henry quirk wrote: ↑Mon Jul 05, 2021 7:12 pm
So: you're sayin' the world has no independent existence, yes?
??? No. I'm not saying that at all. I'm saying that physical laws have no independent existence. They're merely a way that we think about the phenomena (which certainly has an independent existence) that we experience.
Or, more accurately, you're sayin' certain aspects of the world are dependent on us, yeah?
I'd say that about some things--for example, shoes exist independently of us once we manufacture them, but their nature is dependent on us.
But no, re what I wrote above, that's not what I was saying, either. Some things are simply how we think about, or feel about, etc. the world, and as such, they don't somehow get thrust into the world then. They incorrigibly remain only ways we think about the world.
Or mebbe you're sayin' the regularities we observe are not regularities but interpretations of what's goin' on.
They're regularities but not necessities. There's no law to make them a necessity.
I have a box of lucifer matches (100 in all). I pull each match from the box and strike each. Each strike results in pretty much the the same kind of flame. Never, in any of the 100 strikes, does anything other than a flame occur. The match head never turns into a daffodil or a drop of water or anything other than a flame.
Sometimes, by the way, no flame occurs with a given match. We have ways of excusing recalcitrant behavior like that on the assumption that most of us make that there are real physical laws, that the world obeys with regularity more or less to the point of necessity, etc. But those are assumptions that aren't really warranted.
Again, as I've said many times, that there are no real physical laws, that the "same" antecedent states don't always cause exactly the same consequent states, etc. isn't something that's thus completely arbitrary/completely, equiprobably random. So while maybe something very weird could happen every once in awhile, it's not likely to, and we more often get just slight variations--or something like matches that won't light.
I think this regularity of result is becuz each match head is chemically the same and responds to a strike the same. I don't think my thinkin' has anything to do with it.
Sure. But what do you think has to do with it. Is it just a brute fact? Are you positing real physical laws? (And if you are, what the heck would a real physical law be?)
Joe (my go-to example) might authentically believe a strike will result in a daffodil or a drop of water but I think he'll be mightily disappointed.
Re physical laws being a way that we think about phenomena, the idea isn't that I'm talking about beliefs in that sense, and certainly not "just any arbitrary belief."
Do you mean to say that if Joe believes sumthin' other than flame will result from a lucifer match strike, that it's possible or probable or guaranteed sumthin' other than flame will result?
No. I'm not saying anything like that. I'm talking about observations we make, from our perspectives as humans, given the abstractions we make (so that we think of multiple things as "the same" for example), given the way we gloss over fine-grained details, given the way we excuse away recalcitrant data (because we have an intuitive belief in regularity), and so on.
And to say sumthin' is a brute fact, in context, is no different than sayin' there's a physical law or immutable regularity or immutable characteristic, yeah?
It's different because if we're saying that there are real physical laws, then we're positing ontological something or others that exist independently of us. Well, just what sort of ontological whatsits would we be positing? Where would they exist? How would they interact with/regulate stuff? etc.
"Brute fact" just says that "that's just the way this particular thing 'behaves,'"where there's no "background" reason for that.
