[FRIAM] When are telic attributions appropriate in physical descriptions?

[Santafe]

btw, rather than always complaining, I should have noted that I think Nick’s analysis below is very much on-point:

> On Aug 7, 2024, at 8:12, Nicholas Thompson <thompnickson2 at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Yes.  Because the verb require is intenSional and takes a proposition as its object.  Thus, if you graph the sentence, it really goes "Physical Law requires [that momentum be conserved]"   Who is physical law to do that?
> 
> I would say that in saying it that way you have introduced a category error.  Physical laws don't compel obedience.  they are themselves the overarching sum of such obedience. 
> 
> Why not simply, "Everywhere momentum is conserved and that fact constitutes a law that governs our behavior if we want to successfully manipulate the world."   If we choose to manipulate the world successfully, the facts require us to expect that momentum will in all cases be conserved.   The compulsion is from facts to us, rather than from the law to the facts.
> 
> Are there important exceptions to my belief that laws have no causal properties?  That we are not in need of such an hypothesis?

The one place my earlier post was meant to address this is that I don’t mind having the word “cause”, and there is in fact quite a lot that can be said about its glossing through history and within the sciences.  But it is possible to say in structural terms (the structure of some empirical account) what work one wants the word “cause” to do in referring to classes of structures. 

Eric