Philosophy Now Forum

I'm inviting you to come to the dark side to see what I'm....okay, I guess it might be too dark to see. Nevermind.

I won't try and answer your question, Scott, because I have no idea what it means. Can I get a translation in Australian English?

Obvious Leo wrote:I won't try and answer your question, Scott, because I have no idea what it means. Can I get a translation in Australian English?

Okay, does an empty kangaroo pocket mean anything to you?

Oh, right, the toilets flow backwards there. Let me try again:

?you to anything means pocket kangaroos empty an does, Okay

Scott Mayers wrote:Okay, does an empty kangaroo pocket mean anything to you?

Good on ya, cobber, now I get ya.

Yes. An empty kangaroo pouch (not pocket!) is one without a joey in it.

Now I understand why infinite regress is ridiculed by anyone who can find their way out of a paper sack.

The Inglorious One wrote:Now I understand why infinite regress is ridiculed by anyone who can find their way out of a paper sack.

Yes. In the language of a Spinozan universe where reality is regarded in terms of process the infinite regress is simply an absurdity because it merely leads to a first cause argument. Any philosopher willing to entertain a first cause argument ought to consider taking up an alternative line of work.

There are no ultimate laws of nature or laws of physics as I prefer to call them. As they are an explanatory framework for
explaining how the observable Universe functions but nothing else. And as they are scientific in principle and as science is
an inductive discipline then they are not absolute. Unlike axiomatically deductive systems like mathematics which are for
it uses proof to validate its premises. Whereas science by contrast uses evidence to validate its hypotheses which is not as
valid as proof. And science is in a continuous of revision and modification. And nothing outside of the observable Universe
can be scientifically determined so it is impossible to know how the laws of physics would pertain to such regions of space

Obvious Leo wrote:

The Inglorious One wrote:Now I understand why infinite regress is ridiculed by anyone who can find their way out of a paper sack.

Yes. In the language of a Spinozan universe where reality is regarded in terms of process the infinite regress is simply an absurdity because it merely leads to a first cause argument. Any philosopher willing to entertain a first cause argument ought to consider taking up an alternative line of work.

This is why I can't take you seriously, Leo. You fall into the absurdity of infinite regress and you assume "first cause" is in reference to something that is first in a long line of temporal events.

In other words, you can't find your way out of a paper sack.

What the fuck is the matter with your powers of English comprehension, Inglorious?

The Inglorious One wrote: you assume "first cause" is in reference to something that is first in a long line of temporal events.

Where did I say this? How many times have I said that there's no such thing as a first cause and anybody wishing to argue the opposite is a blathering fucking idiot.

The Inglorious One wrote:Laws are merely observed patterns of observed behavior. .

As an an account of the nature of propositions in a scientific theory, this Hume-ish formula has a little too much the flavor of simple inductivism for my taste. We have a good deal more than a handful of observed cases (out of the astronomic number of such events that have occurred since the Bang) in support of the proposition that mutual annihilation occurs when an electron meets a positron. That issue is not my current concern, however.

Put in other language, what I am interested in is how much "pattern" there is at the deepest level of reality. How much would an accurate description be like "all rocks in the box are attracted by a magnet" in comparison to "all rocks in the box weigh less than 100 grams".

We have found a lot of pattern at the macro level. For a long time science seemed to find more and more pattern as its explanations got deeper. This experience, and the idea that order really shouldn't be able to arise out of disorder, led to the presumption that at the very deepest level nature must be very well ordered indeed. This, in turn, has stimulated the desire for and work towards a grand unified theory.

Quantum phenomena, however, have shown that apparent order can in fact arise out of the disorder of indeterminism. (It is admittedly a disorder constrained by probabilities.)

So, quite independent of whether we use the word "laws" and the fine points of the status of theoretical statements, there are the questions I tried to take on in more detail in my Sep 20, 2014 post on lawrenceCrocker.blogspot.com: how much disorder, non-law-like-ness, non-describability, could there be at the deepest level? In addition, although there must be a deepest level of reality in that reality just is what it is, could there fail to be a deepest level of explanation -- even of "best possible explanation"?

Lawrence,

I can't interpret where you stand. Are you supporting ultimate laws? Against them? You appear to be reporting some problem without taking a stance with certain clarity. Do you have one?

Lawrence Crocker wrote:the idea that order really shouldn't be able to arise out of disorder,

That this proposition is false is a truth first discovered by Anaximander and re-discovered by Charles Darwin. Throughout the 20th century it was elaborated into a formal mathematical framewor called non-linear dynamic systems theory, from which the term "complexity from chaos" derives.

Lawrence Crocker wrote:Quantum phenomena, however, have shown that apparent order can in fact arise out of the disorder of indeterminism.

This is simply a misuse of language. The disorder at the sub-atomic scale is not indeterminism at all, any more than the disorder at the cosmological scale is. It is merely unpredictability. Chaotically determined systems are both fullly deterministic AND utterly unpredictable beyond a finite and unspecifiable order of probability. This is a well established and completely uncontroversial scientific fact which physics utterly ignores, which explains why its models make no sense.

Lawrence Crocker wrote:This, in turn, has stimulated the desire for and work towards a grand unified theory.

Never in a million years will physics find such a theory within the current spacetime paradigm. However if you're seriously interested in it, Lawrence, here it is.

https://austintorney.wordpress.com/2015 ... n-de-jong/

Lawrence Crocker wrote:there must be a deepest level of reality in that reality just is what it is,

Exactly. Reality just is what it is and the only meta-law it is beholden to is that shit happens. This meta-law can even account for the fact that we are here discussing this.

Lawrence Crocker wrote: could there fail to be a deepest level of explanation -- even of "best possible explanation"?

Read my synopsis and judge for yourself. However bear in mind that it is a genuine scientific hypothesis because it yields a testable prediction which would unambiguously falsify either itself or current theory.

Obvious Leo wrote:
Where did I say this? How many times have I said that there's no such thing as a first cause and anybody wishing to argue the opposite is a blathering fucking idiot.

That's a philosophic assumption, not a fact of nature.

A rock moves.
The rock is moved by a stick.
The stick is moved by a hand.
The hand is moved by a human body (along with all its physiological connections).
The body is moved by atoms and forces.
Atoms and forces are moved by...? Shit happening? Where's the "cause and effect" there?

Lawrence Crocker wrote: Quantum phenomena, however, have shown that apparent order can in fact arise out of the disorder of indeterminism. (It is admittedly a disorder constrained by probabilities.)

Of course. And the highlighted has been my point all along. Why is this the case?

The Inglorious One wrote: That's a philosophic assumption, not a fact of nature.

It's neither. A "first cause" is an example of an oxymoron. If you wish to put the case for an uncaused cause then be my guest but keep in mind that since it is you that defends the minority position then it is you that bears the burden of proof.

This should be quite interesting because I've been studying philosophy for over 40 years and I've never read of anybody trying the argue the case for a first cause. Good luck.

The Inglorious One wrote:Of course. And the highlighted has been my point all along. Why is this the case?

Because the future is a blank slate. It hasn't been MADE yet and there are NO LAWS to determine what the future will hold otherwise you'd know everything that was going to happen tomorrow. Anyone could tell you that even in principle this is utterly impossible. This was told by the most profound metaphysical gurus of the 20th century.

"Que sera sera".....Doris Day

"Prediction is difficult, particularly of the future".....Yogi Berra

"Life is what happens to you while you're making other plans".....John Lennon.

However this is my favourite telling of this truth and it's over a thousand years old.

The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line
Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.

From “The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam”

Do you know what Omar is telling us, Inglorious??? He's telling us that Newton was completely wrong.

[Edited by iMod]

Scott Mayers wrote:Lawrence,I can't interpret where you stand. Are you supporting ultimate laws? Against them?

It is possible that there are fundamental laws of physics, i.e. that reality works on a basis that could in principle be described in a way that would seem to us to be explanatory very much as we have traditionally taken scientific laws to be explanatory. Physics seeks such laws, and it might well find them.

The question that interests me is how far reality might fail to be like this, and in what ways. My inclination is that, as a conceptual matter, it might depart pretty far towards the not law-like and that it migh even not be "capturable in finite language." My inclination on this point, however, could be overcome by argument.