Timeline for If laws are just descriptions of reality, is it a miracle that things are regular?
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23 events
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| Dec 22, 2023 at 13:14 | comment | added | Scott Rowe | We just need to define "complete bruteness". And 'prescribe'. In general, things can only be fully explained in terms of what they don't already have. Regularly can only be explained through something other than regularity. Laws can only be explained through things that are unlike laws. Otherwise it is question-begging. Infinite regress. Whatever. | |
| Dec 22, 2023 at 10:44 | comment | added | user62907 | @CharlesHudgins It’s not about whether it is more of a coincidence than anything else. It is about why there is a coincidence at all. The question is not about why there is order rather than disorder. It is about whether the order exists by complete bruteness or whether law or laws, although brute, explain or prescribe that order. | |
| Dec 22, 2023 at 10:24 | comment | added | Charles Hudgins | I think on a Humean view it is no more coincidental that nature is uniform than it is coincidental that I should see the license plate "ARW 357" on my way into work. It is we who invest regularity with special significance contra irregularity. The sun not rising tomorrow would be no more special than it rising. We only think to the contrary because we've circularly inducted on the uniformity of nature to conclude that nature should continue to be uniform. And worse, we decide what constitutes regularity and what doesn't. | |
| Dec 21, 2023 at 19:48 | answer | added | Ray | timeline score: 2 | |
| Dec 21, 2023 at 18:13 | history | became hot network question | |||
| Dec 21, 2023 at 17:56 | answer | added | Chris Sunami | timeline score: 3 | |
| Dec 21, 2023 at 15:33 | comment | added | Scott Rowe | @DavidGudeman the question ends up with asking if unexplained things are miracles. We should define miracle, then I think the answer will present itself. | |
| Dec 21, 2023 at 15:18 | answer | added | Kristian Berry | timeline score: 2 | |
| Dec 21, 2023 at 13:29 | comment | added | TKoL | Someone probably pointed this out already, but there's some disambiguation needed about what you're referring to when you say "Law". There are two things you could mean at once - a "law" as written down in a text book, and formulated by a human being, -vs- a "law" as an ontologically real rule about reality. The former are descriptions. The latter ... it's debatable if they exist, of course, but if they do, they would in some sense not merely be descriptions. Unfortunately we don't seem to have a strong grasp on that second type of 'law', if there is such a thing. I think there is, personally. | |
| Dec 21, 2023 at 12:49 | comment | added | Mauro ALLEGRANZA | Maybe... following your approach regarding the lack of certainty about the existence of regularities in nature, from the fact that there are multiple interpretations of Hume's philosophy we have to conclude that there was no Hume. | |
| Dec 21, 2023 at 11:52 | comment | added | David Gudeman | @ScottRowe, those statistical regularities only produce system properties like pressure or temperature; they don't produce things like directed motion without some force causing them to. And even the system properties are without explanation in the Humean view. Why are the particles behaving in such a way as to produce those system properties? | |
| Dec 21, 2023 at 11:27 | comment | added | Scott Rowe | The universe is very big, with a stupefying number of particles in even the smallest object. As we know, large numbers of particles together doing their unguided things produce extreme statistical regularly. Things that depart from the norm or average tend to be swamped out by the vast swaths of average behavior. We cannot have insight into these large scale processes, they are beyond our comprehension. Nonetheless, that's how it works. If a million people all get on planes on a certain day, is that because the calendar forced them to do it? Well, yes and no. | |
| Dec 21, 2023 at 11:17 | comment | added | user62907 | Interesting. So Hume was himself anti Humean and thought laws were prescriptive? | |
| Dec 21, 2023 at 11:13 | comment | added | Mauro ALLEGRANZA | Humean vs non-Humean: what does it mean? See Hume: "historically, until late in the Twentieth Century, was called the “Humean” account of Laws of Nature was a misnomer. Hume himself was no “Humean” as regards laws of nature. Hume, it turns out, was a Necessitarian – i.e. believed that laws of nature are in some sense “necessary” (although of course not logically necessary). His legendary skepticism was epistemological. He was concerned, indeed even baffled, how our knowledge of physical necessity could arise. " | |
| Dec 21, 2023 at 11:12 | answer | added | Richard Kirk | timeline score: 6 | |
| Dec 21, 2023 at 10:40 | comment | added | user62907 | But that’s just restating the regularity @MauroALLEGRANZA Why does it behave the same way? Your answer simply amounts to “because the structure is such that it does.” But why does that structure lead to a regularity? | |
| Dec 21, 2023 at 10:34 | comment | added | Mauro ALLEGRANZA | "Why doesn’t salt dissolve in water today and not the next?" According to our current scientific knowledge, because the chemical structure is salt is "made" in such a way that it interacts with water in such-and-such a way. This is HOW scientific theories describe and explain FACTS: using mathematical formulas (law) to express generalities. Knowledge is to "collect" particulars (facts) under general (laws, abstract concepts): it is a very efficient way humans use to survive. | |
| Dec 21, 2023 at 10:25 | history | edited | user62907 | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| Dec 21, 2023 at 10:21 | comment | added | user62907 | Why is reality regular then? Why doesn’t salt dissolve in water today and not the next? @MauroALLEGRANZA If laws were prescriptive, it would explain why it’s regular by virtue of it being a law. If they are descriptions, the fact that reality is regular seems to just be an unexplainable coincidence if no law is enforcing the regularities. | |
| Dec 21, 2023 at 10:20 | history | edited | user62907 | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| Dec 21, 2023 at 10:17 | history | edited | haxor789 | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| Dec 21, 2023 at 10:15 | comment | added | Mauro ALLEGRANZA | "laws" are our (human) way to describe reality; maybe our description is faithful. The grounding principle of science (and most of philosophy...) is that there is a reality independent of human mind and that we can use experience and reason to try to describe and understand it. | |
| Dec 21, 2023 at 10:11 | history | asked | user62907 | CC BY-SA 4.0 |