• Bob Ross
    1.8k
    There is a long history in philosophy of the controversy behind the existence of proper laws; i.e., rules which govern behavior with strict, necessary conformity. The three general responses I have seen in the literature is threefold: (1) the empiricist’s, (2) the rationalist’s, and the (3) transcendental idealist’s. The first denies the existence of (proper) laws in outright, because all human knowledge obtains about “laws” are observed regularities (e.g., Humean arguments); the second sees nothing wrong with merely migrating the induced laws of our consciousness to proper laws (e.g., pretty much any modern person); and the third denies the possibility of knowing any such (proper) laws while maintaining the induced (“transcendentally deduced”) laws as a priori.

    I have been playing with a fourth solution, which is transcendental in nature; but seems to demonstrate plausibly the necessity of proper laws transcendently as a necessary precondition for the possibility of any possible consciousness (of reality). I would like to briefly outline it and see what people think.

    A transcendental argument, for those that are not familiar, is fundamentally any argument that tries to conclude something based off of it being a necessary precondition for something else that is already affirmed (especially as it relates to experience). E.g., it is a necessary precondition for the possibility of human experience, that the brain cognizes in conformance to the law of non-contradiction; for, otherwise, it would be impossible for the brain to ever construct a coherent flow of experience like it does (as apodictically demonstrated by one’s own consciousness).

    It is naturally not possible to demonstrate transcendentally any particular law of transcendent reality, but it is possible to demonstrate that such laws must exist (transcendentally). The easiest way to demonstrate this is to assume that reality itself has no necessary conformity of behavior (of relations): everything would be utterly incoherent—everything would be random. If everything transcendently were random and utterly incoherent, then it would be impossible for your brain to intuit, judge, and cognize in a such a way as to have a sufficiently accurate and coherent stream of consciousness for survival; and since we know that it is the case that the brain does exactly that (as apodictically certain by the conscious experience you have had which has allowed you to navigate reality in a sufficiently accurate way to survive), it must be false that reality lacks any laws. Therefore, it is a necessary precondition for the possibility of the human experience which we have, which is sufficiently accurate to survive reality, that reality has proper laws.

    Now, what these laws are, can only be conditionally mapped, or modeled, by a priori modes of cognizing reality (with mathematical equations and rules of logic being the most fundamental of them all); and so what exactly they are cannot be so described other than mathematically, logically, etc.

    Thoughts?
  • ssu
    8.6k
    If everything transcendently were random and utterly incoherent, then it would be impossible for your brain to intuit, judge, and cognize in a such a way as to have a sufficiently accurate and coherent stream of consciousness for survivalBob Ross
    Would it be so? What if we stumble upon something that is inherently random, but still want to make some "sense" about it and then start imagining patterns where there aren't any. Would our error be truly so bad that it would endanger our survival? Because the other way it's dangerous for our survival: when we fail to see any pattern where there is an obvious pattern, we can then walk in a trap or ambush or utterly fail to see an opportunity. If something effects us that is totally random, we just either "win" by sheer luck or we are extremely unlucky. No use of looking there for a pattern, shit happens.

    Now, what these laws are, can only be conditionally mapped, or modeled, by a priori modes of cognizing reality (with mathematical equations and rules of logic being the most fundamental of them all); and so what exactly they are cannot be so described other than mathematically, logically, etc.Bob Ross
    Isn't this a tautology? If humans and animals make models of the surrounding World rationally or by logic, then naturally the only models we make are these rational and logical models. To make an illogical model of the World wouldn't be useful.
  • Count Timothy von Icarus
    2.8k


    Would it be so? What if we stumble upon something that is inherently random, but still want to make some "sense" about it and then start imagining patterns where there aren't any. Would our error be truly so bad that it would endanger our survival? Because the other way it's dangerous for our survival: when we fail to see any pattern where there is an obvious pattern, we can then walk in a trap or ambush or utterly fail to see an opportunity. If something effects us that is totally random, we just either "win" by sheer luck or we are extremely unlucky. No use of looking there for a pattern, shit happens.

    I think you are correct as respects particular instances, but I thought the OP was pointing to global denials of any laws/regularities/patterns/rationality/logos/whatever-you-want-to-call-it existing outside the mind. To go a bit broader, a blanket prohibition on causes, even as inexplicable constant conjunctions that "just are," or on any notion of the past relating to the future seems to produce a similar problem.

    I assume this is why most "arguments against causation" tend to rely on rebutting specific theories of causation, and generally want to "eliminate the word" while still in some way "explaining" what has been meant by "causes." My thoughts here have generally been that contemporary thought (particularly in the analytic tradition) has a pernicious tendency of deciding that, if something is hard to define or "give a philosophically adequate account of," it needs to be eliminated or radically deflated. Maybe this is an appropriate tactic sometimes, but as a rule it bottoms out in attempts to eliminate truth, goodness, beauty, and finally consciousness itself (in eliminative materialism.) I don't know what the right term is here, if not the tyranny of certainty then perhaps the tyranny of rigor.
  • 180 Proof
    15.4k
    If the nonexistence of nature, like the nonexistence of a sunny day, is a non-contradiction, then nature, like a sunny day, is contingent (i.e. non-necessary; can change, become otherwise; possibly 'comes to be, continues to be or ceases to be'). Therefore, if nature as a whole, as well as each of its constituents, is contingent (NB: nature could be otherwise =/= "anything" within nature could happen), then its "laws", or inherent regularities-relations, are 'necessarily contingent', no?

    Also, contra Kantianism, isn't 'the human brain-body adaptively interacting with its environment' (i.e. embodied agency) – an emergent constituent of nature – the necessary precognition for 'the human mind' (i.e. grammar, experience, judgment)?
  • Wayfarer
    22.7k
    If everything transcendently were random and utterly incoherent, then it would be impossible for your brain to intuit, judge, and cognize in a such a way as to have a sufficiently accurate and coherent stream of consciousness for survival; and since we know that it is the case that the brain does exactly that (as apodictically certain by the conscious experience you have had which has allowed you to navigate reality in a sufficiently accurate way to survive), it must be false that reality lacks any laws. Therefore, it is a necessary precondition for the possibility of the human experience which we have, which is sufficiently accurate to survive reality, that reality has proper laws.Bob Ross

    I've been reading from Schopenhauer again. Something he says struck me with particular force, of late, which is this:

    Of all systems of philosophy which start from the object, the most consistent, and that which may be carried furthest, is simple materialism. It regards matter, and with it time and space, as existing absolutely, and ignores the relation to the subject in which alone all this really exists. It then lays hold of the law of causality as a guiding principle or clue, regarding it as a self-existent order (or arrangement) of things, veritas aeterna, and so fails to take account of the understanding, in which and for which alone causality isp34

    My bolds. There is a volume of literature on the subject of whether causality really exists in the world, or whether it is something attributed to it by the human mind. But Schopenhauer's view is that it is neither: causality is the relation between ideas, but how the world occurs for us IS as idea. So that the logic that holds between ideas also holds in the world, because these are not ultimately separable.

    Having said that, though, I find it very hard to square the logic inherent in ideasm such as the law of the excluded middle, with Schopenhauer’s insistence on the irrational and blind nature of Will. If Will is irrational, then how come Wigner’s ‘unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics in the natural sciences?’ How is it that the order of nature so readily lends itself to mathematical analysis and prediction? That sure seems neither blind nor irrational to me. It is there I feel that the Platonist must know something that Schopenhauer does not. But then, there are whole sections of Schopenhauer I haven’t read, including his seminal essay on the Pinciple of Sufficient Reason.

    This is definitely enough material for an entire term paper, although whether I have the time and energy to really explore it remains to be seen.

    then its "laws", or inherent regularities-relations, are 'necessarily contingent', no?180 Proof

    If it’s contingent ‘all the way down’, then how is it not chaos? I think the Platonist intuition is that laws exist at a deeper level than contingent facts, that laws somehow dictate, as much as predict, how specific particulars will behave, all other things being equal. What happens on the surface level is what appears as phenomena - ‘phenomena’ being ‘what appears’ - but why things happen as they do, is the consequence of uniform regularities that are real on a different level to the phenomenal.

    But as discussed in another thread, the difficulty with that, is that there are no 'other levels' in current philosophy. There’s only the horizontal dimension of effective causation; the vertical dimension is generally excluded from naturalism, as naturalism anchors itself to the domain of phenomena and mathematical analysis arising from it.
  • J
    678
    What happens on the surface level is what appears as phenomena - ‘phenomena’ being ‘what appears’ - but why things happen as they do, is the consequence of uniform regularities that are real on a different level to the phenomenal.Wayfarer

    I think we need to go even deeper, in order to reach a classical idealist understanding of causality and laws. The above statement speaks about a "consequence of uniform regularities" as the reason things happen as they do. (It also speaks about "reality on a different level to the phenomenal," but put that aside for the moment.). Isn't this like saying that sleep happens due to "soporific properties"? Yes, we perceive the uniform regularities, and their uniformity is what calls for explanation. And yes, if we could offer that explanation, it would make the regularities a consequence of it. But have we really progressed?

    The kind of "basic" causality that you're talking about, I think, needs to be described more powerfully. You say (for the Platonist), "Laws exist at a deeper level than contingent facts." This is because the laws are supposed to cause the facts. Here a robust idealism emerges: A law, presumably, is not a material object. Yet it has the power, on this account, to cause and organize every phenomenon we experience. Now we reach that "different level to the phenomenal" -- what sort of thing must such a law be? I'm sympathetic to considering a vertical (higher) dimension, as you know, but how do we avoid an infinite regress? Do the laws shape themselves? Do they cause themselves? This raises the interesting question of whether hardcore idealism has to be, at bottom, theistic.
  • Bob Ross
    1.8k


    What if we stumble upon something that is inherently random,

    If something effects us that is totally random, we just either "win" by sheer luck or we are extremely unlucky. No use of looking there for a pattern, shit happens.

    If reality is completely random, then we would not expect our experience, even if it is fabricated into a coherent series, to be useful for survival; which it clearly is.

    Sure, if, ceteris paribus, there was one random bit of reality that we experienced along with non-random bits of reality, then our brain would most likely fabricate that part—transcendentally seeking causality—but this still admits of some proper laws.

    Isn't this a tautology? If humans and animals make models of the surrounding World rationally or by logic, then naturally the only models we make are these rational and logical models

    No, a tautology is when something is necessarily true as a matter of definition (such that its truth-table would be true all the way down). Material implication, of which what you noted above is an instance, is not tautological. Moreover, what I was saying is that if we can only cognize reality relative to those a priori preconditions, then it follows that what the proper law is can only be modeled semi-accurately with such.
  • Bob Ross
    1.8k


    If the nonexistence of nature, like the nonexistence of a sunny day, is a non-contradiction, then nature, like a sunny day, is contingent

    I don’t think the universe is necessarily contingent, if by ‘nature’ that is what you are referring to, and it doesn’t help to cite a disanalogous example. Why should one accept that there aren’t brute existences?

    To me, it seems more plausible that some “stuff”—whether that be laws, forms, principles, objects, etc.—just is that way because it is (with no sufficient reason for why).

    Therefore, if nature as a whole, as well as each of its constituents, is contingent (NB: nature could be otherwise =/= "anything" within nature could happen), then its "laws", or inherent regularities-relations, are 'necessarily contingent', no?

    I don’t see why that would be the case: a basic contingency relation of objects does not necessitate that the formal rules of relations between them are contingent—although they may be. If I were to grant your point here, then, it seems like reality would have to have, assuming there are laws, an infinite regress of them—no?

    Also, contra Kantianism, isn't 'the human brain-body adaptively interacting with its environment' (i.e. embodied agency) – an emergent constituent of nature – the necessary precognition for 'the human mind' (i.e. grammar, experience, judgment)?

    I didn’t follow this part. Of course, the human biology evolves, if that is what you mean.
  • Bob Ross
    1.8k


    I've been reading from Schopenhauer again.

    Yeah, S has a wildly different metaphysics to K even though he builds off of K. For S, causality is the only feature of our faculty of understanding—no reason, no principles, no categories, etc.—and I have no clue why that would be the case.

    Likewise, as pointed out in the OP, I think it is possible to note that there must be relations, laws, between objects (which would include some form or forms of causality) even if it is not the same as the law of causality which is a priori. No?

    , with Schopenhauer’s insistence on the irrational and blind nature of Will

    Yeah, the problem I have is that, among other things, he reduces the real world to a giant unity blob of will. This doesn’t really make sense: how would the brain be able to cognize something which has no laws of relations between things—let alone cognize something that is a complete unity. How is there even distinctions between things if everything is one thing? Of course, there aren’t; and that’s why Schopenhauer compares the universal will to one of those lanterns that has one light which produces many shadows from all sides.

    How is it that the order of nature so readily lends itself to mathematical analysis and prediction? That sure seems neither blind nor irrational to me.

    Exactly. All S does is strip away the a priori modes of cognizing reality and assumes that the negation of those must be true (e.g., no space and time → absolute unity, no rationality → irrationality, etc.). It doesn’t make sense.
  • 180 Proof
    15.4k
    If I were to grant your point here, then, it seems like reality would have to have, assuming there are laws, an infinite regress of them—no?Bob Ross
    Not unless there is a metaphysical necessity – (transcendental) reason – 'why there is anything at all'. Only "X is ultimately necessary" (i e. absolute) precipates an infinite regrees of "whys" (or "laws").

    If it’s contingent ‘all the way down’, then how is it not chaos?Wayfarer
    I think fundamental physics overwhelmingly suggests, though does/can not prove, that Order is (only) a phase-transition of Disorder such that the more cogent, self-consistent conception of this universe (of atomic event-patterns, or fields-excitations) is that it is a random 'non-zero' (CCC ~Penrose?) fluctuation of vacua. Perhaps this is an Everettian (per)version of Spinozist substance and/or Epicurean void ... Q. Meillassoux's metaphysical term for this sort of concept is 'hyper-chaos' (aka ... sunyata ... dao ... Heraclitus' logos ... ) :fire:
  • Wayfarer
    22.7k
    This is because the laws are supposed to cause the facts. Here a robust idealism emerges: A law, presumably, is not a material object. Yet it has the power, on this account, to cause and organize every phenomenon we experience. Now we reach that "different level to the phenomenal" -- what sort of thing must such a law be? I'm sympathetic to considering a vertical (higher) dimension, as you know, but how do we avoid an infinite regress? Do the laws shape themselves? Do they cause themselves? This raises the interesting question of whether hardcore idealism has to be, at bottom, theistic.J

    I think the Platonist tradition naturally tended to understand laws as the doings of the demiurge laid down at the foundations of time. That still resonates, at least for me, although it is of course consigned to history as far as most people are concerned, having become absorbed into, and then rejected along with, theology. (I really have to make the time to study the Timeaus and commentaries. Apparently a major source of inspiration for a youthful Heisenberg.)

    As for the 'regress' - perhaps what we perceive as laws and regularities are necessarily true. Asking why they must be, is rather like asking why two and two equals four. In fact a whole epistemological question might revolve around trying to understand the way in which such regularities exist. As you will know, philosophers of science like Nancy Cartwright questions the whole idea of natural law, in her books such as How the Laws of Physics Lie. She doesn't call into question the pragmatic effectiveness of science but questions whether it is really 'lawful' in that traditionally-understood sense (see No God, No Laws.)

    as pointed out in the OP, I think it is possible to note that there must be relations, laws, between objects (which would include some form or forms of causality) even if it is not the same as the law of causality which is a priori. No?Bob Ross

    Well, in relation to Schopenhauer, the problem goes away because objects are ideas. The world and everything in it is Idea, as it has 'passed through the manufactory of the brain' and with it, entered the domain of time and space. That aspect of Schopenhauer makes sense to me! Where I'm having the problem is, if Will is 'blind and irrational', how come the exquisite symbiologies of biological existence?
  • J
    678
    As for the 'regress' - perhaps what we perceive as laws and regularities are necessarily true. Asking why they must be, is rather like asking why two and two equals four.Wayfarer

    Yes, in the sense that we're wondering whether explanation can ever stop, and if so, on what grounds. But the difference I see between arithmetic and natural laws is this: We don't generally speak about anything being caused in arithmetic -- we speak of reasons why, e.g., 2 +2 = 4, we don't say that the sum 4 is caused by the addition of 2 and 2. Whereas with natural laws, we do want a cause. The laws seem to harness generative power -- they actually get stuff done. Here you need something more along the lines of a Prime Mover to bring explanation to an end, it seems to me.
  • Wayfarer
    22.7k
    Here you need something more along the lines of a Prime Mover to bring explanation to an end, it seems to me.J

    That's the point Cartwright makes in No God, No Laws. It's also discernable from the whole heritage of Western science, where until the modern period, natural laws were regarded as God's handiwork. The lineage of that idea can be traced back to Greek philosophy. But then in the modern period God becomes 'a ghost in his own machine' as Ted Dace put it.

    But there's another interesting issue, which is the relationship of physical causation and logical necessity. I started a thread on that some time back, but it predictably went around in circles as there are wildly divergent opinions. But I'm forming the tentative understanding that in some real way, mathematics does more than model or represent - that in some sense the Universe *is* mathematical. That's not a new idea either. Someone alerted me to this book, The Pythagorean World, Jane McDonell, but a lot of it is beyond me as I don't have the training in mathematical physics.
  • Mww
    4.9k
    The easiest way to demonstrate this is to assume that reality itself has no necessary conformity of behavior (of relations)….Bob Ross

    …..these laws are, can only be conditionally mapped, or modeled, by a priori modes of cognizing reality (with mathematical equations and rules of logic being the most fundamental of them all)….Bob Ross

    How can non-relational transcendent laws ever be determinable by a method necessarily predicated on relations? If the method is relational, mustn’t the model constructed by that method, be relational?

    What’s the difference, in this thesis, between consciousness, and consciousness (of reality)? Do transcendent laws only precondition the latter, and if so, why not the former as well?

    The ground of a transcendental argument presupposes a given. Depending on the choice of definitions, to construct an a priori judgement in the form of a transcendental argument, but with transcendent conceptions, is always invalid, insofar as no transcendent conceptions are given, re: that, the negation of which, is impossible.

    Dunno why I need a law that preconditions the possibility of my consciousness of reality.
  • 180 Proof
    15.4k
    The ground of a transcendental argument presupposes a given. Depending on the choice of definitions, to construct an a priori judgement in the form of a transcendental argument, but with transcendent conceptions, is always invalid, insofar as no transcendent conceptions are given, re: that, the negation of which, is impossible.Mww
    :100: :up:
  • Corvus
    3.3k
    Now, what these laws are, can only be conditionally mapped, or modeled, by a priori modes of cognizing reality (with mathematical equations and rules of logic being the most fundamental of them all); and so what exactly they are cannot be so described other than mathematically, logically, etc.

    Thoughts?
    Bob Ross

    The wordings of the OP title "the existence of transcendent laws" sounds ambiguous and unintelligible.
    All laws are from human reasoning be it induction or deduction. Some laws are from the cultural customs and ethical principles.

    A priori is the way human reasoning functions and possibility of some abstract concepts. It is not about the laws. All laws are nonexistent until found by reasoning and established as laws. For the ancient folks with little or no scientific, philosophical and mathematical knowledge, everything was myth. There was no laws. Therefore there are no such things called "transcendent laws".
  • Mww
    4.9k


    I think, again, depending on definitions….and indeed metaphysical predispositions….. that while a transcendental argument cannot suffice for establishing that transcendent laws precondition human consciousness of reality, it is far more relevant to consider quid juris with respect to them. To establish that, re: by what right or warrant does reason determine that such transcendent laws are justifiable to begin with, historically anyway, requires a “transcendental deduction”, in which, not arguing that conceptions belong quid facti to a cognition, as expressed in general by ’s “…. (as apodictically demonstrated by one’s own consciousness)….”, but rather, by what right do they belong.
  • Bob Ross
    1.8k


    Not unless there is a metaphysical necessity – (transcendental) reason – 'why there is anything at all'.

    If there is something that is metaphysically necessary, then not everything is contingent; which negates your original point, no? Are you just contending that whatever is necessary is NOT a law?

    Only "X is ultimately necessary" (i e. absolute) precipates an infinite regrees of "whys" (or "laws").

    That’s what I understand metaphysical necessity to be. I am not following.

    I think fundamental physics overwhelmingly suggests, though does/can not prove, that Order is (only) a phase-transition of Disorder such that the more cogent, self-consistent conception of thi

    Oh, I see what you mean. Ok, let’s break this down (assuming I understood you correctly): the standard laws of Nature, which we observe, are, under your view, contingent; and more ontologically fundamental than those laws is some sort of disorder. That is an interesting hypothesis, but how can proper laws originate out of things that behave “unlawfully”?

    Since we have to speak in terms of our a priori means of mapping reality, my example would be the law of non-contradiction—which is presupposed in every natural law every posited—and it seems very implausible that this sort of formal law—or, more accurately, whatever law this model maps onto—could originate out of pure chaos. I think we can even demonstrate this in principle as false, by way of a thought experiment. Imagine that there’s no order at all to anything. This would entail that there are NO OBJECTS—for an ‘object’ can only refer to something with some sort of formal bounds in concreto (and not just in abstracta or semantically)—and NOT JUST no relations between objects. If there are no formal rules to anything, then there are no composition, no identity, no relation, etc….there’s, to wit, nothing but one ‘thing’.

    Therefore, you would not be able to posit, if your view is granted, that there are these objects and laws which arise out of such a “pure chaos”; because there cannot be any formal demarcation in a completely unified existence.
  • Bob Ross
    1.8k


    Well, in relation to Schopenhauer, the problem goes away because objects are ideas

    I don't see how this resolves anything: whatever 'thing', more loosely put, is being cognized is cognized as an idea; but Schopenhauer thinks that there's only one 'thing', and it is one will. How is that one will, assuming it even exists, being cognized according to rules if it has itself no rules governing it? This seems to reduce into a form of ontological idealism, where one has to posit a universal mind that is uniquely different from other minds which has the power to just powerfully dream up reality.
  • Bob Ross
    1.8k


    How can non-relational transcendent laws ever be determinable by a method necessarily predicated on relations? If the method is relational, mustn’t the model constructed by that method, be relational?

    Exactly.

    What’s the difference, in this thesis, between consciousness, and consciousness (of reality)?

    Ah, just that the former is more generic, and encompasses fabrications (like hallucinations).

    Do transcendent laws only precondition the latter, and if so, why not the former as well?

    Transcendent laws condition reality (viz., the universe), and, so, also conditioned whatever our faculties are which are cognizing it.

    Dunno why I need a law that preconditions the possibility of my consciousness of reality.

    Because your brain couldn’t cognize reality into a coherent whole which is accurate enough for survival if there were no transcendent laws.
  • Bob Ross
    1.8k


    The wordings of the OP title "the existence of transcendent laws" sounds ambiguous and unintelligible.
    All laws are from human reasoning be it induction or deduction. Some laws are from the cultural customs and ethical principles.

    The justification for a law is not to be conflated with the law itself. A transcendent law, as opposed to a transcendental law, is just making a Kantian distinction between laws which reside a priori and those which are about transcendent reality.

    A priori is the way human reasoning functions and possibility of some abstract concepts. It is not about the laws.

    Eh, I don’t by that at all. There are, e.g., a priori laws of logic, natural laws (e.g., law of causality), etc.

    All laws are nonexistent until found by reasoning and established as laws. For the ancient folks with little or no scientific, philosophical and mathematical knowledge, everything was myth. There was no laws. Therefore there are no such things called "transcendent laws".

    So? There are people who don’t believe that germs exist: does that have any bearing on a scientific conversation on germ theory?
  • Corvus
    3.3k
    So? There are people who don’t believe that germs exist: does that have any bearing on a scientific conversation on germ theory?Bob Ross

    They are the beliefs and facts. They are not laws. There seem to be a big confusion here.
  • Corvus
    3.3k
    Eh, I don’t by that at all. There are, e.g., a priori laws of logic, natural laws (e.g., law of causality), etc.Bob Ross

    They are the products of the human reasoning.
  • Corvus
    3.3k
    The justification for a law is not to be conflated with the law itself. A transcendent law, as opposed to a transcendental law, is just making a Kantian distinction between laws which reside a priori and those which are about transcendent reality.Bob Ross

    I am not sure what you mean by a transcendent law. What do you mean by transcendent reality?
  • Mww
    4.9k


    Define transcendent. In what sense are you using it in this discussion? What would be its complement?

    And transcendent cannot be defined as that by which the brain cognizes reality into a coherent whole, without sufficient justification that pure transcendental reason hasn’t already provided the ground for exactly that.
  • Corvus
    3.3k
    Define transcendent. In what sense are you using it in this discussion? What would be its complement?Mww

    :up:
  • Mww
    4.9k


    HA!! I know…sorry. You beat me by a full 17 minutes.
  • Corvus
    3.3k
    I presume the OP is not talking about the Kantian transcendental law. Then transcendent law seems to imply the laws from Gods or divine law, which sounds ambiguous. Perhaps OP could give us clarification on the concept.
  • Mww
    4.9k


    Yeah, that, and I think he wants to use Kantian methods to justify them, which is fine, as long as they work. Which is possible iff the relevant definitions are inconsistent with each other.

    And there hasn’t yet been mention in the thesis, of principles, under which the transcendent laws would have to be subsumed.

    Guess we’ll find out….
  • AmadeusD
    2.6k
    I see him doing this elsewhere too, so I assume that's the case.

    Makes for some strange reading..
  • Mww
    4.9k


    He does seem to base his philosophical mindset on Kant, however over-extended it seems to be, from a purist’s perspective anyway.
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