Olav’s blog has his first metaphysics lecture posted (college level students). Nice lecture, Olav. Do your students really understand it? I suppose you use that text as a guide and explain in more detail?
In section III you say that the laws of nature hold true always, but with Popper’s caveat (falsification). But Popper really isn’t strong enough here, is he? There’s a difference between the law of gravity being true until it’s proven false, and the law of gravity being true until the electromagnetic situation alters substantially enough for the law to alter. Laws are based on the state of the universe at any given time. Hubble is seeing so far back, that in those spaces gravity DOESN’T suck. But that doesn’t mean Newton is falsified, it means physical law evolves. Newton is fine, and plasma behaves radically differently–both are true. On the other side of 10 to the negative 42 seconds after the big bang, there’s no such thing as physical law as we know it.
I’ve read little Popper, but it seems to me he isn’t only guilty of the fallacy of misplaced concreteness, but also his thinking is dichotomous–to the point of a false dilemma (true until proven false rather than considering true or false contingent upon the nature of the prehensions at any particular time). Does that make sense?
Prehensively Yours, Aliman