On Hume and order in nature

[chezlaw]

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With some things, it does. Existence is axiomatic. That it's ordered is also axiomatic. Let me ask you... what have you ever seen that would make you think otherwise?

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That something exists follows from the fact there is something like thinking going on. That existence is sufficiently ordered to make this existence possible is trivialy true but going beyond that by saying its obvious smacks of religon to me.

The fact that nothing in my experience makes me think something else is not the case does not mean that something else is not the case.

chez

[NotReady]

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An axiom doesn't require proof. It's something that's obviously true. An axiom is not an assumption and it does not require proof.


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What about this axiom?

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

Does it require proof?

[Piers]

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Hume argued that there is no way to deductively prove that nature is ordered

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Can certainly agree with this.

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and therefore must be presupposed.

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This is where I would disagree. I can see no reason to make this assumption apart from as a mental exercise.

Intuitively it seems clear to me that the universe is not ordered (in your sense of ‘abides by physical laws/rules’), however it is also necessary to assume the universe is ordered in order for us to reason meaningfully about it.

So making an assumption of an ordered universe is a pragmatic pandering to our own limitations rather than a statement about how the universe really is.

Life just shows us how localised ordered patens can arise out of chaotic forces. Just looking at the fractural patens of chaos theory should illustrate my point.

[jthegreat]

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Intuitively it seems clear to me that the universe is not ordered (in your sense of ‘abides by physical laws/rules’)

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Like I asked Chez, what have you ever experienced that would lead you to think that the Universe is truly chaotic? And I'm talking *actual* chaos, not apparent chaos as described by chaos theory.

[Piers]

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Like I asked Chez, what have you ever experienced that would lead you to think that the Universe is truly chaotic?

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I mean "order" as in, "abides by physical laws/rules".

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It’s more that I do not think the universe is ordered. By this I mean that no set of physical laws/rules that humans or their agents can construct could completely describe the universe.

It is just human arrogance that makes people believe that ‘an ordered’ universe should be the default.

Scientific progress has followed the cycle of consistently obsolescing previous scientific beliefs with new ones. I think this is no coincidence but instead reflects the real situation, in that any scientific belief we propose has the potential to be obsoleted.

By their very nature human constructed laws must be in some sense finite. Nothing about the universe suggests such a finite nature to me.

[jthegreat]

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Scientific progress has followed the cycle of consistently obsolescing previous scientific beliefs with new ones.

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Do you guys constantly ignore the real world or what?

Yes, older theories are replaced by new ones. But the new ones almost *never* throw away the old ones. They are simply subsumed into the new theories. Look at Newtonian physics vs. Relativity. It's an improvement, not a total replacement.

[Piers]

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Scientific progress has followed the cycle of consistently obsolescing previous scientific beliefs with new ones.

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Do you guys constantly ignore the real world or what?

Yes, older theories are replaced by new ones. But the new ones almost *never* throw away the old ones. They are simply subsumed into the new theories. Look at Newtonian physics vs. Relativity. It's an improvement, not a total replacement.

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Yes of course.

Obsolete was a bit of a strong word to use, I was overstating to emphasise a point. Newtonian mechanics is still widely used so is not obsolete from a practical viewpoint.

However from the viewpoint of getting as accurate as possible theoretical models of the universe it can be valid to describe Newtonian mechanics as obsolete as Relativity is less inaccurate and can be considered to dominate Newtonian mechanics in this regard.

I think it is possible for something to be obsoleted by an improvement rather than only a replacement. But I guess this is a matter of definition.

All this is a trivial quibble, and does not have any bearing on the point I was making in my original post.

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Hume argued that there is no way to deductively prove that nature is ordered

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Can certainly agree with this.

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and therefore must be presupposed.

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This is where I would disagree. I can see no reason to make this assumption apart from as a mental exercise.

Intuitively it seems clear to me that the universe is not ordered (in your sense of ‘abides by physical laws/rules’), however it is also necessary to assume the universe is ordered in order for us to reason meaningfully about it.

So making an assumption of an ordered universe is a pragmatic pandering to our own limitations rather than a statement about how the universe really is.

Life just shows us how localised ordered patens can arise out of chaotic forces. Just looking at the fractural patens of chaos theory should illustrate my point.

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That the universe at least appears ordered is the presupposition that all of empirical science operates on. If the universe did not at the very least appear ordered then we would be completely unable to make accurate predictions about physical phenomena (or indeed just function normally in our day to day lives).

Hume's point was that one could not establish on rational grounds (i.e., by argument) that the universe operates according to universal laws, despite the fact that everything in our experience seems to show that it does. The reason one could not show this is because it is only by induction that we could provide a cogent argument to the conclusion that nature is uniform, and all inductive arguments must themselves presuppose the uniformity of nature.

To disagree that at least prima facie nature appears uniform is to make a claim that neither Hume nor any philosopher of science I know, including both those who ultimately agree with Hume's skepticism about induction and those who disagree, has made.

In short, the reason to make the assumption that nature is uniform is as plain as the nose on your face, as they say.

[Piers]

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is also necessary to assume the universe is ordered in order for us to reason meaningfully about it.

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That the universe at least appears ordered is the presupposition that all of empirical science operates on. If the universe did not at the very least appear ordered then we would be completely unable to make accurate predictions about physical phenomena (or indeed just function normally in our day to day lives).

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Yes that is what I said. So we agree on this point.

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So making an assumption of an ordered universe is a pragmatic pandering to our own limitations rather than a statement about how the universe really is.

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Here I am just underlining the limitation of the point we both agree on.

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To disagree that at least prima facie nature appears uniform …

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I am not disagreeing with this, just saying that on reflection I see no reason to suppose the universe is ordered, and the assumption of not ordered feels the most natural to me.

The exact definitions of uniform and ordered is a little hazy, which might be the contention.

By ordered, I am meaning that there is a set of rules by which the universe words. Further that it is at least theoretically possible for humans or their agents to derive.

I use Gödel’s theorem to inspire the claim that any such set of rules must be incomplete in that there are real events that are not covered by them. I made the point in my original post that this effect is what we appear to have experienced during the development of science.

I am not saying that there are not consequential relationships between events in the real world. Just that it is likely that we are logically unable to fully understand them.

Now if you widen the scope of ordered so that our own limitations do not restrict it, then an ordered universe is close to a tautology. Basically your rules of the universe could consist of a complete listing of every event in the universe. The universe itself could be considered such a ‘set of rules’.

I am implying that it is likely that we cannot create an exact copy of the universe.

This makes the universe completely deterministic. If you want to know what happened at a particular point in the universe, you just go there and look. The universe itself is its own model.

It appears to me that if you extend your use of the word ordered to cover this situation, then the word ordered ceases to contain any information.

This is my motivation for saying that the set of rules associated with order, should be restricted to those that our agents or we might logically derive. With this restriction in place I fell that an unordered universe is the most natural possibility.

Just to clarify what Hume was talking about then...by the 'uniformity of nature' Hume simply meant that nature exhibits empirical regularities, which naturally suggests that there are underlying physical laws that govern such regularities. So if you hold a pencil up in your living room and let go of it, it falls to the floor. And it does this over and over again, hence nature seems uniform.

In making his point about induction Hume was not really addressing whether it is theoretically possible for humans to fully understand the laws of nature.

Godel's point about incompleteness is about formal systems, not empirical phenomena. I'm afraid I don't see the relevance of Godel's point then to Hume's discussion of induction or the uniformity of nature.