It "smears" particles into a nebulous cloud of potential positions over time that don't manifest themselves as composite
-
Eva_Yojimbo — 9 years ago(January 16, 2017 12:56 PM)
And you're still not getting it either, because none of your points are countering anything I said.
the "laws of physics" are effectively another way of saying "regularities that exist in Nature". They mean the same thing. There was never a concept of "laws existing" as an entity out there that explained these regularities.
I never suggested that the "laws existing" explained the regularities. All I said was that if you can use the laws, the descriptions, the regularities, to explain reality (or all phenomena if I wanted to get specific) then that is simpler than adding "God" as a means of explaining them (both the phenomena and the laws) as well. That's it.
Laws don't do anything on their own.
This doesn't make any sense because since (according to you) the "laws of nature" are just "descriptions of regularities in nature," then part of those "regularities" involve nature "doing things."
Even in our everyday human experience, laws are impotent. They are enforced by external agents, i.e., efficient causes.
As if natural laws are the same as social laws. That's a derp analogy you just tried to make there, but it's part and parcel of the whole mind-projection fallacy that comes with academic theology.
In other words, as I said in my first post, reifying the "laws of physics" is effectively removing the God-head that gave it actual agency.
No, we're removing the God-head that
you claim
gave them agency because there is no evidence for it and doing so makes the hypothesis simpler and, thus, more likely to be true as per Occam.
Acorns turn into oaks and not pine trees. Apple seeds turn into apples and not oranges. Human zygotes turn into humans and not penguins. Etc.
And this has nothing to do with purpose and everything to do with natural causality, unless you think causality ceases working when it comes to biology. Purpose is a product of human minds. Remove the mind and there is no purpose; just mind-projection fallacies.
Can't help but notice you ignored all the Occam stuff. Still think it's "just a heuristic?"
Rabbit
: It's rare that stupid doesn't bring douchedom with it. -
DramatisPersona — 9 years ago(January 16, 2017 03:13 PM)
I never suggested that the "laws existing" explained the regularities. All I said was that if you can use the laws, the descriptions, the regularities, to explain reality (or all phenomena if I wanted to get specific) then that is simpler than adding "God" as a means of explaining them (both the phenomena and the laws) as well. That's it.
But that's the reason behind how the phrase came to be, i.e., to explain them, and is the question the occassionalist philosophers were attempting to answer. To say "laws of Nature" is to
explain
the "regularities of nature" via Divine Decree, so they couldn't have been choosing between "laws of Nature" and "God" as the simpler
explanation- where Occam's Razor would apply - because the "laws" were due to God. Hence, to speak of the "laws of Nature" without a God-head is not an
explanation
for these regularities. It is simply descriptive - an "is" - at whatever level of sectionalized Reality is being modeled, whatever the formalization process for the latter entails, i.e., physics, chemistry, biology, etc. Aristotle, Aquinas, Ibn Sina, Ghazali, etc., weren't pantheists.
That's a derp analogy you just tried to make there, but it's part and parcel of the whole mind-projection fallacy that comes with academic theology.
It's not a "derp analogy". Social laws are effectively used to maintain order. The "laws of Nature" are nothing more than Divine Decrees to maintain order in the Universe. That's the extent of it. It has nothing to do with a mind-projection fallacy, which is like saying such and such food tastes bad for me, so it must taste bad for everyone else, i.e., objectifying a subjective perception without any reason to do so.
And this has nothing to do with purpose and everything to do with natural causality, unless you think causality ceases working when it comes to biology. Purpose is a product of human minds. Remove the mind and there is no purpose; just mind-projection fallacies.
And I'm telling you teleology as Aristotle and Aquinas understood it is not just limited to purposes in the human
intentionality
sense. It is more
generic
than that and applies to the idea that ends are existent in natural substances and are
intrinsic
to their nature. Hence, the latter of the four causes to explain being: material, formal, efficient, and
final
, i.e.,
teleological
. Opium has a dormitive power when it interacts with the human body. When ingested it becomes an efficient agent that puts you to sleep. If this final cause/end was not inherent in it, then the fact that it would put you to sleep every time you ingested it - unless impeded for some reason - would be inexplicable and unintelligible. The only other way to
explain
it would be that some extrinsic agent to it would cause you to be put to sleep when you ingested it - hence, the entire idea behind occassionalism.
Can't help but notice you ignored all the Occam stuff. Still think it's "just a heuristic?"
"A heuristic technique, often called simply a heuristic, is any approach to problem solving, learning, or discovery that employs a practical method not guaranteed to be optimal or perfect, but sufficient for the immediate goals."
~ Wiki
If you have some issue with me stating it was "just a heuristic", I don't know why. I didn't deny it could be formalized and used practically in some manner. I have no knowledge of what you wrote to deny or affirm it and I don't doubt your explanation of it. The formalization of Occam's Razor just wasn't relevant to the the point I was trying to make.
I want a unicorn.
- where Occam's Razor would apply - because the "laws" were due to God. Hence, to speak of the "laws of Nature" without a God-head is not an
-
YouMightRabbitYouMight — 9 years ago(January 17, 2017 05:16 AM)
Who cares what somebody made up whole cloth as "explanations"? "Laws of Nature" is just a colorful way of expressing "what is", and no historical mysticism nor language play can birth a god from it.
The "laws of Nature" are nothing more than Divine Decrees to maintain order in the Universe.
Only as asserted spin of the religious.
And what "Aristotle and Aquinas understood" very frequently ran parallel to reality.
Certainly repeatedly asserted, but in no manner even approaching demonstrated. Aristotle was steeped in hoo-doo; he made up concepts freely in his attempt to fabricate something out of sheer nothingness. Religious want doesn't have to include flying horses or rising from the dead. The fact that the "simple causality exhibited by a tiny hydrogen atom as ascertained by modern physics" is enough to see a god shows just how ludicrous the entire endeavor is.
Nothing you've posted in any way yields agency nor intentionality, other than sheer want. The noting that "the laws of physics" do nothing but describe what we've found, along with the fact that what we've found in no way yields a god, of course does nothing but undermine the attempts to throw deities into the mists.
The whole-cloth imaginatively constructed notions that people in history have come up with are not given any credence by their age. Silly playtime remains so regardless of whether it came from Iron age "philosophers" struggling with so little information or religious apologists who think that an esoteric argot somehow gives gravitas to mundane and easily-dismissible ideas. -
Eva_Yojimbo — 9 years ago(January 17, 2017 11:41 AM)
But that's the reason behind how the phrase came to be, i.e., to explain them, and is the question the occassionalist philosophers were attempting to answer. To say "laws of Nature" is to explain the "regularities of nature" via Divine Decree, so they couldn't have been choosing between "laws of Nature" and "God" as the simpler explanation - where Occam's Razor would apply - because the "laws" were due to God.
So now we're back to the genetic fallacy: the occassionalists coined "the laws of nature" to explain how God gave nature regularity. Fine, but that's not what the "laws of nature" mean now; they are simply, as you said, synonymous WITH those regularities. So when I said "laws of nature to explain reality," I'm referring to the ability of the regularities to explain various natural phenomena like the origin of the universe. Then I argued that adding "God" as a means of explaining the regularities/laws is just adding needless complexity. These points stand, and none of your history lesson about where/why the term came to be has refuted them.
It's not a "derp analogy". Social laws are effectively used to maintain order. The "laws of Nature" are nothing more than Divine Decrees to maintain order in the Universe.
It's the derpiest derp that ever derped. Social laws do not exist without humans to make them. They are also subject to humans remaking them. We know natural laws don't need humans to function, neither can they be remade by human will. There is no evidence that natural laws were "made" at all, nor is there any evidence they require a "Divine Decree" to work. Saying "God" doesn't really explain them anyway; it's just a semantic stopsign, or at best a fake explanation like phlogiston was for fire.
I'm telling you teleology as Aristotle and Aquinas understood it is not just limited to purposes in the human intentionality sense. It is more generic than that and applies to the idea that ends are existent in natural substances and are intrinsic to their nature.
And I'm telling you they were plain wrong. The fact that biological causality has "ends" (more just like a specific framework in which to function) is no more "purposeful" than the gravity that slings asteroids through space. They're all working on the same causal principles with no "intent" behind them. Neither Aristotle or Aquinas had the first clue about Evolution, about how the randomness of mutations could adapt to an environment. The randomness certainly isn't purposeful; neither is the adaptation (a mutation either facilitates survival/reproduction or it doesn't).
If you have some issue with me stating it was "just a heuristic", I don't know why.
I fully explained why in my post before last. In the formalized sense, Occam isn't just a practical and non-optimal means of problem-solving or learning. In the formalized sense it's something that precisely tells us how likely one hypothesis is compared to another based on their computational simplicity. In fact, the formalized version is entirely impractical and about optimal/perfect as we can get. Most current research into Solomonoff Induction is about finding ways to make it into a "practical" heuristic that we can actually use.
Still, even in the more "practical" sense there are lessons that can be gleaned from it. My original point about "laws of nature" being simpler than "laws of nature + God" falls under the Conjunction Fallacy, one principle of Occam. A+B can never be more likely than just A or B.
Rabbit
: It's rare that stupid doesn't bring douchedom with it. -
DramatisPersona — 9 years ago(January 17, 2017 03:05 PM)
Last try since you're still not understanding.
So now we're back to the genetic fallacy:
No we're not.
the occassionalists coined "the laws of nature" to explain how God gave nature regularity.
No. Those "laws of Nature" are synonymous with Divine Decree, which give Nature its regularity.
Fine, but that's not what the "laws of nature" mean now; they are simply, as you said, synonymous WITH those regularities.
Yes, typically
reified
as if they are a cause of them as the quote I posted by Paul Davies showed.
So when I said "laws of nature to explain reality," I'm referring to the ability of the regularities to explain various natural phenomena like the origin of the universe.
So you're using the regularities that exist
in
the Universe to explain the
origin
of the Universe? Dismissing this backwards way of thinking and presuming what you mean, the origin of the Universe is still just a subset of the question the philosophers were asking, if they even presumed that the Universe had a beginning, which some did and some didn't. As I said before a number of times on this forum in other threads, Aquinas did not believe the beginning of the Universe could be philosophically proven. Whether the asserted Quantum Fields entity that you often speak of can give "birth" to the Universe(s) is a moot point and highly speculative. Regardless, they provide no such answer for the regularities that exist
within
the Universe they gave birth to and what, if anything, enforces them.
Then I argued that adding "God" as a means of explaining the regularities/laws is just adding needless complexity. These points stand, and none of your history lesson about where/why the term came to be has refuted them.
And this is simply false, because as I said repeatedly, this is not the question the philosophers were answering. They were asking what is the
ontological
source for these regularities. As you said, you were never asking what explains the "laws of Nature", but that is precisely the question that the philosophers were asking. Therefore, the law of parsimony doesn't apply, because
describing how
Reality works due to its regularities was never the question. You can't have two equally competing solutions to a
different
problem to apply Occam's Razor to. It was never "laws of Nature" + "God" to
describe
how Nature works. It is "God" to ontologically be the explanation for the regularities that were encapsulated in the phrase the "laws of Nature" which was equivalent to Divine Decree. Do you think these philosophers didn't know that Nature was structured and regular? Do you think they didn't know a particular natural substance interacted with another in particular ways?
It's the derpiest derp that ever derped.
No it's not. The extent of the analogy was to show how people like you continue to reify the "laws of Nature" as if they have any agency on their own, which they don't.
And I'm telling you they were plain wrong. The fact that biological causality has "ends" (more just like a specific framework in which to function) is no more "purposeful" than the gravity that slings asteroids through space.
You just keep repeating yourself and don't understand what someone writes. Like I said, teleology in the Aristotelian sense is more
generic
than human intentionality and purpose, and hence subsumes it. Do you know what the term generic means? I even gave you example of an end in an organic natural substance that was explained using the Aristotelian metaphysical framework. What do you think human intentionality is except pointing to an end? What do you think to int
end
means? How do you explain human intentionality if ends aren't intrinsic to Reality
as such
?
Neither Aristotle or Aquinas had the first clue about Evolution, about how the randomness of mutations could adapt to an environment. The randomness certainly isn't purposeful; neither is the adaptation (a mutation either facilitates survival/reproduction or it doesn't).
What does evolution have to do with anything that has been discussed? Randomness isn't purposeful, but that was never the point. Chance is still the accidental convergence of causal regularities, and it is the source of the latter that is still the question.
I want a unicorn. -
YouMightRabbitYouMight — 9 years ago(January 18, 2017 03:06 PM)
Yeesh. What are you calling "the universe"? All of reality? What we see as the current universe that we exist in? Or that and what directly led to it,
?
1 and 3 being different ways of saying the same thing.
Certainly repeatedly asserted, but in no manner even approaching demonstrated. Aristotle was steeped in hoo-doo; he made up concepts freely in his attempt to fabricate something out of sheer nothingness. Religious want doesn't have to include flying horses or rising from the dead. The fact that the "simple causality exhibited by a tiny hydrogen atom as ascertained by modern physics" is enough to see a god shows just how ludicrous the entire endeavor is.
Nothing you've posted in any way yields agency nor intentionality, other than sheer want. The noting that "the laws of physics" do nothing but describe what we've found, along with the fact that what we've found in no way yields a god, of course does nothing but undermine the attempts to throw deities into the mists.
The whole-cloth imaginatively constructed notions that people in history have come up with are not given any credence by their age. Silly playtime remains so regardless of whether it came from Iron age "philosophers" struggling with so little information or religious apologists who think that an esoteric argot somehow gives gravitas to mundane and easily-dismissible ideas. -
Eva_Yojimbo — 9 years ago(January 20, 2017 02:02 PM)
Instead of this Omnislash War Im going to try to pare this down into three key parts:
Laws of Nature
Heres a full recap of the discussion before you entered into it:
Originally I was explaining how the origins of the universe can be explained through quantum vacuums. Miscella argued that since the laws of physics break down at quantum levels, then physics couldnt argue for there being no God (presumably, no laws would mean anything is possible.) I countered this by simply stating that there ARE laws for how quantum physics works even if theyre different from classical physics.
I assumed by laws of physics Miscella simply meant certain ways in which physics works, so my expanded point was in saying that if you can explain all phenomena, including the universes origins, with just known physical laws, then this is simpler than also adding God to explain the universes origin.
It certainly doesnt seem like Miscella was using laws of physics to mean God-degreed ways of how matter behaves, and I certainly wasnt. So all your history lesson has done is shown how the term used to be used, not how its used now or was being used in the discussion you responded to.
Occam
In the context of the above discussion, its obvious my argument was that using the LoP to explain the universes origins is simpler than invoking God. Your point is that philosophers proposed the LoP as a Divine decree to explain where the Laws came from. Even though your point is irrelevant and tangential to the one I was making, Ill address it anyway.
Occam is still applicable in that situation. Firstly, God doesnt really answer the question either (no more than any other proposed answer without evidence would), it simply moves the meta-question back a further step. Its an example of a semantic stop-sign:
http://lesswrong.com/lw/it/semantic_stopsigns/
Philosophers are good at asking hard questions. Theyre also notoriously bad at answering them. Asking why the laws of nature are how they are is a fine question. Proposing God to answer it is a bad answer; not because of some a priori atheistic metaphysic, but because its an example of a fake explanation or fake causality:
http://lesswrong.com/lw/ip/fake_explanations/
and
http://lesswrong.com/lw/is/fake_causality/
Science was conceived partly as an antidote for this kind of lazy thinking; it no longer mattered what you could argue, but what you could prove.
Secondly, lets just say for a moment you have two hypotheses that can explain those origins: one is God, and two is, as you suggested earlier, the LoP being brute facts. There is no doubt which of these two Occam would favor. The LoP already exist, and we actually know how/why they would/could create a universe, as well as account for pretty much all phenomena in the universe we inhabit. We dont know God exists, dont know how/why/if s/he/it could/would create a universe or decree such laws upon it. There is no rational reason to invent a being with magical powers (and I say magical because nobody could explain the mechanics of how God could create a universe) to explain why something exists when it just does is an available hypothesis. Further, as I said above, the invented being not only adds complexity, but it only serves to move all the questions back a step: why is God (rather than the LoP) allowed to just exist without a reason? Theres no answer to that question that: 1. Is anything other than a baseless claim; 2. There is any evidence for; and 3. Couldnt be equally claimed of the LoP.
So, just to recap:- Claiming God doesnt answer the question. Its just a semantic stop-sign, an example of a fake explanation/causality.
- Claiming God adds far more complexity than going with the brute fact hypothesis of the LoP.
- All the questions that can be asked about the LoP can be asked of God. All the answers that can be given for God will be nothing but baseless claims and could equally be claimed for the LoP.
So, yes, Occam is still applicable to the question Where did the LoP come from? It favors the brute fact hypothesis. This doesnt mean the hypothesis is right, but, again, Occam is about assigning probability among available hypotheses and favoring the one that is the least complex. Inventing a being (not JUST a being, but an entirely new realm of the supernatural) is undoubtedly more complex, and theres no way around this. Programming the LoP into a computer to output a universe would be pretty easy; trying to program a God that created those laws would not be. Its a shame most old, dead philosophers didnt grasp the basic concept of Solomonoff Induction as it wouldve prevented them from proposing dumb answers to hard questions (while allowing them to understand WHY the answers were dumb).
Teleology
This is really tangential and isnt really something I care about discussing, but my point is that all the innate teleology in nature you brought up were just examples of physical interactions and causes, no different than gravity hurling comets through
-
Superdude6090 — 9 years ago(January 10, 2017 04:23 PM)
it was just always there, end of discussion!" schtick just strikes me as intellectually lazy.
Actually you are engaging in intellectual laziness with your position,it is a logical fallacy known as "The God of gaps":
God of the gaps (or a divine fallacy) is logical fallacy that occurs when Goddidit (or a variant) is invoked to explain some natural phenomena that science cannot (at the time of the argument). This concept is similar to what systems theorists refer to as an "explanatory principle." "God of the gaps" is a bad argument not only on logical grounds, but on empirical grounds: there is a long history of "gaps" being filled and the gap for God thus getting smaller and smaller, suggesting "we don't know yet" as an alternative that works better in practice; naturalistic explanations for still-mysterious phenomena are always possible, especially in the future where more information may be uncovered.[1]
The God of the Gaps is a didit fallacy and an ad hoc fallacy, as well as an argument from incredulity or an argument from ignorance, and is thus an informal fallacy.
The ultimate "gap" that likely cannot be bridged is "well, God started everything", because even if something like the m-theory explaining how our universe could have "big banged" in the first place was proven to be true someone could always ask, "yes, but what created the membranes?" -
-
filmflaneur — 9 years ago(January 11, 2017 07:10 AM)
The argument that simply because science has found answers in the past means it will find any in the future is wishful thinking no matter how logically flawed.
It is better expressed as 'since science has always found explanations for a whole range of things and continues to do so, there is no reason to assume this will not be the case in the future'. That is, it is more reasonable to assume that a pattern will be continued rather than insisting it will abruptly stop.
I'm well aware that railing does no good
kurt2000 -
-
filmflaneur — 9 years ago(January 13, 2017 03:59 AM)
I was not "insisting" it would abruptly stop. It is however logical to assume that it will stop. Perhaps you already noticed that the periodic chart of the elements has in fact stopped.
Actually a new couple of elements were added last year lol
It is also disingenuous to equate the whole wide field of knowledge with just a single table. Has the whole of human understanding come to grinding halt you think - or just the bit you hope will find out no more?
I'm well aware that railing does no good
kurt2000 -
Miscella — 9 years ago(January 09, 2017 08:55 PM)
So what's preventing Christians from accepting that the Universe didn't have to come into being?
Dementia flaring up again?
http://www.imdb.com/board/bd0000108/nest/264932739?d=264941020#264941020 -
filmflaneur — 9 years ago(January 10, 2017 03:57 AM)
So what's preventing Christians from accepting that the Universe didn't have to come into being?
Dementia flaring up again?
I don't think so. They can't all suffer from senility.
I'm well aware that railing does no good
kurt2000 -
AbsolutelyThoughtfulGoz — 9 years ago(January 10, 2017 04:20 PM)
The Creator of God thought it would be a good idea.
His Creator was in agreement so it was all systems go.
Fortunately Great Grandfather Creator was dead and in Heaven, so he couldn't have a say, and he was an ornery intelligent old man with a white beard, and really really smart about science and physics and stuff, so they were all relieved when he 'passed'!