Logical Absolutes

[LadyForCamus]

...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.

Sure. So, if the contention is: why are these seemingly immutable facts about reality the way that they are or, “why is reality the way that it is?” then yes. I agree, the answer to that as far as we can tell is “we don’t know, and we may never know.” But, appealing to a god simply kicks the can further down the road. Why is god’s immutable nature the way that it is? The theist’s response is, “because that’s what god is.”

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

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.

I could be wrong, but I disagree here. When we describe, for example, a rock as a rock and not not a rock, there needs to be something thing we’re referring to in order for that concept to be coherent, no?

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?

Without a thing or things existing, there isn’t a fact of any thing to be able to know and then describe.

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."

Hmm. I’d say it’s the burden of someone asserting the possibility and/or existence of immaterial laws to demonstrate that.

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.

That’s a fair objection. I’m probably oversimplifying here. I’m certainly no mathematician myself.

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."

Or, “they are, but we don’t yet know why,” which again, is not a problem that is solved by theism.