Both models are useful. So if usefulness is the basis for judgement of correctness, then both are correct. But the point is, what this example provided. If there is no true way of modeling motions, i.e. different ways of modeling the same moving bodies are useful for different purposes, then the judgement of theories is based in usefulness rather than truth. Following from this, relativity will become the prevailing theory, because it is naturally versatile by allowing the same moving bodies to be modeled in whatever way proves to be the most useful. If you are one to believe in "truth" you will see that relativity theory is a forfeiture of truth.

Both [goecentric and heliocentric] models are useful. — Metaphysician Undercover

But only one is realistic.

What I was questioning and what I poorly attempted to articulate in the OP was supposed to be whether there is a particular set of "why" questions that cannot be answered any further than by responding that this is just the way things are.

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

It's the search for a causal account. — apokrisis

I was questioning whether such "why" questions are always a search for a causal account. I see now that I had been thinking of a causal account only in terms of "how" questions. As I said previously, knowing all the causes of how the brain produces qualitative experience does not touch the question of why we have those qualitative experiences. However, you are right that I had overlooked the causal account given by a final (or efficient?) cause. After completely accounting for how the brain produces qualitative experiences, the question of why we have qualitative experiences could be accounted for in terms of god or evolution. It could then be asked why god or evolution exist, but these seem like further "how" questions.

Admittedly, I'm still a bit unclear on the difference, if any, between "how" and "why" questions, but this is helpful:

‘Why’ questions look for an overarching explanatory scheme to organize particular facts or subordinate the patterns. — Joshs

:up:

@180 Proof also has a point that these questions cannot exist in a vacuum outside of any context, and perhaps it is this context which determines what is considered necessary and contingent and which sets the limits that allow or disallow further questioning in actual discussion.

But only one is realistic. — Wayfarer

Yes, that's the way we look at it, as the laity, but it's not the way that the principles of relativity theory dictate that we look at it. By relativity theory we do not judge a model of moving bodies on the basis of which model is more realistic, the judgement is made on other principles such as which model is more useful for the purpose at hand, which is usually some sort of prediction.

Are you familiar with model-dependent realism?

However, you are right that I had overlooked the causal account given by a final (or efficient?) cause. — Luke

Efficient cause answers the question of what particular event(s) conspired to trigger the observed result. So it sits with material cause (as the material potential which could be the substance partaking in the change) down at the "how" end of things.

After completely accounting for how the brain produces qualitative experiences, the question of why we have qualitative experiences could be accounted for in terms of god or evolution. It could then be asked why god or evolution exist, but these seem like further "how" questions. — Luke

Perhaps "how" and "why" are rather rough and ready folk terms when it comes to analysing causality? So the better thing to do is move on and only employ the technical categories of Aristotle's metaphysics?

Anyway, finality in the modern systems science view can be further broken down into the three categories of teleomaty, or material tendency; teleonomy, or biological function; and teleology, or consciously formed purpose.

So the Second Law of Thermodynamics - the demand that Nature must materially entropify - is an example of mere material tendency. It is kind of purposeful in a finality sense. It goes to the "why". But it is also a very weak notion of final cause by our usual human standards.

If you get the right causal language, causation should start to seem more common sense and not so dualistically divided between world and spirit, or whatever.

Hey I agree.

The objections to the idea of laws is that the word implies a power that makes something happen, whereas in natural law, there's no such observable power. See Nancy Cartwright's No God No Laws. — Wayfarer

Men make laws; look around you, this law, that law, we seem to be completely immersed in it from womb to tomb and sometimes beyond the grave. Perhaps it's this plain fact of life that makes us think (erroneously?) that where there are laws, there must be a legislator, someone who frames these laws. In theism, this someone is god.

Buddha stands out from the rest in this regard. Being averse to metaphysical speculation, an inevitability, he kept mum (noble silence). He must've thought it best to stick to demonstrable truths like karma and anicca as far as possible and minimize the metaphysical elements of his philosophy, Buddhism.

Men make laws — Agent Smith

Right - which is why the description 'scientific law' is treated with suspicion. It sounds anthropomorphic to some.

He must've thought it best to stick to demonstrable truths like karma and anicca as far as possible and minimize the metaphysical elements of his philosophy, Buddhism. — Agent Smith

:up: Quite right!

Right - which is why the description 'scientific law' is treated with suspicion. It sounds anthropomorphic to some. — Wayfarer

Reminds me of hunting game. We don't block all escape routes for the prey, we leave one open. Of course it leads to a trap but you get the idea. What's the alternative to anthropomorphism? Do only humans make laws?

Efficient cause answers the question of what particular event(s) conspired to trigger the observed result. So it sits with material cause (as the material potential which could be the substance partaking in the change) down at the "how" end of things. — apokrisis

I admit to being not very familiar with Aristotle's Four Causes, but the Wikipedia article on the topic associates efficient cause with an Agent:

Agent (the efficient or moving cause of a change or movement): consists of things apart from the thing being changed or moved, which interact so as to be an agency of the change or movement. For example, the efficient cause of a table is a carpenter, or a person working as one, and according to Aristotle the efficient cause of a child is a parent. — Wikipedia article: Four Causes

It seems to me as though this (Agent, efficient cause) would be the sort of cause that god is, and possibly evolution too? In my previous posts I identified god and evolution as possible answers to the question of why the brain produces qualitative experiences, as opposed to the question of how the brain produces qualitative experiences.

Perhaps "how" and "why" are rather rough and ready folk terms when it comes to analysing causality? So the better thing to do is move on and only employ the technical categories of Aristotle's metaphysics? — apokrisis

Perhaps, but I was querying the distinction between "how" and "why" questions and whether "why" questions are necessarily questions of causality.

If you get the right causal language, causation should start to seem more common sense and not so dualistically divided between world and spirit, or whatever. — apokrisis

As an atheist, the only intelligent design I believe in is the type found in the creations of humans and other animals, so I don't have this problem.

Do only humans make laws? — Agent Smith

I think the issue is that with laws, there is a sense of agency - that laws are able to compel things to happen, that they govern outcomes. So a 'law' of nature is also a regularity or an invariable pattern - but does it make sense to call that a 'law'?

I asked the question on another forum last year: what is the connection between logical necessity and physical causation. In fact I even asked that of a retired lecturer in philosophy. The answer that came back was there is no necessary connection. This from the lecturer:

Logical necessity and physical causality: Logical necessity is a function only of truth. The[re] is no intrinsic connection between antecedents and consequents in conditionals, or between premises and conclusions, apart from the truth functional form. Thus, as the Stoics first understood, a conditional means that it is false only if the antecedent is true and the consequent false. In formal deduction, if the premises are true, then the conclusion must be true. It doesn't matter what the meaning of the terms is. David Hilbert said that the terms could be beer steins and sausages as well as anything else (-- those Germans).

With causality, there are extra concepts. The principle of causality is that the cause makes the effect happen.

One answer I got on Stack Exchange was:

There is no causation in logic. Some formulas are equivalent to others, and common language confuses the issue with formulations like "this circle has circumference Pi because its diameter is 1", when in fact saying one proposition is the same as saying the other. It is not analogous to physical causation (I.e. The observation that some events often happen in succession).

I see the point, but I can't help but think there's something wrong with it. I mean, it seems to me science relies heavily on the application of logic to the analysis of causal relationships. And that 'natural law' is where these meet. You conjecture that if [x] then [y], and then carry out an experiment or make an observation that confirms or disconfirms it. So I'm considering the idea that scientific law is where logical necessity and physical causation intersect, but I've never heard anyone else say that.

When pressed further, the prof pointed me to this page.

Indeed, causation is, as Hume discovered, not deductively necessary (re the problem of induction). The best we can do is describe patterns in nature, one such kind being causality where we tell ourselves that the cause brings about the effect provided the correlation is strong and consistent across spacetime.

If causation has no deductive basis, all bets are off: there's no way we could predict the future, today a ball may bounce off the ground and tomorrow it might stick to it. If so, what about the law of karma? Buddha did emphasize anicca (the problem of induction). The world is going to be full of surprises then, oui? Today you might hurl invectives at someone and get beaten black and blue for it and the next day, doing the same thing, you might end up with a marriage proposal.

Basically, anicca (impermanence) is a warning, it alerts us to chaos (an ever changing set of rules/laws or, god forbid, cosmic anarchy).

Unfortunately, without some kinda pattern (laws/rules/principles), the world becomes incomprehensible and that's what Zen koans must be designed to evoke in the unsuspecting practitioner: utter perplexity and anxiety (can one hand clapping make a sound? It just might, panta rhei)

Coming to the notion of agency as relates to laws/rules, it seems to be an argument from incredulity. We can't imagine laws sans legislators; ergo, one erroneously concluded, every law (of nature) must have an intelligent being as its source.

Indeed, causation is, as Hume discovered, not deductively necessary (re the problem of induction). The best we can do is describe patterns in nature, one such kind being causality where we tell ourselves that the cause brings about the effect provided the correlation is strong and consistent across spacetime.

If causation has no deductive basis, all bets are off: there's no way we could predict the future, today a ball may bounce off the ground and tomorrow it might stick to it. If so, what about the law of karma? Buddha did emphasize anicca (the problem of induction). The world is going to be full of surprises then, oui? Today you might hurl invectives at someone and get beaten black and blue for it and the next day, doing the same thing, you might end getting a marriage proposal. — Agent Smith

I think an argument can be made that some kind of uniformity of nature was in play during our evolution at least so that our 'irrational' (non-deductive) expectation of continuing uniformity makes evolutionary sense (it paid off to 'act as if' nature was a good girl.) I don't know of any good arguments (non-circular) against the logical possibility of everything going to pieces in the future. It might be that we can't even talk intelligibly about a causally unstructured reality (return of the ghost of the world as it is when we can't know anything about it).

Like this :

Unfortunately, without some kinda pattern (laws/rules/principles), the world becomes incomprehensible and that's what Zen koans must be designed to evoke in the practitioner: utter perplexity and confusion (can one hand clapping make a sound? It just might, panta rhei) — Agent Smith

I see the point, but I can't help but think there's something wrong with it. I mean, it seems to me science relies heavily on the application of logic to the analysis of causal relationships. — Wayfarer

Not my field, but I do understand that a mathematical model can be transformed into a mathematical equivalent that might nevertheless be more useful or intuitive to its user.

Along these lines, symbolic logic can be used as a detector/checker of non-obvious tautologies. The platonist might say that the tautology was 'always there' but not being looked at. Mainstream math is 'eternal,' while badboy intuitionism lets time in.

So I'm considering the idea that scientific law is where logical necessity and physical causation intersect, but I've never heard anyone else say that. — Wayfarer

I think the necessity is in the mathematical formalism. If you tell me $y = exp(bx)$, then 'necessarily' or 'logically' or 'grammatically' I know that $log(y) = bx$. Assign x to a quantity of somethings and y to the number of related somethingelses and you have a model with b as a single parameter. I don't see how the mathematical 'necessity' can escape into the world and bind whatever is counted by x and y. The parameter b (and of course the exponential model type) must be chosen according to what has been recorded so far. The model's relevance for the future is where Hume's problem comes in, seems to me.

@Wayfarer

That causation has no deductive basis and given that most "laws" of nature are causal in nature, suggests an absence of an intelligence (god), a designer for the universe.

Perhaps it's just that we're stupider than we think we are and simply don't possess the processing power to suss this out.

So many possibilities...shouldn't we just take the world as it appears to us instead of racking our brains trying to figure out the (real)truth, assuming there is one as of yet under the veil of Isis?

shouldn't we just take the world as it appears to us — Agent Smith

You make that sound easy! We've evolved to worry ourselves, friend. The dead don't breed.

instead of racking our brains trying to figure out the real truth? — Agent Smith

I think this applies to some metaphysical issues, and I can't bring myself to fret anymore than Hume could. It's a glitch in the matrix. Still some of them are maybe good for target practice or as scratching posts.

Perhaps it's just that we're stupider than we think we are and simply don't possess the processing power to suss this out. — Agent Smith

Could be. And perhaps we are too stupid to appreciate just how stupid we are. Is stupidity not relative? This touches on another metaphysical chestnut. In what way does or can the sage exist for the fool ? Except as a vague promise ? Can the fool understand the sage without becoming the sage? I don't think so. And yet the fool must trust in the sage to stick around long enough to become him. Or is it like music, where taste can run ahead of chops ? There's something tricky about talking about either genius or stupidity from the outside. It's like writing a check and the money ain't in the bank yet.

Assign x to a quantity of somethings and y to the number of related somethingelses and you have a model with b as a single parameter. I don't see how the mathematical 'necessity' can escape into the world and bind whatever is counted by x and y. — lll

Isn’t it that if x and y are isometric against some measurable values and the relationship between them is described in the equation, then the mathematical model maps against the outcome. Get [X] wrong, and your [bridge][rocket launch][whatever] fails. What am I not seeing?

In the simplest situation, the model will be fit to a set of measurements, which always refer to the past.

The data underdetermine the model. If a model does fit well, then we use it make predictions, and it's basically a video game simplification of reality. We 'pretend' that the data was actually generated by the model in the context of some random noise, and can then get new dependent values from any independent values we choose (though it's prudent to stay where we have lots of data, as this where our model tends to be robust.)

Assuming the uniformity of nature, the bridge would collapse because our 'video game version' of it was wrong (wrong enough), and we made a decision that trusted the model when we shouldn't have (too heavy of a truck, tardy replacement or maintenance.) (I'm mostly a stats/computer guy who knows the math better than the applications, so maybe others can say more and say better.)

There's something tricky about talking about either genius or stupidity from the outside. — lll

Indeed! One has to be bat to answer the question "what is it like to be a bat?" Logic/reason is useless? Give me an opaque box and ask me "what does this box contain?" How do I approach this problem? A beetle of course! What is a beetle, outside/inside a box?

Nevertheless...

target practice or as scratching posts. — lll

I think I'm a bat. How did Zhuangzhi become a butterfly?

Now I do not know whether I was then a man dreaming I was a butterfly, or whether I am now a butterfly, dreaming I am a man. — Zhuangzhi

if x and y are isometric against some measurable values — Wayfarer

What does that mean?

Assuming the uniformity of nature, the bridge would collapse because our 'video game version' of it was wrong (wrong enough), and we made a decision that trusted the model when we shouldn't have (too heavy of a truck, tardy replacement or maintenance.) (I'm mostly a stats/computer guy who knows the math better than the applications, so maybe others can say more and say better.) — lll

Do video game bridges collapse under extreme/excess weight like real bridges do?

Indeed! One has to be bat to answer the question "what is it like to be a bat?" Logic/reason is useless? — Agent Smith

With a bat, it seems hopeless. With geniuses, I think we slowly 'become' or assimilate part of them as we keep reading and thinking and writing. They fade in. But it's always a fusion.

With a bat, it seems hopeless. With geniuses, I think we slowly 'become' or assimilate part of them as we keep reading and thinking and writing. They fade in. But it's always a fusion. — lll

Like the thing in The Thing!

Do video game bridges collapse under extreme/excess weight like real bridges do? — Agent Smith

If you want them to, yes. It could be a very simple program without graphics that answers yes or no to the weight of a vehicle or it could be some rich, visual presentation, etc. I toyed around with the Unity game creator system briefly. It's got an impressive 'physics engine.'

If you want them to, yes. I toyed around the Unity game engine briefly. It's got an impressive 'physics engine.' — lll

What does it have to be that way? How does the bridge know "that's the last straw, I'm collapsing"? :smile:

What does it have to be that way? How does the bridge know "that's the last straw, I'm collapsing"? — Agent Smith

Well, a really terrible but cheap model is to have the program say 'yes' for collapse if the input is greater than 2000 pounds and no otherwise. (It's terrible because the 2000 pounds was randomly picked.)

Differential equations will offer more interest and fun. You can solve them numerically, watch a virtual cup of coffee cool.

Well, a really terrible but cheap model is to have the program say 'yes' for collapse if the input is greater than 2000 pounds and no otherwise. (It's terrible because the 2000 pounds was randomly picked.) — lll

Differential equations will offer more interest and fun. You can solve them numerically, watch a virtual cup of coffee cool. — lll

:lol:

So, a real bridge is following instructions like in a video game?

@Wayfarer Isn't that interesting, I never thought of it that way. Not only does it seem natural to infer a sentient law-giver, the things that follow laws might need to be intelligent as well. :chin: Panpsychism & Theism rolled into one!

Differential equations, @lll, are they part of load & stress equations in re bridges? Can you explain them to me, please? Simplify them, if you can or want to.