I’d said:
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Physicists haven’t just been sitting on their hands during the past 400 years. They’ve arrived at some well-established, experimentally well-supported, never falsified laws of physics.
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And yes, believe it or not, observational evidence indicates that those laws were also operating at times before there were any physicists. — Michael Ossipoff

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You replied:
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You don't seem to have understood my criticism. The "laws of physics" are descriptions of how things behave. As such they were produced by human beings. How could they be "operating" before there were physicists, when physicists created them?

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You make it sound as if the laws of physics were “created” and “produced” by magicians who made it so.
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No, the laws of physics were discovered by physicists. …as suggestions about how the physical world works. …as evident relations between certain physical quantity-values.
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I emphasized that you can call them “provisional” if you want to, though they aren’t called “laws” until they’re well confirmed, and, after many tests, not falsified.
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By the way, replying to something else that you said in your previous post, there’s no contradiction between my statements about metaphysics and my statements about physics. Those are separate subjects. I suggest that the notion that those statements contradict eachother results from a conflation of physics and metaphysics.
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I’d said:
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No, they’re observed through the senses (often via instrumentation). You can call then “entities” if you want to, but they’re provisional facts, that are accepted if they’re sufficiently confirmed, and never falsified. …eventually increasingly regarded as confirmed instead of provisional. And yes, they’re based on observation of physical events and conditions. — Michael Ossipoff

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You replied:
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Laws of physics are produced by inductive reason, they are not observed through the senses.

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They’re entirely based on observations, as descriptions of how the physical world evidently works, based on those observations.
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You continued:
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Through the senses we observe individual, particular instances, but a law of physics is a generalization which applies to numerous instances.

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Of course.
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I’d said:
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You really think that contradicts the statement that there’s observational evidence that currently accepted and used physical laws obtained at earlier times when there weren’t physicists? — Michael Ossipoff

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You replied:
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Yes, I really think you contradict yourself. I don't see how physical laws could have "obtained" in any normal sense of the word "obtained", prior to their existence.

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Let’s refer to a specific example:
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Newton proposed his laws of motion. They’ve been well-established to be a valid and useful approximation to how the physical world works…useful other than in the domains where quantum-mechanics &/or relativity is needed.
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It’s obvious to specialists in celestial-mechanics that Newton’s laws (sometimes with relativity) accurately describe the motions of the planets over millions of years, billions of years, into the past. …long before there were any physicists.
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That’s what I meant.
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I’d said:
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Angry-noises and vague, unspecified, unsupported expressions of personal opinion are standard, typical common troll-tactics.
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If there's another sample, it won't be answered.

I stop replying to people who show that they're incapable of disagreeing politely. — Michael Ossipoff

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You replied:
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Wow, I politely pointed out a simple problem with your metaphysics, without "vague, unspecified, unsupported expressions of personal opinion", and look who's expressing all sorts of anger.

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Well, you didn’t just do that.
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You suggested that maybe I don’t know what I mean.
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(But the post that I’m replying to now doesn’t contain that sort of comments. I have no criticism of the post that I’m replying to now.)
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In philosophy discussions, we certainly can’t always expect other people’s meaning to be prima-facie obvious, .
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That’s a fact of life in philosophical discussion.
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So, when someone says something that you don’t understand, it isn’t productive to start by jumping to the suggestion that maybe they don’t know what they mean. That’s not philosophical discussion. That’s Internet flamewarrior-attack. It isn’t helpful to discussion-forums.
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If I didn’t well-express what I meant, than I can try to express it better. …to better express the not-understood aspect of what I said.
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But, for that, I’d have to know exactly what matter of what I meant isn’t understood.
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Michael Ossipoff

Why does 2 + 2 = 4? — WISDOMfromPO-MO

I should add that 2 + 2 = 4 is a direct consequence of the below-stated definition of some of the numbers, and the additive associative axiom of the rational numbers.

Here's a definition of some numbers:

Let 1 mean the multiplicative-identity element of the rational numbers.
Let 2 mean 1 + 1.
Let 3 mean 2 + 1
Let 4 mean 3 + 1

The additive associative axiom for the rational numbers:

(a + b) + c = a + (b + c).

Michael Ossipoff

You make it sound as if the laws of physics were “created” and “produced” by magicians who made it so. — Michael Ossipoff

When I clearly stated that the laws of physics are descriptions, this statement is totally irrelevant.

No, the laws of physics were discovered by physicists. …as suggestions about how the physical world works. …as evident relations between certain physical quantity-values. — Michael Ossipoff

OK, call them "suggestions about how the world works" rather than my term "descriptions" if you like. How would physicists "discover" a suggestion? One might discover some by reading books, but there has to be a first time that such a suggestion was made by a physicist, and that physicist made that suggestion, the suggestion was not discovered.

By the way, replying to something else that you said in your previous post, there’s no contradiction between my statements about metaphysics and my statements about physics. Those are separate subjects. I suggest that the notion that those statements contradict eachother results from a conflation of physics and metaphysics.
. — Michael Ossipoff

OK, so your epistemic principles allow that what you believe concerning physics contradicts what you believe concerning metaphysics. I would not allow this, and if I ever found that I was in this situation, or approaching it, I would change what I believe.

As per the contradiction I pointed out, let me give it to you straight. You said:

Modern observations show the currently observed laws of physics operating long before there were any physicists. — Michael Ossipoff

The you said:

So no, I'm not saying that the physical laws exist independent of us. — Michael Ossipoff

Clearly the first statement says that laws of physics were operating before there were any physicists, implying that they are independent of us, and the second statement says that laws of physics do not exist independently of us. Can you explain how this is not contradiction?

Ordinarily, at the forum, I reply no later than the following morning--and sometimes the same day. But today and yesterday are extraordinarily busy, delaying my reply until later today, or maybe even till tomorrow.

Michael Ossipoff

I’d said:
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You make it sound as if the laws of physics were “created” and “produced” by magicians who made it so. — Michael Ossipoff

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You replied:
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When I clearly stated that the laws of physics are descriptions, this statement is totally irrelevant.

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But you don’t think that the laws could have obtained until there were physicists to create them. So you’re speaking of them as more than descriptions. You’re speaking of them as some kind sorcery, in which physicists have made the laws and made them obtain. To put it differently, you’re implying that the physicist has the power of a script-writer, to make things any way that s/he chooses to.
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…implying that, without physicists to fabricate those laws, nothing could have happened in 1,000 B.C. But we know that things did happenin those days, and the evidence suggests that they happened in accord with the same physical laws by which they happen in our century.
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I’d said:

No, the laws of physics were discovered by physicists. …as suggestions about how the physical world works. …as evident relations between certain physical quantity-values. — Michael Ossipoff

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You replied:
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OK, call them "suggestions about how the world works" rather than my term "descriptions" if you like. How would physicists "discover" a suggestion?

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No, the physicists don’t discover a suggestion. They discover an apparent relation among physical quantities. When tested, and found to seemingly always obtain, never falsified in many tests, the suggestion attains the status of being called a “law”.
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How is such a relation discovered?The discoveries are ultimately based on observation. The physicist interprets observations to suggest laws that describe how things seem to be working.
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One might discover some by reading books, but there has to be a first time that such a suggestion was made by a physicist, and that physicist made that suggestion, the suggestion was not discovered.

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Correct. The suggestion wasn’t discovered. An evident relation among physical quantities was discovered.
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Sometimes the evident relation turns out to be not quite correct, and is later improved to better match observation. Sometimes, as I said, a law is only a useful approximation under some (common) conditions, but is still kept because of its practical usefulness within a particular domain.
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I’d said:
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By the way, replying to something else that you said in your previous post, there’s no contradiction between my statements about metaphysics and my statements about physics. Those are separate subjects. I suggest that the notion that those statements contradict eachother results from a conflation of physics and metaphysics.
. — Michael Ossipoff

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You replied:
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OK, so your epistemic principles allow that what you believe concerning physics contradicts what you believe concerning metaphysics.

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No. It isn’t a contradiction, because they’re different subjects entirely.
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Cats have retractable claws. Dogs don’t have retractable claws. No contradiction.
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As per the contradiction I pointed out, let me give it to you straight. You said:
“Modern observations show the currently observed laws of physics operating long before there were any physicists.” — Michael Ossipoff
Then you said:
“So no, I'm not saying that the physical laws exist independent of us.” — Michael Ossipoff

Clearly the first statement says that laws of physics were operating before there were any physicists, implying that they are independent of us, and the second statement says that laws of physics do not exist independently of us. Can you explain how this is not contradiction?

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Thank you. That’s the conflation of physics and metaphysics that I was referring to.
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Physics:
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In the context of our relative world, this possibility-world that is our physical universe, there is lots of strong evidence that the currently-known physical laws obtained in 1000 B.C., even though there were no physicists at that time.
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In fact, as I said, specialists in celestial-mechanics have evidence that the currently-known physical laws obtained even before that!
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Do you really believe that the law of gravity, and Newton’s laws of motion didn’t obtain in the days of the early Egyptian civilization? Don’t we have paintings from that time that show a jar resting on a table-top, or people standing on the ground? In fact, without gravity, the Earth wouldn’t have an atmosphere, and so how would there have been a Sumerian civilization, with no oxygen-containing atmosphere? In fact, how would we have any ancestors?
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The solar system is known to be quite old. If the law of gravity didn’t obtain millions of years ago, the Earth wouldn’t have remained in orbit around the Sun, and would be somewhere far away in interstellar space.
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Oh, but wait, you don’t believe that Newton’s 1st law of motion applied then either.
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I’m almost afraid to ask what sort of chaotic situation you believe to have obtained before the physicists put the laws of physics into effect.
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But the fact that the Earth is still in orbit around the Sun, strongly confirms that the law of gravity has obtained for a long time. …since long before there were any physicists.
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Metaphysics
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Tegmark’s MUH evidently describes this physical world from the objective 3rd-person point-of-view. If such a metaphysics, such as Materialism or MUH were true, we’d still each perceive the world from our own 1st-person point of view, and so our personal point of view doesn’t invalidate the objective viewpoint of MUH .
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Skepticism differs from MUH in regards to what it emphasizes or talks about. Neither is necessarily wrong.
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One could say it either way: From an individual point of view, or from an overall-objective point-of-view.
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But the way we perceive it is, to me, the obvious, natural, reasonable way to say the story. Hence my preference for speaking of individual life-experience possibility-stories.
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I feel that saying it as we perceive it is neater and more parsimonious, in comparison to talking about stories that are about more than we perceive.
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Either kind of story is just as supportable, but one seems more natural.
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So I suggest that the physical world that you live in is most meaningfully regarded as the setting for your life-experience possibility-story. Without you, it that story wouldn’t be, because you’re the essential component of it, because it’s about your experience.
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In that sense, your entire physical world, including physicists and laws of physics, is there because of you, because, as I said, you, the Protagonist, are the essential component of your life-experience possibility-story.
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I didn’t invent non-Realist metaphysics. Many here probably subscribe to one.
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So those are the statements that I’ve made, about physics, and about metaphysics. They aren’t mutually-contradictory, because they’re about different subjects—physics and metaphysics.
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Michael Ossipoff

But you don’t think that the laws could have obtained until there were physicists to create them. So you’re speaking of them as more than descriptions. You’re speaking of them as some kind sorcery, in which physicists have made the laws and made them obtain. To put it differently, you’re implying that the physicist has the power of a script-writer, to make things any way that s/he chooses to. — Michael Ossipoff

No, I am simply pointing out that it is impossible for a description to be used prior to the existence of the description. Take the statement "the sky is blue" for example. There was a time before that statement was ever made. Before that statement was made, it is impossible that people were saying that the sky is blue. There is no such thing as an unstated statement, that is nonsense, and so it is also nonsense to say that the unstated statement obtained.

Do you really believe that the law of gravity, and Newton’s laws of motion didn’t obtain in the days of the early Egyptian civilization? Don’t we have paintings from that time that show a jar resting on a table-top, or people standing on the ground? In fact, without gravity, the Earth wouldn’t have an atmosphere, and so how would there have been a Sumerian civilization, with no oxygen-containing atmosphere? In fact, how would we have any ancestors? — Michael Ossipoff

How does a picture of jar resting on a table-top imply that Newton's laws of motion were applied in early Egyptian civilization? That's utter nonsense. When we know that Newton was the one to develop these laws, why would you think that the ancient Egyptians were using the same laws long before Newton? I suggest that you consider the possibility that some laws other than Newton's obtained at this time.

hen we know that Newton was the one to develop these laws, why would you think that the ancient Egyptians were using the same laws long before Newton? — Metaphysician Undercover

If an ancient Egyptian dropped a brick, it would accelerate according to the formula given in the Laws of Motion; although the Egyptian wouldn't know this was the case.

I suggest that you consider the possibility that some laws other than Newton's obtained at this time. — Metaphysician Undercover

Let's see - Nefertiti's Law. Do you think calling it that would mean objects would fall at a different rate?

If an ancient Egyptian dropped a brick, it would accelerate according to the formula given in the Laws of Motion; although the Egyptian wouldn't know this was the case. — Wayfarer

I would agree that such is the case, if the "Laws of Motion" are correct. But now we have a different issue to deal with, and that is what makes a law "correct". Ossipoff has not provided for that condition.

Let's see - Nefertiti's Law. Do you think calling it that would mean objects would fall at a different rate? — Wayfarer

That would be a different law, with a different name, just like General Relativity provides us with a different way of looking at gravity from Newton's way. There are some important differences, which do you think is correct?

that is what makes a law "correct" — Metaphysician Undercover

What makes it 'a law' is the fact that its predictions always work out. F=MA for ancient egyptians and modern Americans. The rest is obfuscation.

No, what makes it a law is that it is accept by the people. F=MA was not accepted by the ancient Egyptians, and therefore was not a law for them. It did not work out for them because they did not do it. It is you who is obfuscating. Like Michael, you are creating the illusion that people accepted a statement which was never stated.

I’d said:
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But you don’t think that the laws could have obtained until there were physicists to create them. So you’re speaking of them as more than descriptions. You’re speaking of them as some kind sorcery, in which physicists have made the laws and made them obtain. To put it differently, you’re implying that the physicist has the power of a script-writer, to make things any way that s/he chooses to. — Michael Ossipoff

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You replied:
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No, I am simply pointing out that it is impossible for a description to be used prior to the existence of the description.

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I’ve repeatedly clarified and emphasized that I’m not saying that a physical law that obtained a billion years ago is a description that was being spoken at that time.
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In fact, I haven’t been defining a physical law as a description at all. I’ve been defining it as a relation between quantity-values. I made that quite clear and explicit in my reply before this one.
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So, the physical laws known today weren’t being uttered as descriptions by anyone a billion years ago. And yet they still obtained, and there’s plenty of evidence for that. As I said, if the law of gravity hadn’t obtained then, the Earth would be a very, very long way from the Sun by now. In fact, as I already said, specialists in celestial mechanics have evidence that Newton’s laws obtained, as well, at that time.
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You continued:
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Take the statement "the sky is blue" for example. There was a time before that statement was ever made. Before that statement was made, it is impossible that people were saying that the sky is blue. There is no such thing as an unstated statement, that is nonsense, and so it is also nonsense to say that the unstated statement obtained.

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As I clarified and emphasized in my post before this one, I’m not talking about statements or descriptions that were being uttered a billion years ago. In my post before this one, I defined a physical law as a relation between physical quantity values. There’s ample evidence that those relations that are known today obtained a billion years ago as well.
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…even though there wasn’t anyone to speak a description of them.
I’d said:
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Do you really believe that the law of gravity, and Newton’s laws of motion didn’t obtain in the days of the early Egyptian civilization? Don’t we have paintings from that time that show a jar resting on a table-top, or people standing on the ground? In fact, without gravity, the Earth wouldn’t have an atmosphere, and so how would there have been a Sumerian civilization, with no oxygen-containing atmosphere? In fact, how would we have any ancestors? — Michael Ossipoff

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You replied:
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How does a picture of jar resting on a table-top imply that Newton's laws of motion were applied in early Egyptian civilization?

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I gave it as an example of the law of gravity. Without that, a little air-current, or the Earth’s rotation, combined with Newton’s 1st law of motion, would send the jar away from the table.
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I don’t suppose that Egyptian paintings give us the quantitative values needed to test for Newton’s 2nd and 3rd laws. With the paintings of jars on a table, or people standing on the ground, I was giving examples of there being gravity in Egyptian times . Of course the law of gravity is quantitative, and that limits the paintings’ ability to really test for compliance with that law. It just shows that there was gravity, as does the evident presence of an atmosphere.
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But celestial-mechanics has given results that coincide well with the known ice-ages. That gives a quantitative confirmation about the law of gravity, and Newton’s laws of motion, obtaining during previous times in geological history.
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You continued:
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When we know that Newton was the one to develop these laws, why would you think that the ancient Egyptians were using the same laws long before Newton?

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I didn’t say that the Egyptians knew of Newton’s laws. That’s why they’re called “Newton’s laws”, instead of “The Egyptian laws”. .
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But those relations between physical quantities obtained during Egyptian times, and long before. …as confirmed by evidence available to today’s scientists.
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I suggest that you consider the possibility that some laws other than Newton's obtained at this time.

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And, though some remarkable coincidence, will those different laws, when applied to celestial mechanics just happen to result in effects that coincide very well with the known history of ice-ages? …as do the actually established physical laws?
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If you want to claim that some other set of physical laws obtained during Egyptian times, instead of the physical laws that are now established, and that that’s confirmed by what is known about those earlier times, then the burden would be on you to show that.
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Remember parsimony, and multiplying unnecessary unsupported assumptions?
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Michael Ossipoff

Like Michael, you are creating the illusion that people accepted a statement which was never stated. — Metaphysician Undercover

No one's claiming that the Egyptians accepted, described or uttered the modernly-known physical laws. Only you are defining a physical law as something that must be uttered at any time that it obtains..

I defined a physical law as a reasonably well-established relation between physical quantity values.

What's known about the present and the past strongly suggests that the modernly-accepted physical laws obtained a billion years ago.

(like the fact that the Earth is still in orbit around the Sun, and the fact that, in celestial mechanics, the modernly-established physical laws produce results that agree with what's known about the history of the ice-ages.)

Michael Ossipoff

I’ve repeatedly clarified and emphasized that I’m not saying that a physical law that obtained a billion years ago is a description that was being spoken at that time. — Michael Ossipoff

You haven't yet explained how a physical law which came into existence a few hundred years ago could have "obtained a billion years ago". As I explained, this is contradiction, and until we sort this out, there is no point in starting with the premise that a physical law obtained a billion years ago.

In fact, I haven’t been defining a physical law as a description at all. I’ve been defining it as a relation between quantity-values — Michael Ossipoff

Again, quantities and values are human judgements, measurements, so this does not get you past this problem.

If you want to claim that some other set of physical laws obtained during Egyptian times, instead of the physical laws that are now established, and that that’s confirmed by what is known about those earlier times, then the burden would be on you to show that. — Michael Ossipoff

No, what I am saying is that if there are no human beings to create physical laws, then no physical laws obtain. That's a pretty simple, straight forward position. I think that the onus is on you to explain how you believe that something which comes about from human judgement, "a relation between quantity-values" could exist prior to there being any human beings.

Do you understand what a "value" is? If so, how do you think that a value could exist without someone to determine the value?

What makes is a law is the fact that it describes an outcome that will occur, regardless of anyone's opinion of it, or knowledge about it. The idea that a scientific law is only such because 'a society accepts it' is incorrect. The laws of motion are not culturally dependent.

All I see in a law is a bunch of symbols which need to be interpreted. Learn the right technique of interpretation, and you know the law.
That's why

The laws of motion are not culturally dependent. — Wayfarer

is interpreted as gibberish by me.

you have no argument. 'The law' refers to a regularity in nature.

'The law' refers to a regularity in nature. — Wayfarer

This is not true at all. What "the law" refers to is what is written down, and that is a description of a regularity in nature. Take your example, the law is the formula "f=ma". This needs to be interpreted, and what this says to me is that if you know the mass of an object, and the acceleration in velocity of the object, you can determine the force which was applied to the object. Conversely, you can figure out the necessary force required to bring an object of a particular mass, to a desired state of acceleration.

Notice that all three, force, mass, and acceleration, are arbitrary forms of measurement created by human beings. Clearly the said law refers to a relationship between these arbitrary forms of measurement, signified by f, m, and a. The relationship is expressed mathematically with "times" and "equals". You might argue that these terms, "force", "mass", and "acceleration", as well as "equals" and "times", refer to regularities in nature, (what Michael Ossipoff seems to take for granted), but that would be a very difficult argument to maintain, with some of these terms such as "force" and "equals", which appear to be purely conceptual, not referring to anything in nature.

So f=ma refers to a purely conceptual relationship (equals) between something conceptual (force), and the measurable regularities of mass and acceleration. Since the stated relationship itself, "equals", is purely conceptual, the stated law refers to the way that we conceive of these regularities of nature (the formula), and not the regularities themselves.

I haven't replied to your previous message to me yet, but first I'll answer this comment:

You might argue that these terms, "force", "mass", and "acceleration", as well as "equals" and "times", refer to regularities in nature, (what Michael Ossipoff seems to take for granted), but that would be a very difficult argument to maintain, with some of these terms such as "force" and "equals", which appear to be purely conceptual, not referring to anything in nature. — Metaphysician Undercover

The word "Nature" tends to be, intentionally or unintentionally, an obfuscation. For one thing, Its usage is a Materialist's way of trying to frame the discussion in terms of a premise that the physical world is what's natural, and is Reality itself.

What I take for granted? I've been saying all along that the physical world and its contents aren't objectively real or existent,and that the hypotheticals that it consists of aren't objectively factual,but only need and have meaning in terms of their own local inter-referring context..

Purely conceptpual? Of course. That's what I've been saying all along.

My metaphysics, Skepticism, is an Idealism..

Thank you for arguing for Skepticism.

So f=ma refers to a purely conceptual relationship (equals) between something conceptual (force), and the measurable regularities of mass and acceleration. Since the stated relationship itself, "equals", is purely conceptual, the stated law refers to the way that we conceive of these regularities of nature (the formula), and not the regularities themselves.

...I don't claim that this physical world and its things are objectively real or existent.

You're right. It's all about our experience. Your life is an experience-story, and this world is the setting for your life-experience possibility-story.

It's all a hypothetical system or inter-referring hypotheticals, and it's for you the Protagonist, the experiencer.

What's that? You say you weren't there a billion years ago, to create and enforce the law of gravity, to keep the Earth in Solar-orbit? That's ok, because the various scientists, and the information that they've reported, are in your experience, part of your life-experience possibility-story, as is are your own physical observations.

The law of gravity keeping the Earth in Solar orbit a billion years ago is part of your life-experience possibility-story. A story, by definition, includes time. It's an account across time. That life-experience story of yours includes the Earth not leaving Solar orbit a billion years ago, kept in orbit by gravity, in accord with the law of gravity.

Your experience is that you're here, of course, and that's partly because the Earth didn't leave orbit a billion years ago. The physicists who explain why, and their explanation, are part of your experience too. .

Michael Ossipoff

I’d said:
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I’ve repeatedly clarified and emphasized that I’m not saying that a physical law that obtained a billion years ago is a description that was being spoken at that time. — Michael Ossipoff

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You replied:
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You haven't yet explained how a physical law which came into existence a few hundred years ago could have "obtained a billion years ago".

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A few hundred years ago that law was discovered, and found (and repeatedly confirmed) to have been in operation for billions of years.
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Say I find your fingerprints at a burglary-scene.
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You argue, “Those fingerprints were created, came into being, because Ossipoff found them. Because their existence depended on his finding him, therefore they couldn’t have existed on the night of the burglary, and couldn’t have been left by me.” ?
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As I explained, this is contradiction, and until we sort this out, there is no point in starting with the premise that a physical law obtained a billion years ago.

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I answer that in the message that I posted just before this one. The premise is that, in your experience, you’re here, and that’s partly because the Earth didn’t leave its Solar orbit a billion years ago, because the law of gravity obtained then.
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I refer you to my more complete answer in my post just before this one.
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Your life-experience possibility-story, like all stories, extends across time. The fact that you’re here because of the Earth remaining in orbit a billion years ago is part of your life-experience story.
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I’d said:
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In fact, I haven’t been defining a physical law as a description at all. I’ve been defining it as a relation between quantity-values — Michael Ossipoff

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You replied:
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Again, quantities and values are human measurements, so this does not get you past this problem.

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I’ll go you one better than that: It’s all human experience, your experience in particular. I haven’t denied that.
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But, as I’ve already said, it isn’t necessary that you were there a billion years ago, to bring the law of gravity into being. You experience the fact that you’re here today. …and you know that you’re here today partly because the gravity kept the Earth in Solar orbit, in accord with the well-established law of gravity.
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For quantitative confirmation of today’s known physical laws and constants, I’ve cited the good correspondence between celestial-mechanics results, and the known history of the ice-ages.
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But of course there’s more too:
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Astrophysicists and astronomers observe events and processes in distant regions of space. …things like the evolution of stars, among various other things, such as radiation from neutron stars, etc.
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They’ve observed that the same physical laws, with the same physical constants can be shown to obtain for those objects and events at various distances.
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But the light from a distant event left that event a long time ago. So, evidently the physical laws and constants were the same then as now.
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I’d said:
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If you want to claim that some other set of physical laws obtained during Egyptian times, instead of the physical laws that are now established, and that that’s confirmed by what is known about those earlier times, then the burden would be on you to show that. — Michael Ossipoff

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You replied:
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No, what I am saying is that if there are no human beings to create physical laws, then no physical laws obtain. That's a pretty simple, straight forward position. I think that the onus is on you to explain how you believe that something which comes about from human judgement, "a relation between quantity-values" could exist prior to there being any human beings.
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Do you understand what a "value" is? If so, how do you think that a value could exist without someone to determine the value?

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It wasn’t necessary for people to be there a billion years ago to “create” the law of gravity, to keep the Earth from leaving orbit. It wasn’t even necessary for anyone to be there a billion years ago to determine, find out, or measure the value of the gravitational force between Earth and Sun.
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Yes, there weren’t any human beings then. Yes, it all is about experience, your life experience. How to resolve that contradiction?
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Easy. As I said above, and in my post before this one, a story includes time. By definition, story takes place across time. Your life-experience possibility story is such a story.
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The only reason why you’re here today is because the Earth didn’t leave orbit a billion years ago. You’re here because the law of gravity obtained a billion years ago. That fact, the fact that you’re here today, and that it’s because the Earth didn’t leave orbit a billion years ago, thanks to the law of gravity obtaining then, is part of your experience today. As we discuss it, in fact.
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…and you’ve heard the explanations from scientists too, and that, too, is part of your experience.
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The Earth remaining in orbit because of the law of gravity obtaining a billion years ago is part of your life-experience possibility-story.
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And guess what? When Cavendish directly quantitatively measured gravitational force in the laboratory, to find the value of G, the gravitational constant, the value that he found for that constant was consistent with the Earth remaining in orbit.
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I don’t know what you think kept the Earth in orbit a billion years ago, but the law of gravity discovered by Newton, and the gravitational constant experimentally found by Cavendish amount to a physical law that explains why the Earth is still in orbit.
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The part of your life-experience possibility story in which the Earth remained in orbit a billion years ago is entirely consistent with Newton’s and Cavendish’s findings. …regarding the physical laws and constants that obtain today, and obtained a billion years ago.
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Michael Ossipoff

Since the stated relationship itself, "equals", is purely conceptual, the stated law refers to the way that we conceive of these regularities of nature (the formula), and not the regularities themselves. — Metaphysician Undercover

So you're point is only that it's not 'a law' until it's written down, whereas I am saying that objects will accelerate in accordance with the formula f=ma whether it's been written down or not. That is why Newton's formula is called 'a discovery' i.e. it uncovers something that already existed but hitherto had not been understood.

We have inherited millennia of language laced with teleology. Science is descriptive and yet on answering "how", as it should. it tends to conflate how with why, or at least finds the words interchangeable.
For example; why is the sky blue? Ought to be how is it that the sky appears blue, and if the word "how" cannot be used to re-parse any scientific question then it is not really science.

Thus:"Evolutionary theory does indeed answer the question of why things act as they do."
Is really "ET does answer how behaviours emerge in species"

Also science, in defining the field of maximum probability explanations for observed correlations in empirical experience tends to have the effect of also assigning probabilities to those things defined as 'how'. Both how and why are questions that touch on categories of causation, which is implicitly defined above only 'why' implies a level above the initial scope of explanation - a how questions seems to be causation within a defined scope or limit. It actually interesting to consider for example that the 'why' of life was, until the 19th century, generally defined as vitalism or some kind of force separate from those known at the time - gravity, electricity and magnetism - read Kant or Hegel or other German idealists and lot of the weirdness (and frankly on some level irrelevance) in their presentation of natural science comes from these presumptions of the age. The 'why' of life can be found, as can it be within any other system inside the natural universe.

Now when people talk about 'why' they mean an ontological why specifically, namely the purpose or meaning of the universe. In an obvious sense, the reason science cannot answer this is that its whole ediface is constructed on probabilistic, self-reinforcing observations within the closed system of empirical reality and our universe. However, rationality in the form of logic and its highly formalised and decontextualised applications in mathematics are in one sense grounded in reality - it is why we have evolved to be able to use them as they are useful for modelling our environment and come from and are made possible by the universe's causally predictable patterns occurring in our thought process. On the other hand, as Kant well documented it can easily break loose of its constraints and entertain purely hypothetical entities based on logical capacities - such as a being unconstrained by the conditions of reality around us - namely some kind of God figure. So in a trivial sense science cannot answer this question... but it is suggestive in two ways. First of all that it has repeatedly defied our pure reason in the past. The rationalist science of Aristotle, admirable and incredibly inventive in its way, was not able to stand the pressure of empirical observation which is well know. This strongly suggests that the probability of our being wrong on something which we do not know and has been constructed based on logical axioms that are ultimately rooted in well documented psychological and evolved states of assumed thinking (such as towards animism and spiritualism) which have benefited us in the past should be held with suspicion on probabilistic grounds. Secondly, the general drift of the evidential structure is towards a universe more grand and un-teleologic than ever, a reduced role for the importance of humans and human volition (if it even exists) and the fact that life in some way a complex arms race game that has been played between aggregating quanitities chemicals as a sort of fluke with little more meaning that that. On these bases I would suggest that they 'why' of the universe is probabilistically favoured towards a lack of meaning, and if that is true then any unveirifyable and sense-less statement about entities outside the ambit of empirical reality is essentially a meaningless question.

On these bases I would suggest that they 'why' of the universe is probabilistically favoured towards a lack of meaning, and if that is true then any unveirifyable and sense-less statement about entities outside the ambit of empirical reality is essentially a meaningless question. — Sam Keays

Thanks, welcome to the forum. Well written post, but depressing. I think it makes the mistake of elevating evolutionary biology to the status of philosophy - which it isn't. Evaluating the truths of reason in terms of adaptive necessity sells reason short by explaining it in other terms; In other words, denying the sovereignty of reason.

The word "Nature" tends to be, intentionally or unintentionally, and obfuscation. For one thing, Its usage is a Materialist's way of trying to frame the discussion in terms of a premise that the physical world is what's natural, and is Reality itself. — Michael Ossipoff

"Nature" was Wayfarer's word. Law was said to refer to regularities in nature, so I was responding to this usage.

What I take for granted? I've been saying all along that the physical world and its contents aren't objectively real or existent,and that the hypotheticals that it consists of aren't objectively factual,but only need and have meaning in terms of their own local inter-referring context..

Purely conceptpual? Of course. That's what I've been saying all along.

My metaphysics, Skepticism, is an Idealism..

Thank you for arguing for Skepticism. — Michael Ossipoff

I have no problem arguing skepticism. I do it all the time, in fact I am very skeptical of your metaphysics, as you should know by now.

So I'll state the problem as clearly as I can, as it appears in the quoted passage. According to my understanding, a concept is something created by a human mind, and existing in a human mind, completely mind dependent. Yet you claim that the physical world is purely conceptual, and that there were concepts before there were human minds, laws of physics and things like that, billions of years ago. How do you support this claim? Are these concepts supposed to exist within the mind of God?

What's that? You say you weren't there a billion years ago, to create and enforce the law of gravity, to keep the Earth in Solar-orbit? That's ok, because the various scientists, and the information that they've reported, are in your experience, part of your life-experience possibility-story, as is are your own physical observations. — Michael Ossipoff

I really haven't been able to grasp this "life-experience possibility-story". Perhaps that's why I don't understand. Can you explain it in plain English? For instance, how is the earth a billion years ago in my own life-experience? The concept of "the earth a billion years ago" is in my own life experience, but the earth a billion years ago is not.

Easy. As I said above, and in my post before this one, a story includes time. By definition, story takes place across time. Your life-experience possibility story is such a story. — Michael Ossipoff

OK, so do you agree that a story requires an author of that story. Who is the author of my life-experience possibility story?

I don’t know what you think kept the Earth in orbit a billion years ago, but the law of gravity discovered by Newton, and the gravitational constant experimentally found by Cavendish amount to a physical law that explains why the Earth is still in orbit. — Michael Ossipoff

It may be gravity which keeps the earth in orbit, but it's definitely not the law of gravity which does this. The law of gravity is one of the different ways that human beings understand gravity. And our understanding of gravity does not keep the earth in orbit.

So you're point is only that it's not 'a law' until it's written down, whereas I am saying that objects will accelerate in accordance with the formula f=ma whether it's been written down or not. That is why Newton's formula is called 'a discovery' i.e. it uncovers something that already existed but hitherto had not been understood. — Wayfarer

My point is that it's not a law until a human being carries out the necessary logical steps required to produce that law. This means that human beings must carry out the required inductive reasoning to make the generalization, and apply the mathematical principles. Prior to this, the potential for that law to come into existence is there, in the world, because different objects accelerate in a consistent manner, but there is no such law. The law is created with the application of logic by human beings.

There is a big difference between finding something in the world, like Ossipoff finds my fingerprints, and creating something in the world. The application of logic is an activity which does not discover laws, it creates them. Principles, rules, and laws, are not the sort of things which we find naturally existing in the world, they are the sort of things which we create, with the use of reason.

That this is true is evident from the fact that we sometimes create laws which are false, wrong. If laws were discovered, it would be impossible to have a false, or wrong law, because you couldn't discover a false law. But I could roll the dice, and roll a seven, and declare that I've discovered a new law, "when I roll the dice, I will roll a seven". Clearly I just created this law, as it is false, I didn't really discover it. But the only difference between it and a correct law, is that it was created by faulty logic rather than good logic. Faulty logic creates an incorrect law, and good logic does the opposite, it creates a correct law. But how can you argue that good logic, instead of doing the opposite thing as bad logic (creating incorrect laws), it does something categorically different from bad logic, it discovers a law, rather than creating a law. In other words, if faulty logic creates laws, and good logic discovers laws, couldn't we avoid all incorrect laws by determining that the law was created rather than discovered? In reality there is no such difference to determine, as they are both create with logic, the one being faulty logic. So the difference to determine is whether the law was created with sound logic or unsound logic.

This strongly suggests that the probability of our being wrong on something which we do not know and has been constructed based on logical axioms that are ultimately rooted in well documented psychological and evolved states of assumed thinking (such as towards animism and spiritualism) which have benefited us in the past should be held with suspicion on probabilistic grounds. — Sam Keays

Yes, this is one of the points I am trying to make here. When we dispel the idea that the "laws of science" are discovered, (implying that they cannot be wrong), we are faced with the possibility that any of the accepted laws may be wrong. So we must examine all the logic, and all the evidence which relates to the premises, to determine whether or not these laws are actually sound.

Well, no, I would not equate evolutionary neurology (which is what I'm arguing here, not psychology per se) with philosophy per se, only to say the logical rules of thinking had to be grounded in the same conditions of cause-and-effect that one sees in reality, only abstracted because it some sense our mental state creates a small universe of its own (which is probably where sentience comes into this) in which these same logical rules that guide causational processes are no longer tied to a concretely developing system.

But that's the problem. The fact that reason exists untethered in our own mental state allows us to use it to prove a great many things, and more importantly it is underdetermined, through chains of logic depending on different axioms different conclusions can be reached. Scholasticism was a great example of how this can become a grand and learned and complicated artifice whilst bearing little connection to reality. Given that we are finite beings, and given that we nonetheless have a constructed mental universe, it strikes me that the purpose of reason is for reductio ad absurdum, to eliminate that inconsistent with the root logic of existence, whereas positive statements must be stated through empirical means which, by consideration of Humean/Bayesian reasoning here, is by its nature a series of ever more refined probablistic statements.

Also science, in defining the field of maximum probability explanations for observed correlations in empirical experience tends to have the effect of also assigning probabilities to those things defined as 'how'. Both how and why are questions that touch on categories of causation, which is implicitly defined above only 'why' implies a level above the initial scope of explanation - a how questions seems to be causation within a defined scope or limit. It actually interesting to consider for example that the 'why' of life was, until the 19th century, generally defined as vitalism or some kind of force separate from those known at the time - gravity, electricity and magnetism - read Kant or Hegel or other German idealists and lot of the weirdness (and frankly on some level irrelevance) in their presentation of natural science comes from these presumptions of the age. The 'why' of life can be found, as can it be within any other system inside the natural universe.

Now when people talk about 'why' they mean an ontological why specifically, namely the purpose or meaning of the universe. In an obvious sense, the reason science cannot answer this is that its whole ediface is constructed on probabilistic, self-reinforcing observations within the closed system of empirical reality and our universe. However, rationality in the form of logic and its highly formalised and decontextualised applications in mathematics are in one sense grounded in reality - it is why we have evolved to be able to use them as they are useful for modelling our environment and come from and are made possible by the universe's causally predictable patterns occurring in our thought process. On the other hand, as Kant well documented it can easily break loose of its constraints and entertain purely hypothetical entities based on logical capacities - such as a being unconstrained by the conditions of reality around us - namely some kind of God figure. So in a trivial sense science cannot answer this question... but it is suggestive in two ways. First of all that it has repeatedly defied our pure reason in the past. The rationalist science of Aristotle, admirable and incredibly inventive in its way, was not able to stand the pressure of empirical observation which is well know. This strongly suggests that the probability of our being wrong on something which we do not know and has been constructed based on logical axioms that are ultimately rooted in well documented psychological and evolved states of assumed thinking (such as towards animism and spiritualism) which have benefited us in the past should be held with suspicion on probabilistic grounds. Secondly, the general drift of the evidential structure is towards a universe more grand and un-teleologic than ever, a reduced role for the importance of humans and human volition (if it even exists) and the fact that life in some way a complex arms race game that has been played between aggregating quanitities chemicals as a sort of fluke with little more meaning that that. On these bases I would suggest that they 'why' of the universe is probabilistically favoured towards a lack of meaning, and if that is true then any unveirifyable and sense-less statement about entities outside the ambit of empirical reality is essentially a meaningless question. — Sam Keays

Why is all of that the case?

"Why?" still remains.

I’d said:
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Thank you for arguing for Skepticism. — Michael Ossipoff

You replied:

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I have no problem arguing skepticism. I do it all the time, in fact I am very skeptical of your metaphysics, as you should know by now.

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You’re confused. I capitalized Skepticism because it’s what I’ve named my metaphysics. (…because a brief name is convenient).
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Quoting you again:
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I am very skeptical of your metaphysics

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That’s a good “I” statement.
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It tells your personal opinion or feeling. Good for you!
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But it isn’t an argument.
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Presumably, in your recent constant repetition, you’ve given us your best arguments against Skepticism.
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You said:
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So I'll state the problem as clearly as I can, as it appears in the quoted passage. According to my understanding, a concept is something created by a human mind., and existing in a human mind, completely mind dependent. Yet you claim that the physical world is purely conceptual

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Yes, we could quibble about what we mean by “concept” (a word that’s absent from my definition of Skepticism). I agreed with your use of “conceptual” because abstract facts can be called concepts, and “are” even without the help of any mind.
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, and that there were concepts before there were human minds

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A system of inter-referring abstract logical facts and hypothetical if-statements don’t depend on anyone or anything (other than their own mutual referential context) for existence or reality in their own local inter-referring context..
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You say they aren’t real? Fine. I agree that they don’t have (or need) any objective reality or factualness.
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, laws of physics and things like that, billions of years ago. How do you support this claim? Are these concepts supposed to exist within the mind of God?

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You’re repeating your old objection. I’ve answered it many times. In fact, I answered it in the passage that you quoted directly below:
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…this passage:

What's that? You say you weren't there a billion years ago, to create and enforce the law of gravity, to keep the Earth in Solar-orbit? That's ok, because the various scientists, and the information that they've reported, are in your experience, part of your life-experience possibility-story, as is are your own physical observations. — Michael Ossipoff

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You said:
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I really haven't been able to grasp this "life-experience possibility-story". Perhaps that's why I don't understand. Can you explain it in plain English?

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I’ve defined it many times. Most recently, I defined it, and Skepticism, in my post to a topic entitled “On Being Overwhelmed”. You can find it in the All Discussions forum, or the General Philosophy forum.
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Briefly, though, your life-experience possibility-story is a system of inter-referring hypotheticals, hypothetical if-then statements (which necessarily include “if’ clauses and “then” clauses).
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That system includes such components as hypothetical physical laws (relations between physical quantity-values), physical quantity-values, abstract logical facts, and mathematical theorems.
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That system, that story, is your life-experience story.
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For more detail, I refer you to the post referenced above.
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For instance, how is the earth a billion years ago in my own life-experience? The concept of "the earth a billion years ago" is in my own life experience, but the earth a billion years ago is not.

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Call it a “concept” if you want to. I suggest that you’re getting yourself all confused with your sloppy use of “concept”.
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The fact that you’re here today means that the Earth was here a billion years ago. If Metaphysician Underground’s existence today is taken as a fact, then the existence of the Earth a billion years ago is a fact too.
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You can have a concept about it, but the Earth billion years ago is as factual as you are.
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I’d said:
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Easy. As I said above, and in my post before this one, a story includes time. By definition, story takes place across time. Your life-experience possibility story is such a story. — Michael Ossipoff

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You said:
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OK, so do you agree that a story requires an author of that story.

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No, I don’t.
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Every possibility story, every self-consistent system of inter-referring hypotheticals, is valid in its own inter-referring context. As I said, it neither has nor needs any validity, reality, existence or meaning in any other context, or in some “global” context.
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Is it real?
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It isn’t, and needn’t be, objectively real.
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Who is the author of my life-experience possibility story?

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It didn’t have to be written. It was already there, in its own context. Remember, I’m not saying that it’s objectively real or factual.
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I don’t know what you think kept the Earth in orbit a billion years ago, but the law of gravity discovered by Newton, and the gravitational constant experimentally found by Cavendish amount to a physical law that explains why the Earth is still in orbit. — Michael Ossipoff

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You said:

It may be gravity which keeps the earth in orbit, but it's definitely not the law of gravity which does this.

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You’re talking like a (metaphysical) Physicalist. You think that there’s always the objectively-existent actual Materialist “thing”. No, what I’ve been saying (in agreement with Faraday, Tippler & Tegmark) is that there’s no reason to believe in more than the mathematical and logical structure, the system of inter-referring hypotheticals.
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…not that it need have any objective reality or existence.
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As I said, there’s no reason to believe in the metaphysical Physicalists objectively-existent “stuff” or “things”.
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Even if Materialism or metaphysical Physicalism were true, it would be irrelevant and superfluous.
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The law of gravity is one of the different ways that human beings understand gravity. And our understanding of gravity does not keep the earth in orbit.

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The law of gravity, (Newtonian or Relativistic) observed, confirmed and well-established among physicists, evidently obtained a billion years ago (…even though there was no one alive then to understand or know about it).
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Otherwise we wouldn’t be here today.
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We’ve been over this. It’s become a repetition of the same already-answered objections.
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You said:
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That this is true is evident from the fact that we sometimes create laws which are false, wrong. If laws were discovered, it would be impossible to have a false, or wrong law, because you couldn't discover a false law

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You could mistakenly discover a law that later is falsified or improved on by later experiments. That has happened, of course. We’ve been over this before.
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Presumably, in your recent constant repetition, you’ve given us your best arguments against Skepticism.
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Alright, this has gone on long enough.
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You’ve been continually repeating the same objections that I’ve just finished answering. I’m not going to continue answering your objections. There’d be no point.
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But, if instead of just making non-valid attempts to criticize Skepticism, you want to actually suggest an alternative metaphysics, then by all means state it, so that we can evaluate and compare it.
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Otherwise, this discussion is concluded.
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Michael Ossipoff

There's really no point in copy-and-pasting stuff verbatim out of other websites, unless you're presenting it in support of an argument

Scholasticism was a great example of how this can become a grand and learned and complicated artifice whilst bearing little connection to reality. — Sam Keays

Scholastic philosophers would not agree, and neo-Thomism, which is a form of scholasticism, is still a voice within contemporary philosophy.

On these bases I would suggest that they 'why' of the universe is probabilistically favoured towards a lack of meaning, — Sam Keays

What you're arguing is still basically 'scientistic'. Whether the universe 'has purpose' or not, depends on the way you look at the question. However, I personally find the 'fine-tuning' arguments, and the 'biological information' arguments, quite persuasive in favour of theism.

What's more, the presence or absence of meaning is itself a value judgement. The scientific method, generally, operates by first laying aside value judgements, and concentrating on what can be measured. So it hardly surprising that it will then say 'hey, look, no value here', because that is specifically one of the factors that has been set aside in the first place.

However, I personally find the 'fine-tuning' arguments, and the 'biological information' arguments, quite persuasive in favour of theism. — Wayfarer

Why would that be in favor of theism, rather than, say, deism, pantheism, etc?

If scientific findings can be brought to bear in service of demonstrating God's existence (as you say here), I presume you believe that it is also fair game to use scientific findings to argue against the existence of God? Because it seems that in the past, such things would invite cries of "scientism" from you.