Re: Things we take for granted

From: Patrick Reany (reany_at_asu.edu)
Date: 08/08/04 

Date: 8 Aug 2004 08:46:40 -0700

daniel009@webtv.net (Daniel Weston) wrote in message news:<2798-411546C3-409@storefull-3136.bay.webtv.net>...
> Let us take a look at the mantra, "science is about theories that work".
> This turns out to be a helpful statement, but very shallow.

Of course it's shallow! I admitted the same in the very post your post
is in reply to! Entire books could be written on realism vs
instrumentalism and the like. How ya gonna fit an entire book into
half a dozen words? You're not! The rest of this post is proof
positive that I know how to expand upon the meaning of my epigram!

>
> THE BIG QUESTION THAT HAS NOT BEEN ADEQUATELY ADDRESSED IS ---FOR WHAT
> PURPOSE DO WE WANT THEORIES THAT WORK??

How about the question, Why do we want scientific theories at all?

>
> Imagine if you will Shangrala where most of the population spend their
> time performing experiments. Everybody gets a huge kick and a rush,
> every time they perform an experiment. They are especially happy when
> the experiment turned out exactly as some theory predicted. And they
> keep doing this ad infinitum. Nobody is interested in working out
> better statements about reality, just performing theories that work
> (i.e. come out as predicted)

OK, Mr. Pragmatist, what's the practical difference between "better
statements about reality" and "theories that work"? I can't imagine
why a realist would want only statments about reality, whatever that
is. I thought even realists wanted realist theories.

By the way, I don't believe that you're an instrumentalist. You care
too strongly to adhere to realist values of metaphysics and
epistemology.

> There is no law against performing the
> same experiment more than once, so many people keep performing the same
> experiment because they are assured that the experiment will turn out as
> predicted. In Shangrala doing experiments that came out as predicted,
> is an end in itself. What a sad state of affairs.

I never claimed that the goal of science is NOTHING BUT (only) the
search for theories that work. There is one objective standard for
comparison of theories that work equally well on the same domain of
applicability: logical economy. There are many subjective standards to
use to evaluate theories that works, one of which is unity, or
harmony, with the bigger picture in the field of the theory. Another
is beauty.

>
> Reany's "inventing theories that work" is superficial in that it does
> not address for what purpose we do that. I will tell you several
> reasons. The first is that, however hard the task, we as humans want to
> understand reality on a deeper level.

You divide understanding reality into "understanding deep reality" and
"understanding nondeep reality." Weston's model of understanding
reality:

  "understanding deep reality " + "understanding nondeep reality"

What is the divide between "deep understanding" and "nondeep
understanding"? What is the CAUSE of this divide? Is reductionism
implied in this philosophy?

> It is hard wired into our brain.
> Call it intuition if you wish. I call it a primordial urge. For
> example: The amount of money spent on astronomy through out the world is
> astronomical. (no pun) No one thinks that a better toilet will be made
> from studying massive black holes, or better cars will come from more
> exactly measuring the size of the universe, etc. Occasionally we do get
> a fall out practical benefit, but the motivation is not practical but
> primordial. This is often referred to as our spiritual side.
>
> This quest for "reality" more deeply understood, can be, and has, been
> taken to extreme.

Why do you put the word "reality" in quotes above. You were using, not
referencing, the word. Don't you really know what "reality" means?
You've used it for years as though you do!

How do you know which statements purporting to be true of reality are
actually true of reality? For examples, use the statements "The sky is
blue," "phlogiston is the cause of combustion," "The earth is flat,"
and "There is an electron in the neutral hydrogen atom."

> Theories proposed would be ignored unless it was
> thought that it gave us at least a tenuous insight into reality.

What does "insight into reality" mean? Give an example of a theory
that worked but was ignored because it didn't deliver your concept of
"insight into reality"? Is QM such a theory? Does a theory that uses a
continuous mass variable providing "insight into reality" even though
no one believes that mass is really continuous? It gets used!

Every theory that works is an *explanation* of why it works. That's
what theories are -- explanations. So ALL theories that work give
"insight into reality." Reality is a theory-laden concept.

> This
> led to extremes and generated the Instrumentalist movement.

Wrong. The origin of the instrumentalist movement was in the tiresome
burden that was perceived by the American pragmatist Peirce and Dewey
that people ask too many undecidable questions in science (actually,
in life, but we'll restrict our discussion to science), and that the
remedy of such a waste of time was to decide which questions are
instrumental for progress and which are not on the basis of the
practical difference that knowing the answer to the question makes.
Just do your own homework for a change. I already told you all this
stuff before.

> I am an
> instrumentalist to counteract endless arguments abut how we learn about
> reality, but Reany takes it to the extreme of a religious convert. As a
> result he has ignored "Why we want theories that work". Theories that
> work are to help us understand reality better and better.

Do you really consider yourself a pragmatist? Anyway, By what
declared, objective standard do you use to decide when understanding
inherent in theory B is "better" than understanding inherent in theory
A? What is "inherent understanding" anyway?

>
> Reality is not a dirty word, and working theories are not the all to end
> all. We must temper our enthusiasm with moderation. Patrick suffers
> from tunnel vision.

Patrick suffers from a hatred of terms used as though they are precise
when in fact they are not. All imprecise words are "dirty" in physics
in that regard. If you ever want the term "reality" to be precise for
your usage, YOU have to stipulate your precise meaning for it. THAT IS
ALL I'VE EVER ASKED FROM YOU. You can't just say, "Look it up in a
dictionary." Dictionaries provide multiple mutually contradictory
meanings. The ONLY way for the reader to disambiguate the meaning of
"reality" is for the user of the term to stipulate its meaning up
front.

How do you KNOW that hydrogen atoms really exist? Will Weston finally
answer this question, or will he simply ignore it once again? For
someone such as Weston, who is on the mission for "deeper
understanding," you'd think that he'd love the chance to tackle this
question sincerely. We'll see.

> Instrumentalism itself breaks down into numerous
> camps.

List them.

> He throws it around as if it has been defined with mathematical
> exactitude. He misuses
> the word Realist and Realism.

Prove it.

> Realism means many things and is in

Implicit in the context of the philosophy of science is the convention
that "realism" is a short form of "scientific realism." Look it up
yourself. Start with
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/scientific-realism/

Scientific Realism
It is easier to define scientific realism than it is to identify its
role as a distinctly philosophical doctrine. Scientific realists hold
that the characteristic product of successful scientific research is
knowledge of largely theory-independent phenomena and that such
knowledge is possible (indeed actual) even in those cases in which the
relevant phenomena are not, in any non-question-begging sense,
observable. According to scientific realists, for example, if you
obtain a good contemporary chemistry textbook you will have good
reason to believe (because the scientists whose work the book reports
had good scientific evidence for) the (approximate) truth of the
claims it contains about the existence and properties of atoms,
molecules, sub-atomic particles, energy levels, reaction mechanisms,
etc. Moreover, you have good reason to think that such phenomena have
the properties attributed to them in the textbook independently of our
theoretical conceptions in chemistry. Scientific realism is thus the
common sense (or common science) conception that, subject to a
recognition that scientific methods are fallible and that most
scientific knowledge is approximate, we are justified in accepting the
most secure findings of scientists "at face value."
 ------------------------------------------------------

http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/Scientific%20realism

Scientific realism is the view that the universe really is as science
describes it. It holds that the things of the universe such as
subatomic particles, microbes, stars, electromagnetic force and so
forth exist independently of observation or perception.

---------------------------------------------------------

Then do a Google search on this string "instrumentalism realism".

I'll put it to you this way, Weston. Do you believe that science
PROVES that atoms are real? Then, give a definition of what an atom
is.

> itself difficult to define giving due regard to all its branches. He
> does not use he word _real_ as a philosopher should. He has good points
> to make, but he rants and raves.

You make a lot of claims but give no proof or examples to butress your
endless rhetorical complaints.

Patrick

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