My question Is metaphysical, not linguistic. I want to know what a law of nature consists of. A regularity needs a cause, so I wonder whether that cause is a law of nature. Speed limit signs stand on roads because laws determine speed limits. Driver behavior isn't a law. A law governs it. Scientists are rarely metaphysicians. No, many of them reject metaphysics.

Some say laws of nature describe regularities, but descriptions rarely cause what they describe. Instead, we describe events because we discover them. The events predate the descriptions.

….metaphysical, not linguistic. I want to know what a law of nature consists of. — BillMcEnaney

All law consists of the relation of conceptions in accordance with principles. That subsumed under law is determined by the source of the principles to which it accords, and that legislated by law is determined by the source of the causality of its objects.

The possibility of law in general on the one hand, and the apodeitic certainty of law on the other, is given from the principles of universality and necessity.

In the case of natural law, then, in which all causality of objects is Nature itself, the source of conceptions is empirical understanding, which is itself always predicated on observation of those objects, the relation being an effect to its cause.

An expression of a law is linguistic in one form or another; the construction of it, is always metaphysical, the purview of speculative pure reason for natural law, and practical reason for moral law in the case made by deontological philosophy.

A metaphysical answer to a metaphysical question.

For whatever that’s worth.

My perspective has changed significantly because I suffer from two painful mental illnesses: severe clinical depression and emotional deprivation disorder. My field, computer science, made everything seem black and white because conclusive answers were easy to. find. I still believe true statements must match reality. Otherwise, they're false.

I reject moral relativism and relativism about truth. But my emotional pain makes me long to think like a cultural anthropologist who must learn how to study a society from the native's perspective and empathize with him.

You know what Christian fundamentalists usually do. They study the Bible from a 21st-century perspective and read contemporary ideas into it. They misinterpret Sacred Scripture because they ignore ancient historical and cultural context. Many atheists do that, too, when they caricature theism. They may not know they're doing that. But perceptive theists notice the distortion and oversimplification. I don't see things your way when I'm biased against it.

Some unsophisticated people believe relativists are kind and tolerant. They forget that truth is hard to find. Relativism about truth makes people like arrogant narcissists who are too proud to learn from others. They might say, "I'm a scientist. You're a gullible moron because you believe in the invisible sky daddy. Learn science and reject religious superstition."

Hear Dawkin's dismissive "What if you're wrong?" speech and hear his fans cheer mindlessly when he humiliates a since questioner by committing an obvious example of the genetic fallacy. How can he expect theists to listen carefully to him when he dimisses what they believe and ignores how his arrogance might make them feel. He's an excellent scientist and a gifted writer. Unfortunately, I loathe how he treated his questioner in this video.

What if you're wrong?

I could reply with another example of the same fallacy by saying something like this. Prof. Dawkins, you believe in contemporary Western science because you grew up in the West. In Ancient Greece, you would have believed in Ancient Greek science and atomism. You would have believed in Ancient Chinese science during the Ming Dynasty. What if you're you're wrong about Ancient Greek science? What if your wrong about contempory Western science?"

Dawkins's audience was like a screaming crowd a a Justin Bieber concert because they didn't reflect on what they heard. Dawkin's is no elderly substitute for a teen heartthrob.

I don’t think anyone takes Dawkins seriously as a philosopher, and many atheists I know view him with dismay, the way many Christians look upon grubby prosperity preacher, Benny Hinn. I’m not particularly interested in debates that turn these matters into a team sport.

Some unsophisticated people believe relativists are kind and tolerant. They forget that truth is hard to find. Relativism about truth makes people like arrogant narcissists who are too proud to learn from others. They might say, "I'm a scientist. You're a gullible moron because you believe in the invisible sky daddy. Learn science and reject religious superstition." — BillMcEnaney

I'm not really able to follow the thread of this, it seems like grab-bag of assumptions and prejudices, perhaps?

Take this line, as a for instance:

Relativism about truth makes people like arrogant narcissists who are too proud to learn from others.

Now that’s just an assertion. What demonstration can you provide that this is necessarily the case? I could just as easily say that Christianity makes people into arrogant narcissists who are too proud to learn from others, and it would be equally “true.” By that, I mean you can find arrogant narcissists anywhere and, to be honest, I’m particularly wary of anyone who thinks they have The Truth, surely a recipe for arrogance greater than a propensity for subjectivity?

But even if relativism turns people into narcissists, you still haven't addressed whether it is a reasonable view of itself. Whether relativism is true or not is independent of how people behave if they hold this view.

But perhaps all this, and your ideas about God, belong in a different or a new thread rather than this one about "laws" of nature...

You know what Christian fundamentalists usually do. They study the Bible from a 21st-century perspective and read contemporary ideas into it. They misinterpret Sacred Scripture because they ignore ancient historical and cultural context. Many atheists do that, too, when they caricature theism. They may not know they're doing that. But perceptive theists notice the distortion and oversimplification. I don't see things your way when I'm biased against it. — BillMcEnaney

I started a thread on this very matter called More Sophisticated Philosophical Accounts of God.

"Narcissism" and "arrogance" were probably poorly chosen words. So, I can see why they confused you, and I should think more carefully. But there's still a significant problem with relativism about truth. If relativists believe it's always true everywhere, their belief is self-contradictory. They believe in absolute relativism.

So, although the conceptual relations don't cause natural events, they describe them? I won't say that they entail them since you can break a law of nature. For example, the law of gravity explains why a ball will fall when I drop it, but it'll stop falling when you catch it.

For example, the law of gravity explains why a ball will fall when I drop it, but it'll stop falling when you catch it.

That’s not an example of breaking the law of gravity at all. Gravity still applies because the ball is still pressing down against your hand with the same force as when it was falling. It’s just that your hand formed an obstacle which that force was not strong enough to overcome. For example, if the ball was a 10kg shot put, your hand wouldn’t have stopped it, it would have pushed your hand out of the way.

Thank you for correcting my mistake.

No worries.
As for your question,

My question Is metaphysical, not linguistic

I have concluded that the laws of nature are innate. That whenever there is more than one, a pattern emerges which on a greater scales results in these laws. As to where this comes from, who knows.

Wherever it comes from, it's teleological.

"Narcissism" and "arrogance" were probably poorly chosen words. So, I can see why they confused you, and I should think more carefully. But there's still a significant problem with relativism about truth. If relativists believe it's always true everywhere, their belief is self-contradictory. They believe in absolute relativism. — BillMcEnaney

No, that's a common error. Saying “relativism is self-defeating” only works if you ignore how relativists actually define truth. Relativism doesn’t claim universal truth; it asserts that truth is always relative to a framework, so the statement “truth is relative” is itself a framework-bound claim, not a universal one. That said I'm not especially concerned by so-called performative contradictions, I think contradictions are just part of how life and language actually work.

A relativist will often argue that truth depends on context, like culture, language, or conceptual schemes. I think that's pretty much the case. So when they say something is true, they mean it's true relative to a particular framework, not that it's universally true for everyone at all times. In Western countries, we often have intersubjective agreements about values, but even some of these are open to challenge. Some people condemn homosexuality, while others proudly fly the rainbow flag of inclusion. There are different frameworks even within a single culture.

I understand, but what about Thomas Kuhn's scientific paradigms from his book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions? Kuhn talks about normal science, a time when scientists form plausible hypotheses, confirm them, and when their work goes smoothly. Then, a crisis happens. The current paradigm becomes useless.

Each paradigm lands in what you might call a metaphorical vault that no one can open. Nobody can understand its jargon anymore. Its theories don't work. . . However, Kuhn still uses outdated jargon to describe supposedly unintelligible models. His postmodern antirealist theory sounds like a kind of relativism you described.

Scientist X may say that atoms exist. Scientist Y might assure you that they don't exist. X believes that atoms exist, logically consistent with Y believing atoms don't exist. But ignore the parts about X and Y to get contradictories. When you tell me that some statement is true in some context, it may mean it's only a supposition. However, that supposition may be false and inconsistent with other context statements. When you suppose the first premise in a reductio ad absurdum argument, you do that to derive a contradiction from it.

Wherever it comes from, it's teleological.

Yes, but that’s not an answer, it’s a description.
Going back to more than one, could there, logically, be more than one without the innate pattern? Or could there be other patterns?

….although the conceptual relations don't cause natural events, they describe them? — BillMcEnaney

For dialectical consistency, we must say that metaphysically, conceptual relations as such, represent human understanding of natural events. Words describe; understanding uses no words hence doesn’t describe.

In whichever form conceptual relations are eventually understood, the words used to express such relation represents a description post hoc ergo propter hoc, of the understanding alone, which is twice removed from the event itself.

And still as yet has no sufficient justification for reference as law, but merely the initial condition established for its possibility, for as yet there is no account of the principles to which the relations must accord.

Metaphysics: that fun shit in which every single rational human ever necessarily indulges but, all-too-humanly, seldom bothers to acknowledge, while nonetheless thrilled to hear himself talk and then think there’s something important about that.

I don't want to hear myself talk, partly because I doubt I've found much wisdom. Although I love philosophy, I hate uncertainty. In his Skeptical Essays, Benson Mates seems to think truth is elusive enough that we usually. must settle for falsifying philosophical theories instead of seeing which ones are true.

Yes, fair enough. I was just pointing out that philosophy can’t answer the question in the OP. However we can conclude that the laws of nature can be seen as innate, fundamental (to our world) and can be described.