(November 26, 2014 at 8:03 pm)ChadWooters Wrote:(November 26, 2014 at 6:42 pm)Jenny A Wrote: There's no need to require a designer or outside controller of events for effects to be regular. It is natural that the same action produces the same results consistently. It is a result of the natural properties of the objects involved. Change the properties, change the results. But regardless, the results will be regular.
It’s fairly common to assert that the regularities of nature are brute facts that requires no further explanation. That said, can you think of a reason why it must be a brute fact other than you cannot give an account for the natural order. In other words, why is your assertion that the regularity of nature not an argument from ignorance.
Two thoughts occur to me. First, I can't help but wonder if Aquinas would have made the same argument if he'd lived to see all of nature's behavior unified under two sets of equations. There is a certain simplicity and elegance to the natural order that I can only imagine was largely mysterious to an astute observer in his day. The second is that this is missing a lot of cogency because it is lacking the backdrop of Aristotle and Plato and the theory of forms and causes. Stated bluntly in modern terms without those nuances, some of the premises seem pure non sequiturs. As to the theory of forms and causes, my inclination is that the heirarchy of causes in some sense takes induction where it never should have gone; not everything forms a series, especially when you begin by jumping pell mell from one category to another. (I realize the initial arguments are somewhat more nuanced, but that's how it strikes me. Not everything has a more basic foundation somewhere further onward.)
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