One of the main problems with a purely descriptive account of laws is that it renders those laws epistemic. In and of itself, this is not a bad thing. Certainly, our expressions of laws (whether or not there is an underpinning metaphysical reality to them) are entirely epistemic. When I say, “Gravity is a result of the curving of space-time by mass,” I am expressing an idea, an epistemic state.
I agree that saying something “Is a Law” can be used as a curiosity-stopper, just as you suggest. Particularly when the speaker is talking with someone outside of their field. I also agree that conceptions of natural laws where physics is necessary and biology, chemistry, etc. are unnecessary leads to a problematic ontological barrier while trying to claim that physics, biology, chemistry, etc. are “out in the ether” leads only back to the difficulties of Plato.
But the epistemic state claims to be about something in the world outside of my head, and that’s where things get a little tricky. When we ask why there is a regularity that we agree on epistemically, we ask why there is a regularity and not something else. Just saying that the regularities are necessary seems as much a curiosity-stopper as saying that “It is a Law” as is saying that we can’t know why there is a regularity. Equally bad answers to this include but are not limited to “We only care about the epistemic state” and “There is no fact of the matter about what makes a regularity a law.” (Which are sadly not straw-men, but actual positions held.)
So saying that laws are epistemic rather than metaphysical doesn’t get rid of the mysteriousness, it just changes the curiosity stopper from being about how laws are implemented to how they exist in the first place.
Oh, I don’t pretend to be presenting an explanation for the existence of regularities. I don’t think any philosophical account of the laws of nature can do that. The right sort of response to a question like “Why does this regularity exist?” is going to come from science. It’s going to appeal to some deeper theoretical understanding of the relevant system. All-purpose philosophical explanations like “Because it is a law of nature” or “Because of the causal structure of the universe” aren’t really explanations at all. I think one of the reasons for the persistence of the prescriptive view of laws is the illusory promise of a universal explanation of regularity. Once we give up the hope that philosophy is going to save us from the unavoidable curse of unexplained explainers, we can set about the business of figuring out the actual scientific role of the concept “laws of nature”.
So I’m not picking any of the bad answers you propose to the question of why there is a regularity. I don’t think you can get any useful answer at that level of generality. The right answer is going to depend on what regularity you’re talking about and is going to look like science, not philosophy.
Interesting. How do you get around the problem that not all regularities are something we would consider a law of nature, even when generalizable? (Trivial example: I buy a pair of jeans and immediately put 3 quarters in them and keep these jeans until I throw them out. We would not say that “Those jeans have 3 quarters in them when belonging to me” is a law of nature, but it takes the form of a complete regularity. Even if the jeans lasted until the heat death of the universe and always had 3 quarters in them, we wouldn’t say it is a law that they do.)
Regularities of the kind you describe would very plausibly not be the axioms of the best system for any vocabulary we care about. Adding the jeans regularity to the list of axioms in a system would give up simplicity for a trivial gain in information content.
So it comes down to laws being separated from other regularities because of some ratio of parsimony to information? Without some reason to declare a particular boundary on that, that seems like a rather arbitrary distinction.
One of the main problems with a purely descriptive account of laws is that it renders those laws epistemic.
What does “being epistemic” (or “purely descriptive”, for that matter) mean? Taking a photo of a man doesn’t render the man “purely photographic”, nor is the image “purely photographic”; the image of the world describes the world, and both have the properties reflected in the photo. Predictions inferred from known physical laws coincide with the events in physical world, and this systematic coincidence reflects the presence of common structure between the world and its description. It is this common structure that makes known laws useful, and if it were imprinted on a different description it would remain so, but being shared with the world (and many other things) it doesn’t exclusively belong to our descriptions.
One of the main problems with a purely descriptive account of laws is that it renders those laws epistemic. In and of itself, this is not a bad thing. Certainly, our expressions of laws (whether or not there is an underpinning metaphysical reality to them) are entirely epistemic. When I say, “Gravity is a result of the curving of space-time by mass,” I am expressing an idea, an epistemic state.
I agree that saying something “Is a Law” can be used as a curiosity-stopper, just as you suggest. Particularly when the speaker is talking with someone outside of their field. I also agree that conceptions of natural laws where physics is necessary and biology, chemistry, etc. are unnecessary leads to a problematic ontological barrier while trying to claim that physics, biology, chemistry, etc. are “out in the ether” leads only back to the difficulties of Plato.
But the epistemic state claims to be about something in the world outside of my head, and that’s where things get a little tricky. When we ask why there is a regularity that we agree on epistemically, we ask why there is a regularity and not something else. Just saying that the regularities are necessary seems as much a curiosity-stopper as saying that “It is a Law” as is saying that we can’t know why there is a regularity. Equally bad answers to this include but are not limited to “We only care about the epistemic state” and “There is no fact of the matter about what makes a regularity a law.” (Which are sadly not straw-men, but actual positions held.)
So saying that laws are epistemic rather than metaphysical doesn’t get rid of the mysteriousness, it just changes the curiosity stopper from being about how laws are implemented to how they exist in the first place.
Oh, I don’t pretend to be presenting an explanation for the existence of regularities. I don’t think any philosophical account of the laws of nature can do that. The right sort of response to a question like “Why does this regularity exist?” is going to come from science. It’s going to appeal to some deeper theoretical understanding of the relevant system. All-purpose philosophical explanations like “Because it is a law of nature” or “Because of the causal structure of the universe” aren’t really explanations at all. I think one of the reasons for the persistence of the prescriptive view of laws is the illusory promise of a universal explanation of regularity. Once we give up the hope that philosophy is going to save us from the unavoidable curse of unexplained explainers, we can set about the business of figuring out the actual scientific role of the concept “laws of nature”.
So I’m not picking any of the bad answers you propose to the question of why there is a regularity. I don’t think you can get any useful answer at that level of generality. The right answer is going to depend on what regularity you’re talking about and is going to look like science, not philosophy.
Interesting. How do you get around the problem that not all regularities are something we would consider a law of nature, even when generalizable? (Trivial example: I buy a pair of jeans and immediately put 3 quarters in them and keep these jeans until I throw them out. We would not say that “Those jeans have 3 quarters in them when belonging to me” is a law of nature, but it takes the form of a complete regularity. Even if the jeans lasted until the heat death of the universe and always had 3 quarters in them, we wouldn’t say it is a law that they do.)
Regularities of the kind you describe would very plausibly not be the axioms of the best system for any vocabulary we care about. Adding the jeans regularity to the list of axioms in a system would give up simplicity for a trivial gain in information content.
So it comes down to laws being separated from other regularities because of some ratio of parsimony to information? Without some reason to declare a particular boundary on that, that seems like a rather arbitrary distinction.
What does “being epistemic” (or “purely descriptive”, for that matter) mean? Taking a photo of a man doesn’t render the man “purely photographic”, nor is the image “purely photographic”; the image of the world describes the world, and both have the properties reflected in the photo. Predictions inferred from known physical laws coincide with the events in physical world, and this systematic coincidence reflects the presence of common structure between the world and its description. It is this common structure that makes known laws useful, and if it were imprinted on a different description it would remain so, but being shared with the world (and many other things) it doesn’t exclusively belong to our descriptions.
I’m not sure what point you are trying to make here.