I'm not sure what you mean by 'the workings of natural law'.
IMO There are no 'natural laws' except a limited number asserted by humans such as 'the second law of thermodynamics'. The word 'workings' presents its own problem because it tends to imply the concept of 'causality' which has questionable philosophical status — fresco
And that is abject bullshit. — Banno
That just does not follow — Banno
The short answer to your question is 'no' for three reasons.
(1) 'Things' are thinged by humans relatively to a continuously evolving 'body of knowledge' which continues to raise further anthropocentric questions.
(2) As already pointed out, 'logic' (in the traditional sense) is merely one aspect of human reasoning. And as far as frontier science is concerned 'reasoning' is more highly dependent on mathematical models more abstract than set theory.
(3) Although abstract models may generate the 'prediction and control' aspects of what we call 'science' the question still remains as to whether that is sufficient to constitute 'explanation'. — fresco
In that case, the OP will have to scrap science, because it uses an entire bureaucracy of correspondence-checking formalisms that keeps scientific patterns in sync with experimental observations.
Pure deduction, i.e. "pure reason", only deals with abstract, Platonic worlds constructed from a basic set of (possibly arbitrary, speculative) beliefs. Pure reason is not about the real, physical world at all — alcontali
Well, yeah. Immanuel Kant already pointed out at length in his "Critique of Pure Reason" that science is not pure reason. On the contrary, science seeks to explicitly systematize experimental observations.
It is not possible to target the real, physical world and still hope to stick to pure reason. It cannot be done. — alcontali
How does empiricism play a role in the above? IOW one might think you mean via deduction alone. I am guessing that is not what you mean, but then I think it might be helpful to include the empirical side in our choices, because presumably, we would need to be able to somehow do research on everything and experience it via observation of some kind. IOW there are factors I think need to be explained in scenario one that might affect people's choice of one or two. — Coben
Both reason and logic are nothing more than theoretical a priori processes in the human rational system. They don’t explain anything in and of themselves, but only set the parameters for the methodology from which explanations become possible.
That being granted, it follows necessarily that the question as to whether reason and logic can explain everything, is insusceptible of a rational answer, because the major premise in both propositional constructions are themselves unjustifiable inductive inferences.
Nothing like using reason and logic incorrectly, in order to ask them to do something they’re not equipped to do anyway. — Mww
This doesn't make my statement invalid or off-topic. I'm asking clarification of what you mean by "understanding" and "figure it out". — Harry Hindu
Except "all things possible" beyond the capacity of comprehension of the human mind, but I don't know why they'd be relevant in whining about. — Swan
What does logic "explain" about logic exactly..?
What is A+B=C 'explaining' about itself? — Swan
To believe that that it is possible to explain everything, one already presupposes that it's possible to know everything. — creativesoul
Agreed.
Abstract, Platonic worlds are different from the real, physical world. Still, the real, physical world is to be considered more complex and more difficult to understand, if only, because unlike in the case of abstract, Platonic worlds, we have no copy of its construction logic.
We cannot fully understand even abstract, Platonic worlds, if their construction logic is sophisticated enough. If it contains a sufficiently large fragment of number theory, it will defeat our ability to fully understand it.
We cannot expect the real, physical world, in its full detail, to be easier to understand than a mere thought exercise. We will hit fundamental limitations in much, much simpler worlds already.
Yes, logic alone is not viable as a tool in an empirical context. Science will demand real-world experimental testing. Merely calculations are not accepted for explaining anything.
Furthermore, logic itself is an abstract, Platonic system based on the 14 basic, speculative, arbitrary beliefs of propositional logic. It is always the core axiomatic module (and language) of any system. However, these basic beliefs say more about us than about the real, physical world. They have helped us to survive on earth. However, they were never used to survive elsewhere in the universe; in which case these beliefs might have ended up shaped differently. Logic itself could easily be just a Platonic-cave shadow of an unknown, real, universal logic, which we don't know. We may not even have the capacity to deal with the remainder of the universe. — alcontali
If "truth" is subjective then it seems logical to say 1. is the case. If there is no such thing as an "objective" truth, - only subjective ones, then your truth is understandable to you. If it's not understandable to you, then how can it be a "truth" for you? — Harry Hindu
Well... I'll just let the scientists answer that one — Artemis
But let's assume for a moment that QM is true — Artemis
Now on the other hand, if something like Chaos Theory were to hold true, then parts of the universe could not be fully understood with logic or reason, because they defy these. But again, I'm more inclined to agree with those scientists who suggest that we simply have not yet discovered the logical and rational explanation-holes Chaos Theory is trying to fill. — Artemis
A good example is the Riemann hypothesis. Nobody has been able to find a counterexample. At the same time, nobody has been able to prove that it necessarily follows from number theory — alcontali
Can you give an example that would not be cleared up by simply having more information available? Otherwise, it's a lack of info and not a limit of reason per se — Artemis
There are limits to reason/logic, so not everything can be proven via a chain of reasoning. — Sam26
In sum: we can probably understand the entirety of the universe someday — Artemis
And do you mean that understanding of the universe has to be collective or can it be singular? Let me rephrase: does a single human being have to be able to understand anything and everything about the universe, or can we have (purely hypothetically) Hawking understand 20%, Einstein a different 20% and so on until we have 100%? — Artemis
And if that human reasoning and logic finds out that to some questions we simply cannot find out solutions even if they exist because of logic? That it would be illogical if we could find the solution.
This actually happens already as we are part of the universe and cannot observe things from outside the universe. — ssu
Would you care to give us an example of such a mind? — Mark Dennis
Question: Whose mind are we referring to here? Your average Joes and Janes? Or the greatest minds of our entire species? — Artemis
Consciousness in the strict sense, or consciousness properly speaking, and consciousness of the infinite cannot be separated from each other; a limited consciousness is no consciousness; consciousness is essentially infinite and all-encompassing. The consciousness of the infinite is nothing else than the consciousness of the infinity of consciousness. To put it in other words, in its consciousness of infinity, the conscious being is conscious of the infinity of its own being.
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Every limitation of reason, or of human nature in general, rests on a delusion, an error. To be sure, the human individual can, even must, feel and know himself to be limited – and this is what distinguishes him from the animal – but he can become conscious of his limits, his finiteness, only because he can make the perfection and infinity of his species the object either of his feeling, conscience, or thought. — Feuerbach
Though we could specify these loaded concepts forever, they are often enough to tuck us in — jellyfish
I don't think we can get the mathematics of Being that some philosophers have craved — jellyfish
I like your post in general, but maybe it falls into its own trap. 'The truth is only in your mind' is in some sense not virtuously humble at all but just one more 'super theory' put forward as a truth that is not only in your mind or my mind — jellyfish
I am open to possibilities, but possibilities are endless, and without a shred of justification there is no reason to take any particular possibility seriously — SophistiCat
You can't have a language without semantics, and you can't have semantics without personal interpretation. There's no way to make personal interpretation universal — Terrapin Station
Neil deGrasse Tyson has somewhat pointedly observed that human and chimp DNA differs only very slightly, and what if we meet beings whose DNA differs from ours...?
And there's the approach from the other side. Can even we craft a question ultimately unanswerable? That is, for any iterated series of "Whys," is there always an answer? — tim wood
If I am to take seriously the attempt at distancing from the traditional divine creation narrative, then I just can't see any attraction in this overcomplicated account — SophistiCat
People almost always talk about explanations without analyzing the idea of explanations. Explanations are not that cut and dried that we can just bypass that step — Terrapin Station
What would you say determines whether a model resolves a question then — Terrapin Station
Science is merely a Platonic-cave shadow of the real explanation for the universe, i.e. the theory of everything (ToE). — alcontali
It is not even sure that "more sophisticated models" are within reach. They could be, but they could also not be.
As far as I am concerned, the link between mathematics and physics is not as simple as Hawking depicts it — alcontali
My list of impossibles: Stillness, Beginning, End, Infinite, Nothing, Free Will, He, and maybe Forever. — PoeticUniverse
But why set up such a dichotomy: either chaos or human-like agency (aka "intelligent design")? Aren't you missing the simplest, most obvious alternative: structure? "Structure" not as a house or a bridge, but in a more general sense, as a closed system subject to fixed constraints - what is conventionally called "laws of nature." — SophistiCat