I am not sure why you are including the mind here, maybe we are talking at cross purposes. I am not making statements about the world, only about the emergence of the laws of physics as written in textbooks, which exist as abstractions across human minds. If you are the Laplace’s demon, you can see the whole world, and if you wanted to zoom into the level of “planets going around the sun”, you could, but there is no reason for you to. This whole idea of “facts” is a human thing. We, as embedded agents, are emergent patterns that use this concept. I can see how it is natural to think of facts, planets or numbers as ontologically primitive or something, not as emergent, but this is not the view I hold.
Isn’t your thesis that “laws of physics” only exist in the mind? But in that case, they can’t be a causal or explanatory factor in anything outside the mind; which means that there are no actual explanations for the patterns in nature, whether you look at them dynamically or atemporally. There’s no reason why planets go round the stars, there’s no reason why orbital speeds correlate with masses in a particular way, these are all just big coincidences.
Isn’t your thesis that “laws of physics” only exist in the mind?
Yes!
But in that case, they can’t be a causal or explanatory factor in anything outside the mind
“a causal or explanatory factor” is also inside the mind
which means that there are no actual explanations for the patterns in nature
What do you mean by an “actual explanation”? Explanations only exist in the mind, as well.
There’s no reason why planets go round the stars
The reason (which is also in the minds of agents) is the Newton’s law, which is an abstraction derived from the model of the universe that exists in the minds of embedded agents.
there’s no reason why orbital speeds correlate with masses in a particular way, these are all just big coincidences
“Coincidence” is a wrong way of looking at this. The world is what it is. We live in it and are trying to make sense of it, moderately successfully. Because we exist, it follows that the world is somewhat predictable from the inside, otherwise life would not have been a thing. That is, tiny parts of the world can have lossily compressed but still useful models of some parts/aspects of the world. Newton’s laws are part of those models.
A more coherent question would be “why is the world partially lossily compressible from the inside”, and I don’t know a non-anthropic answer, or even if this is an answerable question. A lot of “why” questions in science bottom out at “because the world is like that”.
… Not sure if this makes my view any clearer, we are obviously working with very different ontologies.
A lot of “why” questions in science bottom out at “because the world is like that”.
But you see, by treating the laws of physics as nothing but mental constructs (rather than as a reality with causal power, that is imperfectly approximated by minds), you extend the realm of brute facts rather radically. Under a law-based conception of physical reality, the laws and the initial conditions may be brute facts, but everything else is a consequence of those facts. By denying that there are mind-independent laws at all, all the concrete patterns of physics (from which the existence of the laws is normally inferred) instead become brute facts too.
I think I understand your speculations about an alternative paradigm, e.g. maybe intelligent life can’t exist in worlds that don’t have sufficiently robust patterns, and so the informational compressibility of the world is to be attributed to anthropics rather than to causally ordering principles. But this faces the same problem as the idea that the visible universe arose as a Boltzmann fluctuation, or that you yourself are a Boltzmann brain: the amount of order is far greater than such a hypothesis implies. A universe created in a Boltzmann fluctuation would only need one galaxy or even one star. A hallucinated life experienced by a Boltzmann brain ought to unravel at any moment, as the vacuum of space kills the brain.
The simplest explanation is that some kind of Platonism is real, or more precisely (in philosophical jargon) that “universals” of some kind do exist. One does not need to be a literal Platonist about them. Aristotle’s approach is closer to common sense: universals are always attached to some kind of substance. Philosophers may debate about the right way to think of them, but to remove them outright, because of a philosophical prejudice or blindspot, leads to where you are now.
I was struck by something I read in Bertrand Russell, that some of the peculiarities of Leibniz’s worldview arose because he did not believe in relations, he thought substance and property are the only forms of being. As a result, he didn’t think interaction between substances is possible (since that would be a relation), and instead came up with his odd theory about a universe of monadic substances which are all preprogrammed by God to behave as if they are interacting.
I am not 100% against these radical attempts to do without something basic in ontology, because who knows what creative ideas may arise as a result? But personally I prefer to posit as rich an ontology as possible, so that I will not unnecessarily rule out an explanation that may be right in front of me.
It seems like we are not even close to converging on any kind of shared view. I don’t find the concept of “brute facts” even remotely useful, so I cannot comment on it.
But this faces the same problem as the idea that the visible universe arose as a Boltzmann fluctuation, or that you yourself are a Boltzmann brain: the amount of order is far greater than such a hypothesis implies.
I think Sean Carroll answered this one a few times: the concept of a Boltzmann brain is not cognitively stable (you can’t trust your own thoughts, including that you are a Boltzmann brain). And if you try to make it stable, you have to reconstruct the whole physical universe. You might be saying the same thing? I am not claiming anything different here.
The simplest explanation is that some kind of Platonism is real, or more precisely (in philosophical jargon) that “universals” of some kind do exist.
Like I said in the other reply, I think that those two words are not useful as binaries real/not real, exist/not exist. If you feel that this is non-negotiable to make sense of philosophy of physics or something, I don’t know what to say.
I was struck by something I read in Bertrand Russell, that some of the peculiarities of Leibniz’s worldview arose because he did not believe in relations, he thought substance and property are the only forms of being. As a result, he didn’t think interaction between substances is possible (since that would be a relation), and instead came up with his odd theory about a universe of monadic substances which are all preprogrammed by God to behave as if they are interacting.
Yeah, I think denying relations is going way too far. A relation is definitely a useful idea. It can stay in epistemology rather than in ontology.
I am not 100% against these radical attempts to do without something basic in ontology, because who knows what creative ideas may arise as a result? But personally I prefer to posit as rich an ontology as possible, so that I will not unnecessarily rule out an explanation that may be right in front of me.
Fair, it is foolish to reduce potential avenues of exploration. Maybe, again, we differ where they live, in the world as basic entities or in the mind as our model of making sense of the world.
I am not sure why you are including the mind here, maybe we are talking at cross purposes. I am not making statements about the world, only about the emergence of the laws of physics as written in textbooks, which exist as abstractions across human minds. If you are the Laplace’s demon, you can see the whole world, and if you wanted to zoom into the level of “planets going around the sun”, you could, but there is no reason for you to. This whole idea of “facts” is a human thing. We, as embedded agents, are emergent patterns that use this concept. I can see how it is natural to think of facts, planets or numbers as ontologically primitive or something, not as emergent, but this is not the view I hold.
Isn’t your thesis that “laws of physics” only exist in the mind? But in that case, they can’t be a causal or explanatory factor in anything outside the mind; which means that there are no actual explanations for the patterns in nature, whether you look at them dynamically or atemporally. There’s no reason why planets go round the stars, there’s no reason why orbital speeds correlate with masses in a particular way, these are all just big coincidences.
Yes!
“a causal or explanatory factor” is also inside the mind
What do you mean by an “actual explanation”? Explanations only exist in the mind, as well.
The reason (which is also in the minds of agents) is the Newton’s law, which is an abstraction derived from the model of the universe that exists in the minds of embedded agents.
“None of this is a coincidence because nothing is ever a coincidence” https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Literature/Unsong
“Coincidence” is a wrong way of looking at this. The world is what it is. We live in it and are trying to make sense of it, moderately successfully. Because we exist, it follows that the world is somewhat predictable from the inside, otherwise life would not have been a thing. That is, tiny parts of the world can have lossily compressed but still useful models of some parts/aspects of the world. Newton’s laws are part of those models.
A more coherent question would be “why is the world partially lossily compressible from the inside”, and I don’t know a non-anthropic answer, or even if this is an answerable question. A lot of “why” questions in science bottom out at “because the world is like that”.
… Not sure if this makes my view any clearer, we are obviously working with very different ontologies.
But you see, by treating the laws of physics as nothing but mental constructs (rather than as a reality with causal power, that is imperfectly approximated by minds), you extend the realm of brute facts rather radically. Under a law-based conception of physical reality, the laws and the initial conditions may be brute facts, but everything else is a consequence of those facts. By denying that there are mind-independent laws at all, all the concrete patterns of physics (from which the existence of the laws is normally inferred) instead become brute facts too.
I think I understand your speculations about an alternative paradigm, e.g. maybe intelligent life can’t exist in worlds that don’t have sufficiently robust patterns, and so the informational compressibility of the world is to be attributed to anthropics rather than to causally ordering principles. But this faces the same problem as the idea that the visible universe arose as a Boltzmann fluctuation, or that you yourself are a Boltzmann brain: the amount of order is far greater than such a hypothesis implies. A universe created in a Boltzmann fluctuation would only need one galaxy or even one star. A hallucinated life experienced by a Boltzmann brain ought to unravel at any moment, as the vacuum of space kills the brain.
The simplest explanation is that some kind of Platonism is real, or more precisely (in philosophical jargon) that “universals” of some kind do exist. One does not need to be a literal Platonist about them. Aristotle’s approach is closer to common sense: universals are always attached to some kind of substance. Philosophers may debate about the right way to think of them, but to remove them outright, because of a philosophical prejudice or blindspot, leads to where you are now.
I was struck by something I read in Bertrand Russell, that some of the peculiarities of Leibniz’s worldview arose because he did not believe in relations, he thought substance and property are the only forms of being. As a result, he didn’t think interaction between substances is possible (since that would be a relation), and instead came up with his odd theory about a universe of monadic substances which are all preprogrammed by God to behave as if they are interacting.
I am not 100% against these radical attempts to do without something basic in ontology, because who knows what creative ideas may arise as a result? But personally I prefer to posit as rich an ontology as possible, so that I will not unnecessarily rule out an explanation that may be right in front of me.
It seems like we are not even close to converging on any kind of shared view. I don’t find the concept of “brute facts” even remotely useful, so I cannot comment on it.
I think Sean Carroll answered this one a few times: the concept of a Boltzmann brain is not cognitively stable (you can’t trust your own thoughts, including that you are a Boltzmann brain). And if you try to make it stable, you have to reconstruct the whole physical universe. You might be saying the same thing? I am not claiming anything different here.
Like I said in the other reply, I think that those two words are not useful as binaries real/not real, exist/not exist. If you feel that this is non-negotiable to make sense of philosophy of physics or something, I don’t know what to say.
Yeah, I think denying relations is going way too far. A relation is definitely a useful idea. It can stay in epistemology rather than in ontology.
Fair, it is foolish to reduce potential avenues of exploration. Maybe, again, we differ where they live, in the world as basic entities or in the mind as our model of making sense of the world.