Sometimes very active discussions about peripheral issues overwhelm a thread, so this is a permanent home for those conversations.
I’ve opened a new “Sandbox” thread as a post as the new “ignore commenter” plug-in only works on threads started as posts.
Whilst you sre not the only person to note the odd zeal of keiths in attempting to be the last man standing in any discussion, technically, suggesting Aspergers or the like challenges the rule on addressing the comment and not its author.
I mean, on the one hand, if true, we should manage a bit of tolerance, and if not, well, what’s the excuse?
Alan, to Flint:
I hold positions that I think are true, and I stop holding them (or never hold them in the first place) if I think they are false. If being “the last man standing” means not abandoning a position that I continue to believe is correct, then sure — why would I abandon it? It would be weird and dishonest to pretend that my belief is false if I don’t actually think that’s the case.
I’m not going to pretend that I’m wrong in order to mollify Flint, nor should I. He’s wrong on this issue, as evidenced by the fact that he can’t refute the argument I’ve made. The one he he has refused to address, literally for months.
For the record, I don’t object at all to Flint’s little digs (or yours, for that matter). I think they make the discussion more entertaining for readers, and for me, too. Plus, it isn’t like they hit their target. They simply backfire.
Flint is pretty entertaining when he’s riled up, and if that means tolerating some overheated rhetoric from him, then so be it. The entertainment is worth the price.
Are you entertained? I know you keep saying so.
Alan:
Definitely! Flint makes me laugh. That doesn’t mean that I’m not also disappointed in his stubbornness and slow progress. Entertainment and disappointment are not mutually exclusive.
The entertainment (among other things) offsets the disappointment to a certain degree, making it easier to continue the discussion than it otherwise might be.
keiths:
Neil:
First, the isomorphism we’re talking about is between structures within two mathematical models — the alien civilization’s and ours. It’s perfectly appropriate to speak of an isomorphism between the two.
Second, the fact that models are human-invented abstractions hardly means that they can’t model anything outside of themselves. I mean, the whole point is to model some aspects of reality.
Some models work better than others, and for a model to work well means far more than mere internal consistency. The model must deliver results that comport with observations of external reality. If I measure the length of an object repeatedly and get wildly inconsistent results, then I know that there’s something wrong with my measurement method, or my model, or both. In that case my measurements aren’t capturing the aspect of external reality that I’m after.
If my measurements are repeatable, consistent, and conform to the predictions of my model, then I have reason to believe that I am capturing a stable aspect of external reality. The fact that object A is 5.2 cm long while object B is 7.4 cm long isn’t built into my model. What is built in is the idea that solid objects typically don’t fluctuate wildly in length over short periods of time. So if I measure the length of object A repeatedly, getting consistent results in the ballpark of 5.2 cm, and the length of object B repeatedly, getting consistent results in the neighborhood of 7.4 cm, then I have reason to believe that my measurements are capturing some stable aspect of external reality. The numbers aren’t random, and they aren’t built into the model. They have to be coming, ultimately, from the external world. Where else could they be coming from?
Neil:
keiths:
Neil:
Then please try to make your point clearer. There is something called ‘distance’ in our model, and the nature of our model leads us to believe that the yardstick method and the subtended angle method will yield equal distance measurements (within the margin of error). Sure enough, they do yield equal results.
Likewise, there is something called ‘temperature’ in our model, and the nature of our model leads us to believe that the infrared method and the mercury column method of temperature measurement will yield equal temperatures (within the margin of error). Sure enough, they do yield equal results.
Why do you consider the two ways of measuring distance to be incommensurable if the two ways of measuring temperature are not incommensurable?
keiths:
Neil:
Have you ever watched octopuses in action? If not, I’d suggest watching My Octopus Teacher. Besides being informative, it’s quite moving.
In the unlikely event that they don’t perceive distance, I would make the same argument as I did regarding the alien civilization:
Neil:
I am trying to understand it. If your message isn’t getting across, perhaps you could rephrase it, or add more detail, or otherwise improve it.
You’re free to stamp your feet, take your ball, and go home, of course, but why not stick it out? See if you can defend your position, and if you can’t, then try modifying it. One of the benefits of internet discussions is that others may spot problems in your reasoning that you yourself are overlooking. If your position can’t survive scrutiny, then it may need adjustments (or even an overhaul). Finding that out is beneficial.
No and your entertainment and disappointment don’t necessarily coincide with other’s take on whatever this discussion is or if anything useful finally emerges and the entertainment and disappointment that may or may not be derived from it.
I do wonder what criteria you employ in ascertaining the rightness, wrongness, and usefulness of your comments. They zing way above my head, obviously.
Anyway, real life calls. À bientôt.
Alan:
Of course! Some may find this discussion entertaining, or interesting, or educational, or useful, and others may not. We’re all different. My hope is that anyone who isn’t getting anything out of the discussion will simply skip over it. Life is too short. Why spend time on an internet discussion if it isn’t benefitting you in any way?
The same criteria that I employ when evaluating the comments of others. Are they consistent? Is the logic valid? Do they conflict with observation? Are they written clearly? Are they relevant? …and many others.
But they don’t yield equal results. That’s what makes them incommensurable.
If the earth were a perfect sphere, they would yield equal results. But the earth is not a perfect sphere, so any conversion between the two measures will be location dependent.
Neil:
If differing results are all that’s required, then the two temperature-measuring methods also qualify as incommensurable by your standards.
The temperature-measuring methods operate on different principles: the mercury thermometer is based on the principle of thermal expansion, while the infrared thermometer is based on the principle of blackbody radiation. This means that the two methods will diverge.
Take the infrared thermometer. The amount of infrared radiation emitted by an object increases as the temperature increases. You point the thermometer at the object whose temperature you want to know. The thermometer focuses the infrared radiation on a sensor, which detects its intensity, and the thermometer infers the temperature of the object from the radiation intensity.
The problem is that two objects at the same temperature won’t necessarily emit the same amount of infrared radiation, and they won’t necessarily reflect the same amount of infrared radiation either. That can throw the measurement off.
Consider a highly reflective object that is located close to an infrared source. The thermometer is looking at the total amount of IR coming from the object, but it can’t distinguish IR that is being emitted from IR that is being reflected. The reflected IR is emitted by the nearby source, not by the object itself, so a temperature inference based on the total IR intensity will produce a reading that is too high.
Unequal results imply incommensurability, according to you, so the two temperature-measuring methods qualify as incommensurable. Earlier you wrote:
Applying the same logic to temperature would then argue against the idea that temperature comes from nature. You’ve placed yourself in the awkward position of suggesting that neither distance nor temperature comes from nature.
In fact, your logic suggests that any characteristic that is measured using two or more methods, where the results can differ, doesn’t actually come from nature. Are you sure you want to go there?
What are the characteristics that do come from nature, by your criteria?
I’m ending my participation in this particular “discussion”. I have no interest in playing Calvin Ball.
If I’m understanding him right, he’s saying that all characteristics that humans characterize come from human conceptions, perceptions, aggregating and sorting, etc. In other words, we dream these categories up because doing so is how we think, so it works for us. Whether any of them are “actually natural” isn’t a question we can answer. We can say “I think, therefore I am” but perhaps we can’t say “I think about X, therefore X exists.” About things external to us, we live in a world of mutual human subjective agreement. Our concepts of dimension, of time, of temperature, force and energy, are all mental maps and models, while any underlying territory is something else.
Flint,
That’s a pretty fair summary. Thanks.
Behind a lot of somewhat fruitless discussions are fundamental philosophical differences. Neil’s position is quite different from a perspective that nature exists and our minds can accurately describe it. Given those differences, agreements on these measurement issues is unlikely.
That’s about right.
I don’t expect keiths to agree with me. But he should at least be attempting to understand my point of view — but he isn’t doing that.
Neil:
keiths:
Neil:
Neil, I disagreed with something you wrote and explained why, in detail. That’s playing Calvinball, in your view?
Why do you post your ideas here if you aren’t willing for them to be discussed and yes, possibly criticized? That’s what TSZ is about.
Flint,
That’s a good description of Neil’s general position, but he and I had gone deeper and were discussing some implications of his views.
I’m fine with the idea that our models might differ from the underlying reality they are intended to represent. In fact, I’m certain that they differ, because scientific progress consists in noticing where our models clash with reality and then adjusting the models (sometimes radically) in order to better conform to that reality.
The question is this: how much of the structure we see in nature is imposed by our model upon reality, vs being present in reality as refracted through the lens of our model?
To recap, Neil asked:
I responded:
In other words, I accept that it is at least possible that the concept we call ‘length’ (or more generally, ‘distance’) might be absent from an alien civilization’s model, but I maintain that there must be something analogous to it in that model. I further maintain that there is something objective about external reality that stands behind our concept of ‘length’ (or ‘distance’) and the alien civilization’s analogous concept. When I measure the length of an object, the answer is not dictated by the model itself. It is dictated by reality as refracted through the lens of the model.
Neil contends that our concept of length/distance cannot be anchored to reality in that way. He reasons thus:
In response to questions about why he considered them to be incommensurable, he wrote:
His overall claim, therefore, is that if we have two methods of measuring a characteristic C that yield differing results, this indicates that C is not backed by some aspect(s) of external reality. It’s imposed by the model.
I find that position untenable, because it’s a commonplace that different measuring techniques yield different results, and distance is not the only characteristic for which that is true. I mentioned temperature measurements, giving the example of mercury thermometers vs infrared thermometers. Those are based on different principles and therefore give different results, meaning that by Neil’s criteria they are incommensurable and are therefore artifacts of the model and not a reflection of something out there in external reality.
He disagrees, having said earlier that
It’s clear that by Neil’s stated criteria, the temperature-measuring methods are incommensurable, so his position is inconsistent. I’m interested in seeing whether he can come up with other criteria for deciding whether measurements of a characteristic C ultimately “come from nature.”
Hopefully he’ll recover from his miniature “Calvinball” meltdown and return to the discussion with improved criteria in hand.
Keiths writes, “The question is this: how much of the structure we see in nature is imposed by our model upon reality, vs being present in reality as refracted through the lens of our model?”
That’s a nice big question, well-stated.
aleta:
That’s absolutely true. But it’s also possible to have fruitful discussions despite fundamental philosophical differences. For example, you can evaluate whether someone’s position is internally consistent even if you don’t agree with the premises it is based upon. Also, by assuming the person’s premises arguendo and drawing out the implications, you sometimes find that the implications (by being absurd, for example) cast doubt on the premises from which they stem.
The goal of discussion isn’t necessarily to reach agreement, though it’s nice when that happens. There’s also a benefit in determining precisely where the disagreement originates, even if the disagreement remains unresolved.
I agree with all that, keith.
You are not even trying to understand what I am saying.
I welcome thoughtful discussion. But you are not doing that. You are just declaring that I am wrong, without even trying to understand what I am actually saying and why I am saying it.
Agreed. But you have not been doing that.
Keith writes, “There’s also a benefit in determining precisely where the disagreement originates.”
Yes, that is a good major goal of productive discussion. I’ll repeat that sometimes the origin of a disagreement goes back to very fundamental philosophical differences.
aleta:
Yep. No question about it.
I don’t think that was his point. Yes, you described two different ways of measuring temperature. And yes, these produce different results. But you seemed to imply that these different results mapped to one another in a one-to-one way, so that the result from either could be converted meaningfully to the other. And I understood your point to be that there IS, in reality, a measurable temperature that both methods are measuring.
But Neil’s example emphasized that the two ways of measuring distance he described could NOT be mapped to one another. One method produced a given distance regardless of where the measurement took place, and the other produced a distance that varied with location, producing different lengths depending on where the measuring was done. A yardstick, no matter how reproducible its results, simply cannot do this.
So which, if either, is the “real” distance? Is there any such thing as the “real” distance at all?
This reminded me of something Stephen J. Gould wrote: that while everything that exists can be measured, it’s not necessarily the case that everything that can be measured exists! The history of science includes a variety of things that were carefully measured, but which turned out not to exist.
Neil,
No objective reader could look at my comments and conclude that I’m not trying to understand your position. That’s ridiculous.
I’ve seen this pattern of behavior from you before. You’re simply looking for an excuse not to respond to my criticism, and you think that “You’re not even trying to understand me!” gives you that excuse.
It won’t work. First, I clearly am trying to understand you, and my comments demonstrate that. Second, even if I weren’t trying to understand you, there’s no reason you couldn’t respond as follows:
Neil:
If you want to lob false accusations at me, then fine, lob away. You’re not fooling anyone. But I challenge you to respond in a similar way to what I’ve outlined above. Do it for the readers who are trying to follow your arguments.
Flint:
Yes, in the sense that we can calibrate our measurement methods against each other and against nature itself, so that mercury thermometers and infrared thermometers will give the same answers (within some margin of difference) when applied to the same object.
For example, you want both methods to indicate something very close to 32° F when applied to a container of ice water under normal conditions, and you want them to indicate something very close to 212° F when this is done with boiling water.
Once your methods and instruments are properly calibrated, then yes, temperatures measured using one method are interchangeable with those measured using another (assuming you’ve taken measurement error into account). The goal is to be able to say of an object that “its temperature is 56° F” without having to specify how the measurement was obtained.
Calibration and compensation can work up to a point, but differences will inevitably remain. That’s what I was getting at in my description of how an IR thermometer can be thrown off by the reflectivity of an object’s surface or its proximity to an IR source — a radiant heater, for instance. The fact that such differences remain doesn’t mean that the IR thermometer and mercury thermometer aren’t both measuring temperature. It just means that the error can vary depending on the circumstances and the chosen measurement method.
Or, at the very least, that there is something in external reality that maps onto the thing we call ‘temperature’ in our model. The crucial point is that the measurement result is not wholly dictated by the model itself. External reality has a say, and when we determine that objects A and B differ in temperature, we can conclude that something in external reality is responsible for the difference. The difference is not dictated by the model itself.
If all you’re trying to say is that measurements can produce different results depending on circumstances, then of course I agree, but that’s just as true of temperature measurements as it is of distance measurements. The subtended-angle method can be thrown off by deviations from sphericity on the earth’s surface, and the infrared thermometer can be thrown off by variations in reflectivity and by the proximity of IR sources.
I still don’t understand why Neil’s criterion for incommensurability doesn’t apply just as well to temperature measurements as it does to distance measurements. After all, they both satisfy his requirement:
Are you referring to this comment?
Because Elizabeth set TSZ up with these words:
There are plenty of blogs and forums where people with like priors can hang out and scoff at those who do not share them. There’s nothing wrong with those sites, and I’ve learned a lot from them. But the idea here is to provide a venue where people with very different priors can come to discover what common ground we share; what misunderstandings of other views we hold; and, having cleared away the straw men, find out where our real differences lie. In my experience, when you reach that point, who is right becomes obvious to both parties.
Picking up on temperature and what is being measured and what models, methods and scales are useful, I see there is a suggestion to adopt “hotness” as a description of thermodynamic temperature. Unfortunately, as anyone can find on searching, the word is already taken.
Yes, Alan, that was the statement of keith’s I was agreeing with.
Sorry, no, I’m not buying that.
Flint is understanding my position better than you are. And he tried to explain that to you. You refused to accept his attempted explanation.
It is quite clear that you are not attempting to understand me.
I’ve withdrawn from the “discussion” because it is just a waste of both of our times.
I despair of trying to explain. It’s NOT that they produce different results, it’s that the two methods can never be compatible. You simply can’t take a measurement using a yardstick, and from there convert to a subtended angle measurement. You don’t have enough information to do that. You can’t simply assume that the technique you are using is the only one that maps to reality.
Was it aleta who talked about the philosophy that there is a single, objective reality that science is attempting to measure and describe, coming closer with each advance? As opposed to an intersubjective agreement among people, forever hostage to the next conceptual framework that gets adopted. You seem to be taking the position that any alteration of intersubjective framework is adopted because it better approximates the objective underlying reality. But the idea of an objective underlying reality is an article of faith. A faith not everyone follows.
Oddly enough some folks here are taking as an article of faith that there is an underlying objective variation in the shape of the earth that makes the two kinds of mile incommensurable.
Neil:
Take a look at what I wrote to Flint:
How does that amount to ‘refusing to accept his attempted explanation’?
It’s quite clear that for you, someone who is trying to understand you, but disagrees with you, is not trying to understand you.
I’m obviously trying to understand you, which is why I keep asking you about your criterion for incommensurability. You wrote:
I am trying to understand why, in your view, the temperature-measuring methods I’ve described are not incommensurable, when they satisfy the criterion for incommensurability that you have explicitly laid out.
You know, it’s perfectly fine to amend your statement. If you recognize that your statement is incorrect, and that there need to be additional criteria, you can say so. There’s absolutely no shame in that. You can modify your position as problems are brought to your attention, and in fact, that’s the right thing to do. So let me ask you directly: In your view, does the inequality of results make two measurement methods incommensurable, as you’ve stated, or do additional criteria need to be met?
Your interpretation of the word ‘incommensurable’ is absolutely central to this discussion, because as you have said:
I ‘m asking you to explain your view, Neil. I’m trying to understand it. I’m asking questions about it. It’s dishonest of you to pretend otherwise.
The fact that I have disagreed with you does not mean that I’m not trying to understand you.
If so, nobody has said that.
Flint:
OK. But let’s be clear that you are now stating your own view, not Neil’s. You are disagreeing with his statement:
Which is perfectly fine, of course. You aren’t obligated to agree with him. I just want to point out that we are now talking about your views, not his.
Sure you can. Those methods are both designed to measure distance, so it’s trivial to do the conversion. In fact, no conversion is needed at all. 500 yards is just 500 yards. It’s an expression of distance, and it stands on its own. There’s an error associated with every measurement, and the magnitude of the error can differ depending on the measurement method you choose, obviously, but that doesn’t mean that the methods aren’t measuring the same thing.
It’s true that subtended-angle measurements can be thrown off by local variations in the sphericity of the earth, but it’s also true that yardstick measurements can be thrown off by factors such as differences in thermal expansion due to local variations in temperature. In both cases we are using a method to approximate the true length, and in both cases the method is subject to measurement error.
Exactly. Someone who claims that mercury thermometers “map to reality”, while infrared thermometers don’t, is mistaken. Likewise, someone who claims that yardstick measurements “map to reality”, while subtended-angle measurements don’t, is also mistaken.
It isn’t merely an article of faith, not by a long shot, and I’ve been explaining that throughout the discussion. (And by the way, Neil accepts the existence of external reality.)
Most recently I wrote:
My model does not include the length of every scrap of wood in the world. Suppose I pick up a scrap and measure its length to be 6.4 inches, and repeated measurements give the same answer (within the margin of error) — including measurements made using different methods.
Where did the “6.4 inches” come from? It didn’t come from my model, because my model doesn’t specify the length of every wood scrap in the world. It isn’t random, because I’m getting consistent results. Where else could it be coming from, ultimately, if not from the external world?
Flint writes, “Was it aleta who talked about the philosophy that there is a single, objective reality that science is attempting to measure and describe, coming closer with each advance? As opposed to an intersubjective agreement among people, forever hostage to the next conceptual framework that gets adopted.”
I didn’t mention science, and certainly didn’t say “hostage” so I think you’ve read a lot into what you remember, or perhaps are remembering someone else
All I wrote was, “Behind a lot of somewhat fruitless discussions are fundamental philosophical differences. Neil’s position is quite different from a perspective that nature exists and our minds can accurately describe it.”
He is expressing my view.
Oh, shit. You are a bloody literalist. You might as well be a YEC creationist. Literalism is bullshit.
I made that statement based on your wording. I guess I should have pointed out that your wording, taken literally, was bullshit.
This is just wrong.
If keiths states that he is trying to understand you, then site rules require that we take him at his word. When keiths states that he is obviously trying to understand you, then site rules require that we accept that he genuinely believes this.
He’s wrong, of course.
About nautical miles and, ironically, about temperature too.
I can’t recall an instance where keiths successfully read back an argument that he disagreed with. It’s rehearsing, filtering, advising, and phoodooesque mangling all the way.
I’m always a little loopy when I come out of the dryer.
Neil:
Please explain why, upon reading your statement…
…I should have concluded “Neil does not think that that’s what makes them incommensurable.” In other words, why should I have assumed that you did not mean what you wrote? I’m interested in hearing your explanation, and I’ll bet the readers are too.
The irony here is that you have been (falsely) accusing me of not trying to understand your position, when in fact I am trying to understand you and I’m proceeding in the only way available to me: by reading what you write.
In effect, you are complaining “I didn’t mean what I wrote! Don’t pay attention to what I write! You’re a literalist!”
Take responsibility, Neil. You wrote what you wrote. If your statement is incorrect, then say so and offer a revised version. I’m trying to understand what qualifies two measurement methods as incommensurable, in your view.
keiths:
Neil:
Why is it wrong? Please explain.
Oh, wait. I just asked yet another question that is designed to help me understand your position. But that’s not possible, because as you keep saying, I’m not trying to understand your position.
OK, everyone. When you see me asking a question of Neil, I am not asking a question of Neil. Don’t be literalists.
Lol.
Let’s have a discussion, Neil. A good start would be for you to present a revised statement of your criteria for incommensurability. Next you could explain why I am wrong to claim that both methods, the subtended-angle method and the yardstick method, are designed to measure distance.
I think someone said the earth is not a perfect sphere.
Jock:
I have never invoked the site rules in order to force you to believe what I say. You are free to disbelieve me, you are free to say so, and you are free to explain why.
Excellent! We disagree. This could form the basis for further discussion and debate. Let’s discuss and debate!
I don’t believe you. Are you going to invoke the rules and complain about that?
I was attempting to describe Neil’s position, and Neil has agreed that I did so successfully. But certainly I am disagreeing with your careful misunderstanding of his statement. I didn’t need to remove all the context to force his statement to fit my convictions.
Forum rules require that I regard this frustrating exercise at totally missing the point as a good faith effort to understand, even though it is a straightforward restatement of exactly what Neil and I are trying to correct! We are saying that distance is a conceptual model. You keep insisting that yards are yards are yards, forever and always, because they are measuring the one true distance!! Exactly what we are saying simply ain’t so.
Maybe here we’re getting somewhere. The two methods are measuring different things, and CALLING each of them “distance”. I pointed out that there is not, and can not be, a one-to-one mapping, so no conversion is possible. And you keep saying “of course they are the same thing, so conversion is trivial!” This is NOT an attempt to understand a different viewpoint, this is simply repetition of the same error ad nauseum. You might try asking yourself WHY conversion is not possible, rather than insisting that it is.
And here you go again. You seem utterly unable to grasp that we have two different concepts of distance. This is NOT measurement error. Subtended angle measurements are not “thrown off”, as though they are producing measurement error! Each method can be applied absolutely perfectly, and produce mutually inconsistent results because one method relies on the location where the measurement is taken and the other does not. You need not know where you are to measure with your yardstick. You MUST know where you are to use the subtended angle method. Look, imagine you wander around the globe taking distance measurements with your yardstick. So you get 500 yards in every location. Using the subtended angle method, you get a RANGE of distances, no two alike. Don’t forget that I’m assuming no measurement errors at all.
Sigh. They both map to different notions of reality. You still can’t grasp the idea that IF there is an objective underlying reality, we cannot know it. If you believe there must be such a thing, that’s faith. Now, we can agree beforehand, because we have a mutual intersubjective agreement, that a specific measuring technique works for our purposes. In our example here, either method works, we just have to be both using the same method. But our agreement to use the same method does NOT mean there is an objective reality we’re measuring.
I’m reminded of a grad school discussion about achieving the “greatest good for the greatest number”., and what that might be.
And after a lot of discussion, some heated, I think we all came to understand that
1) If we ever blundered onto that happy situation, we’d have no way to recognize it
2) Also, that “the greatest good for the greatest number” is necessarily suboptimal for everyone! That means that every single person in the polity could easily name a few dozen changes that would make them better off individually. Which leads to:
3) “The greatest good for the greatest number” is an inherently unstable condition. Stability comes from the greatest good to those in the position of power to make self-serving changes. Democracies are inherently unstable, and nearly everywhere they’re tried, they quickly devolve to authoritarian rule (though the dictators change from time to time, the dictatorship itself is a stable form of government).
4) Therefore, the US is not a democracy, but rather a form of authoritarian rule encrusted with beneficent exceptions. The rise of Trumpism is an indicator that the weight of those exceptions is becoming untenable.
It’s a disquieting thought.
If you cannot know it, how do you know it’s different.
Nautical miles differed by two meters going north/south vs traversing the equator. Before the the unit was standardized.
But how could you describe the difference without reference to some objective reality?
petrushka writes, “IF there is an objective underlying reality, we cannot know it.”
This is one philosophical position. Given all that we have learned about how the world is different than how it appears, all the way down to the world of quantum events, I think this position is probably true. I think, even more so, that we can’t know whether what underlies the world we can and do know can be properly described as objective or reality.
P.S. I have no idea how this point relates to the measurement question, which lost me long ago.
But, on the other hand, to be flippant, so what? The only world we can know is, surprise, the world we can know, so for all practical purposes that is the world we should take as objectively real even if philosophically we know that most like there is more that we can’t know.
This is not so much as matter of faith that the world we experience is “really” there as it is a practical decision to treat it as such: it’s the only world we can know, and we can know a lot about it, so let’s treat it as real and go on about the business of living in it as it appears to be
I can’t parse this question. If you use two incompatible methods of measurement and get two different results, then your options are: both are wrong, one is wrong and the other right, or both are right. Which one do you choose, and why?
But you HAVE no reference to an objective reality. You have the three options I just presented. Seems keiths not only assumes that there is an objective reality, that there must be one, that it is knowable, and that it is the ultimate reference against which everything is measured.
These are different from each other. IF there is an objective reality out there beyond our senses, but not beyond our concepts, we only have reference to our concepts. Our concepts are not reality. They are maps, and maps to a territory which must forever remain hypothetical.
Actually, I wrote that.
And this also repeats what I wrote above, that there is an agreed mutual intersubjective agreement about the concepts we use, the measurement techniques we use, the model of an objective reality we agree on whether it can be said to “exist” or not. And we accept this agreement because it works, until we run into a situation where it doesn’t work, and we have to re-conceptualize. And in some cases, like between quantum and classical mechanics, we know we cannot reconcile these very well, so we work with the one that seems most practical at the scale under consideration. My reading is that there is an expectation that these two WILL be reconciled, because the “one true underlying reality” will be arbiter of any dispute. But we might have a long wait…
Flint adds, ” IF there is an objective reality out there beyond our senses, but not beyond our concepts, we only have reference to our concepts.”
A certain large class of our concepts are about the reality we can experience. Any “concepts” we might have about any reality beyond the reality we experience are unverifiable and ungrounded speculations. We also have concepts that are purely abstract, such as math, but we have found, and verified, that using those concepts as part of our conceptual understanding of the reality we experience works.
Flint’s comment doesn’t make sense to me, or I disagree with it. As I said above, I don’t think we can have any valid, verifiable concepts beyond the world that our senses bring us.
Sorry, Flint. I’m still getting confused about the author of a post and the person quoted.