There is a long history in philosophy of the controversy behind the existence of proper laws; i.e., rules which govern behavior with strict, necessary conformity. The three general responses I have seen in the literature is threefold: (1) the empiricist’s, (2) the rationalist’s, and the (3) transcendental idealist’s. The first denies the existence of (proper) laws in outright, because all human knowledge obtains about “laws” are observed regularities (e.g., Humean arguments); the second sees nothing wrong with merely migrating the induced laws of our consciousness to proper laws (e.g., pretty much any modern person); and the third denies the possibility of knowing any such (proper) laws while maintaining the induced (“transcendentally deduced”) laws as a priori.

I have been playing with a fourth solution, which is transcendental in nature; but seems to demonstrate plausibly the necessity of proper laws transcendently as a necessary precondition for the possibility of any possible consciousness (of reality). I would like to briefly outline it and see what people think.

A transcendental argument, for those that are not familiar, is fundamentally any argument that tries to conclude something based off of it being a necessary precondition for something else that is already affirmed (especially as it relates to experience). E.g., it is a necessary precondition for the possibility of human experience, that the brain cognizes in conformance to the law of non-contradiction; for, otherwise, it would be impossible for the brain to ever construct a coherent flow of experience like it does (as apodictically demonstrated by one’s own consciousness).

It is naturally not possible to demonstrate transcendentally any particular law of transcendent reality, but it is possible to demonstrate that such laws must exist (transcendentally). The easiest way to demonstrate this is to assume that reality itself has no necessary conformity of behavior (of relations): everything would be utterly incoherent—everything would be random. If everything transcendently were random and utterly incoherent, then it would be impossible for your brain to intuit, judge, and cognize in a such a way as to have a sufficiently accurate and coherent stream of consciousness for survival; and since we know that it is the case that the brain does exactly that (as apodictically certain by the conscious experience you have had which has allowed you to navigate reality in a sufficiently accurate way to survive), it must be false that reality lacks any laws. Therefore, it is a necessary precondition for the possibility of the human experience which we have, which is sufficiently accurate to survive reality, that reality has proper laws.

Now, what these laws are, can only be conditionally mapped, or modeled, by a priori modes of cognizing reality (with mathematical equations and rules of logic being the most fundamental of them all); and so what exactly they are cannot be so described other than mathematically, logically, etc.

Thoughts?