Kjetil Posted October 19, 2013 Report Share Posted October 19, 2013 What should Objectivists answer when people say things like "We must be open to the hypothesis that the constants of the laws of physics / the laws of nature may be subject to change"? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
A is A Posted October 19, 2013 Report Share Posted October 19, 2013 What should Objectivists answer when people say things like "We must be open to the hypothesis that the constants of the laws of physics / the laws of nature may be subject to change"? Change from what to what? By what method? What is the basis (evidence) for the hypothesis? Is skepticism the basis for knowledge? Is certainty possible? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Leonid Posted October 19, 2013 Report Share Posted October 19, 2013 laws of natures are in fact laws of causality which in fact law of identity applied to action. To change that one has to change an identity of an object involved. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nicky Posted October 19, 2013 Report Share Posted October 19, 2013 (edited) What should Objectivists answer when people say things like "We must be open to the hypothesis that the constants of the laws of physics / the laws of nature may be subject to change"? They should one up that: the laws of nature aren't just subject to change, they WILL change. The laws of nature are context dependent, just like the rest of human knowledge. They can change with context. We pretty obviously don't fully know the entirety of the Universe, so it's also very clear that our context of knowledge will change, and with it the laws of nature will too. laws of natures are in fact laws of causality. No, causality is the epistemological basis for the laws of nature. Edited October 19, 2013 by Nicky Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kjetil Posted October 19, 2013 Author Report Share Posted October 19, 2013 laws of natures are in fact laws of causality which in fact law of identity applied to action. To change that one has to change an identity of an object involved. Totally agree. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
New Buddha Posted October 19, 2013 Report Share Posted October 19, 2013 I'm not a physicist, but my understanding is that the Universe is significantly different now then it was right after the Big Bang. Elements had not yet formed, until it cooled a bit (someone can elaborate). And the Universe may be a significantly different 15 billion years from now. I'm not aware of any coherent theory (quantum, relativity) that doesn't have holes in it. So we'd be hard pressed to state that we have some omniscient understanding of the "laws of nature" in the first place. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kjetil Posted October 19, 2013 Author Report Share Posted October 19, 2013 The universe keeps changing all the time, but the law of identity still applies. By the way, the Big Bang never happened. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nicky Posted October 19, 2013 Report Share Posted October 19, 2013 The universe keeps changing all the time, but the law of identity still applies.You didn't ask about the law of identity, you asked about the laws of Physics and nature. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mmmcannibalism Posted October 19, 2013 Report Share Posted October 19, 2013 The 'ultimate' laws of nature are just the facts about how the world works that aren't further reducible. The relevant question is whether a certain 'law' is the sort of thing that is capable of changing. For instance, gravity could become stronger per mass if the thing that causes gravity is able to change in a way that it creates a higher value for gravity. As an analogy. If we lived on a planet with an almostly perfectly constant temperature (a bit silly example), then encountering temperature would lead to us thinking the laws of nature changed. However, what really happened is that we discovered our theories weren't incorporating something. Likewise, gravity strength can't change if the strength of gravity is just a basic fact about matter. But gravity can change if its really a fact about how some variable thing is 'sitting' in relation to matter. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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