35
votes
Is the surprising applicability of mathematics to the physical world a brute fact, or something crying out for a theistic explanation?
Reality existed.
Math was invented, partly to describe and predict reality, a useful tool.
Calculus specifically is an example...
Isaac Newton (1642–1727) is best known for having invented the
...
- 1,960
23
votes
Accepted
Is the surprising applicability of mathematics to the physical world a brute fact, or something crying out for a theistic explanation?
The biggest issue seems to be that Craig implies that mathematics is entirely disconnected from the physical world. But maths emerged from our understanding of physical world. We saw that when you put ...
- 13.8k
16
votes
Accepted
Is every feature of the universe logically necessary?
Logic is not in the business of telling the universe what to do, or even in the business of describing how the universe works. We have science for that. Logic is concerned with the relations of ...
- 31.5k
8
votes
Is the surprising applicability of mathematics to the physical world a brute fact, or something crying out for a theistic explanation?
My three cents.
It has been claimed that the effectiveness of mathematics on physical reality is anything but unreasonable.
The reason is twofold. First many theories and areas of mathematics were ...
- 2,948
7
votes
Accepted
Is steam necessarily ice?
Ice is H2O in solid state, and steam is H2O in gaseous state, so neither is H2O simpliciter and necessarily (or even actually) the other. The correct versions will be "the material of ice is ...
- 44.2k
7
votes
Is the surprising applicability of mathematics to the physical world a brute fact, or something crying out for a theistic explanation?
The argument presupposes that the relevance of mathematics to physics is remarkable. However, if you spend any time reflecting on that, you should readily conclude that it is not remarkable at all.
To ...
- 26.4k
7
votes
Are the laws of physics brute facts or metaphysical necessities?
The universe is the way it is. There is no scientific theory explaining why it is the way it is.
Science observes phenomena and attempts to explain these phenomena
by reducing them to general laws of ...
- 42.5k
6
votes
Is the surprising applicability of mathematics to the physical world a brute fact, or something crying out for a theistic explanation?
So wait a second. The two alternative hypotheses are:
God created the world and made physics work by math because he is generous to human physicists and wanted them to be able to use math.
Simple, ...
- 18.9k
6
votes
Are the laws of physics brute facts or metaphysical necessities?
Analytic philosophy has gone in a bit of a circle about this. At one point, R. M. Hare (a Christian of some sort, more prominently known as a moral philosopher) indirectly resurrected a word that ...
- 22.5k
5
votes
What precisely are brute contingent facts?
According to Wikipedia, Poincare distinguished brute facts from their scientific description. The first is ontological and the second, epistemic.
Now, scientific descriptions can be founded on other ...
- 48.8k
5
votes
Accepted
Is metaphysical necessity an unambiguous concept, and if so, how do we capture it?
Kripke (naming and necessity) is often held responsible for reintroducing metaphysical necessity in contemporary philosophy. You'll find some examples from ordinary language in Naming and Necessity, ...
- 5,968
5
votes
Can everything in the universe be metaphysically necessary without determinism?
The words used here, "neccesary" and "determinism," are complicated. They have very precise meanings in several contexts, but those meanings do not always align. When answering ...
- 18.8k
5
votes
Is the surprising applicability of mathematics to the physical world a brute fact, or something crying out for a theistic explanation?
No, the applicability of mathematics to the physical world is not surprising - to me at least, and evidently to many others - with or without explanation, theistic or otherwise. Nor is it necessarily ...
- 330
4
votes
Can empiricists and materialists accept metaphysical modality?
Interesting question!
What you are talking about seems to be addressed by the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. According the Epistemology of Modality (SEP):
Kant famously argued that what is a ...
- 35.6k
4
votes
Is an equal outcome necessary to differentiate between equity and equality?
Your question supposes that equity and equality have precise meanings, which is not true. Words mean what people take them to mean, so you might take the word equality to mean something subtly ...
- 26.4k
4
votes
Accepted
If a then it cannot fail to be the case that b
The difference is concerned with the scope of the 'necessarily' operator. There is a difference between "Necessarily: if A then B" and "if A then necessarily B". In the first ...
- 31.5k
4
votes
Why shouldn’t I be a skeptic about the Necessitation Rule for alethic modal logics?
Modal logics that include the necessitation rule are called normal. Not all modal systems are normal. Some of the non-normal logics are S1, S2 and S3, which are consistent with the necessitation rule, ...
- 31.5k
4
votes
What determines a need for explanation?
I think it is difficult to attribute any real meaning to the kinds of ideas being discussed in that debate. Both positions seem to be synonymous with 'we don't know what caused the Universe'. If ...
- 26.4k
4
votes
What determines a need for explanation?
You ask:
what is the difference between an explanation and a cause here? Can something truly have an explanation for its existence but not have a cause?
A cause is imputed to be real, and an ...
- 35.6k
4
votes
Is the surprising applicability of mathematics to the physical world a brute fact, or something crying out for a theistic explanation?
A brute fact.
I don't even see why the question of God's (non-)existence could emerge from recognition of the usefulness of an idealized framework like math to the physical world that we live in.
Even ...
- 233
4
votes
Can the law of non-contradiction exist without the law of identity?
Can the law of non-contradiction exist without the law of identity?
in what follows, we'll tackle the 0th-order law of identity, the scheme 'p → p' for some binary connective for which modus ponens ...
- 1,857
4
votes
Is there really such a thing as metaphysical necessity?
Metaphysical necessity is a question on which philosophers continue to disagree.
Our use of language contains a great deal of modal terminology. We say that some things are necessary, some are ...
- 31.5k
4
votes
Are the laws of physics brute facts or metaphysical necessities?
This question makes two invalid framing assumptions, which lead to a misleading statement of the question being asked.
Mistake 1, science laws are not unbreakable "laws" they are ...
- 17.4k
3
votes
Are there examples of necessity other than logical necessity?
Well, take the claim that nothing travels faster than light. This is clearly physically necessary in the sense of being true in any possibility, where our actual laws of physics hold. But it is not ...
- 1,388
3
votes
Must an eternal object be uncaused?
Causality and time are so intertwined that they’re nearly synonymous.
Time is a frame which we construct in order to capture causality. If you remove causality, you remove time, and if you remove ...
- 143
3
votes
Would a first cause exist necessarily, so that absences are uncaused?
There are questions about whether the idea of a first cause is coherent or required. If the universe has always existed then it does not need and cannot have a first cause. Also if everything ...
- 36.1k
3
votes
Is every feature of the universe logically necessary?
There is a saying in physics that is called the totalitarian principle (of physics), which holds that anything not expressly forbidden is compulsory.
- 9,392
3
votes
Is every feature of the universe logically necessary?
The opposite of your presumption is the case. NO feature of our universe is necessary.
All the principles of logic we use, are discovered. There are infinite logics, different ones of which ...
- 17.4k
3
votes
Do contingent propositions about the world rely on the consistency of mathematics?
Not all those who assert contingent propositions believe that the consequence relation is classical (in relevant logic, for example, the consequence relation is paraconsistent, and so there's no proof ...
- 138
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