Skepdick wrote: ↑Thu Jun 15, 2023 4:02 pmThe game of definitions is a very silly game.
I am not at all surprised that you hold such a silly belief.
Whoever promotes the idea that the game of definitions -- proper, linguistic, nominal ones -- is a silly game is promoting the destruction of society. The question is merely whether they are doing it intentionally or unintentionally.
Define "define".
To define a word is to describe what that word means.
More specifically, to define some word W as used by person P is to describe the concept that the person P attaches to the word W.
The term "definition" is also used to refer to 1) the act of constructing a concept, and 2) the act of attaching a concept to a word. Sometimes, the two meanings are combined into one, so that "to define symbol X" means "to construct a concept and attach it to the symbol X".
The term is also often used by laymen to mean the same thing as "description". In that case, a definition does not necessarily describe the concept attached to a word. In fact, in most cases, it describes some other portion of reality, such as what all real life things that can be represented by that word have in common or what's important to know about them.
And why should nature's laws care about your definitions thereof?
Nature's laws do not and should not but you should.
When you construct a concept and attach it to a symbol -- which is something you have to do before you can observe anything -- you establish what can be and cannot be represented by that symbol.
When you establish that the word "bachelor" can only be used to represent unmarried men, it follows that bachelors, i.e. things that can be represented by the word "bachelor", can never be married. No amount of observation can prove that wrong.
"Married bachelor" would be a contradiction in terms, an oxymoron, a broken symbol that cannot be used to represent anything conceivable let alone real. The concept attached to the symbol tells you that it's a symbol that can only be used to represent men that are BOTH married AND not married. That makes it effectively a meaningless symbol, one that cannot be used to represent anything at all. That's why you can know, without any sort of observation, that married bachelors do not exist.
The same goes for the term "laws of nature". The concept attached to it specifies that the term can only be used with respect to
immutable laws. If a law is a mutable law, it is NOT a law of nature. End of story. No amount of observation can prove the existence of mutable laws of nature.
That's why you should care about definitions. They prevent you from making mistakes ( such as contradictions, equivocation, etc. ) They also help you effectively communicate and understand what others are saying.
The term "laws of nature" refers to the components of the mechanism that generates the next state of the universe based on the prior one. Such a mechanism is very clearly immutable; it does not "move" through time, so it has no capacity to change. If the operation of the mechanism is limited, i.e. if there are laws that restrict its behavior, it is either a deterministic mechanism ( involving no randomness at all ) or an indeterminstic one ( involving a degree of randomness. ) If there are no such laws, it's a nondeterministic mechanism, a completely random one.
You can talk about mutable laws that govern an aspect of the universe, that's for sure, but in that case, you have to understand that you're talking about a different thing. In that case, you wouldn't be talking about "the laws of nature". Such laws may undergo change but that neither means that the laws of nature are mutable nor that the laws of nature do not exist.
Consider the mechanism that generated the state of the universe at point in time
t2 based on the state of the universe at some prior point
t1. Suppose the mechanism is governed by deterministic laws. Suppose that a different mechanism was responsible for generating the state of the universe at point
t3 based on the state of the universe at point
t2. Since that mechanism is a different one, its laws are also different ones. Suppose the laws are still deterministic but otherwise different than the ones that govern the other mechanism. At this point, we have two different immutable mechanisms governed by two different sets of immutable laws. If we decide to treat the two mechanisms as two different states of one and the same mechanism, the result is a mutable mechanism -- and not merely one that can mutate ( "mutable" ) but also one that mutated. That would be an example of a mutable mechanism that is governed by mutable laws. For every two adjacent points in time, there exists a mechanism that generated the state of the universe at the subsequent point based on the state of the universe at the earlier point. If we say that every such mechanism is a single state of one and the same mechanism, we end up with a mutable mechanism that is governed by what we might call "mutable laws of nature". These laws, however, would be separate from, a different thing than, what is normally meant by "laws of nature". Such laws wouldn't be the fundamental laws of the universe because one can legitimately ask "What kind of laws govern the way these mutable laws change?" If the answer is "No laws govern it", then it follows that the laws of nature do not exist. But in that case, it also follows that the universe, at the fundamental level, is governed by randomness. No laws = no limitations = everything is equally possible = chaos / randomness.
You are caught up in word games and your disdain for definitions merely reinforces it.
The entire "Laws of nature are human inventions" is nothing but a confusion born out of disdain for definitions ( which is common among those who lean too much on the side of empiricism. ) Not even these "mutable laws of nature" that I mentioned in that paragraph above are human inventions.
Nature's laws are whatever they are.
If they are mutable but you define them as immutable - your definition is wrong.
If they are immutable but you define them as mutable - your definition is wrong.
There you go. You are one of those who do not really understand what definitions are. A definition is not merely a description of some portion of reality ( although laymen often use the word that way. ) A definition is a description of a concept attached to a word by someone. A definition is true if and only if it accurately describes the concept it is supposed to describe. Laws aren't concepts, so their constitution is irrelevant.
What a terrible analogy. Do you understand how the term "immutable" qualifies the laws you are speaking about.
Bachelor implies unmarried. Law does not imply immutable.
"Law of nature" implies it, dummy.
Actually, I can claim whatever the fuck I want. Despite your objections or attempts to restrict the way I think or speak.
And you already do. You already claim "whatever the fuck [ you ] want". But if you want your claims to be true, they must avoid saying nonsensical things such as "The laws of nature change!"
