The general issue then is: are there regularities in nature or are we only imposing them to be able to better plan our lives. — Pez

Either there are regularities or we are quite the kind of imposers!

is there a reason they average out, by chance, — flannel jesus

I think it's called "regression to the mean". If you toss a coin twice you might get heads twice, tails twice or one of each ht or one of each th. If you toss a coin a million times, you are almost certain to get within a hundred or so equal numbers of heads and tails, because 'chances are'.

And how does regression to the mean produce balls falllng from towers with incredible consistency?

I'll quote myself, because I'm really curious about your thoughts on this:

Like if I drop a ball from a tower, and I time how long it takes to hit the floor, over and over again, and I keep recording the same time within a very small margin of error over and over again - how do you conceptualise the reason for this consistency? Is there something in reality, independent of human ideas, which underlies this consistency?

that the question is ill-formed — unenlightened

I agree. My immediate response was that these are "laws of nature" and not "laws for nature." Whether anything is classified as a "law of nature" depends upon whether human beings conclude it will admit of no exceptions. And we have been wrong so many times that we are not even bound to our conclusions, let alone nature.

Well without going into everything, terminal velocity is a function of the difficulty of pushing all those molecules of air out of the way. Gravity itself is the average of the attractive force of all the masses in the vicinity.

So are those pieces of matter, molecules, attractive force -- is all that due to something you might describe as 'rules' or 'laws'?

Like, why is there attractive force between masses instead of repellant forces? Is that related to any of this matter following "rules" of some kind?

The general issue then is: are there regularities in nature or are we only imposing them to be able to better plan our lives. — Pez

I wonder just how we would "plan our lives" if there were no regularities in nature. Very ineffectively, I would think.

If this is the issue, I also wonder if it has ever been asked just how likely it is that what is useful to us in planning our lives--in living--would be in some sense inconsistent with or at odds with nature. This would require, for one thing, an assumption that we're not part of nature, or not wholly part of it, which sadly is an assumption that's been made too often with unfortunate results (including the belief that there's an "external world" separate from us). But much as some would like to think we are apart from nature, I fear we're a part of it like everything else. And as parts of nature we interact with the rest of it necessarily, are formed by the rest of it and form the rest of it as well in some respects as part of that interaction.

Note that it is ""Transcendental Idealism" not "Transcendent Idealism". The CPR is not about "Transcendent Idealism", as this would lie beyond what the human can cognitively grasp and would move into the realm of the unknowable. Not only beyond human experience but also beyond human reason, because beyond the scope of empirical investigation. Included would be such concepts as God and the soul. — RussellA

That's what I suspected. But some critics seem to think Kant was talking about a supernatural Heavenly Realm, instead of a Hypothetical or Metaphorical state of perfection. Philosophical conjectures are often "beyond the scope of empirical investigation", but seldom beyond the range of rational analysis. Sadly, Philosophical Metaphors are all-too-often taken literally by those opposed to any preternatural implications.

On this forum, "transcendence" seems to be a taboo trigger-word for fully-invested Immanentists --- one in particular --- to get on their high-horse. Ironically, in a practical sense, I could be pigeon-holed into an Immanentism (reality vs ideality) slot. But when theorizing, I feel free to go beyond the current state of empirical knowledge, and to speculate into the unknown. Yet some would dismiss that philosophical freedom as a religious commitment to a supernatural faith. :halo:

Immanence and Transcendence :
Both what we can know by reason (immanence) and what we can know only by revelation (transcendence) are reflections of the very being of God. By contrast, immanence would signify that human reason is the highest norm for our knowledge of ethical and religious practices.
https://academic.oup.com/edited-volume/28079/chapter-abstract/212098546?redirectedFrom=fulltext

The CPR is not about religion or the spiritual realism, but is about what we can practically know about the world using reason and observation. — RussellA

Thanks for the quote. As I indicated above, I assumed that Kant was writing as a reality-exploring philosopher --- searching for the boundaries of Epistemology --- not as a Christian apologist. However, some on TPF reject anything he says as-if it was religious propaganda. Yet he seems to rely on mundane reasoning, not on divine revelation, for his conclusion that there are some "things" (ding an sich) that are not accessible to "empirical investigation". And it's exactly those known-unknowns that intrigue me. :nerd:

Kant uses such a Transcendental Argument in his Refutation of Idealism in B275 against the Idealism of Berkeley in order not to prove that things exist independently of the mind, but only the possibility that things exist independently of the mind. — RussellA

Obviously, it would be impossible to prove anything beyond empirical evidence or the reach of reason. But what difference does it make to assert the "possibility" of such ding an sich? I'm guessing that he was responding to some aspect of Berkeley's Idealism. Ironically, Kant's own philosophy has the label "Idealism" pinned on it. So, he's not rejecting the general concept of Meta-Physical Reality, but some particular detail of Berkeley's formulation. Yes? :cool:

"Transcendental Idealism" uses the Transcendental Argument to make sense of the world given our sensory experiences. — RussellA

Thanks again. That makes sense to me. Although it obviously doesn't compute for some Kant bashers. Taken literally, the title "Transcendental Idealism" seems to be directly opposite to "Immanent Realism". Was that effrontery intentional? :smile:

PS___ The OP seems to be questioning the possibility of a First Cause or Lawmaker to force Nature into compliance with somewhat arbitrary top-down "laws", as opposed to innate regularities emerging bottom-up, due to the constraints of random interactions. Top-down Laws would be Transcendent, while bottom-up Regularities would be Immanent. Hence, the thread's side-track into questioning Kant's notion of things & forces "beyond our sensory experience" or our "cognitive grasp".

Like, why is there attractive force between masses instead of repellant forces? — flannel jesus

Like, there is both. If you have a problem with the idea that physical laws are largely statistical, take it up with some physicists.

From a tower, perhaps, but what if the ball hits a number of pegs along the way?:

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/8713/causality-determination-and-such-stuff/p1

I think it's at least reasonable to suppose that the reason we can predict such things is that we're really really close to knowing what's going on in a general sense, but every particular has more to it than a generality. That is -- it's statistical, just 99.99999999 etc whatever you want to say close.

EDIT: And, to be fair, in practice I don't think I've seen anything beyond 5 or 6 sig-figs. Statistics are regularly a part of science in practice, even though the textbook problems give this impression of analytic certainty. That's mostly for the students benefit, whose already learning too much.

I don't have a problem with anything. I'm just curious about how you deal with these situations. You previously said "Nature does not conform to Laws." Ok, that's fine, so where do these super-consistent behaviors come from?

Something that follows no laws whatsoever, it would seem to me, wouldn't have any regular repeating patterns. So there must be *some reason*, from your point of view, why our world is so full of reliably repeating patterns. If nature does not conform to laws, then why can physicists predict with remarkable accuracy how long it will take a ball to hit the ground? What's the background process behind that, that doesn't involve laws in nature?

You say 'regression to the mean' but that's super general. Why should 'regression to the mean' mean balls fall down in that particular way and not some entirely different way? Or fall down in any particular way at all? Or stay coherent long enough for a person to recognize it as the ball? Regression to *what* mean? There must be some reason why the mean is this and not that - what do you call "that reason" if not something like laws or rules or ... ?? What do you call the reason?

I think it's called "regression to the mean". If you toss a coin twice you might get heads twice, tails twice or one of each ht or one of each th. If you toss a coin a million times, you are almost certain to get within a hundred or so equal numbers of heads and tails, because 'chances are'. — unenlightened

I just Googled Bertrand Russell's statistical argument*1 to explain Nature's regularities, without recourse to a supernatural lawmaker. At first it seems to make empirical sense. But with afterthought, Nature still shows evidence of top-down statistical "laws"*2, begging the question of a Lawmaker or Regulator of Nature's "program", to direct its meandering median path, perhaps toward some future state.

For example, why would a random, non-designed, process (e.g. Evolution or coin flipping) have a tendency to average out extreme states? Is there a mathematical "gravitational" force pulling events toward some middle course? To suggest that Nature tends toward moderation also raises Why questions. Physical Science has postulated dozens of hypothetical "Forces" to explain consistent physical behavior ; four of them deemed "fundamental" to physics. Even Aristotle described four Causes in nature.

Yet again, why would such mysterious invisible causal pulls & pushes, with power over tangible matter, emerge within a non-directional randomized system?*3 Even "Chance" and "Chaos" are found to be lawful*4, and subject to arbitrary tugs toward the statistical median. So, Russell's argument merely redirects the question, pointing to the empirical predictable regularities of mathematics, instead of the hypothetical Great Mathematician*5, who defines what is Normal. :smile:


*1. The Natural Law Argument :
The laws of nature are of that sort as regards a great many of them. They are statistical averages such as would emerge from the laws of chance; and that makes this whole business of natural law much less impressive than it formerly was. . . .
if there was a reason for the laws which God gave, then God Himself was subject to law, and therefore you do not get any advantage by introducing God as an intermediary. You have really a law outside and anterior to the divine edicts, and God does not serve your purpose, because He is not the ultimate law-giver.
https://www.mit.edu/activities/mitmsa/NewSite/libstuff/russell/node3.html
Note --- this just kicks the Lawmaker question farther back down the road toward an "ultimate" Reason-maker. Perhaps, Plato's LOGOS?

*2. Empirical statistical laws :
An empirical statistical law or (in popular terminology) a law of statistics represents a type of behaviour that has been found across a number of datasets and, indeed, across a range of types of data sets.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empirical_statistical_laws

*3. Is God a Mathematician? :
Nobel Laureate Eugene Wigner once wondered about “the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics” in the formulation of the laws of nature. Is God a Mathematician? investigates why mathematics is as powerful as it is. ___Mario Livio, astrophysicist
https://www.amazon.com/God-Mathematician-Mario-Livio/dp/0743294068

*4. Laws of Chaos :
Chaos theory has been developed from the recognition that apparently simple physical systems which obey deterministic laws may nevertheless behave unpredictably.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/earth-and-planetary-sciences/chaos-theory

*5. Who says God is a mathematician? :
Michio Kaku explains why he believes in an intelligent creator and describes God as a “mathematician” and his mind as “cosmic music.” “The final resolution could be that God is a mathematician,” says Kaku. ___ Michio Kaku, theoretical physicist
https://bigthink.com/the-well/mathematics/

2, begging the question of a Lawmaker or Regulator of Nature's "program", to direct its meandering median path, perhaps toward some future state. — Gnomon

I can't pass a beggar without leaving a bit of change. If one begins with maximal simplicity, there is nowhere to go but towards complexity. However, once complexity has evolved, it can devolve into more simple forms, and there are many examples, For instance
https://www.sciencealert.com/what-happens-when-species-evolve-backwards-the-strange-science-of-devolution.
It is fairly obvious that every feature of an organism carries an energetic cost, and so as environments change, features that no longer contribute to survival are selected against.

I'll just note also that when i talk of statistical foundations of the gas laws and suchlike I am not talking of empirical statistical laws, but of theoretical, mathematical statistical laws. That is a misleading reference you gave in this context. This is what I was talking about.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinetic_theory_of_gases

For the uninitiated, an ideal gas is theorised as elastic particles moving at random and bouncing off each other. Pressure as measured is the average force exerted per unit area, and temperature a measure of the average velocity.

I'm in the mood for getting more specific: you said there's no laws, only regression to the mean, but you haven't given any indication of where this 'mean' comes from in the first place. As it turns out, it doesn't come from nowhere. It's pretty well defined.

In quantum mechanics, things are indeed stochastic, and measurement results when taken in aggregate can be described as 'regressing to the mean', so the question I asked is, *what mean*? And in QM, the answer is, "the mean as described by the wave function". If the wave function of a quantum system gives us a probabilistic spread of possible measurements, then the "mean" being regressed to is the mean of that probabilistic spread.

And the wave function, in QM, it turns out is governed over time by the Schrodinger Equation - that equation defines how wave functions evolve over time.

So I think you're absolutely right in an important way, that we observer regularities because of a regression to the mean. I think you're stopping short when you don't ask yourself the question, "where does that mean come from? The mean as defined by what?"

So now we know where the mean comes from - the Schrodinger Equation, which evolves the wave function deterministically over time - what we have is something people might metaphorically refer to as a "law". However, this time it's not a law that's defining a singular behavior, it's a law defining statistical behavior, probability distributions. But a law nonetheless.

So even if the regularities we see are due to regression to the mean, when we look deeper into what that actually means, it looks like "laws" are still a pretty good metaphor.

So, the question here is, when I refer to the Schrodinger Equation as a law, am I making an ontological statement or just a statement about my model of the world? And I think my answer is, a little bit of both. It might be that hte Schrodinger equatiation and/or the wave functions are ontological, OR it may be that they're a model we have of something, and maybe our model is maybe a bit off, and maybe there's some other ontological reason why it seems like wave functions are obeying the schrodinger equation with remarkable consistnecy -- and it just turns out that hte schrodinger equation is a really good approximation of that ontological reason, or an approximation of a high-level consequence of the ontological reason.

But it would seem to me that, even if we're a little bit wrong, there's still *some underlying reason*. And I call that underlying reason a law.

Eg 2 hydrogen atoms consistently bond with 1 oxygen atom when they can because the stuff that makes these atoms up is defined, at it's very core, to behave in a particular way? — flannel jesus

If You can omit the notion "atom" at all, I am quite familiar with Your idea. An oxygen atom, for instance, is then only a bundle of laws, or as I would express it "a compound of related properties" and nothing else.

None of the above should be taken to deny teleology, purpose and meaning or god in the world. It should be taken to deny it all in science.

you said there's no laws, only regression to the mean, — flannel jesus

This is what you said that I said. But it isn't what I said. I am not so dogmatic.

I do not pretend to be competent to speak about the interpretation of quantum mechanics, so I leave all that to others. but my position on mathematics is that it is the study of order and disorder, and thus of pattern and arrangement and symmetry. whatever there would be, would have some arrangement or other partial or complete, and perfect disorder has the structure of no structure and gives rise touch things as regression to the mean as soon as it is sampled or observed. I am a mathematical realist in the sense that mathematics deals with any possible or indeed any impossible world whatsoever, and that is why it finds 'unreasonable' application in this world. Naturally, the tendency is for humans to interest themselves particularly in the kind of maths that is instantiated in their world, and be less concerned with N dimensional hyperbolic manifolds and klein bottles and transfinite arithmetic etc.

But it would seem to me that, even if we're a little bit wrong, there's still *some underlying reason*. And I call that underlying reason a law. — flannel jesus

Call it what you like. But if, having discovered this law-like behaviour you then ask why the universe obeys this law, I cannot see that you can possibly come up with an underlying reason for your underlying reason. And this is why I call the op's question malformed.

you said there's no laws, only regression to the mean,
— flannel jesus

This is what you said that I said. But it isn't what I said. I am not so dogmatic. — unenlightened

Nature does not conform to Laws.
Nature does whatever the fuck she wants, and laws have to learn to conform to her, if they know what's good for them. — unenlightened

is there a reason they average out, by chance,
— flannel jesus

I think it's called "regression to the mean". — unenlightened

Perhaps I'm misreading your words, I feel like they leave a lot of room for interpretation there.

Perhaps I'm misreading your words, I feel like they leave a lot of room for interpretation there. — flannel jesus

Of course there is. Science is a big topic and hard to speak of globally. But it is an old cliché that scientific laws are descriptive and not prescriptive, and this means that they are the laws because nature obeys them, rather than that nature obeys them because they are the laws. Is this not clear to you?

Naturally, the tendency is for humans to interest themselves particularly in the kind of maths that is instantiated in their world, and be less concerned with N dimensional hyperbolic manifolds and klein bottles and transfinite arithmetic etc. — unenlightened

Actually, I think all the problems and confusions we have in math starts from what you mentioned. Math for humans, and I would dare to say for animals too even if they math is "nothing, one, two, many", has started from the necessity of counting things. And we have thus put this small part of math as to be the basis of math, as the initial axioms everything starts from.

Also Euclidian geometry is good for builders of Parthenons and aqueducts etc.

no, I think you're failing to see that there are two very different things people mean when they say "law of nature". One of them is the so-called laws human scientists concoct in their theories, which may or may not be correct, and the other meaning of the word is *the actual real underlying rules*.

So yes, laws that scientists come up with are descriptive. That's the first type of law, not the second type.

That there's non-euclidian geometry was actually rather easy to understand because it's so useful for instance when mapping the World.

I think the real question is all the issue that are in the realm of non-computable mathematics.

If anything exists, it must have qualities. Is there a bottom level explanation for whatever qualities there are?

That's the first type of law, not the second type. — flannel jesus

Then you need to answer the question that I refuse; what makes nature obey the second kind of law?

first of all, let me just say that it's not like I'm certain there even is the second kind of law. It makes the most sense to me, and I can't really conceptualise the negation of it, but I'm by no means expressing any kind of certainty about it. It's just what I think.

So in answer to your question, I wouldn't personally frame it as "obeying". Nature isn't obeying some laws defined from outside, rather nature IS those laws. There's not a separation between nature and the laws, our reality at its root is what it is because it is defined by those laws.

Our reality, I think, is probably in some sense a series of mathematical relationships between "things". Nature isn't being forced to obey those relationships, nature is the unfolding of those relationships (or if we're in a block universe, nature is maybe the crystallized structure of those relationships?).

So in answer to your question, I wouldn't personally frame it as "obeying". Nature isn't obeying some laws defined from outside, rather nature IS those laws. There's not a separation between nature and the laws, our reality at its root is what it is because it is defined by those laws. — flannel jesus

I've never much liked the word 'laws' in this context. Apart from the metaphysical implications, it also implies a law giver or other mysterious entities. And leads to the the use of the word 'obey' which also seems irresistibly anthropomorphic.

Can't we just say that humans observe regularities and patterns in nature? To what extent these regularities are a function of our cognitive apparatus or are in nature itself, I'm not sure we can say. Our physics and science are incomplete and our philosophical understandings of what humans bring to observation and the concomitant construction of what we call reality, are also partial.

Can't we just say that humans observe regularities and patterns in nature? — Tom Storm

You are certainly free to just say that, but some of us like to go on to think about what the reasons might be that we do observe those regularities. I respect if you're not interested in that question

You are certainly free to just say that, but some of us like to go on to think about what the reasons might be that we do observe those regularities. I respect if you're not interested in that question — flannel jesus

You left out the key part.

To what extent these regularities are a function of our cognitive apparatus or are in nature itself, I'm not sure we can say. Our physics and science are incomplete and our philosophical understandings of what humans bring to observation and the concomitant construction of what we call reality, are also partial. — Tom Storm

Perhaps Kant can help us? Or phenomenology? What methodology do you think you have access to that can answer the above and determine what direction this enquiry should take? Or do you think straightforward empiricism can resolve this matter?

Perhaps Kant can help us? Or phenomenology? What methodology do you think you have access too that can answer the above and determine what direction this enquiry should take? Or do you think straightforward empiricism can resolve this matter? — Tom Storm

I'm happy to start from my own intuition and go from there. I wouldn't personally consult Kant myself

But if I wanted to seek external opinions about if the universe is really "lawful" under the hood, I would seek the opinion of scientists first, physicists in particular, rather than ancient philosophers. I respect that that's not necessarily a popular opinion here

the key part.

To what extent these regularities are a function of our cognitive apparatus or are in nature itself, I'm not sure we can say. Our physics and science are incomplete and our philosophical understandings of what humans bring to observation and the concomitant construction of what we call reality, are also partial.
— Tom Storm — Tom Storm

The way you tell it is almost as if our cognitive apparatus is unnatural, or supernatural.