5 ms·

Random stuff happening? Pockets of local consistency?

greiskul 3y ago
There probably wouldn't exist any type of inteligent animal to wonder about it, since life and the evolution of life kind of requires chemestry to be a thing.
- esahione 3y ago
  The anthropic principle doesn't explain why it is, in actuality, intelligible. It's only a constraint on what couldn't be the case given we exist. It's clearly a much deeper question, given even Wigner wrote a paper about it. He called it a miracle. Look, ultimately, mathematics is abstract and the physical world is material. The fact that an abstract condition is able to affect material conditions is literally a miracle that can only be explained metaphysically.
hackinthebochs 3y ago
Random stuff happening for no reason with no pattern or constraint runs afloul of the principle of sufficient reason. The PSR is a basic assumption of intelligibility. Events happening with no cause can't be made sense of. Everything that happens is brute in the worst way possible. By the standards of reason, it is maximally unintelligible. We must rationally give higher credence to any other explanation, i.e. an order and law-based universe. One might say the universe has no obligation to be intelligible to us, and perhaps that true. But we have an obligation to intelligible beliefs. In being able to ask the question of why the world is law-based, we're rationally constrained in the answer we can accept. You can see it as an application of the anthropic principle, but I think it's more basic than that. If there is sense to be made of anything (in a logical sense that is prior to the universe), then the universe must also make sense.
- esahione 3y ago
  There's no causation line from abstractions such as mathematics to material effects. The fact material conditions follow abstract conditions is a very particular problem and different from the one you aim to solve with your reply.
  - hackinthebochs 3y ago
    There is no causal line, but there is a sort of influence, we can call it constraint propagation. The constraints of logical consistency and the rules that follow (e.g. mathematics) constrain the natural world. Logic determines what is possible, the universe is what is actual. The possible is a superset of the actual. Constraints on the possible are constraints on the actual.
    - esahione 3y ago
      Again, there's no apparent connection between logic and mathematical truths and the universe. Moreover, logic and mathematical truths are causally inert: they cannot be a cause to a physical effect. Yet it appears like all physical effects are following such laws and rules. I.e, there appears to be something that breathes fire into our equations.
      - hackinthebochs 3y ago
        Well this will depend on how you conceive of logical and mathematical facts. If you think of them as abstract "objects", you end up with the problem of how abstract objects can influence the world. But if you conceive of logical and mathematical facts as descriptions of states of possible formal systems, i.e. systems that do not contain a contradiction, then there is no problem. The actual world is simply a subset of the possible world; truths derived from investigating what is possible necessarily and obviously apply to the actual as a subset of the possible.
        esahione 3y ago
        Ok but isn't a formal system also an abstract logical structure? Why are atoms actually following truths from logical systems? The problem remains. Wigner clearly delineates the problem on his famous paper about the applicability of mathematics. It's still a topic in philosophy to this day. I'm sure you appreciate that if it was a simple solution it wouldn't be a big deal.

There probably wouldn't exist any type of inteligent animal to wonder about it, since life and the evolution of life kind of requires chemestry to be a thing.

esahione 3y ago
The anthropic principle doesn't explain why it is, in actuality, intelligible. It's only a constraint on what couldn't be the case given we exist. It's clearly a much deeper question, given even Wigner wrote a paper about it. He called it a miracle. Look, ultimately, mathematics is abstract and the physical world is material. The fact that an abstract condition is able to affect material conditions is literally a miracle that can only be explained metaphysically.

hackinthebochs 3y ago

Random stuff happening for no reason with no pattern or constraint runs afloul of the principle of sufficient reason. The PSR is a basic assumption of intelligibility. Events happening with no cause can't be made sense of. Everything that happens is brute in the worst way possible. By the standards of reason, it is maximally unintelligible. We must rationally give higher credence to any other explanation, i.e. an order and law-based universe. One might say the universe has no obligation to be intelligible to us, and perhaps that true. But we have an obligation to intelligible beliefs. In being able to ask the question of why the world is law-based, we're rationally constrained in the answer we can accept. You can see it as an application of the anthropic principle, but I think it's more basic than that. If there is sense to be made of anything (in a logical sense that is prior to the universe), then the universe must also make sense.

esahione 3y ago
There's no causation line from abstractions such as mathematics to material effects. The fact material conditions follow abstract conditions is a very particular problem and different from the one you aim to solve with your reply.
- hackinthebochs 3y ago
  There is no causal line, but there is a sort of influence, we can call it constraint propagation. The constraints of logical consistency and the rules that follow (e.g. mathematics) constrain the natural world. Logic determines what is possible, the universe is what is actual. The possible is a superset of the actual. Constraints on the possible are constraints on the actual.
  - esahione 3y ago
    Again, there's no apparent connection between logic and mathematical truths and the universe. Moreover, logic and mathematical truths are causally inert: they cannot be a cause to a physical effect. Yet it appears like all physical effects are following such laws and rules. I.e, there appears to be something that breathes fire into our equations.
    - hackinthebochs 3y ago
      Well this will depend on how you conceive of logical and mathematical facts. If you think of them as abstract "objects", you end up with the problem of how abstract objects can influence the world. But if you conceive of logical and mathematical facts as descriptions of states of possible formal systems, i.e. systems that do not contain a contradiction, then there is no problem. The actual world is simply a subset of the possible world; truths derived from investigating what is possible necessarily and obviously apply to the actual as a subset of the possible.
      - esahione 3y ago
        Ok but isn't a formal system also an abstract logical structure? Why are atoms actually following truths from logical systems? The problem remains. Wigner clearly delineates the problem on his famous paper about the applicability of mathematics. It's still a topic in philosophy to this day. I'm sure you appreciate that if it was a simple solution it wouldn't be a big deal.