientific in the sense that it has application after the laws of nature become established truths. The laws of nature become axioms from which other truths may be proved. Point to note is that the axioms are derived from observations - raw data from instruments.
2 is, I think, is the general objective of science - to provide explanations for phenomena. But these explanations are derived from theories/hypotheses. These too are derived from observations.
So to ask ''why?'' would be essentially asking
A) Why (reason) observations are the way they are?
B) Why (explanation) observations are the way they are?
A doesn't make sense because observations aren't propositions. So, they require explanations, not reasons.
B is problematic, similar to the problem of induction, because all we have access to are observations themselves. Any answer to B would require us to go beyond the observations and that isn't allowed in science. Perhaps it's a question for philosophy.
Quoting Wayfarer
Yes, although in some small corner of the larger scientific enterprise (namely psychology and the social sciences), purpose and intention are still legitimate areas of inquiry. I would say that, in the overall sweep of science, it has simply become unnecessary to impute a purpose or telos in explaining most phenomena. Explaining, say, why a positron behaves as it does in the presence of a magnetic field can be done without reference to the inclinations or purpose of the positron or its behavior.
Yes, and they are both answers involving causation. It is your goal to make tea, which occurs prior to making the tea. The prepared tea in the future isn't what is causing the tea to be made. It is your will in the present, that is driving the body to make tea. After all, your could end up being interrupted in your tea-making and never end up making tea.
Asking "why" isn't a problem of science. It is simply a problem of having a mind that needs an explanation for everything - to keep on acquiring knowledge, even when there isn't any more knowledge to be had. I could keep asking "why" for any religious or philosophical answer, not just answers provided by science. Why does God exist?
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If you have a proof that the fully parsimonious Idealistic metaphysics that I’ve proposed (and which I call "Skepticism") is wrong, I invite you to state it.
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Modern observations show the currently observed laws of physics operating long before there were any physicists.
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But yes, of course your life-experience possibility-story is about experience and observation.
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Physicists’ observations (and your own direct experience, and your experience of what physicists report) are of certain physical laws evidently applying.
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Possibility-stories are self-consistent. The physicists and you, when examining, experimenting, observing, and testing, will find underlying facts (physical quantities and laws) that are consistent with eachother and with your other experiences and observations.
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Humans deduce physical laws that are consistent with their observations. Humans continue to recognize a physical law if it remains consistent with observation. It’s part of your hypothetical life-experience possibility-story, consisting of a system of inter-referring “if-then”s.
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It’s enough that it describes the world that we observe, and is consistent with our experiences and observation.
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What more would you ask of an explanation?
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I didn’t say that a thing and its description are the same.
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There’s no reason to believe that the objectively-existent “things” of Materialism are other than fiction.
Yes, of course because the world's things are part of our life-experience possibility-story, we must deal with them. But this is a philosophical discussion about what is.
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What I said is that our physical world is nothing other than a system of inter-referring “if-then”s.
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Several physicists, from Michael Faraday (1844) to Max Tegmark (currently) have been saying that the physical world is consistent with a mathematical and logical system of relation, in which there’s no reason to believe in objectively-existent “stuff”. They’re right.
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Your physical world is nothing other than your experience—your life-experience possibility-story.
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Why is there that story? How could there not be, among the infinity of hypothetical possibility-stories such as I’ve described. As I’ve said, that system of hypothetical “if-then”s doesn’t and needn’t exist in any context other than its own. Its elements needn’t and don’t have any applicability, meaning or existence other than in reference to eachother.
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As for whether Materialism or Skepticism is true, let me quote something that I recently said in another topic at this forum:
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...besides, even if Materialism were true (but it isn't), worlds consisting only of systems of inter-referring hypotheticals would still inevitably be.
...an infinity of them.
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...meaning that, even if Materialism were true, a supposed Materialist nature of this particular physical world wouldn't change the inevitability of the infinitely-many possibility worlds
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So, even if Materialism were true of this particular physical world, it would be superfluous and irrelevant overall.
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In fact, it would be superfluous and irrelevant in our world too. The expected observations for Materialism and Skepticism are identical. Those two metaphysicses are observationally indistinguishable.
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So, you can believe in Materialism if you want to, but just know that you’re believing in an unnecessary assumption and brute-fact, when you believe that the physical world and its things and stuff are objectively existent, primary, and fundamentally existent.
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Michael Ossipoff
But then you have the 'observer problem' which has thrown the entire 'mind-independence' of observation into question. One implication of that being, what you see depends on what you decide to measure. 'We have to remember that what we observe is not nature herself, but nature exposed to our method of questioning' ~ Heisenberg.
Quoting apokrisis
The thing is, their status as 'particles' and, ergo, 'what they are', is in question. You're still thinking 'fundamental particles', which surprises me, coming from you.
Or more like fundamental resonance modes in being the simplest possible permutation symmetries. Particles are excitations of a quantum field rather than scraps of matter. So their "why" is because of nature's "desire" for lowest mode simplicity.
(Y)
More grist for the Lawrence Krauss mill On the Origin of Everything, David Albert
The Metaphysical Muddle of Lawrence Krauss, Neil Ormerod.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
For one thing, regarding the system of inter-referring hypotheticals that I speak of, I don't claim that it's objectively real, existent or factual..
Regarding the various "if-then"s composing it, I don't claim that any of them are objectively factual.
They have reference, applicability and relevance only in their own mutually inter-referring context.
In particular, that includes the physical laws. These are all hypotheticals. I specifically referred to physical laws as hypothetical facts. ...and as part of if-clauses of various if-then facts. ...if-then facts which, themselves, could be part of an "if" clause of another hypothetical if-then fact.
For another thing, this isn't a "Realism".
I'm not saying that the physical laws have definite form, regardless of whether we know that form yet.
It would be tempting to say that, but your life-experience possibility-story is about your experience, not external, 3rd-person objective facts, or things that you haven't encountered yet.
Physicists can tell you what, based on their experiments, seem likely to be the physical laws regarding some physical subject. ...what the best theory seems to be, in that regard. Sometimes your own experience tells you something about that too. You've gotten a direct experiential sense of F = ma, and life in a nearly uniform gravitational field. and the fact that soap helps dissolve lipids in water, giving confirmation to what we've heard about its molecule's polar and nonpolar ends making it compatible to mix with both, to make an emulsion..
If our physicists probe, investigate, test, and experiment, then they might find some theories that they favor as likely physical laws and physical structure. ...and then tell us, whereby those likely physical laws become part of our experience.
So no, I'm not saying that the physical laws exist independent of us. None of all this does, because your life-experience story is only about your experience. And this world is nothing other than part of that story.
And, as I said, the conditional, if-then, nature of facts about our physical world isn't limited to physics. I gave the example of the traffic roundabout at 34th & Vine.
A world best described by conditional grammar, rather than declarative grammar.
A world of "If", rather than a world of "Is".
MIchael Ossipoff
I cannot comprehend this statement. First, the "laws of physics are produced by human beings, created by human minds. So secondly, when you say the "observed laws of physics", I assume that what you mean is that the laws are "respected" by physicists, not that they are things like entities observed through the senses. Finally, therefore, it is nonsense to say that these laws were "operating" before there were any physicists. What could you possibly mean by "operating" here?
Quoting Michael Ossipoff
This seems to directly contradict what you said above. Are you sure that you know what you're trying to say?
Quoting Michael Ossipoff
You said: "In the metaphysics that I propose, our whole physical world is a system of inter-referring if-then statements, and nothing more.
If-then statements are statements of description. And you said that these statements of description are the physical world itself, (the thing being described).
Quoting Michael Ossipoff
Are you saying that there is no such thing as the thing being described, that "the thing being described" is fictitious? What's the point of a description then?
Ok. Not sure what that has to do with the "telos" of the positron, though.
This is a 6-page reply. If I take the time to reply at all, then I don’t let brevity overrule complete answers.
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We’ve been over that. I refer you to my previous post (the one that you’re replying to).
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Which part of the statement don’t you comprehend?
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Physicists haven’t just been sitting on their hands during the past 400 years. They’ve arrived at some well-established, experimentally well-supported, never falsified laws of physics.
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And yes, believe it or not, observational evidence indicates that those laws were also operating at times before there were any physicists.
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Humans “produced” them? Humans found laws that explain and predict physical events in terms of other physical events and conditions.
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Some laws are understood, at the time of proposal or acceptance or later, to be approximate, and useful only under conditions wherein the approximation isn’t too far off. Newton’s laws are still widely used, in spite of the fact that quantum mechanics or relativity gives better predictions in some domains of observation.
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You can call all physical laws “provisional” if you want to. But I doubt that they attain the name of “law” until they’ve been thoroughly tested and verified, at least for the domain in which they’re proposed to be applicable.
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Provisional or not, physical laws now widely accepted and used have been shown to have been operating before there were physicists.
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No, they’re observed through the senses (often via instrumentation). You can call then “entities” if you want to, but they’re provisional facts, that are accepted if they’re sufficiently confirmed, and never falsified. …eventually increasingly regarded as confirmed instead of provisional. And yes, they’re based on observation of physical events and conditions.
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It means that physical events were happening in keeping with those laws.
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What “seems” to be so can be mistaken, when you’re sloppy.
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I’ve said many times that I’m not proposing a “Realist” metaphysics. Your life, and everything in it, is part of your life-experience possibility-story. It’s entirely from your point of view, about your experience, and for you.
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The Protagonist is central and primary to a life-experience possibility-story.
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You said that physical laws are products of physicists’ minds. I’ll go one better than that: The physical laws, the physicists, and everything in your experience, are all parts of your life-experience story, which firstly, fundamentally, primarily, and prior-ly, is about your experience.
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You really think that contradicts the statement that there’s observational evidence that currently accepted and used physical laws obtained at earlier times when there weren’t physicists?
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I remind you that I just finished telling you that I don’t claim that the life-experience possibility-stories, or the possibility-worlds that they’re set in, are objectively real or existent. …or that the hypothetical if-then facts that they consist of are objectively factual.
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Of course the stories and worlds are real in their own contexts. …and their component hypothetical facts are applicable in their own context of mutual reference.
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You troll-talked:
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You need to improve your manners. I’m giving notice that I won’t answer another post with your current manners-level. If you can’t disagree politely, you don’t qualify for a reply.
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I’ve clarified at length what I mean. If you haven’t read it, or have read it and still have a question, then ask about it…politely.
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To refute that, you quoted me:
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…and replied:
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I’ve usually, especially lately, used the word “facts” instead of “statements”. I’ll say now that “facts” was what I meant. Yes, I’ve said “statements” a few times, but lately I’ve pretty much always said “facts”. Maybe you mistakenly put the word “statements” into a sentence that said “facts”. Check again. …or maybe you were quoting an earlier post, or one of the relatively few in which I said “statements”.
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With the understanding that I’m talking about systems of inter-referring if-then facts, then yes, I’m saying that such systems, and their components don’t need objective reality or existence. Why expect or require them to be objectively or globally real or existent? They neither have nor need meaning, applicability or reality outside of their own context of mutual reference.
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Your experience is consistent with the inter-referring if-thens of a life-experience possibility-story. Materialism’s objectively real and fundamentally prior-ly existent physical world things is superfluous.
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Physicists Michael Faraday, Frank Tippler, and Max Tegmark, too, have remarked on the superflousness of objectively-existent “stuff” and “things”…as opposed to structure consisting of mathematical and logical relation and reference. And Witgenstein has been quoted in these forums as saying that ultimately there are facts, but not things.
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Tegmark’s MUH has been called Ontic Structural Realism. Yes, I got the impression of Realism from what I’ve read by Tegmark. The metaphysics that I propose isn’t Realism. I mentioned that above in this post.
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When Tippler says that our physical world could have been created by a computer-simulation, that means that his metaphysics is not mine.
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Using terms that I’ve read of, my metaphysics could be called “Eliminative Ontic Structural Non-Realism”.
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I just call it “Skepticism”, because it’s skepticism itself. What could be more skeptical than complete rejection and avoidance of assumptions?
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Good question. Ask a Materialist.
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My use of the word “fictitious” has been mostly in reference to the Dualist’s talk of “Mind”, but I don’t object to it in reference to the Materialist’s objectively-existent physical world. But I prefer “Superfluous”, because I can’t prove which metaphysics is true. Metaphysicses can’t be proved.
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Metaphysicses that explain our physical world (maybe by contriving brute-facts), can be contrived to be observationally indistinguishable from eachother. But some of them have superfluous brute-facts.
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What if Materialism is true of our physical world? The infinity of hypothetical life-experience possibility-worlds is still inevitable. So Materialism for our particular physical world would be superfluous overall…wouldn’t affect the infinitely-many hypothetical possibility-stories, which, as I said, don't need reality, existence, meaning or applicability outside of such a system's own inter-referring context..
In fact, as I mentioned, Materialism is superfluous even as an explanation for our own physical world, since the same evident world, the same experiences, are consistent with a hypothetical possibility-story (your life) set in a hypothetical possibility-world.
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…but without Materialism’s brute-fact.
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Our stories and worlds needn’t be objectively real, and needn’t have reality or relevance outside their own context. And there’s no reason to believe that they are or do.
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You ask what’s the point of describing those things and events? How about because we’re in this life, and these things and events are in the context of this life.
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What alternative would you propose?
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It seems popular for participants here to give themselves creative names like “Metaphysician Undercover”.
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Sometimes metaphysicses are best discussed in comparisons.
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Does your undercoverness mean that you can’t name a metaphysical proposal that you consider more parsimonious, or otherwise better supported or justified, than the one that I propose? Yes, of course it’s always easier to criticize than to name an alternative.
Angry-noises and vague, unspecified, unsupported expressions of personal opinion are standard, typical common troll-tactics.
If there's another sample, it won't be answered.
I stop replying to people who show that they're incapable of disagreeing politely.
Michael Ossipoff
No, science does not dodge "why" questions, it just traces the answers as far back as is needed to make the model work. There's no need to insert some metaphysical theory to explain why some phenomenon happens the way it does. "Why do we perceive color light?" can be answered by "because we have cones in the backs of our eyeballs, and because color would have made it easier to differentiate things in our visual awareness way back in time." "Why do the waves on a beach change throughout the day?" is answered by "because of the moon's gravity." "How come the 'quality of life' apparently increased in the 1860s?" is answered (??) by "because of the industrial revolution, capitalism ( :-} ), technological innovations, etc."
In fact, why-questions typically end up being teleological which is not all that helpful to scientists, at least not in the traditional way. Why-questions are blurred into how-questions.
But to say philosophy studies the "why" questions is not only excluding many other things it studies but also seems to beg the question.
You don't seem to have understood my criticism. The "laws of physics" are descriptions of how things behave. As such they were produced by human beings. How could they be "operating" before there were physicists, when physicists created them?
Quoting Michael Ossipoff
Laws of physics are produced by inductive reason, they are not observed through the senses. Through the senses we observe individual, particular instances, but a law of physics is a generalization which applies to numerous instances.
Quoting Michael Ossipoff
Yes, I really think you contradict yourself. I don't see how physical laws could have "obtained" in any normal sense of the word "obtained", prior to their existence.
Quoting Michael Ossipoff
Wow, I politely pointed out a simple problem with your metaphysics, without "vague, unspecified, unsupported expressions of personal opinion", and look who's expressing all sorts of anger.
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You make it sound as if the laws of physics were “created” and “produced” by magicians who made it so.
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No, the laws of physics were discovered by physicists. …as suggestions about how the physical world works. …as evident relations between certain physical quantity-values.
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I emphasized that you can call them “provisional” if you want to, though they aren’t called “laws” until they’re well confirmed, and, after many tests, not falsified.
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By the way, replying to something else that you said in your previous post, there’s no contradiction between my statements about metaphysics and my statements about physics. Those are separate subjects. I suggest that the notion that those statements contradict eachother results from a conflation of physics and metaphysics.
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They’re entirely based on observations, as descriptions of how the physical world evidently works, based on those observations.
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Of course.
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Let’s refer to a specific example:
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Newton proposed his laws of motion. They’ve been well-established to be a valid and useful approximation to how the physical world works…useful other than in the domains where quantum-mechanics &/or relativity is needed.
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It’s obvious to specialists in celestial-mechanics that Newton’s laws (sometimes with relativity) accurately describe the motions of the planets over millions of years, billions of years, into the past. …long before there were any physicists.
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That’s what I meant.
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Well, you didn’t just do that.
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You suggested that maybe I don’t know what I mean.
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(But the post that I’m replying to now doesn’t contain that sort of comments. I have no criticism of the post that I’m replying to now.)
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In philosophy discussions, we certainly can’t always expect other people’s meaning to be prima-facie obvious, .
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That’s a fact of life in philosophical discussion.
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So, when someone says something that you don’t understand, it isn’t productive to start by jumping to the suggestion that maybe they don’t know what they mean. That’s not philosophical discussion. That’s Internet flamewarrior-attack. It isn’t helpful to discussion-forums.
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If I didn’t well-express what I meant, than I can try to express it better. …to better express the not-understood aspect of what I said.
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But, for that, I’d have to know exactly what matter of what I meant isn’t understood.
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Michael Ossipoff
I should add that 2 + 2 = 4 is a direct consequence of the below-stated definition of some of the numbers, and the additive associative axiom of the rational numbers.
Here's a definition of some numbers:
Let 1 mean the multiplicative-identity element of the rational numbers.
Let 2 mean 1 + 1.
Let 3 mean 2 + 1
Let 4 mean 3 + 1
The additive associative axiom for the rational numbers:
(a + b) + c = a + (b + c).
Michael Ossipoff
When I clearly stated that the laws of physics are descriptions, this statement is totally irrelevant.
Quoting Michael Ossipoff
OK, call them "suggestions about how the world works" rather than my term "descriptions" if you like. How would physicists "discover" a suggestion? One might discover some by reading books, but there has to be a first time that such a suggestion was made by a physicist, and that physicist made that suggestion, the suggestion was not discovered.
Quoting Michael Ossipoff
OK, so your epistemic principles allow that what you believe concerning physics contradicts what you believe concerning metaphysics. I would not allow this, and if I ever found that I was in this situation, or approaching it, I would change what I believe.
As per the contradiction I pointed out, let me give it to you straight. You said:
Quoting Michael Ossipoff
The you said:
Quoting Michael Ossipoff
Clearly the first statement says that laws of physics were operating before there were any physicists, implying that they are independent of us, and the second statement says that laws of physics do not exist independently of us. Can you explain how this is not contradiction?
Ordinarily, at the forum, I reply no later than the following morning--and sometimes the same day. But today and yesterday are extraordinarily busy, delaying my reply until later today, or maybe even till tomorrow.
Michael Ossipoff
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But you don’t think that the laws could have obtained until there were physicists to create them. So you’re speaking of them as more than descriptions. You’re speaking of them as some kind sorcery, in which physicists have made the laws and made them obtain. To put it differently, you’re implying that the physicist has the power of a script-writer, to make things any way that s/he chooses to.
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…implying that, without physicists to fabricate those laws, nothing could have happened in 1,000 B.C. But we know that things did happenin those days, and the evidence suggests that they happened in accord with the same physical laws by which they happen in our century.
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No, the physicists don’t discover a suggestion. They discover an apparent relation among physical quantities. When tested, and found to seemingly always obtain, never falsified in many tests, the suggestion attains the status of being called a “law”.
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How is such a relation discovered?The discoveries are ultimately based on observation. The physicist interprets observations to suggest laws that describe how things seem to be working.
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Correct. The suggestion wasn’t discovered. An evident relation among physical quantities was discovered.
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Sometimes the evident relation turns out to be not quite correct, and is later improved to better match observation. Sometimes, as I said, a law is only a useful approximation under some (common) conditions, but is still kept because of its practical usefulness within a particular domain.
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No. It isn’t a contradiction, because they’re different subjects entirely.
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Cats have retractable claws. Dogs don’t have retractable claws. No contradiction.
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Thank you. That’s the conflation of physics and metaphysics that I was referring to.
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Physics:
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In the context of our relative world, this possibility-world that is our physical universe, there is lots of strong evidence that the currently-known physical laws obtained in 1000 B.C., even though there were no physicists at that time.
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In fact, as I said, specialists in celestial-mechanics have evidence that the currently-known physical laws obtained even before that!
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Do you really believe that the law of gravity, and Newton’s laws of motion didn’t obtain in the days of the early Egyptian civilization? Don’t we have paintings from that time that show a jar resting on a table-top, or people standing on the ground? In fact, without gravity, the Earth wouldn’t have an atmosphere, and so how would there have been a Sumerian civilization, with no oxygen-containing atmosphere? In fact, how would we have any ancestors?
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The solar system is known to be quite old. If the law of gravity didn’t obtain millions of years ago, the Earth wouldn’t have remained in orbit around the Sun, and would be somewhere far away in interstellar space.
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Oh, but wait, you don’t believe that Newton’s 1st law of motion applied then either.
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I’m almost afraid to ask what sort of chaotic situation you believe to have obtained before the physicists put the laws of physics into effect.
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But the fact that the Earth is still in orbit around the Sun, strongly confirms that the law of gravity has obtained for a long time. …since long before there were any physicists.
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Metaphysics
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Tegmark’s MUH evidently describes this physical world from the objective 3rd-person point-of-view. If such a metaphysics, such as Materialism or MUH were true, we’d still each perceive the world from our own 1st-person point of view, and so our personal point of view doesn’t invalidate the objective viewpoint of MUH .
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Skepticism differs from MUH in regards to what it emphasizes or talks about. Neither is necessarily wrong.
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One could say it either way: From an individual point of view, or from an overall-objective point-of-view.
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But the way we perceive it is, to me, the obvious, natural, reasonable way to say the story. Hence my preference for speaking of individual life-experience possibility-stories.
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I feel that saying it as we perceive it is neater and more parsimonious, in comparison to talking about stories that are about more than we perceive.
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Either kind of story is just as supportable, but one seems more natural.
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So I suggest that the physical world that you live in is most meaningfully regarded as the setting for your life-experience possibility-story. Without you, it that story wouldn’t be, because you’re the essential component of it, because it’s about your experience.
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In that sense, your entire physical world, including physicists and laws of physics, is there because of you, because, as I said, you, the Protagonist, are the essential component of your life-experience possibility-story.
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I didn’t invent non-Realist metaphysics. Many here probably subscribe to one.
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So those are the statements that I’ve made, about physics, and about metaphysics. They aren’t mutually-contradictory, because they’re about different subjects—physics and metaphysics.
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Michael Ossipoff
No, I am simply pointing out that it is impossible for a description to be used prior to the existence of the description. Take the statement "the sky is blue" for example. There was a time before that statement was ever made. Before that statement was made, it is impossible that people were saying that the sky is blue. There is no such thing as an unstated statement, that is nonsense, and so it is also nonsense to say that the unstated statement obtained.
Quoting Michael Ossipoff
How does a picture of jar resting on a table-top imply that Newton's laws of motion were applied in early Egyptian civilization? That's utter nonsense. When we know that Newton was the one to develop these laws, why would you think that the ancient Egyptians were using the same laws long before Newton? I suggest that you consider the possibility that some laws other than Newton's obtained at this time.
If an ancient Egyptian dropped a brick, it would accelerate according to the formula given in the Laws of Motion; although the Egyptian wouldn't know this was the case.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Let's see - Nefertiti's Law. Do you think calling it that would mean objects would fall at a different rate?
I would agree that such is the case, if the "Laws of Motion" are correct. But now we have a different issue to deal with, and that is what makes a law "correct". Ossipoff has not provided for that condition.
Quoting Wayfarer
That would be a different law, with a different name, just like General Relativity provides us with a different way of looking at gravity from Newton's way. There are some important differences, which do you think is correct?
What makes it 'a law' is the fact that its predictions always work out. F=MA for ancient egyptians and modern Americans. The rest is obfuscation.
No, what makes it a law is that it is accept by the people. F=MA was not accepted by the ancient Egyptians, and therefore was not a law for them. It did not work out for them because they did not do it. It is you who is obfuscating. Like Michael, you are creating the illusion that people accepted a statement which was never stated.
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I’ve repeatedly clarified and emphasized that I’m not saying that a physical law that obtained a billion years ago is a description that was being spoken at that time.
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In fact, I haven’t been defining a physical law as a description at all. I’ve been defining it as a relation between quantity-values. I made that quite clear and explicit in my reply before this one.
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So, the physical laws known today weren’t being uttered as descriptions by anyone a billion years ago. And yet they still obtained, and there’s plenty of evidence for that. As I said, if the law of gravity hadn’t obtained then, the Earth would be a very, very long way from the Sun by now. In fact, as I already said, specialists in celestial mechanics have evidence that Newton’s laws obtained, as well, at that time.
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As I clarified and emphasized in my post before this one, I’m not talking about statements or descriptions that were being uttered a billion years ago. In my post before this one, I defined a physical law as a relation between physical quantity values. There’s ample evidence that those relations that are known today obtained a billion years ago as well.
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…even though there wasn’t anyone to speak a description of them.
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I gave it as an example of the law of gravity. Without that, a little air-current, or the Earth’s rotation, combined with Newton’s 1st law of motion, would send the jar away from the table.
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I don’t suppose that Egyptian paintings give us the quantitative values needed to test for Newton’s 2nd and 3rd laws. With the paintings of jars on a table, or people standing on the ground, I was giving examples of there being gravity in Egyptian times . Of course the law of gravity is quantitative, and that limits the paintings’ ability to really test for compliance with that law. It just shows that there was gravity, as does the evident presence of an atmosphere.
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But celestial-mechanics has given results that coincide well with the known ice-ages. That gives a quantitative confirmation about the law of gravity, and Newton’s laws of motion, obtaining during previous times in geological history.
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I didn’t say that the Egyptians knew of Newton’s laws. That’s why they’re called “Newton’s laws”, instead of “The Egyptian laws”. .
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But those relations between physical quantities obtained during Egyptian times, and long before. …as confirmed by evidence available to today’s scientists.
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And, though some remarkable coincidence, will those different laws, when applied to celestial mechanics just happen to result in effects that coincide very well with the known history of ice-ages? …as do the actually established physical laws?
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If you want to claim that some other set of physical laws obtained during Egyptian times, instead of the physical laws that are now established, and that that’s confirmed by what is known about those earlier times, then the burden would be on you to show that.
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Remember parsimony, and multiplying unnecessary unsupported assumptions?
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Michael Ossipoff
No one's claiming that the Egyptians accepted, described or uttered the modernly-known physical laws. Only you are defining a physical law as something that must be uttered at any time that it obtains..
I defined a physical law as a reasonably well-established relation between physical quantity values.
What's known about the present and the past strongly suggests that the modernly-accepted physical laws obtained a billion years ago.
(like the fact that the Earth is still in orbit around the Sun, and the fact that, in celestial mechanics, the modernly-established physical laws produce results that agree with what's known about the history of the ice-ages.)
Michael Ossipoff
You haven't yet explained how a physical law which came into existence a few hundred years ago could have "obtained a billion years ago". As I explained, this is contradiction, and until we sort this out, there is no point in starting with the premise that a physical law obtained a billion years ago.
Quoting Michael Ossipoff
Again, quantities and values are human judgements, measurements, so this does not get you past this problem.
Quoting Michael Ossipoff
No, what I am saying is that if there are no human beings to create physical laws, then no physical laws obtain. That's a pretty simple, straight forward position. I think that the onus is on you to explain how you believe that something which comes about from human judgement, "a relation between quantity-values" could exist prior to there being any human beings.
Do you understand what a "value" is? If so, how do you think that a value could exist without someone to determine the value?
All I see in a law is a bunch of symbols which need to be interpreted. Learn the right technique of interpretation, and you know the law.
That's why
Quoting Wayfarer
is interpreted as gibberish by me.
This is not true at all. What "the law" refers to is what is written down, and that is a description of a regularity in nature. Take your example, the law is the formula "f=ma". This needs to be interpreted, and what this says to me is that if you know the mass of an object, and the acceleration in velocity of the object, you can determine the force which was applied to the object. Conversely, you can figure out the necessary force required to bring an object of a particular mass, to a desired state of acceleration.
Notice that all three, force, mass, and acceleration, are arbitrary forms of measurement created by human beings. Clearly the said law refers to a relationship between these arbitrary forms of measurement, signified by f, m, and a. The relationship is expressed mathematically with "times" and "equals". You might argue that these terms, "force", "mass", and "acceleration", as well as "equals" and "times", refer to regularities in nature, (what Michael Ossipoff seems to take for granted), but that would be a very difficult argument to maintain, with some of these terms such as "force" and "equals", which appear to be purely conceptual, not referring to anything in nature.
So f=ma refers to a purely conceptual relationship (equals) between something conceptual (force), and the measurable regularities of mass and acceleration. Since the stated relationship itself, "equals", is purely conceptual, the stated law refers to the way that we conceive of these regularities of nature (the formula), and not the regularities themselves.
I haven't replied to your previous message to me yet, but first I'll answer this comment:
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
The word "Nature" tends to be, intentionally or unintentionally, an obfuscation. For one thing, Its usage is a Materialist's way of trying to frame the discussion in terms of a premise that the physical world is what's natural, and is Reality itself.
What I take for granted? I've been saying all along that the physical world and its contents aren't objectively real or existent,and that the hypotheticals that it consists of aren't objectively factual,but only need and have meaning in terms of their own local inter-referring context..
Purely conceptpual? Of course. That's what I've been saying all along.
My metaphysics, Skepticism, is an Idealism..
Thank you for arguing for Skepticism.
...I don't claim that this physical world and its things are objectively real or existent.
You're right. It's all about our experience. Your life is an experience-story, and this world is the setting for your life-experience possibility-story.
It's all a hypothetical system or inter-referring hypotheticals, and it's for you the Protagonist, the experiencer.
What's that? You say you weren't there a billion years ago, to create and enforce the law of gravity, to keep the Earth in Solar-orbit? That's ok, because the various scientists, and the information that they've reported, are in your experience, part of your life-experience possibility-story, as is are your own physical observations.
The law of gravity keeping the Earth in Solar orbit a billion years ago is part of your life-experience possibility-story. A story, by definition, includes time. It's an account across time. That life-experience story of yours includes the Earth not leaving Solar orbit a billion years ago, kept in orbit by gravity, in accord with the law of gravity.
Your experience is that you're here, of course, and that's partly because the Earth didn't leave orbit a billion years ago. The physicists who explain why, and their explanation, are part of your experience too. .
Michael Ossipoff
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A few hundred years ago that law was discovered, and found (and repeatedly confirmed) to have been in operation for billions of years.
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Say I find your fingerprints at a burglary-scene.
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You argue, “Those fingerprints were created, came into being, because Ossipoff found them. Because their existence depended on his finding him, therefore they couldn’t have existed on the night of the burglary, and couldn’t have been left by me.” ?
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I answer that in the message that I posted just before this one. The premise is that, in your experience, you’re here, and that’s partly because the Earth didn’t leave its Solar orbit a billion years ago, because the law of gravity obtained then.
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I refer you to my more complete answer in my post just before this one.
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Your life-experience possibility-story, like all stories, extends across time. The fact that you’re here because of the Earth remaining in orbit a billion years ago is part of your life-experience story.
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I’ll go you one better than that: It’s all human experience, your experience in particular. I haven’t denied that.
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But, as I’ve already said, it isn’t necessary that you were there a billion years ago, to bring the law of gravity into being. You experience the fact that you’re here today. …and you know that you’re here today partly because the gravity kept the Earth in Solar orbit, in accord with the well-established law of gravity.
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For quantitative confirmation of today’s known physical laws and constants, I’ve cited the good correspondence between celestial-mechanics results, and the known history of the ice-ages.
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But of course there’s more too:
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Astrophysicists and astronomers observe events and processes in distant regions of space. …things like the evolution of stars, among various other things, such as radiation from neutron stars, etc.
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They’ve observed that the same physical laws, with the same physical constants can be shown to obtain for those objects and events at various distances.
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But the light from a distant event left that event a long time ago. So, evidently the physical laws and constants were the same then as now.
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It wasn’t necessary for people to be there a billion years ago to “create” the law of gravity, to keep the Earth from leaving orbit. It wasn’t even necessary for anyone to be there a billion years ago to determine, find out, or measure the value of the gravitational force between Earth and Sun.
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Yes, there weren’t any human beings then. Yes, it all is about experience, your life experience. How to resolve that contradiction?
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Easy. As I said above, and in my post before this one, a story includes time. By definition, story takes place across time. Your life-experience possibility story is such a story.
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The only reason why you’re here today is because the Earth didn’t leave orbit a billion years ago. You’re here because the law of gravity obtained a billion years ago. That fact, the fact that you’re here today, and that it’s because the Earth didn’t leave orbit a billion years ago, thanks to the law of gravity obtaining then, is part of your experience today. As we discuss it, in fact.
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…and you’ve heard the explanations from scientists too, and that, too, is part of your experience.
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The Earth remaining in orbit because of the law of gravity obtaining a billion years ago is part of your life-experience possibility-story.
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And guess what? When Cavendish directly quantitatively measured gravitational force in the laboratory, to find the value of G, the gravitational constant, the value that he found for that constant was consistent with the Earth remaining in orbit.
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I don’t know what you think kept the Earth in orbit a billion years ago, but the law of gravity discovered by Newton, and the gravitational constant experimentally found by Cavendish amount to a physical law that explains why the Earth is still in orbit.
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The part of your life-experience possibility story in which the Earth remained in orbit a billion years ago is entirely consistent with Newton’s and Cavendish’s findings. …regarding the physical laws and constants that obtain today, and obtained a billion years ago.
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Michael Ossipoff
So you're point is only that it's not 'a law' until it's written down, whereas I am saying that objects will accelerate in accordance with the formula f=ma whether it's been written down or not. That is why Newton's formula is called 'a discovery' i.e. it uncovers something that already existed but hitherto had not been understood.
For example; why is the sky blue? Ought to be how is it that the sky appears blue, and if the word "how" cannot be used to re-parse any scientific question then it is not really science.
Thus:"Evolutionary theory does indeed answer the question of why things act as they do."
Is really "ET does answer how behaviours emerge in species"
Now when people talk about 'why' they mean an ontological why specifically, namely the purpose or meaning of the universe. In an obvious sense, the reason science cannot answer this is that its whole ediface is constructed on probabilistic, self-reinforcing observations within the closed system of empirical reality and our universe. However, rationality in the form of logic and its highly formalised and decontextualised applications in mathematics are in one sense grounded in reality - it is why we have evolved to be able to use them as they are useful for modelling our environment and come from and are made possible by the universe's causally predictable patterns occurring in our thought process. On the other hand, as Kant well documented it can easily break loose of its constraints and entertain purely hypothetical entities based on logical capacities - such as a being unconstrained by the conditions of reality around us - namely some kind of God figure. So in a trivial sense science cannot answer this question... but it is suggestive in two ways. First of all that it has repeatedly defied our pure reason in the past. The rationalist science of Aristotle, admirable and incredibly inventive in its way, was not able to stand the pressure of empirical observation which is well know. This strongly suggests that the probability of our being wrong on something which we do not know and has been constructed based on logical axioms that are ultimately rooted in well documented psychological and evolved states of assumed thinking (such as towards animism and spiritualism) which have benefited us in the past should be held with suspicion on probabilistic grounds. Secondly, the general drift of the evidential structure is towards a universe more grand and un-teleologic than ever, a reduced role for the importance of humans and human volition (if it even exists) and the fact that life in some way a complex arms race game that has been played between aggregating quanitities chemicals as a sort of fluke with little more meaning that that. On these bases I would suggest that they 'why' of the universe is probabilistically favoured towards a lack of meaning, and if that is true then any unveirifyable and sense-less statement about entities outside the ambit of empirical reality is essentially a meaningless question.
Thanks, welcome to the forum. Well written post, but depressing. I think it makes the mistake of elevating evolutionary biology to the status of philosophy - which it isn't. Evaluating the truths of reason in terms of adaptive necessity sells reason short by explaining it in other terms; In other words, denying the sovereignty of reason.
"Nature" was Wayfarer's word. Law was said to refer to regularities in nature, so I was responding to this usage.
Quoting Michael Ossipoff
I have no problem arguing skepticism. I do it all the time, in fact I am very skeptical of your metaphysics, as you should know by now.
So I'll state the problem as clearly as I can, as it appears in the quoted passage. According to my understanding, a concept is something created by a human mind, and existing in a human mind, completely mind dependent. Yet you claim that the physical world is purely conceptual, and that there were concepts before there were human minds, laws of physics and things like that, billions of years ago. How do you support this claim? Are these concepts supposed to exist within the mind of God?
Quoting Michael Ossipoff
I really haven't been able to grasp this "life-experience possibility-story". Perhaps that's why I don't understand. Can you explain it in plain English? For instance, how is the earth a billion years ago in my own life-experience? The concept of "the earth a billion years ago" is in my own life experience, but the earth a billion years ago is not.
Quoting Michael Ossipoff
OK, so do you agree that a story requires an author of that story. Who is the author of my life-experience possibility story?
Quoting Michael Ossipoff
It may be gravity which keeps the earth in orbit, but it's definitely not the law of gravity which does this. The law of gravity is one of the different ways that human beings understand gravity. And our understanding of gravity does not keep the earth in orbit.
Quoting Wayfarer
My point is that it's not a law until a human being carries out the necessary logical steps required to produce that law. This means that human beings must carry out the required inductive reasoning to make the generalization, and apply the mathematical principles. Prior to this, the potential for that law to come into existence is there, in the world, because different objects accelerate in a consistent manner, but there is no such law. The law is created with the application of logic by human beings.
There is a big difference between finding something in the world, like Ossipoff finds my fingerprints, and creating something in the world. The application of logic is an activity which does not discover laws, it creates them. Principles, rules, and laws, are not the sort of things which we find naturally existing in the world, they are the sort of things which we create, with the use of reason.
That this is true is evident from the fact that we sometimes create laws which are false, wrong. If laws were discovered, it would be impossible to have a false, or wrong law, because you couldn't discover a false law. But I could roll the dice, and roll a seven, and declare that I've discovered a new law, "when I roll the dice, I will roll a seven". Clearly I just created this law, as it is false, I didn't really discover it. But the only difference between it and a correct law, is that it was created by faulty logic rather than good logic. Faulty logic creates an incorrect law, and good logic does the opposite, it creates a correct law. But how can you argue that good logic, instead of doing the opposite thing as bad logic (creating incorrect laws), it does something categorically different from bad logic, it discovers a law, rather than creating a law. In other words, if faulty logic creates laws, and good logic discovers laws, couldn't we avoid all incorrect laws by determining that the law was created rather than discovered? In reality there is no such difference to determine, as they are both create with logic, the one being faulty logic. So the difference to determine is whether the law was created with sound logic or unsound logic.
Yes, this is one of the points I am trying to make here. When we dispel the idea that the "laws of science" are discovered, (implying that they cannot be wrong), we are faced with the possibility that any of the accepted laws may be wrong. So we must examine all the logic, and all the evidence which relates to the premises, to determine whether or not these laws are actually sound.
But that's the problem. The fact that reason exists untethered in our own mental state allows us to use it to prove a great many things, and more importantly it is underdetermined, through chains of logic depending on different axioms different conclusions can be reached. Scholasticism was a great example of how this can become a grand and learned and complicated artifice whilst bearing little connection to reality. Given that we are finite beings, and given that we nonetheless have a constructed mental universe, it strikes me that the purpose of reason is for reductio ad absurdum, to eliminate that inconsistent with the root logic of existence, whereas positive statements must be stated through empirical means which, by consideration of Humean/Bayesian reasoning here, is by its nature a series of ever more refined probablistic statements.
Why is all of that the case?
"Why?" still remains.
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You’re confused. I capitalized Skepticism because it’s what I’ve named my metaphysics. (…because a brief name is convenient).
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Quoting you again:
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That’s a good “I” statement.
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It tells your personal opinion or feeling. Good for you!
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But it isn’t an argument.
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Presumably, in your recent constant repetition, you’ve given us your best arguments against Skepticism.
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Yes, we could quibble about what we mean by “concept” (a word that’s absent from my definition of Skepticism). I agreed with your use of “conceptual” because abstract facts can be called concepts, and “are” even without the help of any mind.
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A system of inter-referring abstract logical facts and hypothetical if-statements don’t depend on anyone or anything (other than their own mutual referential context) for existence or reality in their own local inter-referring context..
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You say they aren’t real? Fine. I agree that they don’t have (or need) any objective reality or factualness.
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You’re repeating your old objection. I’ve answered it many times. In fact, I answered it in the passage that you quoted directly below:
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…this passage:
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You said:
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I’ve defined it many times. Most recently, I defined it, and Skepticism, in my post to a topic entitled “On Being Overwhelmed”. You can find it in the All Discussions forum, or the General Philosophy forum.
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Briefly, though, your life-experience possibility-story is a system of inter-referring hypotheticals, hypothetical if-then statements (which necessarily include “if’ clauses and “then” clauses).
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That system includes such components as hypothetical physical laws (relations between physical quantity-values), physical quantity-values, abstract logical facts, and mathematical theorems.
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That system, that story, is your life-experience story.
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For more detail, I refer you to the post referenced above.
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Call it a “concept” if you want to. I suggest that you’re getting yourself all confused with your sloppy use of “concept”.
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The fact that you’re here today means that the Earth was here a billion years ago. If Metaphysician Underground’s existence today is taken as a fact, then the existence of the Earth a billion years ago is a fact too.
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You can have a concept about it, but the Earth billion years ago is as factual as you are.
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No, I don’t.
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Every possibility story, every self-consistent system of inter-referring hypotheticals, is valid in its own inter-referring context. As I said, it neither has nor needs any validity, reality, existence or meaning in any other context, or in some “global” context.
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Is it real?
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It isn’t, and needn’t be, objectively real.
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It didn’t have to be written. It was already there, in its own context. Remember, I’m not saying that it’s objectively real or factual.
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You’re talking like a (metaphysical) Physicalist. You think that there’s always the objectively-existent actual Materialist “thing”. No, what I’ve been saying (in agreement with Faraday, Tippler & Tegmark) is that there’s no reason to believe in more than the mathematical and logical structure, the system of inter-referring hypotheticals.
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…not that it need have any objective reality or existence.
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As I said, there’s no reason to believe in the metaphysical Physicalists objectively-existent “stuff” or “things”.
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Even if Materialism or metaphysical Physicalism were true, it would be irrelevant and superfluous.
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The law of gravity, (Newtonian or Relativistic) observed, confirmed and well-established among physicists, evidently obtained a billion years ago (…even though there was no one alive then to understand or know about it).
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Otherwise we wouldn’t be here today.
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We’ve been over this. It’s become a repetition of the same already-answered objections.
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You said:
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You could mistakenly discover a law that later is falsified or improved on by later experiments. That has happened, of course. We’ve been over this before.
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Presumably, in your recent constant repetition, you’ve given us your best arguments against Skepticism.
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Alright, this has gone on long enough.
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You’ve been continually repeating the same objections that I’ve just finished answering. I’m not going to continue answering your objections. There’d be no point.
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But, if instead of just making non-valid attempts to criticize Skepticism, you want to actually suggest an alternative metaphysics, then by all means state it, so that we can evaluate and compare it.
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Otherwise, this discussion is concluded.
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Michael Ossipoff
Quoting Sam Keays
Scholastic philosophers would not agree, and neo-Thomism, which is a form of scholasticism, is still a voice within contemporary philosophy.
Quoting Sam Keays
What you're arguing is still basically 'scientistic'. Whether the universe 'has purpose' or not, depends on the way you look at the question. However, I personally find the 'fine-tuning' arguments, and the 'biological information' arguments, quite persuasive in favour of theism.
What's more, the presence or absence of meaning is itself a value judgement. The scientific method, generally, operates by first laying aside value judgements, and concentrating on what can be measured. So it hardly surprising that it will then say 'hey, look, no value here', because that is specifically one of the factors that has been set aside in the first place.
Why would that be in favor of theism, rather than, say, deism, pantheism, etc?
If scientific findings can be brought to bear in service of demonstrating God's existence (as you say here), I presume you believe that it is also fair game to use scientific findings to argue against the existence of God? Because it seems that in the past, such things would invite cries of "scientism" from you.
I don't know if it is theism strictly speaking, maybe it's simply a 'higher intelligence' in some vague sense. You know, some of those Pew surveys of religion, find that a percentage of self-described atheists will still admit to having an ill-defined 'belief in a higher intelligence'. I myself don't believe in a 'heavenly father figure', but (as you know) I'm also not an atheist.
Quoting Arkady
I have often said that you can't scientifically prove the existence or non-existence of God, and I stand by that. So I wouldn't like to defend the kind of vulgar attempt to 'prove that God exists' undertaken by ID theorists. But then, neither would David Bentley Hart, or Ed Feser, both of whom a theistic philosophers, and neither of whom will have any truck with intelligent design.
My argument is more along the lines that science assumes natural laws, or the 'regularities of the heavens', or whatever; and also assumes the efficacy of mathematics. Given those two foundation - namely, natural laws, and mathematics - science can discover a great deal indeed. But why nature is so ordered, and why the 'unreasonable efficacy of mathematics in the natural sciences' (to quote Eugene WIgner), is another kind of question altogether. I don't think science answers that kind of 'why'; I wouldn't expect it to, but that is no criticism of science, either.
I'll go along with Einstein on this question.
Quoting Tim
This is very interesting and I agree. I think you are a very smart person.
Quoting Tim
Great point again, it answers the question in a very cognitive way. It makes a good point.
I agree that science isn't in the business of "proving" the existence of God. But that's because I don't believe that science is in the business of "proving" anything. That seems more the domain of mathematicians and logicians, wouldn't you say? In that sense, science can't "prove" the existence of electrons.
Science deals in defeasible, fallible reasoning, more inductive or abductive in nature than deductive. But the point is that you believe that certain scientific observations speak to the existence of God (you find it "persuasive" that they point to God, or at least a "higher intelligence"). Even if we are only here dealing in probabilities and not in proof per se, you are of the mind that scientific investigation can provide reasons for believing in the existence of God. But, my point is that that road surely runs two ways: if science can be brought to bear in providing reasons to believe in God, surely it can also be brought to bear (at least in principle) in service of providing reasons not to believe in God? But I suspect that you'd deem the latter to be an instance of "scientism." So, I'm not sure how to reconcile this apparent tension in your views.
But, as I've pointed out before, science doesn't "assume" these things: science (and the lay public, to a lesser extent) observes these things. Observing X and assuming X aren't the same thing. There is no a priori reason to believe in invariant physical laws or values of physical constants, and scientists have in fact searched for such variance, and not found any within the limits of physical detection.
But they do assume them. Every time that an experiment is run which involves velocity, they don't have to first check that this time, F really will equal MA. I mean 'assumes', in that naturalism assumes nature, as does realism, generally. It's not in the business of doubting the testimony of sense; and yet some philosophers will.
Quoting Arkady
That is the story of the last several centuries of Western history, right? Used to believe in divine causes, now knows better because of science? But I think the wheel is turning again.
Besides, I don't think the sentiment expressed by Einstein is really very religious. The first chapter of The God Delusion was called 'A Very Religious Unbeliever', and was about - Albert Einstein.
Assuming the reliability of the senses and assuming the existence of natural law are not the same thing. As I said, science is in the business of fallible reasoning. Scientists (knowingly or unknowingly) rely on induction or abduction. In the case of induction, this often takes the form of extrapolating from the observed to the as-yet-unobserved or to the future. Sometimes this works, sometimes one finds a black swan.
But the point is that the regularity of nature is not an a priori assumption: where nature has been observed, it has been found to be remarkably constant and uniform. It could have been otherwise (at least conceivably), and scientists have looked for such deviations, but none have presented themselves (at least as far as I'm aware: I'm not a physicist). If you want to speak to the fallibility of induction, that is fine, but that's a different topic.
Quoting Wayfarer
My point is that you are claiming that science does in fact provide reasons for believing in God (feel free to substitute "higher intelligence" here if you'd like), and so are claiming that scientific investigation can be brought to bear on the existence of the divine. At the very least, this seems a departure from your earlier positions. So, given that science can be so brought to bear, you surely don't begrudge those who attempt to use science to argue against the existence of God?
Where I take issue, is with the various attempts to present science as capable of a theory which accounts for everything - which is typical of science popularisers such as Lawrence Krauss and Jerry Coyne. A good deal of their writing on the matter is aimed at showing how the life and the universe could 'arise from nothing' (to quote Krauss' title.)
But, as philosopher David Albert pointed out in his review of Krauss' book:
My underline. That is what I mean by 'assuming nature'. Physicalism assumes that what science is analysing is ontologically real - it is arguing that the entities that physics studies, or biology studies, are the building blocks or foundational layer of reality, that what we see can be explained in those terms. That is what naturalism means, after all.
What I'm saying is that science doesn't actually explain mathematics, as such, or why the universe has the laws it has, more broadly. Science always starts with some foundational assumptions, and besides, has to appeal to mathematical reasoning - given which, it is able to explain and predict phenomena. But it doesn't, and can't, explain all of its foundational assumptions (one of the implications of Godel's theorem, as I understand it.)
But I don't want to use this to argue 'see, it must be God'. We don't know - but I think that sense of not knowing is important, and also profound. Especially when it comes to passing judgement on whether the Universe is meaningful, as that is really rather an important question.
Ok. So, the existence of God is fair game for science, just as long as it doesn't purport to explain "everything"?
The ontology of the most basic physical constituents of the universe is a different matter from natural law, it seems to me. You have claimed that scientists have "assumed" that nature is lawlike, and I have retorted that they don't assume this, but rather observe it. You then quote Albert as saying that scientists assume that "at the bottom of everything" is some "real," "natural" stuff. But, again, this seems a different issue than what we were discussing before (why, in your world, philosophers are allowed to opine on science, but scientists are forbidden from opining on philosophy, is a mystery to me).
But you said that the findings of science incline you towards theism, not agnosticism, which would seem the more reasonable option if the findings of science don't speak to the existence of God.
From the David Albert quote:
Yes, that's one of (metaphysical) Physicalism's (Materialism's, "Naturalism" 's ) problems.
"Why is there be that physical world with that stuff? In fact, why is there something instead of nothing?"
Another criticism of Materialism is that, even if true, it's irrelevant and superflouous, for reasons that I've discussed earlier.
Michael Ossipoff
If someone were to claim they can 'prove' the existence of God - what could that mean? That they could show me God? I don't think that 'God' is real in that sense, as an object of empirical proof. I think that the appropriate view, for believers, is that the Universe suggests the existence of God, but they ought to realise that we can't know, because of the limitations of knowledge itself. Knowledge (as the Einstein quote says) is limited - maybe it's radically limited. So my view is that philosophy points to the border of what can and can't be claimed. And God is over that horizon, 'over yonder' (or not!)
Quoting Arkady
Whether they assume or, or observe it, those regularities must exist, in order for there to be science. But do they explain that order? I say, no they don't explain it, nor can they be expected to. That is what I mean by 'assuming' it.
So if natural theology argues that the laws are the 'handiwork of God' - they may be talking malarky, but whether they are or not, is not a scientific question. That's why I said before that the attempt to resolve the question either in the positive or negative, with reference to science, are both mistaken. I think the intellectually honest position is agnosticism.
Hawkings mused idly in his Brief History of Time that if we hit upon the 'grand theory' then we would 'know the mind of God' - which I see as hubris, especially coming from a professed atheist. But then, maybe the reason why he and his ilk hate religion is professional jealousy ;-)
You seem to be walking a rather fine line here. The state or nature of the universe "suggests" the existence of God, and yet the existence of God is not a matter to be adjudicated empirically. So, a dispassionate, purely rational assessment of the universe can reasonably lead one to a suggestion that God exists, but one cannot (even in principle) argue that God most likely exists or anything of the sort. This seems a bit arbitrary, wouldn't you say? Surely those (on both sides of the question) who suggest that the existence of God can be investigated empirically are not too far off-base, given your position here?
But assuming the existence of X and being unable to explain the origin of X are not equivalent.
I think Dawkins once chastised Hawkings for such statements, saying something to the effect that it promotes misunderstanding among those hungry to misunderstand it. I agree with Dawkins. I also think it's dumb to refer to the Higgs boson as the "God particle," and so forth.
Thankyou! X-)
Quoting Arkady
I think that's correct, although I don't know about 'in principle'. Recall Antony Flew, the well-known British philosopher who argued throughout his career for atheism, but ultimately changed his view, saying 'in keeping his lifelong commitment to go where the evidence leads, he now believed in the existence of a God'. But again I think that is a statement of personal conviction, rather than an empirical proof. Highly intelligent persons have taken contrary views of the question, which is why I think Kant counted it among the 'antinomies of reason'.
What does 'empirical evidence' mean in such a context? Actually I think we have previously touched on one body of empirical evidence which does have bearing, namely, that of the Catholic Church in the analysis of claims of miraculous healing. There's a medical doctor by the name of Jacalyn Duffin who has written on that, having been called as an expert witness. (There's an account here.) Significantly, though, she says she is still atheist, even though she admits that the cases she was involved in don't have an empirical explanation. Hence my point! And maybe that's what 'belief' comes down to: what kinds of conclusions you're willing to consider, given certain evidence.
Quoting Arkady
It's the meaning of 'assuming'. Scientists assume that phenomena behave in accordance with what are called 'laws', i.e. their behaviour is predictable under given conditions. But knowing why those laws, is an additional step - it's 'meta-physics', by definition, as it is considering what is 'beyond physics', what causes the laws to be as they are. And the example of 'physics as metaphysics' I cited was Krauss' attempt to show how 'the universe could arise from nothing', which the critic I quoted, David Albert, who is both a physicist and philosopher, believes fails (see also [url=http://www.abc.net.au/religion/articles/2013/02/18/3692765.htm]The Metaphysical Muddle of Lawrence Krauss, by a Catholic theological philosopher.) Both critics say, basically, that Krauss doesn't understand the meaning of 'arising from nothing' (which is significant, as this is what the book is about!)
The long and short is, I don't buy the 'science vs religion conflict thesis', which underwrites most of what current atheism says on the matter including (all due respect) yourself. It arises from an insufficient understanding of the relationship between physics and metaphysics (among other things).
This is an old post, but it's a great issue. I think (for what it's worth) that (1) there can be no "true" answer to the why-why-why, for reasons of infinite regress, which you mentioned. But (2) I don't think we really care about the "truth and the complete truth." In my view, we are "how" creatures, and even the cosmic why is something of a "how" in disguise. If we had "ultimate metaphysical knowledge," what would we use it for? A prestige object, a badge of authority. To be fair, maybe there's a certain amount of pure curiosity. Similarly, there's a certain amount of pure empathy. But I look around and see knowledge used as a tool, again and again, usually for "selfish" purposes --including taking care of one's own beloved children, for instance, "part" of one's extended self. I'm tempted to say that the "truth" of science is technology and the "truth" of philosophy is moral authority. For years now I've considered the ultimately why to be unanswerable in principle, which is to say merely "lyrical." Reality is just here, at some point. It's hereness "surpasses" the patterns we can find in it. I feel a little more "special" for having been able to "unveil" this absurdity or radical contingency. In that sense it's like being proud of knowing the good music, the good novels, or being proud of one's social circle.
In short, inquiry strikes me as the hand of desire. This hand reaches for knowledge largely as a means rather than an end, though we must allow for curiosity and the aesthetic pleasure in patterns. I hypothesize that our stronger drive to map the world and our position in it in a way that not only does not humiliate us but gives us a sense of virtue, power, beauty, etc. Of course possessing the ultimate metaphysical truth would be a good way to scratch that itch. Indeed, my own position is a twist on that same old game, the offering of a truth about truth, the essence of inquiry, the more or less complete self-consciousness of the processes we are, etc.