Natural Laws, and Causation.

[TheBigOhMan]

Natural Laws, as I understand it, are a set of equations we have discovered that represent the behaviour of physical objects that tend to repeat along the Universe and time ( gravity always pull objects, etc).
Yet I've always found the notion a bit strange. natural laws merely describe things, but it doesn't explain why things tend to behave the same way through time ( natural laws don't impose a kind of force on matter so that it behaves according a set of equations. We know particles work in a certain way, though there isn't any aparent reason to explain why they don't simply change for no reason, given they seem to stay the way they are by exactly the same reason: no reason at all! ).
At first I though It could be a kind of "fundamental" thing that cannot be changed: like, electrons can only have a certain number in their electron charge, and for a mysterious reason it must stay that way even when there is no force imposing or restricting any logically valid value ( for some reason this idea doesn't suffice me. I find it really ad-hoc that constants simply cannot change for absolutely no reason except that they can't ) ¿what do you think about this?

However, theoretical physics have been pulling a lot the idea of Multiverses, where ( like in string theory ) the constants can indeed have a very big range of values, so there isn't actually anything trully fundamental about the constants we have (at least in this hypothetical scenarios ). so, ¿in this scenarios, what it is that make it possible for the properties of the fundamental quantum fields to stay the same in time, if there is nothing that prevents them from changing and at the same time there is nothing that make it be that way?

I would like to hear your opinions about this issue, thanks.

[Angrboda]

I think you may be confusing two separate questions into one. The first is why is there (some) order rather than none? If there is any order at all, then that order will yield to description of law-like behavior. A universe with no order might simply be viewed as a specific position in the range of possible ordered universes. Given that we live in an ordered universe, the next question is, why this specific order rather than a different set of ordered conditions? One might suggest that, regardless of the specific order, we would be asking the same question. It's possible there are underlying reasons for the specific type of order, and science is investigating these possibilities; it's also possible that there is no reason, and asking the question in this way just shows an anthropocentric bias. I think to a large extent, metaphysics, including metaphysical interpretations of physical law, are attempts to paint a story of how things are "underneath" that gives rise to these behaviors. Unfortunately, I think metaphysics fails because it either ends up being a re-imagining of the familiar as explaining the unfamiliar, and so adds nothing, or ends up postulating things that are inconsistent, contradictory and nonsensical (you see this a lot in trying to imagine a consistent set of attributes for "God").

(ETA: The question arises, must there be a "bottom," a level at which there either are no underlying explanations for that level (which would create another level to get underneath), either because of the limits of science, practical limits, or because there is such a level where there is no lower level [see for example, Aristotle's primordial matter], or is it turtles all the way down? And how will we know at any particular stage which one of these it is? [The Germans are coming is a fan of Popper's critical rationalism; familiarizing yourself with the Wikipedia entry might prove useful])

[Walking Void]

We know particles work in a certain way, though there isn't any aparent reason to explain why they don't simply change for no reason, given they seem to stay the way they are by exactly the same reason: no reason at all! ).

What kind of particles are we talking about here? Quarks, atomic level, molecules, compounds, etc?

[TheBigOhMan]

We know particles work in a certain way, though there isn't any aparent reason to explain why they don't simply change for no reason, given they seem to stay the way they are by exactly the same reason: no reason at all! ).

What kind of particles are we talking about here? Quarks, atomic level, molecules, compounds, etc?

The most basic ones, I guess: quarks, the set of bosons and the known leptons. We could go further and paint the situation with quantum fields, and the particles merely "ripples" of the said quantum fields.

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I think you may be confusing two separate questions into one. The first is why is there (some) order rather than none? If there is any order at all, then that order will yield to description of law-like behavior. A universe with no order might simply be viewed as a specific position in the range of possible ordered universes. Given that we live in an ordered universe, the next question is, why this specific order rather than a different set of ordered conditions? One might suggest that, regardless of the specific order, we would be asking the same question. It's possible there are underlying reasons for the specific type of order, and science is investigating these possibilities; it's also possible that there is no reason, and asking the question in this way just shows an anthropocentric bias. I think to a large extent, metaphysics, including metaphysical interpretations of physical law, are attempts to paint a story of how things are "underneath" that gives rise to these behaviors. Unfortunately, I think metaphysics fails because it either ends up being a re-imagining of the familiar as explaining the unfamiliar, and so adds nothing, or ends up postulating things that are inconsistent, contradictory and nonsensical (you see this a lot in trying to imagine a consistent set of attributes for "God").

(ETA: The question arises, must there be a "bottom," a level at which there either are no underlying explanations for that level (which would create another level to get underneath), either because of the limits of science, practical limits, or because there is such a level where there is no lower level [see for example, Aristotle's primordial matter], or is it turtles all the way down? And how will we know at any particular stage which one of these it is? [The Germans are coming is a fan of Popper's critical rationalism; familiarizing yourself with the Wikipedia entry might prove useful])

The problem I see with taking the "no reason" approach is that ( as I see it ), it undermines science. We can only talk about the laws of physics working so far as we have studied them in a limited spatiotemporal range. However, there is no warantee they will work the same way tomorrow. Given we don't know why they are what they are, we can't know if they will trully be diferent in the future, and in fact we have no reason to hold they were the same in the past. it turns the Universe to be unpredictable given nature hold in a mysterious ground we can't grasp ( in the case it exist at all ).

The situation, IMO, is not only temporal, but spatial. I find it hard to believe that for no reason, point 1 of space and point 2 of space happen to share the same exact properties and laws, even if they are discrete ( I take for granted here that space is discrete, for the Uncertainty Principle that would state Plank Lenght to be the most short lenght possible in reality ) and separated by big distances.
In said cases, we wouldn't be talking why the Universe have order or X order. Rather, we would be asking why point 1 at time 1 have properties equal to point 2 at time 2 (and trillions of other points and times ).

If this type of strange coincidence can be grounded in a brute fact, then I don't see it as trully improbable that an even stranger coincidences ( the Universe was completely odd and suddently it turned to be consistent within 5 minutes ) could arise.

I agree, however, that this could be an ultimate brute fact ( though one is tempted to ask why that specific brute fact ).

PS: Thanks for the tips in the "ETA"