Laws of Nature

[fast]

We see certain things happening in the real world, and there are real world causes for why those things are happening, and when we look closely, we see that some of those real world happenings are repeating with regularity, and there is an underlying real world cause for those regularly repeating real world happenings. It is my belief that the term, "laws of nature" refers to those real world causes that serve as the foundation for the repeated regularities that man has come to observe.

So, before man enters the scene and starts observing the effects of the laws of nature, there are already laws of nature giving rise to the unobserved regularities. Once man sits up and takes notice, he sees not the laws of nature but rather the consequences of their existence--the regularities that become observed.

It's only after we have observed the effects of the laws of nature that we begin to study and finally write down our formulations that help us explain the cause for why we observe what we do. When we ordinarily speak of laws, we speak of that which we, man, has formulated and written, but such is not the case with with the laws of nature. That is not a law born of man subsequent to observations but rather a 'law OF nature' born before our own existence.

Laws and rules are mind and language dependent. As far as I can see, it is incoherent to think you can describe reality "as it is in itself" without a mind and without a language.

The kind of law I'm talking about is neither mind nor language dependent. Perhaps so when discussing all those other laws we've come to invent, yes, but not so is it the case with the laws of nature, as the laws of nature are not invented but rather discovered laws.

If we discover something and invent a formula, let us not let the invented formula often called a law be mistaken for the discovery; however, neither let the kind of law giving rise to the processes behind discoveries be mistaken for subsequent inventions.

 

[Ahab]

If you don't mind my asking, why do you keep referring to the world as 'the real world' rather than simply 'the world'? It strikes me as being completely unnecessary to add the word "real" to modify "world" given that we are only talking about the world we all live in.

I don't ordinarily. But, since you ask, I was avoiding the terminology of "mind-independent."

I believe there are material, physical, chemical, scientific, kind of functioning processes at work in the outside the mind REAL world, hence nature, that serve as the underlying cause for the regularities that repeatedly occur. Those processes (that I believe exist independent of our minds) are themselves what is referred to by the term, "laws of nature."

Ok. Thanks for the explanation.

 

[Ahab]

Laws and rules are mind and language dependent. As far as I can see, it is incoherent to think you can describe reality "as it is in itself" without a mind and without a language.

The kind of law I'm talking about is neither mind nor language dependent. Perhaps so when discussing all those other laws we've come to invent, yes, but not so is it the case with the laws of nature, as the laws of nature are not invented but rather discovered laws.

If we discover something and invent a formula, let us not let the invented formula often called a law be mistaken for the discovery; however, neither let the kind of law giving rise to the processes behind discoveries be mistaken for subsequent inventions.

You can't escape language. Nor can you step outside of your mind to perceive and experience the world. "Processes", "laws", "discoveries", "inventions", "reality", etc. are all words that we can use to represent the world we experience and perceive.

 

[fast]

The kind of law I'm talking about is neither mind nor language dependent. Perhaps so when discussing all those other laws we've come to invent, yes, but not so is it the case with the laws of nature, as the laws of nature are not invented but rather discovered laws.

If we discover something and invent a formula, let us not let the invented formula often called a law be mistaken for the discovery; however, neither let the kind of law giving rise to the processes behind discoveries be mistaken for subsequent inventions.

You can't escape language. Nor can you step outside of your mind to perceive and experience the world. "Processes", "laws", "discoveries", "inventions", "reality", etc. are all words that we can use to represent the world we experience and perceive.

The truth is independent of minds and language. The expression of or the knowledge of truth may be language and mind dependent, but that's a different matter. The moon was in orbit around our planet long before man came to be.

 

[Juma]

To have an electron, the "rules" for electrons must exist a priori.

I agree that is compelling to believe that there is something guiding the behavior of electrons. But you see: electrons behaves as they do because the space time continuum behaves in a specific way. There is no "laws" governing how elelectrons behave but humans can define models of the behaviour of electrons. These models is what we call laws.

As i showed in a previous post trying to see the laws as something real results in the problem of explaining how nature follow these laws.

 

[fromderinside]

To have an electron, the "rules" for electrons must exist a priori.

I agree that is compelling to believe that there is something guiding the behavior of electrons. But you see: electrons behaves as they do because the space time continuum behaves in a specific way. There is no "laws" governing how elelectrons behave but humans can define models of the behaviour of electrons. These models is what we call laws.

As i showed in a previous post trying to see the laws as something real results in the problem of explaining how nature follow these laws.

I would think the proof of this lies in such as positrons and electrons. Positrons are important to symmetry theory but positrons aren't existent in the current world in which we exist.

 

[Ahab]

You can't escape language. Nor can you step outside of your mind to perceive and experience the world. "Processes", "laws", "discoveries", "inventions", "reality", etc. are all words that we can use to represent the world we experience and perceive.

The truth is independent of minds and language. The expression of or the knowledge of truth may be language and mind dependent, but that's a different matter. The moon was in orbit around our planet long before man came to be.

There is no such thing as 'truth' without minds and language. Truth is not some kind of object like the the moon or earth.

However, it is true that the moon was in orbit around earth long before humans evolved.

 

[fast]

The truth is independent of minds and language. The expression of or the knowledge of truth may be language and mind dependent, but that's a different matter. The moon was in orbit around our planet long before man came to be.

There is no such thing as 'truth' without minds and language. Truth is not some kind of object like the the moon or earth.

However, it is true that the moon was in orbit around earth long before humans evolved.

I think there is truth without minds and language. The door is opened if we consider propositions to be timelessly logically possibly expressed sentences. It is a fact that Earth predates man, and if there was a sentence to express such a proposition before man, it would have been expressive of a true proposition then, but to deny the truth that would have been true based on no sentence to express such a truth doesn't alter the facts that would have made for a true proposition.

 

[Ahab]

There is no such thing as 'truth' without minds and language. Truth is not some kind of object like the the moon or earth.

However, it is true that the moon was in orbit around earth long before humans evolved.

I think there is truth without minds and language. The door is opened if we consider propositions to be timelessly logically possibly expressed sentences. It is a fact that Earth predates man, and if there was a sentence to express such a proposition before man, it would have been expressive of a true proposition then, but to deny the truth that would have been true based on no sentence to express such a truth doesn't alter the facts that would have made for a true proposition.

Sorry, Fast, but this simply makes no sense to me. The existence of propositions, logic, and sentences cannot exist without language. How can they?

I can agree that propositions are a-temporal, but that doesn't entail they existed before there were creatures capable of thought and language.

 

[Juma]

There is no such thing as 'truth' without minds and language. Truth is not some kind of object like the the moon or earth.

However, it is true that the moon was in orbit around earth long before humans evolved.

I think there is truth without minds and language. The door is opened if we consider propositions to be timelessly logically possibly expressed sentences. It is a fact that Earth predates man, and if there was a sentence to express such a proposition before man, it would have been expressive of a true proposition then, but to deny the truth that would have been true based on no sentence to express such a truth doesn't alter the facts that would have made for a true proposition.

Things are as they are even without observers (humans) but without observers there are no truths. Or more exact: there are no models that can be false.

 

[Ahab]

I think there is truth without minds and language. The door is opened if we consider propositions to be timelessly logically possibly expressed sentences. It is a fact that Earth predates man, and if there was a sentence to express such a proposition before man, it would have been expressive of a true proposition then, but to deny the truth that would have been true based on no sentence to express such a truth doesn't alter the facts that would have made for a true proposition.

Things are as they are even without observers (humans) but without observers there are no truths. Or more exact: there are no models that can be false.

Exactly.

 

[Speakpigeon]

It is my belief that the term, "laws of nature" refers to those real world causes that serve as the foundation for the repeated regularities that man has come to observe.

It is your belief and I think it's also what most people believe even though they wouldn't have spent much time thinking about it. It certainly is the conventional meaning of the expression but I understand that many scientists think this doesn't make good sense. If the expression does refer, as is your belief, then there are indeed actual Laws of Nature above and beyond Nature itself and those scientists think it's not a sensible way to construe the situation. Accordingly, they have come to use the expression "Laws of Nature" as referring, yes, but only to the models that science has about Nature, models established, not discovered, by men. This has the advantage that they can establish successive laws (models), each new model being substituted to the one somehow proved wrong. If scientists thought, as you do, of the Laws of Nature as something more than scientific models then they would need to know what these laws are before exhibiting them as such. And I guess that since they don't know such a thing they prefer to use the expression to refer to models, which at least they think they know and can be conveniently discarded when proved wrong. So, I guess it is really not negotiable as far as scientists are concerned, and since many philosophers do try to keep science close to their chests they too won't budge on this. So, all you have in favour of your way of using the expression "Laws of Nature" is vox populi, and old books by dead scientists and dead philosophers, all influenced in that by the pervasive at the time Christian philosophy. In effect, all we have are observations, and they do include regularities. We are thus tempted, and it's apparently only very natural, to infer from these regularities that there must be Laws of Nature. But, we, and scientists, don't know that there are such things. And, since they don't know, they don't want to say that their descriptions of nature, their models of nature, are Laws in the sense you use. What is funny here is that since all the convincing models of how nature behaves have been established by scientists, you are left with admitting that you don't know what the Laws of Nature are or with applying the non-scientific view that Laws of Nature exist independently of our models of nature to the current but perhaps transient scientific model of nature, something that most scientists won't do until they are somehow satisfied that they actually know there current model is true of nature.
EB

 

[Speakpigeon]

Not sure I understand you here. I still think there is a difference between the playing of a game of chess and the rules of chess.

However, describing something as a "regularity" is one way of modelling what is being described, isn't it?

The rules can be derived from observing the playing.

And if the given rules are the same as the derived rules then, if this analogy holds up, the observed regularities would be "the given rules" and our models "the derived rules".

So, in theory, they could both be the same thing.

In theory yes.

but the analogy breaks up, as all analogies do at some point, here when you accept that we are talking of chess as a game we know the rules of. Another way of saying this is that we regard chess as a closed world where we couldn't possibly get surprised by what we saw in it. The world, the "real" world, as we think of it, is open in the sense that we do expect to be possibly surprised at any time. In other words, we accept, usually, that we don't know the world in it's entirety. Thus, we also accept that observed regularities may not reccur throughout reality ("the universe" and beyond) and that therefore any model we work out may prove wrong in due course and that therefore, if there are "rules", Laws of Nature, above and beyond our models, then we don't actually know what these are. And if we don't, it's just as well not to mention them as if we knew what they are.

So, here, the chess analogy doesn't works.
EB

 

[Speakpigeon]

trying to see the laws as something real results in the problem of explaining how nature follow these laws.

Yes, exactly.

This is the same kind of problem as for "abstractions", that some here contend exist but outside space-time and not inside our mind either: How would these abstractions compell us to think of them, or even know them?

These are not absolutely compelling arguments but the thing is nobody seem to be able to explain how that would work. And of course we do understand why we are tempted to think of Laws of Nature as more than man-made models and of "abstractions" as more than ideas in our minds.
EB

 

[fast]

It is my belief that the term, "laws of nature" refers to those real world causes that serve as the foundation for the repeated regularities that man has come to observe.

It is your belief and I think it's also what most people believe even though they wouldn't have spent much time thinking about it. It certainly is the conventional meaning of the expression but I understand that many scientists think this doesn't make good sense. If the expression does refer, as is your belief, then there are indeed actual Laws of Nature above and beyond Nature itself and those scientists think it's not a sensible way to construe the situation. Accordingly, they have come to use the expression "Laws of Nature" as referring, yes, but only to the models that science has about Nature, models established, not discovered, by men. This has the advantage that they can establish successive laws (models), each new model being substituted to the one somehow proved wrong. If scientists thought, as you do, of the Laws of Nature as something more than scientific models then they would need to know what these laws are before exhibiting them as such. And I guess that since they don't know such a thing they prefer to use the expression to refer to models, which at least they think they know and can be conveniently discarded when proved wrong. So, I guess it is really not negotiable as far as scientists are concerned, and since many philosophers do try to keep science close to their chests they too won't budge on this. So, all you have in favour of your way of using the expression "Laws of Nature" is vox populi, and old books by dead scientists and dead philosophers, all influenced in that by the pervasive at the time Christian philosophy. In effect, all we have are observations, and they do include regularities. We are thus tempted, and it's apparently only very natural, to infer from these regularities that there must be Laws of Nature. But, we, and scientists, don't know that there are such things. And, since they don't know, they don't want to say that their descriptions of nature, their models of nature, are Laws in the sense you use. What is funny here is that since all the convincing models of how nature behaves have been established by scientists, you are left with admitting that you don't know what the Laws of Nature are or with applying the non-scientific view that Laws of Nature exist independently of our models of nature to the current but perhaps transient scientific model of nature, something that most scientists won't do until they are somehow satisfied that they actually know there current model is true of nature.
EB

I can appreciate that post.

 

[untermensche]

The rules can be derived from observing the playing.

And if the given rules are the same as the derived rules then, if this analogy holds up, the observed regularities would be "the given rules" and our models "the derived rules".

So, in theory, they could both be the same thing.

In theory yes.

but the analogy breaks up, as all analogies do at some point, here when you accept that we are talking of chess as a game we know the rules of. Another way of saying this is that we regard chess as a closed world where we couldn't possibly get surprised by what we saw in it. The world, the "real" world, as we think of it, is open in the sense that we do expect to be possibly surprised at any time. In other words, we accept, usually, that we don't know the world in it's entirety. Thus, we also accept that observed regularities may not reccur throughout reality ("the universe" and beyond) and that therefore any model we work out may prove wrong in due course and that therefore, if there are "rules", Laws of Nature, above and beyond our models, then we don't actually know what these are. And if we don't, it's just as well not to mention them as if we knew what they are.

So, here, the chess analogy doesn't works.
EB

The real questions are; If the universe does have "rules" from where did they originate? Why are they there?

But all we really can answer is what the rules appear like to us, here and now.

 

[Juma]

In theory yes.

but the analogy breaks up, as all analogies do at some point, here when you accept that we are talking of chess as a game we know the rules of. Another way of saying this is that we regard chess as a closed world where we couldn't possibly get surprised by what we saw in it. The world, the "real" world, as we think of it, is open in the sense that we do expect to be possibly surprised at any time. In other words, we accept, usually, that we don't know the world in it's entirety. Thus, we also accept that observed regularities may not reccur throughout reality ("the universe" and beyond) and that therefore any model we work out may prove wrong in due course and that therefore, if there are "rules", Laws of Nature, above and beyond our models, then we don't actually know what these are. And if we don't, it's just as well not to mention them as if we knew what they are.

So, here, the chess analogy doesn't works.
EB

The real questions are; If the universe does have "rules" from where did they originate? Why are they there?

But all we really can answer is what the rules appear like to us, here and now.

No, that is not "the real question". Its not even hard to answer: the rules are there because the universe is predictable. Tbut there you get an important question: why is the universe so predictable?

 

[untermensche]

The real questions are; If the universe does have "rules" from where did they originate? Why are they there?

But all we really can answer is what the rules appear like to us, here and now.

No, that is not "the real question". Its not even hard to answer: the rules are there because the universe is predictable. Tbut there you get an important question: why is the universe so predictable?

It's the same question.

 

[Juma]

No, that is not "the real question". Its not even hard to answer: the rules are there because the universe is predictable. Tbut there you get an important question: why is the universe so predictable?

It's the same question.

So you no longer think that the universe is goverened by rules?

 

[untermensche]

It's the same question.

So you no longer think that the universe is goverened by rules?

Calling "rules" regularities changes nothing.

To have a regularity requires a "rule".