Laws can be falsified if they are found in contradiction with new data. — Wikipedia
No God No Laws — Wayfarer
I still feel there's a deep issue behind all of this with regards to contingency and necessity. It seems to me when it is said that laws could have been otherwise, that this distinction is being lost. But of course it's a very big question. — Wayfarer
Surely ‘natural law’ must form some part of the answer to this question. ... But there’s no answer to why those laws are as they are.... — Wayfarer
We know the purpose (the final cause) of the universe: A home for humans. — Agent Smith
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
Look up a bit and see the issue with Mercury, which helped support Einstein against Newton. — lll
I'm just flummoxed by the fact that when I do something bad, I don't break any known laws of nature. — Agent Smith
The laws of relativity arose as there had to be an equivalence or symmetry that united gravity and acceleration, and then space and time, and then mass and energy. — apokrisis
I think we crave (at times anyway) an escape from contingency — lll
In metaphysical terms, both the theory of a multiverse and the "theory of everything" are seeking to move beyond contingency to necessity, to formulate what would in traditional terms be called "necessary" being. This approach is an attempt to bypass the traditional response which would identify such a necessary being with God. But the simple fact is that no mathematical formula creates anything. In itself, it is the creation of the mind that conceives it. It may help explain what exists, but it does not create the thing it explains.
The anxiety over contingency is nonetheless a valid anxiety because without some necessary being - such as God - the drive towards the intelligibility of the universe, which is the foundational drive of science, hits a brick wall with existence itself, which remains radically unintelligible, without explanation, unless it is related in some way to necessary being.
This, of course, is not a proof that such a being exists, but it does indicate why the notion of a divine being arises in relation to the problem of contingency; it also indicates the vacuous nature of the question, "Who made God?" Necessary being is self-explanatory; it needs no further explanation, no "maker" to explain it. It also shows why God's existence or non-existence can never be a scientific question. Scientific method is predicated on the need for empirical verification, which means it can only deal with contingent being, not necessary being. — Neil Ormerod, The Metaphysical Muddle of Lawrence Krauss
But as I understand it the theory of relativity supersedes Newtonian physics in some respects, but it doesn't overturn it, as Copernican theory overturned Ptolmaic cosmology. It just showed that Newtonian laws have a limited range of applicability. — Wayfarer
Right, but in practice it isn't so neat and tidy, is it? I think it remains true that according to the projections on the basis of known physics, the universe shouldn't exist. — Wayfarer
The anxiety over contingency is nonetheless a valid anxiety because without some necessary being - such as God - the drive towards the intelligibility of the universe, which is the foundational drive of science, hits a brick wall with existence itself, which remains radically unintelligible, without explanation, unless it is related in some way to necessary being. — Neil Ormerod, The Metaphysical Muddle of Lawrence Krauss
Hence the ubiquity of relativism and subjectivism which is all-pervasive in modern philosophy. — Wayfarer
But as I understand it the theory of relativity supersedes Newtonian physics in some respects, but it doesn't overturn it, as Copernican theory overturned Ptolemaic cosmology. It just showed that Newtonian laws have a limited range of applicability. — Wayfarer
Only when the strangeness of beings oppresses us does it arouse and evoke wonder. Only on the ground of wonder-the manifestness of the nothing-does the "why?" loom before us. Only because the "why" is possible as such can we in a definite way inquire into grounds and ground things. Only because we can question and ground things is the destiny of our existence placed in the hands of the researcher.” — Joshs
Even Copernican theory only overturned Ptolemaic cosmology in the sense of climbing this same ladder of symmetry un-breaking to arrive at a higher level of mathematical abstraction. — apokrisis
If you manage to identify the aspects of the Cosmos that have Platonic necessity, that brings with it by definition the aspects of the Cosmos that are the dialectically contingent. — apokrisis
But the Ptolmaic cosmology was mythological - crystalline spheres, a geo-centric universe, epicycles. Those were factually incorrect posits. — Wayfarer
You live in a culture that doesn't believe in natural moral laws. Put another way, the only natural laws that our culture recognises are physical. In other cultures it was assumed that misbehaviour would reap its consequences either through divine retribution or the law of karma. — Wayfarer
What? Those hairless apes that immediately cooked their own planet?
Sounds legit — apokrisis
Kant was, I believe, trying to make moral laws as all-encompassing and as strict as natural laws. — Agent Smith
The law of karma is real, at least in the here and now, in this life. — Agent Smith
When one refuses to retaliate for a wrong you are, surprise, surprise, in breach of the natural law of karma — Agent Smith
Not so - retaliating, 'paying someone back', is not karma. On the contrary, it would be regarded as a bad karmic act. — Wayfarer
Karma (ˈkɑːrmə/; Sanskrit: कर्म, IPA: [ˈkɐɾmɐ] (listen); Pali: kamma) means action, work, or deed.[1] For the believers in spirituality the term also refers to the spiritual principle of cause and effect, often descriptively called the principle of karma, wherein intent and actions of an individual (cause) influence the future of that individual (effect): Good intent and good deeds contribute to good karma and happier rebirths, while bad intent and bad deeds contribute to bad karma and bad rebirths. — Wikipedia
The laws are such that living beings have evolved. They might have been otherwise, but we would never have been around to discuss it. — Wayfarer
So I think the Copernican revolution was more radical than Einstein's in that sense, as Einstein didn't invalidate the basic tenets of Newtonian physics in the way that Copernicus did Ptolemy. — Wayfarer
That's karmic law, and, in my humble opinion, it seems to be as law-like as any physical law that scientists have discovered and described (mathematically or not). — Agent Smith
If the motions of the planets could be represented equally through the Ptolemaic model as through the Copernican model, then both models are actually "correct", when correctness is determined by usefulness. — Metaphysician Undercover
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