It is worth reflecting on what sort of answer might satisfy those who ask these "why" questions and whether there might be way of rephrasing them to exclude the "why". In other words, what is the actual question here? Are they asking how such things are made possible? Or are they simply expressing wonder at these facts? Or something else? — Luke

A nice issue to bring back up. 'What is the question?' mumbled Gertrude Stein who lay dying. Young Wittgenstein had his own version. I think the 'why' is often enough lyrically indeterminate. It's not how but that the world is that fucks us up. Or fucks those up who're in a mood called 'wonder.'

Can you think of any more examples of this sort of "why" question in philosophy? — Luke

A version that occurs to me is the apparent inescapability of brute fact in any grand narrative. A child might ask why there is a world in the first place and be told that a god created the world. Then this god is a brute fact, until the same child recognizes the contingency of this god as he did of the world.

I have noticed this particular "why" question crops up repeatedly in various guises in philosophy. — Luke

It's the search for a causal account. Every particular must be the product of something more general.

It is worth reflecting on what sort of answer might satisfy those who ask these "why" questions and whether there might be way of rephrasing them to exclude the "why". — Luke

Aristotle list the four general causes - or "becauses". Together, as a unity, they ought to offer a complete account.

Note how some things might be necessary to the reason why something is the way it is. Which is a pretty strong reason for the "why". But other things can be at the other extreme in being a contingent cause - a "mere accident". So the weakest seeming reason for some "why".

Why did the beam buckle, the cookie crumble, or the final straw break the camel's back? We can blame unlucky accident or randomness as the reasonable explanation. We could say absolutely any kind of pertubation, no matter how slight, could have tipped the balance.

So a four causes account covers both structural necessity - formal and final cause - and material accident, or material and efficient cause.

Thinking in these terms might also highlight the impotence of the "answer" given by the fine tuning argument. The fine tuning argument answers the question of why there is life in the universe by saying, basically: because otherwise there wouldn't be life in the universe. Or, in its more general form that applies to all of these questions: because otherwise things would not be the way they are. — Luke

This seems to conflate two possibilities.

In the one, fine-tuning is the result of structural necessity. Our Comos is what it is because that is the sum over all possibilities. In Platonic fashion, you can only have five Platonic solids. Given the constraints of a 3D world, those are the only fully symmetric regular polygon outcomes.

And in physics, this is the kind of gauge symmetry thinking that gives the Standard Model of particle physics. For Nature to reach its simplest possible state in terms of absolute regularity - a world where particles are excitations of the simplest achievable form - then the options are strictly limited in a Platonic structural fashion. So in this sense, fine-tuning is an illusion. Any world would have the same mathematical constraints.

But then the coupling constants of the Standard Model seem arbitrary. The mass of an electron or the strength of the electromagnetic field seem like arbitrary values - at least in the physics to date. And so the way around that is the anthropic principle. We imagine a multiverse or landscape of possibility in which every random combination of constants is tried. We then become the constraint that picks out the particular world-branch in which - by accident - the combination is such as to be able to produce us. The fine-tuning is again an illusion. But now in the sense that every accidental value will be manifested and so our reality now sits at the opposite end of the spectrum.

It is not Platonically necessary, but as causally contingent as it can be imagined to be.

So a lot now hinges on how much of the causal work done by the physical constants can be hoovered up by some future "beyond the Standard Model" physics. The "why" will be shifted from one causal bin to the other to the degree the arbitrary constants get explained as Platonic necessity.

But note that "contingent" is a causal concept just as much as "necessary". And the two being reciprocal views of "why-ness", we can expect always to have some measure of both in any full account. To be completely a case of one or the other is what we shouldn't expect, and what we don't in fact see.

I think the 'why' is often enough lyrically indeterminate. It's not how but that the world is that fucks us up. Or fucks those up who're in a mood called 'wonder.' — lll

Yes, this is what I was getting at.

A version that occurs to me is the apparent inescapability of brute fact in any grand narrative. — lll

Right. I think what these type of "why" questions have in common is that they are givens or necessities of our existence. More specifically, they are what is given, axiomatic or necessary for us to be able to ask these questions in the first place (i.e. our having spatiotemporal existence, life, consciousness).

It's similar to asking: Why is my native language English instead of another language? Or: Why am I me and not someone else? One possible answer might be that it is by virtue of the details of your birth, such as where you were born, who your parents are, who raised you, etc. But I'm not sure that this answer would satisfactorily answer the "why" question.

Even if we knew all the causes of how the brain produces conscious experiences, this still seems to leave untouched the question of why the brain produces conscious experiences.

The fine-tuning argument is, as the name itself suggests, entirely predicated on the precision in the values of certain physical constants if the universe is to be the way it is, if life is to evolve the way it did.

However, mammalian evolution, therefore our own (human) existence, was made possible by a fluke (an asteroid as per consensus that caused the extinction of the dinos). In other words humanity or intelligence, both essential components of the fine-tuning argument for god, were simply contingent and not necessary.

Furthermore, as Carl Sagan once put it, if you rewind the clock of evolution and let it run again, there's no guarantee that humans & intelligence would evolve. Something totally different could happen.

The long and short of it: fine-tuning doesn't mean humans would come into existence. So much for the special relationship (we think) we have with god. Anthropic principle into the trash can.

Even if we knew all the causes of how the brain produces conscious experiences, this still seems to leave untouched the question of why the brain produces conscious experiences. — Luke

Yeah. The how questions are questions about material and efficient causality. The why questions go to formal and final cause.

But why an organism would want to know its world seems an easy thing to see a purpose for. And how it does that is by constructing a neural modeling relation with that world.

The misstep in the causal analysis is to then talk about "conscious experience" as if it were just a product of the material "how" and not the finalistic "why".

Aristotle list the four general causes — apokrisis

Formal cause: The blueprint/design
Material cause: The stuff that the craftsman works with
Efficient cause: The craftsman (God)
Final cause: The purpose (God's intentions. The meaning of life).

The fine-tuning argument attempts to explain the universe as the perfect environment for humans i.e. the universe has been designed with us in mind.

Ok, here we are. What are we supposed to do now? What is the meaning of life? An unanswered subquestion of the final cause.

We know the purpose (the final cause) of the universe: A home for humans.

We do not know our own purpose (final cause): What is the meaning of life?

Looks like all we did was kick the can down the road.

Even if we knew all the causes of how the brain produces conscious experiences, this still seems to leave untouched the question of why the brain produces conscious experiences. — Luke

One understanding of an explanation of an event is that the event is shown to be derivable from a familiar 'law' or pattern which is itself (for the moment) taken for granted. The strange is linked to the familiar and we move on, forgetting that the familiar itself can be questioned.

Along those lines, I can imagine some pattern/law being established from which what gets interpreted as conscious experiences can be derived. But then either this law is contingent ('true for or no reason') or one can climb up the chain to the most general pattern which is currently accepted and find contingency there. To me this suggests a necessary lacuna in human inquiry (perhaps as @apokrisis mentions we are always between the impossible poles of contingency and necessity.) A nice metaphor is the diagonal argument that proves the uncountability of infinite sequences of bits. Our inquiry always casts a shadow.

.

Furthermore, as Carl Sagan once put it, if you rewind the clock of evolution and let it run again, there's no guarantee that humans & intelligence would evolve. Something totally different could happen. — Agent Smith

Excellent point. Dawkins and Dennett also stress this. Randomness plays an essential role. So beyond the brute fact of the most general pattern there's the 'micro' version where brute fact is understood as a goo on every grinding gear.

Randomness plays an essential role — lll

Unless the dino-exterminator asteroid was a planned event. We could find out, you know. What did the dinsoaurs do for the 200 millions years they flourished that homoformed (make suitable for homo sapiens) the planet? Sabrá Mandrake!

Unless the dino-exterminator asteroid was a planned event. — Agent Smith

I was thinking of randomness on the level of particles, which must play a role in mutation and add up to whether a rock falls on the head of a critter or even (eventually) whether an asteroid smashes into our blue planet.

I was thinking of randomness on the level of particles, which must play a role in mutation and add up to whether a rock falls on the head of a critter or even (eventually) whether an asteroid smashes into our blue planet. — lll

Indeed, to understand randomness at all scales, one has to go its source, the level where it's most conspicuous, most apparent, most obvious - particles.

Indeed, to understand randomness at all scales, one has to go its source, the level where it's most conspicuous, most apparent, most obvious - particles. — Agent Smith

And does that not just piss brute fact over inch and pore of us? Making havoc of explanations? If memory serves, there was a moment of hubris where some leading scientists thought that reality was pretty much explained. Ah but we just didn't have equipment that was sensitive enough. We were fooled by low resolution and the law of large numbers...

Can you think of any more examples of this sort of "why" question in philosophy? — Luke

A lot of those sorts of questions might be meaningless even though they seem to make sense to humans whose entire worldview is tied up in measuring things and trying make meaning. Why isn't the world 25% larger than it is?

hubris where some leading scientists thought that reality was pretty much explained. — lll

There is nothing new to be discovered in physics now. All that remains is more and more precise measurement. — Lord Kelvin

How much does precision determine the validity of scientific theories? If a missle is accurate within 200 m, does it follow the same laws of nature as one that can hit a traget with an error of 10 m?

Any mathologers around here who could help?

How much does precision determine the validity of scientific theories? — Agent Smith

Any mathologers around here who could help? — Agent Smith

I'm a mathologer myself. You ask a deep question. But I think it's safe to say that Newtonian physics seemed so convincing because the speeds and masses involved meant that the Newtonian map/model was good enough to seem like more than a map.

I can't vouch for this source, but this example is what I was hinting at. Such anomalies might be written off as a noise or due to some subtle unseen cause, at least until a more comprehensive and/or more accurate theory comes along.

As seen from Earth the precession of Mercury's orbit is measured to be 5600 seconds of arc per century (one second of arc=1/3600 degrees). Newton's equations, taking into account all the effects from the other planets (as well as a very slight deformation of the sun due to its rotation) and the fact that the Earth is not an inertial frame of reference, predicts a precession of 5557 seconds of arc per century. There is a discrepancy of 43 seconds of arc per century.

This discrepancy cannot be accounted for using Newton's formalism. Many ad-hoc fixes were devised (such as assuming there was a certain amount of dust between the Sun and Mercury) but none were consistent with other observations (for example, no evidence of dust was found when the region between Mercury and the Sun was carefully scrutinized). In contrast, Einstein was able to predict, without any adjustments whatsoever, that the orbit of Mercury should precess by an extra 43 seconds of arc per century should the General Theory of Relativity be correct.

https://aether.lbl.gov/www/classes/p10/gr/PrecessionperihelionMercury.htm

Surely ‘natural law’ must form some part of the answer to this question. Why water flows downhill, why bodies fall at the same rate, why nothing can move faster than light, and so on, are part of a huge range of questions that can be answered with reference to laws, principles, axioms, and so on. But there’s no answer to why those laws are as they are, in the same way that there’s no sense in asking why 3 is prime.

. Every particular must be the product of something more general. — apokrisis

So, I’m thinking that the two key ideas here are the necessary and the contingent. The domain of natural or scientific law is one of necessary truths. I suppose that also pertains to the domain of logic. But contingent facts seem lower down the scale than necessary truths - are they not? Contingencies are just that - contingent, dependent, not necessary, could have been other. Whereas natural laws, principles and so on - could not have been other. That’s what makes them ‘laws’.

But let me also observe that the notion of necessary truth is unpopular - because it seems to suggest, or be underwritten by, the notion of a necessary being, which is of course a no-go idea for naturalism.

Don’t know if I’m on to something here or not, if anyone has feedback.

Whereas natural laws, principles and so on - could not have been other. That’s what makes them ‘laws’. — Wayfarer

I think the 'law' metaphor just expresses our expectation that the pattern will hold. It's logically possible that the 'laws' could change. With computers it's easy to simulate alternative worlds with different laws, such as a world where gravity is an inverse cube law.

But let me also observe that the notion of necessary truth is unpopular - because it seems to suggest, or be underwritten by, the notion of a necessary being, which is of course a no-go idea for naturalism. — Wayfarer

To me it makes more sense to speak in terms of a restlessness with brute facts. To find necessity is to find causal linkage, possibly exploitable. The PSR is perhaps more an expression of human curiosity than some primordial cosmic logic. We want to know why why why. This makes sense as an evolved trait, too, since it's presumably useful to always sniff around for correlations and 'handles' (places where small effort leads to great reward) and not be satisfied with 'useless' or 'meaningless' or 'brute' presence. The idea of God makes every single detail of the world meaningful and justified.

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It's logically possible that the 'laws' could change. — lll

The laws are such that living beings have evolved. They might have been otherwise, but we would never have been around to discuss it.

The facts are such that living beings have evolved. They could easily have been otherwise, but we would never have been around to discuss it. — Wayfarer

I agree that a relative stability of physical laws so far makes sense with the rest of what we know, but this is no proof of necessity. I see how one can make a case that the law of gravity has held for centuries, but I don't see how that case can be extended to the future. Only a circular argument comes to mind (the future will resemble the past because the future resembled the past in the past.)

:up:

Can you explain?

As the accuracy of measurement increases, do we have to switch between theories like it was done in your example with Mercury's precession?

Like you said, somewhere, it's about resolution - images (of the universe) at different resolutions isn't a question of plugging in more accurate values into the same equation; we need an entirely different set of equations. I can't quite wrap my head around this. It feels odd.

"Why" questions which are not addressed to some particular person about her intentions / reasons are incoherent. Usually, what's intended are general, causal / explanatory "How" questions about nature or the universe itself. Philosophers, IMO, ask "Why" questions of other philosophers in order to prompt 'speculative answers' to (unstated) "How" questions the domains of which tend to be empirical-hypothetical rather than ideal-categorical; taken or intended literally indicates that the philosophers' language has gone on holiday (Witty). This site is populated (swarmed) almost exclusively by amateurs (& poseurs & proselytizers), so asking nonsensical "Why" questions is deeply endemic.

As the accuracy of measurement increases, do we have to switch between theories like it was done in your example with Mercury's precession? — Agent Smith

As I understand it, it's logically possible that a theory keeps on working indefinitely as we crank up the 'resolution' of our measurements.

The point is that lots of models can fit the same set of data points (which are generated via a randomly generated law with a varying amount of noise.) The model is 'underdetermined' in this sense. This is where factors like economy, coherence with the rest of our beliefs, and beauty come in.

beauty — lll

A curve is beautiful, feminine. I wonder why we're hell bent on finding linear correlations. So masculine straight lines are.

I'd rather use a sine wave or some such like than a straight line. It would make my life hell, but women, they seem to love to do that to me!

I wonder why we're hell bent on finding linear correlations. — Agent Smith

Dirt cheap. Easy to grok. Two parameters. Sum up millions of points with a couple of 64 bit floating point numbers. You can do a sine wave model with 2 or 3 parameters and get a dirt cheap curve. Or a quadratic model, even cheaper to calculate. The basic idea is a 'family' of functions which only vary in their 'settings' (parameters.) How many knobs do I have to twist? How many dimensions much I search through for good settings? Neural networks can have billions of dimensions, but SGD can (amazingly) hack this search space if one is willing to foot the bill for it...

Occam's razor, :kiss: Men are simple folk. Women, no, they remind me of Rube Goldberg machines, they do!

Men are simple folk. Women, no, they remind me of Rube Goldberg machines, they do! — Agent Smith

I suppose, I suppose. Though perhaps we are simple in one way to be all the more complex in another.

I see how one can make a case that the law of gravity has held for centuries, but I don't see how that case can be extended to the future. — lll

Said Hume.

Scientific laws exist where logical necessity meets physical causation. (Explored further on this off-site thread.)

Scientific laws exist where logical necessity meets physical causation. — Wayfarer

I think you know that Newton (Kant's inspiration, I think) was wrong, and that science deals in tentative hypotheses and models that work well enough so far. Is that not already a refutation of this claim ? At the very least your usage of 'law' looks nonstandard.

Science distinguishes a law or theory from facts. Calling a law a fact is ambiguous, an overstatement, or an equivocation. The nature of scientific laws has been much discussed in philosophy, but in essence scientific laws are simply empirical conclusions reached by scientific method; they are intended to be neither laden with ontological commitments nor statements of logical absolutes.
...
Laws differ from scientific theories in that they do not posit a mechanism or explanation of phenomena: they are merely distillations of the results of repeated observation. As such, the applicability of a law is limited to circumstances resembling those already observed, and the law may be found to be false when extrapolated.
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Like theories and hypotheses, laws make predictions; specifically, they predict that new observations will conform to the given law. Laws can be falsified if they are found in contradiction with new data.
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The fact that laws have never been observed to be violated does not preclude testing them at increased accuracy or in new kinds of conditions to confirm whether they continue to hold, or whether they break, and what can be discovered in the process. It is always possible for laws to be invalidated or proven to have limitations, by repeatable experimental evidence, should any be observed. Well-established laws have indeed been invalidated in some special cases, but the new formulations created to explain the discrepancies generalize upon, rather than overthrow, the originals. That is, the invalidated laws have been found to be only close approximations, to which other terms or factors must be added to cover previously unaccounted-for conditions, e.g. very large or very small scales of time or space, enormous speeds or masses, etc. Thus, rather than unchanging knowledge, physical laws are better viewed as a series of improving and more precise generalizations.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_law