The status of the laws of nature

[JérômeVilm]

Hi,
I heard Bernardo claim that the regularity of nature, represented by the laws of nature indicate that mind at large is largely instinctive and regular as well. I don't understand this point very well. According to Kant, the laws of nature are inherent to our dashboard of perception. They (plus space and time) are the apriori forms of perception. They have nothing to do at all with the thing in itself. Can somebody explain how exactly the laws of nature arise to us under analytical idealism and what their ontological status is? Thanks!

[Ben Iscatus]

Jerome, when you say, "nothing at all to do with the thing in itself", you seem to be suggesting that the dashboard of perception has nothing whatever to do with what we might see through the windscreen. But it does - it's a representation, which is to say, a partial image of reality. According to Analytic Idealism, evolution has given us the perceptions to survive in a planetary environment, but not more. Too much would mean we'd "dissolve into an entropic soup" (BK's phrase). So our perceptions pick out certain aspects of noumena which are useful to us.

[Jim Cross]

Hi,
I heard Bernardo claim that the regularity of nature, represented by the laws of nature indicate that mind at large is largely instinctive and regular as well. I don't understand this point very well. According to Kant, the laws of nature are inherent to our dashboard of perception. They (plus space and time) are the apriori forms of perception. They have nothing to do at all with the thing in itself. Can somebody explain how exactly the laws of nature arise to us under analytical idealism and what their ontological status is? Thanks!

I don't think idealism or materialism can explain it. The laws just are. We can discover them to some level of detail but can never explain how or why they are the way they are.

[Soul_of_Shu]

Hi,
I heard Bernardo claim that the regularity of nature, represented by the laws of nature indicate that mind at large is largely instinctive and regular as well. I don't understand this point very well. According to Kant, the laws of nature are inherent to our dashboard of perception. They (plus space and time) are the apriori forms of perception. They have nothing to do at all with the thing in itself. Can somebody explain how exactly the laws of nature arise to us under analytical idealism and what their ontological status is? Thanks!

Under idealism the 'laws' of nature are idea constructions that are integral to experiencing this corporeal construct called 'nature', and have no relevance to a transcorporeal, trans-spatiotemporal consciousness not focused in this construct. Indeed, a spatiotemporal perspective would seem to be a function of the idea construction of one being a conscious locus/agent/alter, other than, and apart from, transpersonal ideation.

[AshvinP]

Hi,
I heard Bernardo claim that the regularity of nature, represented by the laws of nature indicate that mind at large is largely instinctive and regular as well. I don't understand this point very well. According to Kant, the laws of nature are inherent to our dashboard of perception. They (plus space and time) are the apriori forms of perception. They have nothing to do at all with the thing in itself. Can somebody explain how exactly the laws of nature arise to us under analytical idealism and what their ontological status is? Thanks!

Kant made a fundamental error. He assumed that "knowing" is the process of recreating an "external" Reality by way of "internal" concepts, sort of like making a photocopy of the world within ourselves. Only after making that assumption, he proceeded to show why such a Herculean task cannot reasonably be accomplished, so we need to turn to a priori judgments, which have no connection to the underlying Reality, to explain the various consistencies of perception-cognition. That is true, but it tells us nothing about the relationship of concepts to Reality, because it set up the incorrect Cartesian dualist frame to begin with. It is exactly as the materialist who creates the mind-matter division and then wonders how matter can give rise to mind, never making any progress, because they created the impossible scenario to begin with and it has nothing to do with how Reality presents to us in our experience.

Goethe, contemporary of Kant who rejected the Cartesian dualist framing, gave us the true definition of "knowing" under a consistent idealism - it is relating thought-concepts (which currently appear from within) to sense-perceptions (which appear from without) so as to render a more holistic experience. Only half of the perceptual content arrives from without, the other half arrives from within by way of concepts which carry meaning (the meaning is what really connects us to the noumenal). With that slight shift in perspective, we see how our own thinking activity goes hand in hand with act of outer perceiving in the shared goal of "knowing". (keeping in mind "inner" and "outer" are being used as distinctions here precisely to show how they are actually One in essence). The "laws of nature" should be understood as expressions of the ideal relations we have co-created in this manner through our Thinking activity. Here is a passage which should be helpful:

Above all we must hold fast to the fact that the total content of science is a given one; given partly as the sense world from outside, partly as the world of ideas from within. All our scientific activity will therefore consist in overcoming the form in which this total content of the given confronts us, and in making it over into a form that satisfies us. This is necessary because the inner unity of the given remains hidden in its first form of manifestation, in which only the outer surface appears to us. Now the methodological activity that establishes a relationship between these two forms turns out to vary according to the realm of phenomena with which we are working. The first realm is one in which we have a manifoldness of elements given to sense perception. These interact with each other. This interaction becomes clear to us when we immerse ourselves into the matter through ideas. Then one or another element appears as more or less determined by the others, in one way or another. The existential conditions of one become comprehensible to us through those of the others. We trace one phenomenon back to the others. We trace the phenomenon of a warm stone, as effect, back to the warming rays of the sun, as cause. We have explained what we perceive about one thing, when we trace it back to some other perceptible thing. We see in what way the ideal law arises in this realm. It encompasses the things of the sense world, stands over them. It determines the lawful way of working of one thing by letting it be conditional upon another. Our task here is to bring together the series of phenomena in such a way that one necessarily goes forth out of the others, that they all constitute one whole and are lawful through and through. The realm that is to be explained in this way is inorganic nature.

Now the individual phenomena of experience by no means confront us in such a way that what is closest in space and time is also the closest according to its inner nature. We must first pass from what is closest in space and time over into what is conceptually closest. For a certain phenomenon we must seek the phenomena that are directly connected to it in accordance with their nature. Our goal must be to bring together a series of facts that complement each other, that carry and mutually support each other. We achieve thereby a group of sense-perceptible, interacting elements of reality; and the phenomenon that unfolds before us follows directly out of the pertinent factors in a transparent, clear way. Following Goethe's example, we call such a phenomenon an “archetypal phenomenon” (Urphänomen) or a basic fact. This archetypal phenomenon is identical with the objective natural law. The bringing together discussed here can either occur merely in thoughts — as when I think about the three determining factors that come into consideration when a stone is thrown horizontally: 1. the force of the throw, 2. the force of gravity, and 3. the air's resistance and then derive the path of the flying stone from these factors; or, on the other hand, I can actually bring the individual factors together and then await the phenomenon that follows from their interaction. This is what we do in an experiment. Whereas a phenomenon of the outer world is unclear to us because we know only what has been determined (the phenomenon) and not what is determining, the phenomenon that an experiment presents is clear, because we ourselves have brought together the determining factors. This is the path of research of nature: It takes its start from experience, in order to see what is real; advances to observation, in order to see why it is real; and then intensifies into the experiment, in order to see what can be real.