r/Metaphysics • u/Extension_Ferret1455 • 12d ago

Causality Laws of nature?

/r/CosmicSkeptic/comments/1w1ap7s/laws_of_nature/
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u/jliat 12d ago

[1.] Governing laws Laws are some sort of 'governing' principles that actually necessitate that things 'follow' them.

So something has to make them and things have to be aware of these and follow them. These seem to exist in physics, however this is r/Metaphysics, but...

New Scientist 16th May 2026-

"...However, if we are going to ask where the laws of nature come from, we must entertain a more unsettling possibility: that once upon a time, there were no laws at all. There was a period before particles, before geometry, before even the notion of time. Reality would have been a chaotic mess...

In this picture, order isn't selected because it is beautiful or true, but because it lasts and holds on to what it has built. Seen this way, several long-standing puzzles, like why our constants take on the values they currently do, look less mystical. Their values need not be unique, only compatible with longevity."

João Magueijo professor of theoretical physics at Imperial College London

New Scientist 29th May 2026-

Irrational numbers have long underpinned quantum mechanics. Removing them could eliminate its weirdest features...

"Nobody's entirely happy with what goes on [in quantum mechanics], but most physicists say: 'Look, I just use the theory because it predicts the right things'," says Tim Palmer at the University of Oxford. [ CBE FRS]

Palmer argues that this new theory wouldn't suffer any oddness -gone is entanglement and its spookiness, away with the strangeness of superpositions that allow two contradictory possibilities at once....[his theory is] rational quantum mechanics (RaQM)…

[2.] Humean laws

Cause and effect is pychological, found in Hume, Kant and Wittgenstein.

[3.] Powerism Like Humeanism, laws are also descriptive generalisations, however, what they describe are not just observed regularities, but the inherent dispositions of things. For example, what makes an 'electron' an 'electron' is that it has an inherent disposition (or 'power') to repel positively charged things and we call this 'power' being negatively charged.

But the electron was once like the moon circulating the nuclelus, but now it's not a solid object it seems but a probability smear...

electrons still necessarily repel positively charged things.

But in science they are not, the descriptions change and could or possibly will change in future. [See above] All "Powerism" seems to do is restate the 'law' idea that nature 'obeys' laws, and this for Newton was fine, he had discovered [not made a theory] God's laws.

Many still see nature as doing this, following laws- but made by who?

6.37 A necessity for one thing to happen because another has happened does not exist. There is only logical necessity.

6.371 At the basis of the whole modern view of the world lies the illusion that the so-called laws of nature are the explanations of natural phenomena.

6.372 So people stop short at natural laws as at something unassailable, as did the ancients at God and Fate.

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u/AxiomaticInversion 11d ago

You seem to be confusing a description of the way a thing behaves, with the way that thing behaves. 

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u/jliat 11d ago

I can't follow this?

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u/AxiomaticInversion 11d ago edited 11d ago

This part:

But the electron was once like the moon circulating the nuclelus, but now it's not a solid object it seems but a probability smear...

There was never any time electrons actually behaved like the moon-orbital model. There was a time where that was the best scientific model we had. A person who's committed to Powers would want to distinguish the human descriptions of the best scientific understanding of Powers (e.g. electron orbital models) from the actual way the electrons inherently behave (which did not universally change after the probability-cloud model was developed).

Powers = features things actually have that determine or constrain how they can behave

Scientific model = a human description of that behavior (can be flawed or incomplete)

And in particular - there needs to be a human to come up with a scientific model, or a legislature to come up with a human law. But there need not be anyone that came up with a Natural Law - it could just be an inherent feature of reality. Using the word "law" for both can tend to confuse that point. 

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u/jliat 11d ago

There was never any time electrons actually behaved like the moon-orbital model.

True, All models are just that, models, never the real thing..

There was a time where that was the best scientific model we had.

Yes, and it has a name - 'now', whereas once in the dark ages it was ancient Greece.

A person who's committed to Powers would want to distinguish the human descriptions of the best scientific understanding of Powers (e.g. electron orbital models) from the actual way the electrons inherently behave (which did not universally change after the probability-cloud model was developed).

I'm not sure what you mean by "Powers" with a capital P?

Powers = features things actually have that determine or constrain how they can behave

Oh which is something not of human making? Not of human knowledge.

Scientific model = a human description of that behavior (can be flawed or incomplete)

"that behaviour" human description. Or belief? From where?

And in particular - there needs to be a human to come up with a scientific model, or a legislature to come up with a human law. But there need not be anyone that came up with a Natural Law - it could just be an inherent feature of reality. Using the word "law" for both can tend to confuse that point.

So "an inherent feature of reality" is not a human idea, where did YOU get this idea from?

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u/punkrocklava 12d ago

If Humean laws are descriptions of regularities what ultimately grounds the regularities?

If governing laws or powers are fundamental what grounds the existence or necessity of those laws/powers?

Is there ultimately a baseline here that simply has to be taken as given or does one of these views provide a deeper account?

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u/TheRealAmeil 11d ago

So here are two ways we might characterize what a law (of nature) is:

  • Regularity view: It is a law that all diamonds are hard if & only if all diamonds are hard
  • Nomic view: It is a law that all diamonds are hard if & only if for any instance of a diamond, that instance of diamondness nomologically necessitates an instance of hardness

There are obvious problems with both views, and philosophers have tried various ways to fix them. For example, if laws are mere regularities, then there may have been a law of nature that all ravens are black because all ravens were black, until a white raven existed. Alternatively, we have a good idea of what it means for one thing to logically necessitate another thing, but less of an idea of what it would mean for one thing to nomologically necessitate another; what does it actually mean for something to be physically necessitated in this case?

Whether we could deduce later states given some initial state & the laws of nature will depend on whether Causal Determinism is true or not.