Some of the discussion on the “Edward Feser and Vincent Torley” thread seems to have drifted way off topic. So I’m starting a new thread for further discussion on realism.
I’ll just quote part of a recent comment by BruceS:
1. A complete description of the world is a scientific description (or has a large component that is a scientific description).
2. Science is in principle reducible to physics.
3. Physics requires mathematics.
4. Mathematics is “unreasonably effective” when used in physics, which is saying that somehow the world is describable by mathematical concepts.
5. The (parts of the) any two separate complete description of the world (eg by us and some alien species) in mathematical physics will hence involve the same (or at least mathematically equivalent) concepts.
I realize all of these statements are quite questionable, although I would have thought that #3, the need for mathematics in physics, would have been among the least questionable premises!
My own contribution to the thread will be in the comments.
For reference — HERE is a link to an earlier comment by walto that started the discussion of realism
I’m uncertain about this, mainly because the meanings of “science” and “scientific” are far from certain.
I doubt that there could ever be a complete description of the world. A description, as we normally use that term, is a finite instrument. Even if we are generous, it’s hard to see how it could go beyond being countably infinite. Yet, I’m inclined to believe that the complexity of the world is uncountably infinite so far beyond what could be in any description. Thus any description would be incomplete.
I doubt that. Some biologists assert that biology is not reducible to physics, and I think they are right about that.
Physics, as we currently practice it, requires mathematics. However, I’m not convinced that physics could not be done differently.
Mathematics is very effective, as used in physics. However, I do not see that effectiveness as unreasonable. The idea that it is unreasonable seems to come from a misunderstanding of the nature of science and the nature of mathematics.
Ah– REALISM. Still focused almost exclusively on metaphysics, I see.
Just for context: that comment was based on my quick read of Walt’s post about the nature of the concepts/terms in any complete description of the world (supposing such a thing is possible). I was not trying to justify some form or realism, only trying to be more explicit on what was was subconsciously motivating me to comment on Walt’s post.
In particular, I was trying to explain why I thought there might be limitations on the arbitrariness of concepts in a complete description due to mathematics and its use in physics.
My rough points were not about justifying realism. For the purpose of the argument, I was assuming scientific realism is true in the sense that it can provide a description of the world as it is.
And of course the “unreasonable effectiveness” is an allusion to Wigner’s paper, although I doubt I need to point that out to TSZ readers.
I don’t really think it is possible for humanity to create a “complete picture of the world”, even for the part of that description that is within the scope of science. But if some ultimate being could do that, then I do think (the scientific part of) the description would be written in mathematical physics.
“Realism,” much like “naturalism,” is a Big Word that means too many different things, and so has spawned numerous qualifiers, such as Putnam’s “metaphysical realism” and “internal realism” — and there’s “direct realism” in philosophy of perception, “moral realism” in metaethics, and so on. What we are going to be “realists” about, and on what basis, shifts from context to context.
That said, here’s the position I’m currently playing with —
I think that one could start off with a transcendental argument for minimal realism, as Ken Westphal and Sami Pihlstrom have shown, that yields the conclusion that we have the kind of conceptual and perceptual capacities and incapacities such that we are capable of (1) detecting regularities and irregularities; (2) intervening with regard to those regularities and irregularities, and (3) revising the conceptual frameworks on the basis of those interventions.
On that basis, we can justify a fallible yet corrigible direct realism about spatio-temporal particulars and a critical realism about perceptual objects. That applies across the board to all substantive judgments, i.e. judgments made in informal domains. (For formal judgments, only inferential considerations apply. In Brandomian terms, I’m a strong inferentialist about formal judgments and a weak inferentialist about substantive judgments.)
What is distinctive about science is that the disciplinary norms of science function as an iterated filter mechanism for removing judgments more likely to be false. We “triangulate” on objective reality at different levels — in conducting a single experiment or field observation, in discussing our theories with others, and in revising the theories of previous generations.
This gives science a privileged epistemic position with regard to empirical objective reality — the actual world. By contrast, logic alone tells us what must be the case in all possible worlds, or in none of them. (This is made a bit trickier by the fact that there’s more one logical system, so the class of “all possible worlds” varies in cardinality from logic to logic. Presumably the class of all possible worlds under paraconsistent logic is going to have a different cardinality than in classical logic.)
I still don’t know what this position implies for “metaphysical realism”.
Responding to Bruce’s comments on the Feser/Torley thread:
I think that KN and I agree on the meaning of reduction, but disagree on whether the theory-dependence of terms is problematic for reduction. It seems to me that translation and/or bridge laws are necessary for reduction whether or not the references are theory-dependent.
Walto’s issue concerns whether it is ever necessary to believe a theory (as opposed to merely being able to apply it) in order to understand its terms. I can’t think of any such cases, and walto hasn’t mentioned any.
I would say that 1b is not a reduction at all. Tossing out bad theories or concepts is not reduction, it’s rejection. 🙂
Walto’s issue concerns whether it is ever necessary to believe a theory (as opposed to merely being able to apply it) in order to understand its terms. I can’t think of any such cases, and walto hasn’t mentioned any.
I’ve mentioned the world of minds and chairs. (Several times, actually.) Can it be translated into Hopi? Into modern physics? It’s controversial.
walto,
How does “the world of minds and chairs” qualify as “a theory that one must believe (as opposed to merely being able to apply it) in order to understand its terms”?
Whatever there is need not only be this type of material universe.
The bible says there is more then this universe. Its at least a option there is more then this universe.
it seems if this universe was created by a thinking being then its like a machine. or a machine somewhat in contact with other parts of reality.
so the universe is a working machine and so its parts are like a machine we make. orderly. Math is just a minor case of how orderly everything is.
biology is orderly but far more complicated then mere physics.
What people smell about this IS that a orderly, mathy, universe is unlikely unless it was on purpose. So math hints at a thinking being.
They don’t like the creator idea and imagine chance but the order/math is counterintutive to this.
math is the friend to creationists and not the others.
I take it that to apply terms one must understand them. And according to some linguists and philosophers, that can only happen if one is “immersed” in that worldview. It’s a version of the Whorf-Sapir linguistic relativity thesis. And it makes intertranslation/reduction claims quite a challenge. For a book of readings on this stuff, see Rubel and Rosman (eds.) Translating Cultures: Perspectives on Translation and Anthropology. Oxford: Berg.
Again, I’m just describing a position held by a number of people here, not endorsing it myself. I criticize it in the paper I referred to above. But my not agreeing (and yours) doesn’t make it any less controversial.
As I understand it, there are only finitely many disintuigiushable quantum states, so there can only be a finite number of combinations. That’s how some physicists conclude there must be an infinite number of copies of each of us in an infinite universe.
But that is more of a side point to my main point.
My view is that the right way to think about a “complete description of the world” is not some list of all the emergent entities under some arbitrary conceptual scheme at some particular time, but rather a some general mechanism which determines how any such emergent phenomena come about.
I think the mathematics of physics is much more likely to be right type of mechanism than natural language or propositional logic. Today, the best candidate we have is quantum mechanics and decoherence.
Further, it seems reasonable to think that aspects of quantum mechanics like entanglement are not going to disappear from such a complete description and the only way we have of understanding them is mathematical physics.
That sentiment is behind my original concern with how Walt’s paper which addressed the idea of a “complete description of reality” but made arguments about what it could be in terms of counting objects or combining lists of conjunctions of propositions. Such ideas are not compatible with a quantum-mechanics informed view of the world.
Keith:
My impression is that Walt is referring to different philosophical ideas at different times in your exchanges with him. Here are some of them according to my understanding:
1. For some of the social sciences, there are philosophers who think that one cannot do that type of science properly without human empathy . I think some anthropologists might even believe something like that. There is one post where Walt mentions “experiencing” as part of believing and understanding which I’d interpret that way. I have not seen those ideas applied by anyone to physical sciences, however.
2. Incommensurability in the Kuhnian sense: terms are defined by how a theory uses them, so to properly to understand a theory, you need to (act as if you) believe it. Now if you combine this with the philosophical idea that all observations are theory laden, then you might conclude that the replacement of one theory by another is not something objective, since you have to decide which theory to use to interpret your observations. This sort of argument could be used to claim that one theory could NOT be replaced by another solely for objective reasons. This came up in the discussion of historical “reduction”, I think.
3. The manifest version of the world versus the scientific version of the world. Here the philosophical issue is about what science tells us about the reality of ordinary things (eg is a table really only some arrangement of atoms?).
4. Philosophy of language issue. Walt refers to Hopi in a post, and here I suspect he is alluding to concerns by some philosophers (Davidson and Quine?) about if it really possible to find an objective means to translate between languages. Or it might be about the idea that your concepts and thoughts are determined by the language you speak and people who speak different languages have a different conception of the world.
Two points from this spiel:
1. It is helpful to know which of the above, if any, Walt is using before responding.
2. These are all philosophical arguments, so saying that scientists don’t seem to be bothered by them is not enough, unless you add the premise that if it does not bother scientists, it should not bother philosophers.
Heh, I got one right in my reply to Keith! Any comment on the others in my reply?
I don’t understand this point, Bruce. Could you flesh it out for me? Thanks.
BruceS,
I think your 2, 3, and 4 are closely connected. I don’t think I could separate them entirely, anyhow. I don’t understand your 1, so I guess I wasn’t trying to express that one.
You would need time and space to be quantized, to remove the uncountable complexity problem.
The expression “complete description” seems to require specifics and not just generalities.
Someone just posted this 1999 Ray Monk homage to Wittgenstein on the Analytic (yahoo) list. I think it’s kind of relevant to our discussion.
Wittgenstein’s forgotten lesson
Wittgenstein’s philosophy is at odds with the scientism which dominates our times. Ray Monk explains why his thought is still relevant.
by Ray Monk / July 20, 1999
Prospect Magazine
http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/regulars/ray-monk-wittgenstein
I’ve mostly finished Horst’s Beyond Reduction, and it’s given me a lot to think about. It doesn’t seem to have gotten much critical attention in the literature and I don’t know why. Horst argues against realism in favor of what he calls “cognitive pluralism”: that we use a variety of domain-specific models of reality, and there’s no one-size-fits-all model (or meta-model). My favorite line (and there are many): “but what is a truth of reason except a way that we are constrained to think by our cognitive architecture or the models we happen to employ?” (p. 193).
I think that, in order to avoid sheer anti-realism (teetering on the brink of idealism), we do need a minimal realism — just enough realism to show that our models are constrained by something not constituted by the cognitive architecture or conceptual frameworks themselves. But I also think that the best candidate for such constraint is what Dennett (and Ladyman and Ross) call “real patterns,” and that our cognitive awareness of the necessity of there being real patterns can be established through a transcendental argument. I doubt that there’s any further, more demanding realism beyond that.
The iterated filter mechanisms built into the disciplinary norms of science (when those are functioning correctly and not utterly distorted by the logic of capitalist accumulation) are sufficient to explain why our most successful scientific theories bear on objective reality in ways that other language-games don’t, but that’s not enough to show that the other language-games are dispensable or even second-rate.
KN,
An OP on how the norms of science are “utterly distorted by the logic of capitalist accumulation” would generate some vigorous discussion, I’ll bet.
walto,
The question is whether that “immersion” requires genuine belief. In other words, is it ever necessary to genuinely believe a theory (as opposed to assuming it arguendo) in order to attempt a reduction of its terms?
I can’t think of a case where genuine belief is required. The one you offered — “the world of minds and chairs” — doesn’t qualify, as far as I can tell.
Generally speaking I like to be quiet about my commitment to democratic socialism and to the Frankfurt School of critical theory, and I see no reason to make a fuss out of it. My views are well-known to the regulars here and there’s not much point in discussing them. So please feel free to disregard my parenthetical remark.
Bruce,
You’re still not getting it. There is an important difference between genuinely believing something and merely acting as if you believe it or assuming it arguendo.
Again, the question that walto and I have been discussing is whether it is ever necessary to genuinely believe a theory in order to attempt a reduction of its terms.
I can’t think of any such cases. Can you?
Understand it, yes; accept it, no.
Keith:
There is incommensurability in our two attitudes to the discussion I suspect.
I’m still trying to puzzle out the nature of the philosophical issues Walt is raising.
I use his (and KN’s) posts as starting points to learning about different points of view. The level of detail in their posts here is usually not enough for me to have a enough understanding of the idea to discuss it intelligently with people who have studied it for a good part of their academic career.
So I try to have a bit more background before I make a comment. Of course, I usually get shot down (or ignored) by one of the experts anyway, but I usually learn something anyway.
Proving the ideas wrong is not that important to me in general, although if they contradict my worldview, I definitely feel uncomfortable with them.
In any event, I would not try to think of counter-examples to some idea which I was not sure I even understood.
“the world of minds and chairs” — doesn’t qualify, as far as I can tell.
I take it you know some people who are only pretending to believe in them when they sit down or describe their thoughts?
From Scott Aaronson’s latest blog entry (which is a fun read on its own), I learned of a recent conference of physicists/cosmologists talking about issues related to our exchange. The slides of the talks that I’ve looked at rapidly get too technical for me, but just reading the introductory slides on the problem they are addressing was interesting.
Ah, grasshopper, you have come to understand that not everything is obvious. Some there are, who do not see that some belief that they happen to have stumbled upon in the last five minutes might actually be controversial among people who’ve been thinking on, reading and writing about, and discussing for years. While some of us old goats always retain a suspicion that we don’t know what the hell we are talking about, I’ve noticed that others are quite sure they know everything, often just from skimming a paragraph on wikipedia or something.
As threats to science, I’d worry more about the bad science from bad statistics leading to false positives combined with the fact that disconfirmatory work is hard to publish.
I think big money, at least in US politics, is not so much about producing bad science as about rejection of good science in setting public policy, climate change being the obvious example. (In Canada we don’t have any big money doing that, instead we have a wrong-headed Prime Minister who censors scientists).
But not just big money distorts public policy in light of good science. GMO food politics is another example of good science being rejected through politics. (This New Yorker article on Vandana Shiva is worth reading.)
One way to read that is as a form of relativism about science. Is that what you meant?
But if you just mean there is other types of knowledge than scientific knowledge, then I’d have no quibbles with that.
BruceS,
Yes, good points about the interference from ‘big money’ at the point of translating good science into sound policy.
That is indeed what I meant. I’d probably prefer to call those other kinds of knowledge “understanding”, as distinct from “explanation” (scientific knowledge). So I would say that explanations bear on objective reality in ways that understanding doesn’t, but that hardly undermines the practical and existential significance of understanding. But if that seems opaque, then I’ll just stick with the idea that there are non-scientific kinds of knowledge.
Problem is, I don’t see how cognitive pluralism is compatible with naturalism. Naturalism purports to be a comprehensive description of the world — a metaphysics in the classical sense, and as such a rival to theism. Cognitive pluralism tells us that there isn’t any such thing as a single, comprehensive description of the world — there are only various different domain-specific strategies of representation. So cognitive pluralism is as anti-naturalistic as it is anti-theistic (conversely, as friendly to science as to religion).
If that line of thought is right, then I am inclined to abandon naturalism. Though I won’t change my handle — that would cause unnecessary confusion.
Well, olegt seems not to be hanging out here for now, so maybe I can get away with faking it on QM
1. On the concerns with counting objects: In QM, it is possible for entities to enter a state of entanglement (AKA non-locality). This means that you cannot talk about the separate properties of the entities when you conduct experiments involving all of them, you can only talk about the properties of the whole system. So I think any complete description of the world would have to account for that.. You could not think that you were always going to be to be fully account for entities as separate objects.
Now decoherence says that if you don’t have access to all of the entangled entities, then experiments you conduct will result in our normal, classical view of objects. So that is what we see for most of the time. But that would not be enough for a complete description of the world.
2. On propositional logic and quantum mechanics: see Wikipedia
This already came up in your thread on hidden variables and other interpretations where someone re-assured you that Putnam went too far when he said (at time t) that logic might be empirical. But I don’t think it changes the fact the classical propositional logic is limited for propositions about quantum reality.
ETA: I take KN to be saying any complete description of the world would be in terms of patterns and I think those the patterns would be the ones in the structure of the theory of QM (or at least that would be our best route to a complete description using current science).
The number 1 was prompted by something you said about needing to “experience” a theory to understand it. In reading of the history of reduction, logical positivists, and what prompted their approach, I found that in the early part of the 20th century some continental philosophers thought empathy was an important part of the scientific method for the social sciences.
So I thought by “experience” you were referring to that philosophical viewpoint on doing science.
Unfortunately, I cannot find where I read that, although there was some German word starting with “v” involved, if that helps.
Good to hear that you really consider the other ideas to be closely related. When reading all of the exchange, I thought that maybe some kind of game of philosophical wack-a-mole was going on.
But that cannot be the case if there is only one mole.
Well, it would not be much of a game, anyway.
I’m increasingly confused about where I want to hang my hat. I really need to take some time to work this out to my own satisfaction, let alone any one else’s. I still like the idea that we have access to real patterns, and that the patterns constrain how a cognitive model can be used. But I find myself wondering if “universal real pattern” makes as much sense as L&R assume — and if that goes bye-bye, then so does the epistemological priority of “fundamental physics”, whatever that physics turns out to be (whether it includes QM or some successor theory).
I can see their point that we have good reasons to believe that there are universal real patterns, but I’m suddenly unsure if we should believe that fundamental physics models universals real patterns. To accept that we should need to believe not only that there are universal real patterns, and not only that our kinds of minds are able to model limited-domain real patterns, but also that our kinds of minds are able to model the universal real patterns. Fundamental physics might be just as domain-specific as biology or economics. But then it can’t play the unifying role that L&R assign to it.
Perhaps you were remembering reading about Verstehen, the German word for “understanding”. For more, here’s “Empathy as the Unique Method of the Human Sciences“.
No need to thank me; I’ll put it on your tab.
Bruce,
Yes, you seem to be less comfortable about expressing disagreement and more intimidated by credentials and training than I am, particularly on philosophical issues.
I just try to make sure I understand the issue and have thought about it carefully before I comment. After years of practice, I find that I have a pretty good sense of when confidence is warranted and when it isn’t. Metacognition is a skill, and it can be sharpened. And if I make a mistake, no big deal — I’m sure that other commenters will be happy to point it out. I certainly won’t resent them for doing so.
Proving ideas wrong is a crucial part of converging to the truth.
Rather than simply feeling uncomfortable about them, I like to address the differences. Every genuine difference in views is an indication that at least one of the parties is wrong, and this provides an opportunity for learning — at least if the disputants are willing to discuss the disagreement and provide reasons for their respective positions.
Nor would I, but if you reread the threads carefully you’ll see that the assertions I was disputing were clear from the start. With KN it was the assertion that the theory-dependence of terms makes reduction problematic, and with walto it was the assertion that in some cases one must actually believe a theory in order to understand the terms well enough to reduce them.
I think those assertions are wrong, for reasons I’ve already given, but I’m open to reconsidering them if someone provides a good counterargument.
keiths:
walto:
The question is whether one must actually believe any particular theory about chairs or minds in order to attempt to reduce them. I think the answer is no. You need to understand how chairs and minds function within the theory, but you don’t need to believe the theory itself. An arguendo stance is sufficient.
…if you reread the threads carefully you’ll see that the assertions I was disputing were clear from the start. With KN it was the assertion that the theory-dependence of terms makes reduction problematic, and with walto it was the assertion that in some cases one must actually believe a theory in order to understand the terms well enough to reduce them.
Really? Are you sure I didn’t just say that some people believe that and that it’s controversial?
Oh, well if you’re sure, I must have said it, because, after all,
And, of course as we all know well, with keiths,
if [he] makes a mistake, no big deal
Admitting that he’s wrong is one of keiths’ favorite things, in fact! Everybody knows that!!
I was assuming a specific conception of “reduction”, where a reduction is a specification of how to translate the terms of one theory into the terms of another theory.
If theory A is committed to talking about {a, b, c . . . } and theory B is committed to talking about {x, y, z . . . }, then theory A is reduced to theory B if and only if there’s a translation manual from {a, b, c . . . } to {x, y, z . . .}. But if terms of theory-dependent, then there’s no guarantee that we’re “talking about the same thing” when we try to translate from theory A to theory B. That’s why the putative reduction is problematic.
That said, I’m not denying the possibility of other kinds of reduction that are immune to this worry.
No, that wasn’t my question. You obviously didn’t want to answer that question. So let’s take your question instead. How do you know you can understand chairs and propositional attitudes unless you believe in them? You keep asserting that you can, but what is this assertion based on? You apparently don’t know and have never known anybody who doesn’t believe in those thingies. You keep saying that Sapir-Whorf is false. I know their position is controversial, but why should anybody believe you rather than Sapir and Whorf? I mean, they actually studied this stuff a little.
Of course it’s problematic. It’s a well-known, nearly perennial issue.
I mean to everybody except keiths, whose got these metacog SKILLS.
keiths:
walto:
Yes, I’m sure. I wrote:
You replied:
Geez, walto. Either such cases exist, or they don’t. You can’t have it both ways.
I mentioned that people have held that. I guess you can’t grasp this difference even with those amazing metacog skills you’ve bragged about.
And incidentally, how do you know you can understand what chairs and thoughts are without believing in them? The world awaits the brilliancy of your response!
There are no real patterns, though of course that depends on what one means by “real”.
keiths:
KN:
Yes, and I was using that same conception.
Agreed.
There’s no guarantee that we’re “talking about the same thing” even if the terms aren’t theory-dependent. A reduction can be foiled by further discoveries, just as a theory can, but this vulnerability is a consequence of the fact that a translation between terms is occurring, whether or not those terms are theory-dependent.
walto,
Contradicting yourself is not a formula for success in debate.
I wrote:
You disagreed, claiming that you had mentioned such a case:
If you claim to have mentioned such a case, it means you believe that such a case exists. To turn around and deny that belief is silly.
OMG Such skills!
BTW, if terms aren’t theory dependent, then a term from theory 1 can be defined by stipulations of new terms in theory 2 in such a way that there cannot be translation problems.
But of course, that must have been obvious to you, even though you wrote
“There’s no guarantee that we’re “talking about the same thing” even if the terms aren’t theory-dependent.”
(which says the opposite)
And, of course no one (not even those with your impressive self-proclaimed meta cog skills) should be expected to understand stuff like the following, especially when it’s repeated over and over by people who know how much you enjoy admitting when you’re wrong (I like to give you that experience since it’s not just easy for you, it’s also pleasurable, because it exhibits your constant search for the truth.) You no doubt forgot that I had just written this:
Again, I’m just describing a position held by a number of people here, not endorsing it myself. I criticize it in the paper I referred to above. But my not agreeing (and yours) doesn’t make it any less controversial.
I must say it’s always a pleasure dealing with someone so quick to admit his own errors and so self-deprecating about his own skills.
So many fine qualities in one place!!!
I’ll have to think about this. I think I’m still not grokking the implications of QM for the stuff I wrote. I certainly wasn’t trying to make any presuppositions about how science will “ultimately turn out.” I was just trying to describe ways to compare theories as to “ultimateness”–not suggest anything about what an ultimate theory might say. But maybe something I wrote does that by mistake. Totally possible.
So thanks. If you have any further thoughts on this stuff that you think might clarify the issue further more me, please send them along.
BTW, keiths, instead of repeating pointless irrelevancies that, as we both know, only SEEM to SORT OF support your position on something of only very MINOR INTEREST which is ABOUT ME and not any issues, why will you not answer this question that is actually relevant to this thread:
How do you know you can understand [terms for] chairs and propositional attitudes [without believing] in [those items]? You keep asserting that you can, but what is this assertion based on? You apparently don’t know and have never known anybody who doesn’t believe in those thingies. You keep saying that Sapir-Whorf is false. I know their position is controversial, but why should anybody believe you rather than Sapir and Whorf? I mean, they actually studied this stuff a little.
Do you really think it’s more informative for anyone for you to try to intentionally mislead by linking that same “I’ve mentioned the world of minds and chairs. (Several times, actually.)” several more times?
If so, here:
“I’ve mentioned the world of minds and chairs. (Several times, actually.)
I’ve mentioned the world of minds and chairs. (Several times, actually.)
I’ve mentioned the world of minds and chairs. (Several times, actually.)”
Now can you answer my substantive question?
walto,
You’re not handling this very well. Why not consider some alternative approaches?
Seems eminently not-opaque! And I can see that one can make a distinction between raw data – whatever we can perceive, observe, detect of the reality within which we are trapped – and what we can interpret, infer, extrapolate from it. Knowledge and understanding. I question whether it is possible to have understanding without any knowledge.
On the contrary, I think Walt is being very patient with you. What would you like to achieve in these exchanges?