Logical Absolutes

[Belacqua]

...regarding the logical absolutes. They’re just descriptions of what appear to be immutable facts of reality.

I think the issue is: why are the immutable facts of reality as they are? 

Obviously lots of people don't care about this question. And most likely it has no practical value in our lives, since it isn't going to change anything about how the world works or how we live our lives. You can't make money off it.

So most people ignore it with no problem. But others continue to wonder "why these immutable facts and not others." And as Polymath points out, they may not be so immutable -- different logics may be possible.

 Theists go on and on about how they have “no grounding,” and therefore must be “transcendent.” 

The word "transcendent" has a few different meanings. For Kant, it means "being beyond the limits of all possible experience and knowledge." That is, we can know the laws of logic and of math, but we can't experience or know what makes them that way. Or it means something that is "above" and independent of materiality. This is not so scary -- it just means that it is a law which applies overall, non-contingently.

I think in the discussion you're referring to, it means that there's no way we can derive the laws from material conditions -- they aren't caused by matter, in the way that heat is caused by vibrating atoms. 

They’re grounded by reality itself.

They make themselves visible to us in the way material reality behaves. But does that mean they are "grounded" there? Does matter CAUSE the rules of logic? 

And of course you're using "reality" in a particular way. You'd have to show that immaterial laws, not grounded in matter, are not somehow also "reality." 

They’re merely labels we use to talk about the world in its current state, just like numbers are symbols that represent quantities of things that exist. 

Here you're going to get a lot of people who disagree with you. 

No doubt when people started using numbers, we used them for quantities of material objects. Or perhaps units of time. But the ancient Greeks and Indians made that problematic pretty early on. There are numbers which don't refer to quantities of objects. 

I'm no mathematician, but some very smart people -- e.g. Roland Penrose -- claim that numbers have an independent existence, not related to physical quantities. So maybe be careful here.

But they don’t come from anywhere. They just are.

This is what they call "brute facts" in philosophy. "Why are things this way? They just are." 

Isaac Newton changed the way science works by changing his metaphysical approach to looking at the world. Before Newton, people weren't satisfied with the "it's just that way" explanation. But Newton announced that he couldn't say what gravity is or why it acted that way, only that he could describe how it acts. And that's been how science works ever since. With lots and lots of "it just does" included. 

Galileo was less willing to do this. So for example he rejected the idea that the moon causes the tides, despite abundant evidence, because he couldn't explain how distant objects could act on each other, and he wasn't satisfied with "they just do." 

But "they just do" is not an explanation. "They do because they do." It's basically giving up, and saying that no answer can be given. But not everyone is willing to do that. Obviously a lot of people will reject any attempt to go beyond "they just do", because it can't be done through science. It's metaphysics. But if they want to work on it I don't see why that's bad.

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Does it 'reflect a metaphysical truth' to say that a certain chess position allows mate in 3 moves? Because, when it comes down to it, mathematical 'truths' are in the same category as that statement.

Since the rules of chess are made by people, here you're making a case for Intelligent Design.