The universe contains many laws which govern how the universe operates e.g. laws of physics. The question that is puzzling me right now is why are there laws in the first place and why is the universe not lawless instead ?

Because laws are harder more complex and elegant to formulate than if there was no laws at all, why are they in nature ?

If it was lawless there’d probably be no life and no one to ask these questions

There are lots of interesting answers given in this thread. However I like to approach ideas about nature from a different view point and compare and contrast from two different view points. To perform a kind of calculus.

So what’s been presented in this thread are ideas about nature derived from what we find before us when we are born into this world. Including an already fully formed society and culture with all the knowledge of humanity. A world where physical material works in a predictable way following laws of physics etc. and we inhabit bodies which have evolved to inhabit this world over millennia and are very finely tuned to this environment and interacting with each other and other plants and animals. Resulting in a stable complex persistent world, that to a large extent we take for granted as a peaceful normal state of affairs.

Now by contrast I will offer an alternative perspective on this same state of affairs from the spiritual dimension.

Imagine a God, or being with immense powers to create, or generate things. This being has a ground, or substance, a blank canvas of material potentiality to work with. Such that the being can order it into a multitude of forms and complexities at will.

Now imagine that this being creates a world of interacting beings, an angelic world. This angelic world will have a nature and forms dictated by what is required for them to have a form that can be interacting beings that are able to interact. They need to be separate, more than one, they need to be able to act independently of the other beings. They need a common environment, or place in which to be and to interact. So they need a space and some time. Rather like virtual interacting bots that can be created on a computer screen. Now we already have a few basic laws of nature. These laws are requirements, necessities for this little world of angelic beings to exist in this ground and interact.
When it comes to their environment, how they interact, and what they do while interacting. That depends on what they have and can do within the constraints of those few laws of nature that they have. So they may well be able to speed up time, slow it down, reverse it. They may be able to do the same with size, appearance, even change and alter the place they inhabit totally. Merge with each other move through each other. Have bodies made up of other groups of beings etc etc etc.*

Now imagine the creator being decides to increase the complexity of this little world of angels. Inevitably there will be more requirements for laws of nature necessitated. There may be more than one kind of being. Which means they will need to be differentiated into groups, with their differentiated modes of communication. There might be a broader, more complex kind of place or world that they inhabit. Which means there would need to be more stable structures to work with. There would have to be rules for what the individuals in that world can do the change the world, or other beings on a wim. Because it would interfere with the stability of the more complex system they inhabit.

So we have a more complex world with differentiated structures, beings, rules of behaviour etc, which are necessary for that degree of complexity. Constraining the angelic beings in what they can do. Even though, these beings may still have full control at will of their form, the forms around them and how they interact. They inevitably have to conform to the rules of that degree of complexity, to remain there, and sustain it.

Now let’s jump forward a long way into a vastly more complex world of angels. There would at some point of complexity be a requirement for more solid objects, physical material. There would have to be more formal constraints on what each individual angel could do in that world. There would be more rigid laws of nature. The angels can still magically change anything at will. But they are strongly required to abide by the laws because it could have far reaching consequences in that world it they are not fully observed. They might be a history of disasters when beings had defied the laws, resulting in the creator being modifying the angel’s limiting their ability to change things. This might include encoding things so that they can’t access certain abilities without knowledge of the codes.

Eventually the physical material they are working with would become so constrained with such strict laws and the angels would be so limited in their abilities that they would have to learn to inhabit physical bodies in that world with no magical abilities left, no knowledge of the creator being, or the more foundational rules of the world works. In a sense they would be imprisoned in physical bodies in an entirely physical world.

We have come full circle in this alternative cosmogony to the world we inhabit from a different world, the world of spirit. However the same laws of nature apply, for seemingly different reasons. But are they really any different, they are equally necessary in each world. Indeed we could be in either and have no idea which one we are really in, or have no way of finding out.

*what I am describing correlates closely with the cosmos as described in Hinduism.

These patterns are neither external to us, nor are they merely internal to us. The order emerges out of our discursive and material interactions with our environment. It is not discovered but produced , enacted as patterns of activity. — Joshs

I disagree. I think old faithful would erupt with the same regularity whethet humans, or any life, existed. I would say the same about pulsars, and many more examples.

However, that doesn't even matter. Even if there are no patterns in the universe whatsoever other than those humans construct, humans are a part of the universe. Therefore, patterns are a part of the universe.

My basic (and speculative) thesis is this:…. — Tom Storm

Yeah, I like it too. Or something pretty close to it.

…..this process doesn't necessarily map onto any external reality independent of us; rather, it helps us cope with whatever it is we inhabit. — Tom Storm

Agreed, insofar as all natural external reality is independent from us with respect to its existence, but whatever of external reality to which the process….whatever it may be….does map, is necessarily not independent from us with respect to its perception by us, hence is the mere occassion for the possibility of any experience for us.

I agree we see and use patterns. — Tom Storm

I’ve had better luck with relations, which seems to be what patterns reduce to. Another story, though, for another time. Or not.

The laws of nature are required to make the proper change in things with the aim to reach the final goal.

Thank you.

I’ve had better luck with relations, which seems to be what patterns reduce to. Another story, though, for another time. Or not. — Mww

Cool. We may check this out down the track...

These patterns are neither external to us, nor are they merely internal to us. The order emerges out of our discursive and material interactions with our environment. It is not discovered but produced , enacted as patterns of activity. — Joshs

We do, of course, actively discover order when we look for it, be it in our natural environment or in artificial constructs. But the other kind of pattern emergence has its place too, both in sentient and nonsentient organisms. Our DNA encodes patterns in our environment, for example, and so does our behavior.

I'd prefer to say things are useful, not true or false. This is my thesis. — Tom Storm

I know that, but I note that you keep evading the questions that challenge that thesis.

The next obvious criticism is: if nothing is true, then neither is what you said, Tom.

To that, I would agree. Saying “we never get to truth” expresses skepticism about objective or foundational truth claims, but it is not itself a universal truth, rather, I'd see it more as a useful framework for managing ideas and guiding actions. — Tom Storm

That's not the criticism, at least not from me. The criticism is that you keep saying things about the world and our relationship to it, while maintaining that the world is independent of our concepts and practices. Don't you find this contradictory?

The most reasonable move from this point of view would be to drop this mysterious "world" thing as surplus to requirements. But then, of course, in the process of expanding the world of mentation and sociation to encompass the sensible world that we inhabit, in assimilating our commonsense beliefs and scientific theories, you will end up with a construct that is isomorphic to the world of the realist, with the main difference being a more contrived language (like saying "useful" in place of "true").

Back to laws and patterns. Perceived patterns in the external world emerge through our embodied interaction with the environment. I am wondering if they reflect what human cognition projects onto experience and that they can function provisionally to produce what we call useful outcomes. — Tom Storm

Sounds like you've been listening to @Joshs :) But how does this square with your earlier stated view that there are no patterns in the external world? What is it that we perceive then?

My basic (and speculative) thesis is this: we find ourselves somewhere, though we don't really know what somewhere is, even though we give it names (like world or reality) and we go about using our cognitive faculties and languages to give order to it. We invent names and concepts and theories, many of which seem to match what we appear to be involved in. This is something we do to help us predict and act. But this process doesn't necessarily map onto any external reality independent of us; — Tom Storm

I appreciate that you use plain language to get to the heart of things and speak your mind.

I think I see what you are saying. At root, this is your speculation: “[we use] our cognitive faculties and languages to give order to [experience/the world]. We invent names and concepts and theories.” We do this best when we do it pragmatically to “help us predict and act.”

I think I understand that and I think that all is happening.

But my issue arises and begs further speculation when we turn out abilities to give order and invent concepts back on ourselves, and on the world as a whole (and not the world in some practical contextualized circumstance).

When we reflect on your thesis, and further speculate, we end up needing to use words in this way:

“many of which seem to match what we appear to be involved in. This is something we do to help us predict and act. But this process doesn't necessarily map onto any external reality independent of us”

Our inventions of complex concepts like “external” versus conceptualized “reality”, and “matching” these and “mapping” these. Knowing whether our concepts do or do not map onto some independent world is one thing, but how do know there is such a thing as “mapping” or a separate world, at all?

Are we just making concepts and languages up, or are we also making up the fact that there is an independent world and concepts can attempt to map to? We never seem to admit all of the moving parts in our speculations without saying “independent” and drawing this clear line. Is the line already drawn? If so, how is this not an order of things that we did not invent?

The fish may feel it is one with the ocean, and as a conscious being, not know itself, and be a part of the ocean. But people make maps, and so we notice the fish without noticing the ocean.

So I don’t disagree with the positive assertion you say about what there is for us, except I would add there are more things we can speak about, and some of these, we didn’t invent. Like the fact that we live separately (from the world and each other), seeking to invent knowledge, of the world, that can be captured in language. This is a fact about the world and you and me in it. I didn’t merely invent you.

My intuition tells me that what we call “order” is a superimposition upon our situation, not something intrinsic to the world or external to us in any absolute sense. — Tom Storm

That is a better restatement of what I am taking to be your central, speculative, thesis.

I see that first, yes, we invent our language.

My intuition tells be I can’t leave it at that, because our language works too well to capture predictability and identify things.

It cannot be an accident that language about what I think maps to the world, and language about what someone else thinks maps to the world, and these two languages also match each other. There is too much circumstantial evidence for an order I didn’t invent. Everytime I cross the street safely, order in the world, in my eyes, is there for me to testify to in my words, words I can use to keep someone else from getting hit by a car.

Humans live by abstractions. We generate patterns, names, systems, all of which help us navigate what would otherwise be an overwhelming flux. — Tom Storm

If the world was ONLY an overwhelming flux, no abstractions would allow us to survive the day or make even less possible, planning for tomorrow. But we survive some days with predicable ease, and plan for next year about things that we sometimes actually make happen. This is not overwhelming flux.

Or I would say, this is not only overwhelming flux.

But that doesn’t mean those patterns are in the world in a mind-independent way. — Tom Storm

This is your intuition. In one sense, I have to make up a specific noun, predicate that noun from a point of view, place that object in a context of other nouns predicated from other points of view and knit this elaborate web before I can claim my words to reflect an “order in the world.” I agree, that is the process of ordering things.. My language itself is not mind-independent.

But I think that overlooks what language is and what thinking thinks about. Language is always about. We are always translating and interpreting - this is the invention you speak of - but we are always translating and interpreting something independent, something about which we speak. This is what I am trying to show you is always involved as well.

They’re ways we cope, predict, and make meaning. So it’s not that I deny the experience of order or its usefulness to us — I’m simply cautious about mistaking our interpretive frameworks for the nature of reality itself. — Tom Storm

For me to cope, to predict, to make meaning - we cannot simply invent. If there is something, like flux, that demands we cope with it, and somehow we are able to cope with it, to predict it - then there must be something about it our coping mechanism truly relates to just as we have truly felt it was coped with; you don’t get to say “coping” until something has been coped with - and that says something about some “thing” (the world). Same type of analysis for prediction (pre-duct, say it before it is in the world), and meaning.

Your caution is wise in the moment, when deciding when it is safe to step into the street and cross. We are wrong so often. But that caution is different than saying there is no order in the world that instructs the maps we invent to navigate this world.

Something doesn’t need to be true to be useful. — Tom Storm

I disagree. This statement isn’t itself useful when judging important, practical usefulness. Something DOES need to be true to teach others language (maps) that will help them survive crossing the street.

Maybe we need ro know what a law of nature is in itself to find out why those laws exist. One of my philosophy professors didn't understand the question when I asked whether laws ofnature were regularities or their causes. I wondered about that because civil laws affect what we do. For example, you may need to speed up or slow down when you read a speed limit sign.

I would add there are more things we can speak about, and some of these, we didn’t invent. Like the fact that we live separately (from the world and each other), seeking to invent knowledge, of the world, that can be captured in language. This is a fact about the world and you and me in it. I didn’t merely invent you. — Fire Ologist

I’m not an idealist, and I’m not claiming that nothing exists. My point is that human knowledge is contingent, constructed through language, culture, and shared practices, so it isn’t true in any ultimate or objective sense, but rather useful within a given context. What reality is, in itself, we don’t know. The fact that we can build technologies and predict outcomes doesn’t prove we’ve captured some final truth; it simply shows that our current ways of describing the world work well enough for now. 400 years from now our technology may be able to defy current 'laws' of physics.

It cannot be an accident that language about what I think maps to the world, and language about what someone else thinks maps to the world, and these two languages also match each other. There is too much circumstantial evidence for an order I didn’t invent. — Fire Ologist

The fact that our language lines up with the world (and with each other’s) doesn’t require us to believe there’s some deep order we’ve discovered. It’s more plausible to say we’ve developed ways of speaking that help us cope with our environment and coordinate with others. That alignment isn’t surprising; it’s the result of a long, shared process of trial, correction, and adaptation. Intersubjective communities of agreement. What works gets kept. We don’t need to assume our words mirror reality; it’s enough that they help us get things done and reach agreement.

Something doesn’t need to be true to be useful.
— Tom Storm

I disagree. This statement isn’t itself useful when judging important, practical usefulness. Something DOES need to be true to teach others language (maps) that will help them survive crossing the street. — Fire Ologist

I think the example provided makes the argument. But plenty of things which are untrue can be useful , from painting to poetry, fairy tales to myth, even science, which has proved to be wrong, may have provided some utility. No doubt many cancer treatments we have now fail to understand accurately the nature of cancer, but work at some level that prolongs some lives.

I wondered about that because civil laws affect what we do. For example, you may need to speed up or slow down when you read a speed limit sign. — BillMcEnaney

This is an equivocation of the word law. In the case of natural law, law is a metaphor rather than an actual law implying a lawgiver, like traffic laws. Natural laws are axioms or regularities.

However, your example illustrates something different, a speed limit can be changed or ignored without any direct repercussion. But can we ignore the logical axioms (identity non-contradiction and excluded middle) without important consequences? Are we're unable to change them? Cue the debate about paraconsistent logic.

Thank you. I equivocated by mistake. I want to consider logical laws, but it's hard for me to know why we say "laws of nature" if those laws are non-causal, uncaused, or both. I believe David Lewis thought causality was counterfactual dependence. If he's right, I wonder whether the dependence has a cause.

I want to consider logical laws, but it's hard for me to know why we say "laws of nature" if those laws are non-causal, uncaused, or both. — BillMcEnaney

"Laws" is used as a metaphor, many people just call them the principles of logic.

I hope I won't reason circularly when I say God causes people, places, and things by giving them existence, even if they've always existed. If I'm correct, he must cause primary and secondary causality in the world. He's the cause of everyone else, and everything else depends on him for existence and causal power. Since I'm a Catholic Thomist, I've studied Thomas's arguments for God's existence, but I don't understand causation.

Fr. Norris Clark wrote a book arguing for a Thomistic metaphysics. He says we know something exists when we perceive it with our senses. Although I agree with him, a significant problem perplexes me. Dr. William Lane Craig thinks we're justified in believing there's an external world if we don't find a defeater for that belief. But if Berkeley is right, nobody can do that, since objects will still seem to be in an external world when there is none. That suggests that a sound deductive argument would be the only way to prove him wrong.

So, I allude to a law of logic when I say a baseball usually falls when I drop it? "Usually" suggests induction.

hope I won't reason circularly when I say God causes people, places, and things by giving them existence, even if they've always existed. — BillMcEnaney

I'm an atheist, so for me there'd need to be a good reason for assuming gods before giving them a series of characteristics. Or one god. Whatever the model might be.

Dr. William Lane Craig thinks we're justified in believing there's an external world if we don't find a defeater for that belief. But if Berkeley is right, nobody can do that, since objects will still seem to be in an external world when there is none. That suggests that a sound deductive argument would be the only way to prove him wrong. — BillMcEnaney

Well, most people build their beliefs on foundations/axioms or presuppositions. There's a choice of these and they're hotly debated epistemological claims.

I allude to a law of logic when I say a baseball usually falls when I drop it? "Usually" suggests induction. — BillMcEnaney

I'm no expert on logic, but I think you’re referring here to induction and a “law” of nature rather than a logical principle. This is an inductive inference about the physical world.

But you don't need to look into nature to illustrate logical principles; you could say they are necessary to hold a meaningful conversation.

The universe possesses a certain orderliness to it which exists independently of our descriptive language used to describe it. This is the crux of the issue I believe and so far in this thread we don’t know where this orderliness came from but that things just happen to be orderly. Whether this answer is satisfactory or not I do not know however there are two answers that I can think of either it just is the way it is for no apparent reason or there’s an intelligence in the cosmos a god who created these laws.

For the fact that the orderliness exhibits some intelligence then it’s that intelligence that has imbued this order into the universe rather than it just being happenstance.

Whether this answer is satisfactory or not I do not know however there are two answers that I can think of either it just is the way it is for no apparent reason or there’s an intelligence in the cosmos a god who created these laws. — kindred

Isn't t that a false dilemma fallacy? How did you rule out other possibilities?

The universe possesses a certain orderliness to it which exists independently of our descriptive language used to describe it. — kindred

I’m not convinced this is accurate. I think there are philosophers, such as Derrida and Rorty, who would agree. It’s not everyone’s cup of tea, to be sure, but they may be onto something.

Indeed, they amount to much the same view... — Banno

Isn't t that a false dilemma fallacy? How did you rule out other possibilities? — Tom Storm

What other possibilities are there ?

In any case do you believe that the universe contains order in it ?

What other possibilities are there ?

In any case do you believe that the universe contains order in it ? — kindred

I'd say we don't know enough to make any firm pronouncements: we have limitations. From an epistemological perspective, what if idealism is accurate? Are regularities then in the universe, or part of consciousness, convenient mechanisms that help us make sense of experience, but not inherent in the universe itself? Perhaps more along the lines of how Kant seems to view space and time.

If by "no apparent reason" you mean there may be reasoning that simply isn’t apparent to us yet, then fair enough. But it's worth noting that the very idea of a "reason" (defaulting to causation) reflects a deeply human need to explain, grounded in the assumption that the universe is intelligible. Maybe it isn’t.

I specialized in logic while earning my philosophy degree, so I reflect on inference rules, the nature of induction, and more. That's partly why I mentioned induction. When using classical Aristotelian logic, you think about argument patterns like modus ponens, modus ponens, disjunctive syllogism, constructive dilemmas, and more. But those inference rules rarely apply to inductive arguments.

The significant difference between deductive and inductive arguments is that deductive ones can be conclusive, and inductive ones are always inconclusive when they confirm their conclusions. There's only one way to make an inductive argument conclusive: You must find a counterexample to its conclusion. So, scientists may know much less than they think they do.

I mentioned Berkeley's theory because most natural scientists are physicalists. Physicalists believe there's no God and nothing like God. For them, there's only the natural world and its costs. But physicalism may still be false, even if atheism is true. Physicalism is false if there's even one nonphysical object, a number, for example. If Berekeky's theory is true, everyone may still believe in physicalism, even if it's false. Scientific absolute certainty is too rare for me to believe that natural science is the best source of knowledge. No, scientism is self-refuting. It says science is our only source of knowledge. But since that's a belief about the nature of knowledge, it's not a scientific statement.

You said "gods" instead of "God." What's wrong with that? You might make a category midtake. You might lump God together with Zeus, Thor, Hera, Kali, and others when those pagan deities aren't deities in the biblical sense. If they exist, they're created, which means God makes them exist. God explains why there's anything at all. Zeus doesn't do that.

If you want scientific evidence for classical theism, read about combinatorics. It'll show you that natural selection would need to try too many possibilities to produce an animal body plan. Darwin's theory is false. But doesn't mean that I'm a young-earth creationist. You may know that many biologists believe it's time to replace Darwin's theory with one with more explanatory power. If there is one, that's fine with me. Suppose classical theism is true. Then, if atheism were true, there would be nothing at all. If the classical theist's God exists and if Darwin is right, evolution presupposes theism because God must sustain each object and every natural event.

Oops, Grammarly must have replaced "contents" with "costs."

You said "gods" instead of "God." What's wrong with that? You might make a category midtake. You might lump God together with Zeus, Thor, Hera, Kali, and others when those pagan deities aren't deities in the biblical sense. If they exist, they're created, which means God makes them exist. God explains why there's anything at all. Zeus doesn't do that. — BillMcEnaney

Sounds like an argument straight from David Bentley Hart, right down to the wording. I quite like his work and mention it here sometimes. I say “Gods,” even when referring to Christianity, since accounts vary dramatically even within the one religion. Everyone thinks their understanding, their god, is the right one.

I’m not up for a debate about science versus religion. But even if Darwin were wrong, that still wouldn’t get us to gods.

Scientific absolute certainty is too rare for me to believe that natural science is the best source of knowledge. No, scientism is self-refuting. It says science is our only source of knowledge. But since that's a belief about the nature of knowledge, it's not a scientific statement. — BillMcEnaney

You write well, Bill. Most naturalists are not scientistic in outlook, and many are quite open to religious perspectives. Physicalists who embrace metaphysical naturalism take a stronger stance, but it's not clear that anyone can definitively argue that physicalism is the only true view. A more cautious and widely accepted position is methodological naturalism. The challenge, of course, is that we can’t directly test for supernatural claims, we can only infer them through particular language practices or philosophical arguments.

I don't want to debate anything, but here's Google's definition of a category mistake. It's "the error of assigning to something a quality or action that can properly be assigned to things only of another category, for example, treating abstract concepts as though they had a physical location." If you call God "God" and Zeus a "god," you need to equivocate on that word.

Maybe I sound like Hart, but I've never read his books. I'm a Thomist and an Aristotelian, and Hart's isn't either.

I hope you know much more philosophy than Dawkins does. Sadly, it would embarrass me if I thought up his atheistic argument from complexity. He devoted about five pages to Aquinas's Five Ways in The God Delusion when he should have known that St. Thomas thought God had no parts. Thomas believed that anything with parts needed a cause to combine them. He believed God would prevent a vicious infinite regress of causes. For him, God explains why there's natural causality.

Thank you. I wish I wrote much better than I do, partly because I proofread scholarly Catholic books for Preserving Christian Publicans, Inc.

When I attended graduate school at the State University of New York at Albany, my philosophy professors were physicalists. They probably still are. But physicalism is probably self-defeating, like something Freud believed. For him, subconscious brain events caused each belief.. Sadly, that falsifies his opinion because it implies that those subconscious processes also caused it. If thoughts consist of deterministic brain events, how can I know I'm not like Hilary Putnam's imaginary brain in a vat while a mad scientist uses electrodes to make me hallucinate? Am I trapped in Star Trek's holo-deck, where I've lived from birth? The computer could simulate a door to convince me I could leave that machine. If physicalism and determinism are true, rational thought seems impossible.

My undergraduate advisor was an atheist who taught me Medieval Philosophy, so he was open to religious thought. But some other scholars were hostile to it. That was all right because I needed them to challenge my beliefs. I couldn't argue for them in an echo chamber.

My undergraduate advisor was an atheist who taught me Medieval Philosophy, so he was open to religious thought. But some other scholars were hostile to it. That was all right because I needed them to challenge my beliefs. I couldn't argue for them in an echo chamber. — BillMcEnaney

Sounds like you have a healthy and useful approach. I have respect for the Catholic tradition and a couple of friends who are members of the Catholic clergy. One of them introduced me to Father Richard Rohr, who has some powerful insights on binary thinking and finding better ways to approach complex issues. That said, some Catholics view him as bordering on heretical.

I think physicalism (now naturalism) like religion, has become more sophisticated since my university days. Our philosophy department was strictly atheist and often patronising towards religion. I found that very unhelpful, even as an atheist, and ended up leaving.

If physicalism and determinism are true, rational thought seems impossible. — BillMcEnaney

That’s a common enough argument, but I don’t find it convincing. That may depend on what one thinks reasoning actually is. I don’t see reason as some special branch of objective truth reflecting the nature of reality, I generally undertand it as a contingent product of language and culture. I think truth is of a similar nature: not something absolute “out there,” but something shaped and revised within shared human practices. In other words, reason and truth are contingent tools we use to navigate and manage our environment, none of which strike me as requiring a transcendent foundation.

Maybe we need ro know what a law of nature is in itself to find out why those laws exist. One of my philosophy professors didn't understand the question when I asked whether laws ofnature were regularities or their causes. I wondered about that because civil laws affect what we do. For example, you may need to speed up or slow down when you read a speed limit sign. — BillMcEnaney

So, what happens if nature violates its laws? Does it get a ticket?

This obvious parallel with human-instituted laws is unfortunate (and it's probably why some people like @Moliere are allergic to the phrase). Human laws are only prescriptions. They require complex social mechanisms to work, and even then they work imperfectly at best. Laws of nature were always thought of as inviolable (with the possible exception of an occasional miraculous intervention).

The remedy is to not get too hung up on words and their folk etymologies, and remember that words can have multiple meanings. Laws of conduct, laws of science, and laws of nature all mean different things.