The Limits of Possible Explanation

[Mark]

I appreciate your position, but see it as wild speculation. The main assumption here is that an explanation of the relationships between all things (i.e. a unified theory) would have an intangible x factor outside of it ... it would be equally valid to suppose that such a theory would explain why the universe existed through the relationships between it's constituent parts.

So in the case of the ensemble of the universe and factor x, we could possibly define the governing dynamics which regulate both of these things and hence explaing both their presence and origin!

Sam

I did not assert that there was a Factor X. I merely said, suppose you had your grand theory and it pointed to Factor X. I am happy to argue without supposing Factor X; it was just an illustration.

Since we don't need Factor X, according to you we could "explain the governing dynamics which regulate" the physical universe and hence "explain [its] presence and origin." But how could any conceivable "governing dynamics" that "regulate" all things also explain their origin? Explain their origin in terms of what? Explain their origin from what? The italicized relative pronouns could have no possible reference, could they, since whatever they signified would lie outside the set of existing things.

By the way, do you conceive that these "governing dynamics" exist or do they merely summarize in conceptual form the actual behavior of those things that do exist? If the latter, they certainly do not literally regulate, but are merely an elaborate form of explanation (that's pretty much what gravity is today, I would think). If the former, well then, these "governing dynamics" are part of the set of all existing things, are they not, and what then would constitute an explanation of: {the physical universe, whatever "governing dynamics" are supposed to have an objective existence} everything in brackets taken as a totality?

Maybe you would be good enough to supply a counterexample to my proposition that an explanation of an existing thing (which would include not only a red house but say, magnetic fields in general) can only relate it to one or more other such things? I maintain that all explanation, common or officially and formally scientific, is a form of this. If you think there is a class of acceptable explanation that fails to supply an account of a relation between things, it should be simple enough to cite it. But so far as I know, no one would accept an explanation of the form "The house is red because."

"Wild speculation" would be speculation about facts. If I say, "Perhaps there is a green lizard living at the center of the moon," that is wild speculation. It is not speculation to make statements about what "explanation" is. It is to analyze what constitutes acceptable explanation. Notice that I do not say what constitutes the set of all existing things; I merely say that whatever constitutes that set, the set itself is not the sort of thing to which "explanation" applies, just as an orange is not the sort of thing to which "happy" applies.