# Do Laws Of Nature Exist?

I mean, this sounds strange, but I thought about pragmatism yesterday.
While I'm not a pragmatist, I think pragmatism is an interesting
and very useful way of thinking.

Pragmatism is basically a thinking that everything is determined
by its USES (or EFFECTS).

For example,
[Chair] = [What we use to sit].
[Bed] = [What we use to sleep].

The most important thing is that those are equals, not inclusions.
So if no one use a chair to sit, that's not actually a chair. And
if someone use a table to sleep, then that's also a bed too.

Similarily, A god exists if and only if there is a believer. The
god changes the believer's behaviors and the behaviors are real
(or PRACTICAL). So the god is a cause of real effects. Therefore
the god is real.

Similarily, a law of nature is real in this sense. It is a cause
of real effects.

Thus pragmatism is an idealism. Uses are ideas, not materials. This
gave me an insight, "We can't be practical with materials only".

So when I thought about materialism after that, I got a question
of "How can materialists accept laws of nature?". Since laws of
nature are not material, if they accept they would be dualists (who
accept both material and mental things).

After searching, I found that modern "materialism" accepts that
laws of nature exist in addition to matter, force, energy and even
the curvature of the time-space. Since calling it "materialism" no
more makes sense, they call it "naturalism" now. Or "Scientific
naturalism" lol.

But how about Santa Claus? He's not a natural being, but he makes
practical effects on behaviors of people.

Would they explain him as a result of mental activities which are
results of physical events, to explain it as physical events
affecting other physical events?

I don't know, this list (starting from laws of nature and Santa
Claus) will not end. How about structures? Do they exist? And this
seems very absurd like epicycles of geocentrism to me.

So long story short, I think if you are a materialist, you should
deny laws of nature. Only scientific laws which are just statistic
approximations would be "useful", since you can't say that those
"exist". And nature is not governed by any rules.

...Or you can rethink of your materialist position instead.