What is real?
gibbs
the claim that unobservable things, like electrons, actually exist, like
chairs, rivers, and people, even though they cannot be directly observed.
Instrumentalism (or scientific antirealism), on the other hand, disagrees.
The electron, from this POV, is a useful fiction - useful to explain natural
phenomena or to make scientific predictions.
What do you think? Where do you come down in this debate? Are electrons,
quarks, or neutrinos real objects or aren't they?
Daniel T.
All scientists who study these ultra small particles act as if they are
real despite their personal beliefs. So why bother believing they are
not real?
--
There are two things that simply cannot be doubted, logic and perception.
Doubt those, and you no longer have anyone to discuss your doubts with,
nor any ability to discuss them.
Suzana
We can't call them "real' if we can't observe them.
I see it sort of like coherentism vs correspondence.
Electrons, neutrons, quarks...seem to be part of a coherent theory. Do
they correspond to reality? I guess we will know when technology
improves to the point when we will be able to make a devise that will
enable us to see them.
Suzana
tg
What does 'seeing them' mean? How is seeing different from any other
instrumentation?
When you look through a microscope, is the light that hits your eye
'the same' light as was reflected from the object?
-tg
> Suzana
Milan
"gibbs" <gib...@fakedemailaddress.edu> wrote in message
news:l_udneYiIdW0rYzY...@comcast.com...
I used to lean towards an instrumentalist position (I'd prefer to call it
logical positivist) until I read Hacking's "Representing and Intervening".
Hacking (perhaps the only philosopher of science who seems to actually
understand what science is about) emphasizes the importance of the
"intervening" part in our view of scientific entities, ie, he makes the
crucial point that our view of nature has to be informed not only by the way
we represent it, but also by the way in which we use scientific concepts as
instruments to alter nature. Hacking actually goes to laboratories (a first
among philosophers of science) and learns about an experiment to obtain
evidence for fractional electric charges characteristic of quarks. The
experiment involved altering the charge on balls of niobium cooled to very
low temperatures. Hacking asked the guy how the charge on the niobium ball
was changed. The scientist's answer was: "Well at that stage we spray it
with positrons to increase the charge, or with electrons to decrease the
charge." Hacking comments in his book: "From that day forth I've been a
scientific realist. So far as I'm concerned, if you can spray them then they
are real." I tend to agree.
regards
Milan
andy-k
Sir Frederick
There are several different kinds of "realness".
See : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reality
Is a tree in a painting "real" to the human figures in the same painting?
To the painter? To the viewers?
We seem to be manifest here in this situation in some kind of
hyper-painting. The situation is beyond our comprehension.
Thus we tell stories. Thus "reality" for us, becomes a story attribute.
We tell different stories on the same tale. Pick and choose.
Otherwise we don't know. We even produce religions on these
conundrums.
Is there some kind of a higher dimensional "god" around that
knows more. Probably. But that's another story.
Daniel T.
If we were all blind, then nothing would exist?
Immortalist
Seems like one of the group of theories that best explain what we can
experience.
Coherence theory: "An empirical belief is realatively true if and only
if it coheres with a system of other beliefs, which together form a
comprehensive account of reality."
Stephen J. Gould, the Harvard Paleontologist, offers this definition:
In science, "fact" can only mean "confirmed to such a degree that it
would be perverse to withhold provisional assent."
Succesfully Competitive Inductive Cogency; Depends upon the evidential
and conceptual ("context") of reasoning. An inductive argument from
evidence to hypothesis is inductively cogent if and only if the
hypothesis is that hypothesis which, of all the competing hypothesis,
has the greatest probability of being true on the basis of the
evidence. Thus, whether it is reasonable to accept a hypothesis as
true, if the statements of evidence are true, is determined by whether
that hypothesis is the most probable, on the evidence, of all those
with which it competes.
So even if we accept the nature of sensory data we are left with the
nature of "emperical beliefs" and how they are to be justified. But you
would have us skip over and accept by fiat the impartial nature of our
beliefs, tramplling underfoot what is the most exciting part of all
philosophy, though the hardest to state clearly.
-----------------------------------
Philosophical Problems and Arguments: An Introduction
by James W. Cornman, Keith Lehrer, George Sotiros Pappas
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0872201244/
The Coherence Theory of Truth: A coherence theory of truth states that
the truth of any (true) proposition consists in its coherence with some
specified set of propositions.
The Correspondence Theory of Truth: Narrowly speaking, the
correspondence theory of truth is the view that truth is correspondence
to a fact. But the label is usually applied much more broadly to any
view explicitly embracing the idea that truth consists in a relation to
reality, i.e., that truth is a relational property involving a
characteristic relation to some portion of reality.
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/truth-coherence/
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/truth-correspondence/
The coherence theory differs from the correspondence theory of truth in
two essential respects. The competing theories give conflicting
accounts of the relation between propositions and their truth
conditions.
1. According to one, the relation is coherence
2. According to the other, it is correspondence
The two theories also give conflicting accounts of truth conditions.
According to the coherence theory, the truth conditions of propositions
consist in other propositions. The correspondence theory, in contrast,
states that the truth conditions of propositions are not (in general)
propositions, but rather objective features of the world. (Even the
correspondence theorist holds that propositions about propositions have
propositions as their truth conditions.)
-----------------------------------
Gotta work with what we got.
jim_ha...@yahoo.com
Read Einstein's papers about The Photoelectric Effect and Brownian
motion. This pretty much ended the debate about whether atoms exist -
and by their extension Electrons.
The issue is whether there is a Quantum reality.
Jimmy Boy
gibbs
"tg" <tgde...@earthlink.net> wrote in message
news:1158757834.2...@b28g2000cwb.googlegroups.com...
>
> Suzana wrote:
>> We can't call them "real' if we can't observe them.
>>
>> I see it sort of like coherentism vs correspondence.
>> Electrons, neutrons, quarks...seem to be part of a coherent theory. Do
>> they correspond to reality? I guess we will know when technology
>> improves to the point when we will be able to make a devise that will
>> enable us to see them.
> What does 'seeing them' mean? How is seeing different from any other
> instrumentation?
>
> When you look through a microscope, is the light that hits your eye
> 'the same' light as was reflected from the object?
Why shouldn't it be?
gibbs
"Suzana" <suz...@hwcn.org> wrote in message
news:1158757536.5...@i3g2000cwc.googlegroups.com...
Suppose we can never observe them but our theories keep working and nothing
proves them not to be real (no other theoretical entities are thought of
that work better). Can we conclude they are real in that case. Or how
about if we "observe" things indirectly. In the case of particles we might
find evidence in of subatomic particles in cloud chambers. Wouldn't real
entities leave traces?
gibbs
"Daniel T." <dani...@earthlink.net> wrote in message
news:daniel_t-341265...@news.west.earthlink.net...
> "gibbs" <gib...@fakedemailaddress.edu> wrote:
>
>> Scientific realism, as the term is used in the philosophy of science,
>> makes
>> the claim that unobservable things, like electrons, actually exist, like
>> chairs, rivers, and people, even though they cannot be directly observed.
>> Instrumentalism (or scientific antirealism), on the other hand,
>> disagrees.
>> The electron, from this POV, is a useful fiction - useful to explain
>> natural
>> phenomena or to make scientific predictions.
>>
>> What do you think? Where do you come down in this debate? Are
>> electrons,
>> quarks, or neutrinos real objects or aren't they?
>
> All scientists who study these ultra small particles act as if they are
> real despite their personal beliefs. So why bother believing they are
> not real?
Many scientists once believed that phlogiston existed, but scientists no
longer believe that. And the history of science is filled with similar
beliefs that have been abandoned. So the question remains: on what basis
can we claim them to be real if we can't observe them?
gibbs
>> We can't call them "real' if we can't observe them.
>>
>> I see it sort of like coherentism vs correspondence. Electrons,
>> neutrons, quarks...seem to be part of a coherent theory. Do they
>> correspond to reality? I guess we will know when technology improves
>> to the point when we will be able to make a devise that will enable
>> us to see them.
>
> If we were all blind, then nothing would exist?
If we had no senses at all we certainly would have no basis for claiming
anything exists. Of course, we probably wouldn't exist either in that case.
But there is a real point here. The anti-realists don't make any fuss over
things that we can see, like trees, cars, planets, etc. Things that are
observable. They take issue with theoretical constructions like neutrinos.
I think most anti-realists would take the position that we can never really
know that electrons exist and are negatively charged, even though the
theoretical constructions are useful and help us make explanations and
predictions.
gibbs
"Milan" <mtk...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:4ncuquF...@individual.net...
> I used to lean towards an instrumentalist position (I'd prefer to call it
> logical positivist) until I read Hacking's "Representing and Intervening".
> Hacking (perhaps the only philosopher of science who seems to actually
> understand what science is about) emphasizes the importance of the
> "intervening" part in our view of scientific entities, ie, he makes the
> crucial point that our view of nature has to be informed not only by the
> way we represent it, but also by the way in which we use scientific
> concepts as instruments to alter nature. Hacking actually goes to
> laboratories (a first among philosophers of science) and learns about an
> experiment to obtain evidence for fractional electric charges
> characteristic of quarks. The experiment involved altering the charge on
> balls of niobium cooled to very low temperatures. Hacking asked the guy
> how the charge on the niobium ball was changed. The scientist's answer
> was: "Well at that stage we spray it with positrons to increase the
> charge, or with electrons to decrease the charge." Hacking comments in his
> book: "From that day forth I've been a scientific realist. So far as I'm
> concerned, if you can spray them then they are real." I tend to agree.
I would agree to and this is certainly a common sense view. But it sounds
like Hack sidesteps the issue instead of addressing it because he is
basically saying if it works it must be real. The anti-realist can ask Hack
what he would think if we're went into a lab in the 18th century and the
scientist told him he was spraying phlogisticated air on a flame to make a
bigger flame. Hack, by the same reasoning, would have concluded that he was
a scientific realist for the same reason.
gibbs
"Sir Frederick" <mmcn...@fuzzysys.com> wrote in message
news:suj2h2h6us23kh1um...@4ax.com...
Oh, I agree, but I was specifically talking about what is called "scientific
realism". This is distinguished from other forms of realism. Just as the
universe that I describe is the same one that Hobbes described, only a
little smaller. ;-)
Roger Johansson
gibbs wrote:
> > was: "Well at that stage we spray it with positrons to increase the
> > charge, or with electrons to decrease the charge." Hacking comments in his
> > book: "From that day forth I've been a scientific realist. So far as I'm
> > concerned, if you can spray them then they are real." I tend to agree.
> I would agree to and this is certainly a common sense view.
"Common sense" can be dangerous if people believe things without
considering their own preconceptions and subjective assumptions and how
these factors affect the result of their thinking.
> But it sounds
> like Hack sidesteps the issue instead of addressing it because he is
> basically saying if it works it must be real. The anti-realist can ask Hack
> what he would think if we're went into a lab in the 18th century and the
> scientist told him he was spraying phlogisticated air on a flame to make a
> bigger flame. Hack, by the same reasoning, would have concluded that he was
> a scientific realist for the same reason.
One rule of thumb we can remember is what Einstein expressed as:
Explain it as simply as possible, but not simpler.
When we have a set of data we know how reliable these data are, but we
cannot be sure of how we interpret the data.
So we can say that the data is probably very close to reality, but our
interpretations of the data can be heavily influenced by our own
preconceptions.
For example, if 50% of all people in a country say that they believe in
God we can safely assume that 50% of the population are saying that
they believe in God, because that is the data we have collected.
But we cannot safely assume that they actually believe in God, because
many of them can have lied. We only know what they say they believe,
but we do not know what they actually believe in.
As a social scientist you have to reason like a policeman who is
investigating what has happened. He cannot simply assume that everybody
are telling the truth.
--
Roger J.
JethroUK©
because it's made of photons - which you might not beleive exists :o)
Daniel T.
> "Daniel T." <dani...@earthlink.net> wrote:
>>> We can't call them "real' if we can't observe them.
>>>
>>> I see it sort of like coherentism vs correspondence. Electrons,
>>> neutrons, quarks...seem to be part of a coherent theory. Do they
>>> correspond to reality? I guess we will know when technology
>>> improves to the point when we will be able to make a devise that
>>> will enable us to see them.
>>
>> If we were all blind, then nothing would exist?
>
> If we had no senses at all we certainly would have no basis for
> claiming anything exists. Of course, we probably wouldn't exist
> either in that case. But there is a real point here. The
> anti-realists don't make any fuss over things that we can see, like
> trees, cars, planets, etc. Things that are observable.
Well, let's seriously look at what is, and is not observable. Is Pluto
"observable"? How about paramecium? Or the galaxies depicted in the
picture at this website
(http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/newsdesk/archive/releases/1996/01/)?
Microwave radiation I guess is also not real, we can't observe that.
Gravity isn't real, nor is air (but air pollution is real.)
Wordsmith
I guess the light would be a few nanoseconds older.
W : )
Wordsmith
Photons, in a sense, don't exist; they are massless.
W : )
mikeg...@xtra.co.nz
Roger Johansson wrote:
> "Common sense"
Commone sense means, senses are in agreement, you told me that
agreement was the means to man's knowedge, check your premise.
> can be dangerous if people believe things without
> considering their own preconceptions and subjective assumptions
FFS which would make what they believe even more dangerous.
Subjective means imagined, and yet reality is not imagined reality is
identified objectively by man via the process of reason, man's
knowledge is contextual and hierarchical, man adds to his knowledge,
other words for subjective, include bullshitted, whimsical, feelings
totally unrelated to sensory evidence, subjective means not real, cant
be sensed.
Lawyers do not ask for subjective evidence for a good reason but Roger
wont talk to his lawyer about that.
The rational man totally ignores and laughs at ANY and all things
claimed as subjectively determined, especially Roger's claims as
subjective being, the means to man's knowledge.
> and how
> these factors affect the result of their thinking.
Thats the job of non-contradictory identification and integration,
*logic* you should have a crack at it, especially in your idea that
agreement and common sense are somehow not related.
>
> When we have a set of data we know how reliable these data are, but we
> cannot be sure of how we interpret the data.
Especially you cant be sure how to explain how one should interpret
that stupid fucking nonsense.
> So we can say that the data is probably very close to reality,
God you're an absolute twit Roger, reality has no contradictions, what
is real is real, therefore in reality MAN can ONLY identify that which
exists without any contradictions existing in his theory to what his
senses perceive, that process can be 100% accurate and can happen as
instant as a reflex, or can take years.
e.g. Roger could not survive in space outside of his space craft
without wearing a special space suit, we can now claim that as 100%
certain knowldege even though it probably took man many years to
determine.
> but our
> interpretations of the data can be heavily influenced by our own
> preconceptions.
Especially when Kantian Russellian Poppereens Zenoers drongo people
like you ignore the purpose of logic.
> For example, if 50% of all people in a country say that they believe in
> God we can safely assume that 50% of the population are saying that
> they believe in God,
Oh my god how fucking profound, christolmighty when will he stop?
> because that is the data we have collected.
wow
> But we cannot safely assume that they actually believe in God, because
> many of them can have lied. We only know what they say they believe,
> but we do not know what they actually believe in.
What a twit, they believe in a nonsense founded upon nonsense, they
have feelings about feelings, no different to your idea that agreement
does not mean having common sense.
> As a social scientist you have to reason like a policeman who is
> investigating what has happened. He cannot simply assume that everybody
> are telling the truth.
Oh gawd this will be good, define truth as you have used it in that
statement.
Michael Gordge
gibbs
"Roger Johansson" <roge...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:1158782302.6...@i42g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
True for the social scientists, but I don't the physicist has quite the same
problem!
gibbs
"Wordsmith" <word...@rocketmail.com> wrote in message
news:1158786726....@m7g2000cwm.googlegroups.com...
Is having mass the prerequisite for existing?
gibbs
> "gibbs" <gib...@fakedemailaddress.edu> wrote:
>> "Daniel T." <dani...@earthlink.net> wrote:
>
>>>> We can't call them "real' if we can't observe them.
>>>>
>>>> I see it sort of like coherentism vs correspondence. Electrons,
>>>> neutrons, quarks...seem to be part of a coherent theory. Do they
>>>> correspond to reality? I guess we will know when technology
>>>> improves to the point when we will be able to make a devise that
>>>> will enable us to see them.
>>>
>>> If we were all blind, then nothing would exist?
>>
>> If we had no senses at all we certainly would have no basis for
>> claiming anything exists. Of course, we probably wouldn't exist
>> either in that case. But there is a real point here. The
>> anti-realists don't make any fuss over things that we can see, like
>> trees, cars, planets, etc. Things that are observable.
>
> Well, let's seriously look at what is, and is not observable. Is Pluto
> "observable"? How about paramecium? Or the galaxies depicted in the
> picture at this website
> (http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/newsdesk/archive/releases/1996/01/)?
>
> Microwave radiation I guess is also not real, we can't observe that.
> Gravity isn't real, nor is air (but air pollution is real.)
Nice picture. The anti-realist would probably accept that as something
observable, even though sophisticated equipment was used obtain it. What
the AR calls fictions are those things that are truly unobservable. No
doubt there are borderline cases. But strings? Quarks? Pi-mesons?
I certainly have confidence in the position of the scientific realist. But
do we really know whether our theoretical constructions of unobservable are
how reality really is if we can't see it.
jim_ha...@yahoo.com
Do we even know what mass is? They are still searching of the
gravitron. However, photons do exist. We know they exist because of
the photoelectric effect. Also, photons are not the only particle
that is massless.
Jimmy Boy
Roger Johansson
gibbs wrote:
> > As a social scientist you have to reason like a policeman who is
> > investigating what has happened. He cannot simply assume that everybody
> > are telling the truth.
> True for the social scientists, but I don't the physicist has quite the same
> problem!
The physicist has more problems with his own and other scientists's
preconceptions, but lies and deception has happened in the field of
science too.
In the field of social science there is a big problem with religion,
which is based on social secrets, a taboo against speaking about such
things in clear language, which causes the use of symbolism, and
misunderstandings of symbolism.
A lot of undefined terms like God, spiritual life, manly honor, the
holy spirit, the eternal love, angels who dance on pinheads, etc..
>From the historical stories about gods we know that gods have many
human qualities, they can be angry and hateful, they can feel
revengeful and have jealousy.
This suggests that gods are some kind of humans, but with supernatural
powers, some kind of superhumans.
Do we know something about how ordinary humans can be transformed into
some kind of superhumans?
Well, we know that boys had to go through some kind of initiation
process to become men, a process which involved extreme states of mind,
and a female god who blew spiritual life into the created man. (From
the greek mythology)
To create superhumans it sounds like violence is needed, or bullying,
and specially trained women who are strong enough to blow spiritual
life into the superhuman who has become hardened.
There are a lot of secret processes going on in the social field.
A lot of young girls live in very stressed situations, for example.
--
Roger J.
Daniel T.
>>> Scientific realism, as the term is used in the philosophy of
>>> science, makes the claim that unobservable things, like electrons,
>>> actually exist, like chairs, rivers, and people, even though they
>>> cannot be directly observed. Instrumentalism (or scientific
>>> antirealism), on the other hand, disagrees. The electron, from
>>> this POV, is a useful fiction - useful to explain natural
>>> phenomena or to make scientific predictions.
>>>
>>> What do you think? Where do you come down in this debate? Are
>>> electrons, quarks, or neutrinos real objects or aren't they?
>>
>> All scientists who study these ultra small particles act as if they
>> are real despite their personal beliefs. So why bother believing
>> they are not real?
>
> Many scientists once believed that phlogiston existed, but
> scientists no longer believe that. And the history of science is
> filled with similar beliefs that have been abandoned.
Sometimes scientists change their minds once they get more
information... This is a non-sequiter.
> So the question remains: on what basis can we claim them to be real
> if we can't observe them?
Ask the blind man.
gibbs
<jim_ha...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:1158793003.5...@m7g2000cwm.googlegroups.com...
> Do we even know what mass is? They are still searching of the
> gravitron. However, photons do exist. We know they exist because of
> the photoelectric effect. Also, photons are not the only particle
> that is massless.
The anti-realist would say that we don't know that photons exist because we
don't have perceptual experience of photons. We have evidence that points
to the existence of such objects, but the reality of their existence can
never be known: they will always be theoretical.
gibbs
> Sometimes scientists change their minds once they get more
> information... This is a non-sequiter.
Exactly... and that's the anti-realist's point. Since electrons or
neutrinos are never observed we never know that there really are such
things. Contemporary instrumentalists don't deny that such an entity might
exist, but we can't claim that it exists like we can claim that cats,
people, or fossils exist. More information might come along and electrons
and neurtinos will get tossed like phlogiston. The reason is that these are
theoretical, but not real entities, just as phlogiston was a theoretical
substance. Theoretical substances can be tossed, real entities can't. But
we can't know if electrons and neurtinos are real entities.
Brian Fletcher
"JethroUK©" <re...@the.board> wrote in message
news:SChQg.34151$WV2....@newsfe2-gui.ntli.net...
Dear Liza, Dear Liza ?
BOfL
Brian Fletcher
> "Suzana" <suz...@hwcn.org> wrote:
>> gibbs wrote:
>
>>> Scientific realism, as the term is used in the philosophy of
>>> science, makes the claim that unobservable things, like electrons,
>>> actually exist, like chairs, rivers, and people, even though they
>>> cannot be directly observed. Instrumentalism (or scientific
>>> antirealism), on the other hand, disagrees. The electron, from
>>> this POV, is a useful fiction - useful to explain natural phenomena
>>> or to make scientific predictions.
>>>
>>> What do you think? Where do you come down in this debate? Are
>>> electrons, quarks, or neutrinos real objects or aren't they?
>>
>> We can't call them "real' if we can't observe them.
>>
>> I see it sort of like coherentism vs correspondence. Electrons,
>> neutrons, quarks...seem to be part of a coherent theory. Do they
>> correspond to reality? I guess we will know when technology improves
>> to the point when we will be able to make a devise that will enable
>> us to see them.
>
> If we were all blind, then nothing would exist?
Tell that to those who have yet to experience metaphysical phenomena.
BOfL
Roger Johansson
Daniel T. wrote:
> Sometimes scientists change their minds once they get more
> information... This is a non-sequiter.
They seldom change their minds about measured data, but often about the
theories used to explain the data.
When Newton realized that apples fell towards the center of earth he
wrote down his data, like the fact that apples accelerate with 9.81
m/seconds squared towards the center of earth.
Then he invented a theory about invisible forces which influenced the
apples, a force he called gravitation, to explain why apples behaved
like that when dropped.
Hundreds of years later Einstein used a theoretical model called the
curvature of space to explain the movement of masses which replaced the
gravitation forces Newton had invented.
For a lot of practical purposes we still use the Newtonian model but
Einstein's model is said to have more power in a more general view of
the universe.
--
Roger J.
Brian Fletcher
Just adds more credence to the statement "know thyself..and know the secret
of the universe"
Phenomenal advances in scientific methodology over millennia, changes
nothing regarding "understanding".
BOfL
Suzana
tg wrote:
> Suzana wrote:
> > gibbs wrote:
> > > Scientific realism, as the term is used in the philosophy of science, makes
> > > the claim that unobservable things, like electrons, actually exist, like
> > > chairs, rivers, and people, even though they cannot be directly observed.
> > > Instrumentalism (or scientific antirealism), on the other hand, disagrees.
> > > The electron, from this POV, is a useful fiction - useful to explain natural
> > > phenomena or to make scientific predictions.
> > >
> > > What do you think? Where do you come down in this debate? Are electrons,
> > > quarks, or neutrinos real objects or aren't they?
> >
> >
> > I see it sort of like coherentism vs correspondence.
> > Electrons, neutrons, quarks...seem to be part of a coherent theory. Do
> > they correspond to reality? I guess we will know when technology
> > improves to the point when we will be able to make a devise that will
> > enable us to see them.
>
>
> instrumentation?
Are you saying that we can see neutrons and electrons..etc?
...or detect them?
>
> When you look through a microscope, is the light that hits your eye
> 'the same' light as was reflected from the object?
>
> -tg
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> > Suzana
Milan
Good point. But the issue is slightly different, I think. Phlogiston didnt
pass a number of tests so it was abandoned. The hypothesis "phlogiston" was
refuted. In the case of electrons we have an "entity" that has passed all
the tests. The world behaves as if there are electrons (whereas the world
didnt behave as if there was phlogiston). So the issue is, are electrons a
nice fantasy that fits our equations or are they real entities. Once you get
to this point the idea that if you can manipulate them (by spraying them)
they must be real seems to be rather convincing, because sprayability is
something we regard as a property of objects, and not of fictional variables
in equations.
regards
Milan
Daniel T.
But electrons, and quarks (at least, I don't know much about strings or
pi-mesons so I can talk about them) are observable given sufficiently
sophisticated equipment and a sufficiently broad definition of
observable.
> I certainly have confidence in the position of the scientific
> realist. But do we really know whether our theoretical
> constructions of unobservable are how reality really is if we can't
> see it.
Again, it doesn't matter. If we act as if they are real and the results
we obtain don't contradict that assumption, then why claim that they
aren't "really" real?
Daniel T.
>> information... This is a non-sequiter.
>
If you agree with the above, why continue with the chain of reasoning?
Stay on point. If you have every indication that something is real, why
would you persist on claiming it isn't "really" real?
You've never observed me (and likely never will,) are you going to
insist that I'm not "really" real as well? In which case, why talk to me
at all?
Daniel T.
> "Daniel T." <dani...@earthlink.net> wrote in message
>> If we were all blind, then nothing would exist?
>
> Tell that to those who have yet to experience metaphysical phenomena.
Whole different can of worms there.
Daniel T.
> tg wrote:
>> What does 'seeing them' mean? How is seeing different from any
>> other instrumentation?
>
> Are you saying that we can see neutrons and electrons..etc? ...or
> detect them?
You probably detect electrons on a regular basis. See
(http://home.howstuffworks.com/tv3.htm)
gibbs
> Good point. But the issue is slightly different, I think. Phlogiston didnt
> pass a number of tests so it was abandoned. The hypothesis "phlogiston"
> was refuted. In the case of electrons we have an "entity" that has passed
> all the tests. The world behaves as if there are electrons (whereas the
> world didnt behave as if there was phlogiston). So the issue is, are
> electrons a nice fantasy that fits our equations or are they real
> entities. Once you get to this point the idea that if you can manipulate
> them (by spraying them) they must be real seems to be rather convincing,
> because sprayability is something we regard as a property of objects, and
> not of fictional variables in equations.
Oh, I agree that there are good grounds for believing electrons to exist.
But there have also been a history of other empirically successful theories
that were eventually supplanted by other theories. While they held sway
they were thought to have captured the real truth. Phlogiston theory held
sway for a while until it was rejected. So we still end up claiming that
electrons are real because of empirical success. That's reasonable, as far
as it goes, but it hasn't answered the anti-realist's scepticism that
theoretical entities as electrons can be said to really exist. And the
problem is trickier for inherently unobservable entities.
Daniel T.
> <jim_ha...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>> Do we even know what mass is? They are still searching of the
>> gravitron. However, photons do exist. We know they exist because of
>> the photoelectric effect. Also, photons are not the only particle
>> that is massless.
>
> The anti-realist would say that we don't know that photons exist
> because we don't have perceptual experience of photons. We have
> evidence that points to the existence of such objects, but the
> reality of their existence can never be known: they will always be
> theoretical.
Using that reasoning, all of us are theoretical too. Why bother
communicating with us?
gibbs
> If you agree with the above, why continue with the chain of reasoning?
> Stay on point. If you have every indication that something is real, why
> would you persist on claiming it isn't "really" real?
>
> You've never observed me (and likely never will,) are you going to
> insist that I'm not "really" real as well? In which case, why talk to me
> at all?
That's different. You're observable and objects that are not a problem for
scientific anti-realists. Of course, this might all be wrong. I could
postulate a theoretical entity, a person called "Daniel T.", from the
evidence available to me, but it could turn out that you were really a very
sophisticated computer program.
Anti-realism is a serious position in the philosophy of science and while
there are good positions to take against it, there is no knock-down
argument.
gibbs
> "Suzana" <suz...@hwcn.org> wrote:
>> tg wrote:
>
>>> What does 'seeing them' mean? How is seeing different from any
>>> other instrumentation?
>>
>> Are you saying that we can see neutrons and electrons..etc? ...or
>> detect them?
>
> You probably detect electrons on a regular basis. See
> (http://home.howstuffworks.com/tv3.htm)
Detection isn't the same thing as observation.
gibbs
>> Nice picture. The anti-realist would probably accept that as
>> something observable, even though sophisticated equipment was used
>> obtain it. What the AR calls fictions are those things that are
>> truly unobservable. No doubt there are borderline cases. But
>> strings? Quarks? Pi-mesons?
>
> But electrons, and quarks (at least, I don't know much about strings or
> pi-mesons so I can talk about them) are observable given sufficiently
> sophisticated equipment and a sufficiently broad definition of
> observable.
We have evidence and can detect their existence, but none of these things
has ever been observed. It would be like never having seen a jet fly and
then seeing vapor trails in the sky. You can't claim you have observed a
jet because you have only observed vapor trails.
>> I certainly have confidence in the position of the scientific
>> realist. But do we really know whether our theoretical
>> constructions of unobservable are how reality really is if we can't
>> see it.
>
> Again, it doesn't matter. If we act as if they are real and the results
> we obtain don't contradict that assumption, then why claim that they
> aren't "really" real?
Well, that's what instrumentalists (scientific anti-realists) claim. They
are saying that move from theoretical construct to claim that it is a real
thing is a move you can't make. And it can't be made because we just don't
know without directly observing these entities.
Daniel T.
>> If you agree with the above, why continue with the chain of
>> reasoning? Stay on point. If you have every indication that
>> something is real, why would you persist on claiming it isn't
>> "really" real?
>>
>> You've never observed me (and likely never will,) are you going to
>> insist that I'm not "really" real as well? In which case, why talk
>> to me at all?
>
> That's different. You're observable and objects that are not a
> problem for scientific anti-realists.
Am I observable?
> Of course, this might all be wrong. I could postulate a theoretical
> entity, a person called "Daniel T.", from the evidence available to
> me, but it could turn out that you were really a very sophisticated
> computer program.
It might all be wrong... The entire universe may not "really" exist, it
could turn out that even what you observe is "really" a very
sophisticated computer program. You are now left with nothing.
> Anti-realism is a serious position in the philosophy of science and
> while there are good positions to take against it, there is no
> knock-down argument.
There is a knock-down argument. Anti-realists' own actions deny their
claim.
gibbs
>> Anti-realism is a serious position in the philosophy of science and
>> while there are good positions to take against it, there is no
>> knock-down argument.
>
> There is a knock-down argument. Anti-realists' own actions deny their
> claim.
What actions are those? Bear in mind, scientific anti-realists, aka
instrumentalists, have no problem with what science claims to exists in the
observable world. The agnosticism is over the theoretical construction of
unobservable entities that science, in particular physics, claim to be real
entities. As far as the observable world goes, most scientific
anti-realists are realists.
Daniel T.
>>> Nice picture. The anti-realist would probably accept that as
>>> something observable, even though sophisticated equipment was used
>>> obtain it. What the AR calls fictions are those things that are
>>> truly unobservable. No doubt there are borderline cases. But
>>> strings? Quarks? Pi-mesons?
>>
>> But electrons, and quarks (at least, I don't know much about
>> strings or pi-mesons so I can talk about them) are observable given
>> sufficiently sophisticated equipment and a sufficiently broad
>> definition of observable.
>
> We have evidence and can detect their existence, but none of these
> things has ever been observed. It would be like never having seen a
> jet fly and then seeing vapor trails in the sky. You can't claim you
> have observed a jet because you have only observed vapor trails.
Boy, your eyes are very important to you aren't they. What of the lowly
paramecium? You can't "really" observe one you know. All you can do is
put a drop of water at one end of a microscope and observe odd things
moving on the lens at the other end.
You (or they since you haven't actually claimed this as your position,)
are going down the slippery slope of representationalism. If they don't
believe these things exist, why act as if they do?
Electrons are every bit as real as trees; trees may not "really" exist
either, but if you don't act like they exist, you will get a bump on
your head.
>>> I certainly have confidence in the position of the scientific
>>> realist. But do we really know whether our theoretical
>>> constructions of unobservable are how reality really is if we
>>> can't see it.
>>
>> Again, it doesn't matter. If we act as if they are real and the
>> results we obtain don't contradict that assumption, then why claim
>> that they aren't "really" real?
>
> Well, that's what instrumentalists (scientific anti-realists) claim.
> They are saying that move from theoretical construct to claim that
> it is a real thing is a move you can't make. And it can't be made
> because we just don't know without directly observing these
> entities.
Watch two scientists work, one is an instrumentalist, the other is not.
They operate all the equipment the same way and get the same results.
They both act like the ultra-small objects exist. The instrumentalist's
claims are meaningless.
Wordsmith
No, but it is *a* prerequisite for it.
W : )
Chris H. Fleming
> Scientific realism, as the term is used in the philosophy of science, makes
> the claim that unobservable things, like electrons, actually exist, like
> chairs, rivers, and people, even though they cannot be directly observed.
> Instrumentalism (or scientific antirealism), on the other hand, disagrees.
> The electron, from this POV, is a useful fiction - useful to explain natural
> phenomena or to make scientific predictions.
>
> What do you think? Where do you come down in this debate? Are electrons,
> quarks, or neutrinos real objects or aren't they?
Atoms were once in that list. But today we can "see" them with electron
microscopes.
Seeing is overrated.
Sir Frederick
They have equivalent mass in the form of energy.
M(equivalent) = E/C^2
Roger Johansson
Daniel T. wrote:
> > Anti-realism is a serious position in the philosophy of science and
> > while there are good positions to take against it, there is no
> > knock-down argument.
> There is a knock-down argument. Anti-realists' own actions deny their
> claim.
There are practically no "anti-realists". That expression is a gross
misunderstanding of a slightly different philosophical way of reasoning
behind scientific theories.
There are scientists who are more careful than others in assuming that
we know reality, and they prefer to point to measurement data and say
that this is what we know, we should be careful in assuming things
about a an absolute reality behind these data.
> There are two things that simply cannot be doubted, logic and perception.
Both logic and perception are very dependent upon each individual's
subjective way to see things. There is no logic and no perception which
is definitely the same for everybody. Only religious people believe in
an absolute truth and an absolute logic.
--
Roger J.
Sphere
> "gibbs" <gib...@fakedemailaddress.edu> wrote:
> > <jim_ha...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> >> Do we even know what mass is? They are still searching of the
> >> gravitron. However, photons do exist. We know they exist because of
> >> the photoelectric effect. Also, photons are not the only particle
> >> that is massless.
> >
> > The anti-realist would say that we don't know that photons exist
> > because we don't have perceptual experience of photons. We have
> > evidence that points to the existence of such objects, but the
> > reality of their existence can never be known: they will always be
> > theoretical.
>
> Using that reasoning, all of us are theoretical too. Why bother
> communicating with us?
Because it is the most useful thing to do.
Sphere
> Scientific realism, as the term is used in the philosophy of science, makes
> the claim that unobservable things, like electrons, actually exist, like
> chairs, rivers, and people, even though they cannot be directly observed.
> Instrumentalism (or scientific antirealism), on the other hand, disagrees.
> The electron, from this POV, is a useful fiction - useful to explain natural
> phenomena or to make scientific predictions.
>
> What do you think? Where do you come down in this debate? Are electrons,
> quarks, or neutrinos real objects or aren't they?
The problem here is the notion 'real'. In some sense cats
are not 'real', in that they are merely an epiphenomenon
of the interaction of cells.
If you take cats to be real then you must take quarks to
be real. Both are descriptions of observable events.
This, however, does not quite fit into the 'realism'/'antirealism'
debate. No substance is attributed to quarks, or for that
matter cats, here. Both are taken merely as a flux of
interaction which we have found convenient to partition off
and call a separate thing. No fundamental status is
assumed.
If this position is taken as antirealism then nothing is real.
If this position is take as realism then everything is real.
Since the notion of existence is basically broken, and
the notion of reality is a notion, the whole question is
meaningless anyway.
---
No essence. No permanence. No perfection.
Suzana
Right.
Milan
Yes, but I still concur with Hacking that there is a rather significant
difference between believing that an electron exists because the
*observations* fit the existence of electrons and believing that it exists
because we can actually *manipulate* it and obtain the results we predict we
will obtain.
regards
Milan
Daniel T.
>>> Anti-realism is a serious position in the philosophy of science
>>> and while there are good positions to take against it, there is no
>>> knock-down argument.
>>
>> There is a knock-down argument. Anti-realists' own actions deny
>> their claim.
>
> What actions are those? Bear in mind, scientific anti-realists, aka
> instrumentalists, have no problem with what science claims to exists
> in the observable world.
That's an invalid distinction. They are claiming that the object must be
observable only in certain ways to be real, but their distinction about
*how* the object is observable is arbitrary.
> The agnosticism is over the theoretical construction of unobservable
> entities that science, in particular physics, claim to be real
> entities. As far as the observable world goes, most scientific
> anti-realists are realists.
They act exactly like the scientists who believe the sub-atomic
particles are real. If they don't believe the sub-atomic particles are
real, why act as if they are? (KO)
Daniel T.
> Daniel T. wrote:
>>> Anti-realism is a serious position in the philosophy of science
>>> and while there are good positions to take against it, there is no
>>> knock-down argument.
>
>> There is a knock-down argument. Anti-realists' own actions deny
>> their claim.
>
> There are practically no "anti-realists". That expression is a gross
> misunderstanding of a slightly different philosophical way of
> reasoning behind scientific theories.
Of course their arn't any anti-realists. They are simply realists who
claim to be anti-realists.
>> There are two things that simply cannot be doubted, logic and
>> perception.
>
> Both logic and perception are very dependent upon each individual's
> subjective way to see things. There is no logic and no perception
> which is definitely the same for everybody. Only religious people
> believe in an absolute truth and an absolute logic.
The above is an attempt at a logical argument to convince a real person
of a real position. If you don't accept either logic or perception, why
use them?
--
There are two things that simply cannot be doubted, logic and perception.
Daniel T.
> Daniel T. wrote:
>> "gibbs" <gib...@fakedemailaddress.edu> wrote:
>>> <jim_ha...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>>>> Do we even know what mass is? They are still searching of the
>>>> gravitron. However, photons do exist. We know they exist because
>>>> of the photoelectric effect. Also, photons are not the only
>>>> particle that is massless.
>>>
>>> The anti-realist would say that we don't know that photons exist
>>> because we don't have perceptual experience of photons. We have
>>> evidence that points to the existence of such objects, but the
>>> reality of their existence can never be known: they will always be
>>> theoretical.
>>
>> Using that reasoning, all of us are theoretical too. Why bother
>> communicating with us?
>
> Because it is the most useful thing to do.
That's doubtful on so many levels. :-) Why eat? Why staunch a wound? Why
feed your kids? Using the above reasoning, food, wounds and kids aren't
known to exist either.
Daniel T.
I'm not a big fan of "me too" posts, but this is so right on the money
that I just had to do it.
Right on the mark!
Daniel T.
Given the position outlined, why would atoms be removed from the list?
We don't actually "observe" them, we just see some dots on a screen...
Chris H. Fleming
Daniel T. wrote:
> "Chris H. Fleming" <chris_h...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> > gibbs wrote:
>
> >> Scientific realism, as the term is used in the philosophy of
> >> science, makes the claim that unobservable things, like electrons,
> >> actually exist, like chairs, rivers, and people, even though they
> >> cannot be directly observed. Instrumentalism (or scientific
> >> antirealism), on the other hand, disagrees. The electron, from
> >> this POV, is a useful fiction - useful to explain natural phenomena
> >> or to make scientific predictions.
> >>
> >> What do you think? Where do you come down in this debate? Are
> >> electrons, quarks, or neutrinos real objects or aren't they?
> >
> > Atoms were once in that list. But today we can "see" them with
> > electron microscopes.
>
> Given the position outlined, why would atoms be removed from the list?
> We don't actually "observe" them, we just see some dots on a screen...
We don't actually observe much then, including cells as they are mere
images through a lens other than our eye's, and also including a ship
far out on the horizon as viewed through a telescope.
Seeing is doubley overrated then.
And all blind people must find content in solipsism.
gibbs
>> What actions are those? Bear in mind, scientific anti-realists, aka
>> instrumentalists, have no problem with what science claims to exists
>> in the observable world.
> That's an invalid distinction. They are claiming that the object must be
> observable only in certain ways to be real, but their distinction about
> *how* the object is observable is arbitrary.
How is that distinction invalid and arbitrary? It seems perfectly
reasonable to me. If we never saw jets, but only the vapor trails of jets,
we'd be in the same predicament.
>> The agnosticism is over the theoretical construction of unobservable
>> entities that science, in particular physics, claim to be real
>> entities. As far as the observable world goes, most scientific
>> anti-realists are realists.
> They act exactly like the scientists who believe the sub-atomic
> particles are real. If they don't believe the sub-atomic particles are
> real, why act as if they are? (KO)
Because even though scientific anti-realists are agnostic about whether or
not subatomic particles exist, they don't deny that the theory has been
empirically successful. There have been empirically successful theories
(ether as a medium for light in the light-wave theory of light) where an
entity was never seen and was later determined not to exist.
gibbs
"Roger Johansson" <roge...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:1158819677....@h48g2000cwc.googlegroups.com...
> There are practically no "anti-realists". That expression is a gross
> misunderstanding of a slightly different philosophical way of reasoning
> behind scientific theories.
> There are scientists who are more careful than others in assuming that
> we know reality, and they prefer to point to measurement data and say
> that this is what we know, we should be careful in assuming things
> about a an absolute reality behind these data.
There actually are a good number of scientific anti-realists (SAR), though
I'd imagine that scientific realists outnumber them. But the SAR raise
valid and interesting points.
gibbs
>> Oh, I agree that there are good grounds for believing electrons to exist.
>> But there have also been a history of other empirically successful
>> theories that were eventually supplanted by other theories. While they
>> held sway they were thought to have captured the real truth. Phlogiston
>> theory held sway for a while until it was rejected. So we still end up
>> claiming that electrons are real because of empirical success. That's
>> reasonable, as far as it goes, but it hasn't answered the anti-realist's
>> scepticism that theoretical entities as electrons can be said to really
>> exist. And the problem is trickier for inherently unobservable entities.
>
> Yes, but I still concur with Hacking that there is a rather significant
> difference between believing that an electron exists because the
> *observations* fit the existence of electrons and believing that it exists
> because we can actually *manipulate* it and obtain the results we predict
> we will obtain.
In a nutshell, that position is that electrons probably exist because my
experiments work. That's reasonable and okay as far as it goes, but it
doesn't answer the agnosticism of the scientific antirealist. The SAR
doesn't deny that theories about unobservable entities can make good
predictions. It just doesn't answer the existence question except that it
is a matter of faith since the experiments work.
gibbs
> Boy, your eyes are very important to you aren't they. What of the lowly
> paramecium? You can't "really" observe one you know. All you can do is
> put a drop of water at one end of a microscope and observe odd things
> moving on the lens at the other end.
There you go. The paramecium can be directly observed. Quarks cannot.
> You (or they since you haven't actually claimed this as your position,)
> are going down the slippery slope of representationalism. If they don't
> believe these things exist, why act as if they do?
> Electrons are every bit as real as trees; trees may not "really" exist
> either, but if you don't act like they exist, you will get a bump on
> your head.
Yes, that's an assertion, but there is a difference between the existence of
trees, which we can see, and electrons, which we can posit as having real
existence. The question the SR/SAR debate raises is, "What justifies our
claim that something we do not perceptually experience exists?"
Note that the SAR don't say that electrons do not exist. They claim that we
can never know that such things exist and it could turn out, as it has
turned out before, that some theoretical entity did not exist. What the SAR
applauds is that the theoretical construction is a successful one. But does
the success of a theory mean that everything about it is true?
> Watch two scientists work, one is an instrumentalist, the other is not.
> They operate all the equipment the same way and get the same results.
> They both act like the ultra-small objects exist. The instrumentalist's
> claims are meaningless.
No, they are not meaningless at all. The SAR doesn't deny the success of a
theory with such a theoretical construction. But success of a theory isn't
a guarentee that such an object exists. It may turn out that it does exist,
but we will never know for sure because it isn't part of perceputal
experience. When I say, "I perceive a tree." I'm also asserting the
existence of the tree. But I cannot say, "I perceive an electron."
So the SR position is only this: electrons must exist because my
experiments work.
gibbs
>> Is having mass the prerequisite for existing?
>
> No, but it is *a* prerequisite for it.
Light exists but it doesn't have mass. Football scores exist, but they
don't have mass. I doubt that mass is a prerequisite for existence.
gibbs
"Chris H. Fleming" <chris_h...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:1158814647.8...@m7g2000cwm.googlegroups.com...
I agree, but what about subatomic particles? The best we can go on is that
electrons may exist and, as the theory is empirically successful, we might
as well *act* like they exist. But this doesn't answer the scientific
anti-realist.
gibbs
"Sphere" <spher...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:1158831891.8...@i3g2000cwc.googlegroups.com...
> The problem here is the notion 'real'. In some sense cats
> are not 'real', in that they are merely an epiphenomenon
> of the interaction of cells.
According to instrumentalists the notion of real is pretty clear: if it can
be observed then it really exists.
> If you take cats to be real then you must take quarks to
> be real. Both are descriptions of observable events.
Cats are part of perceptual experience, but quarks are not. So you don't
have to take the existence of quarks to be real. When we says, "I perceive
a cat." we are at the same time asserting the existence of a cat.
> This, however, does not quite fit into the 'realism'/'antirealism'
> debate. No substance is attributed to quarks, or for that
> matter cats, here. Both are taken merely as a flux of
> interaction which we have found convenient to partition off
> and call a separate thing. No fundamental status is
> assumed.
This is a contemporary debate in the philosophy of science about theoretical
entities. The debate in POS is called the "realism/anti-realism (or
instrumentalism)" debate. It isn't the same debate as the metaphysical or
epistemological realism/anti-realism debate.
> If this position is taken as antirealism then nothing is real. If
> this position is take as realism then everything is real. Since the
> notion of existence is basically broken, and the notion of reality
> is a notion, the whole question is meaningless anyway.
I don't see how that follows.
gibbs
"Chris H. Fleming" <chris_h...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:1158854113.5...@i42g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
> We don't actually observe much then, including cells as they are mere
> images through a lens other than our eye's, and also including a ship
> far out on the horizon as viewed through a telescope.
I think those count as observations.
Chris H. Fleming
Right, it doesn't answer the question. But it makes the anti-realist's
argument arbitrary.
If we were in 1600 the scientific anti-realist would doubt the
existence of cellular life including germs.
Then Antony van Leeuwenhoek would build a microscope and see some.
Then the anti-realist would doubt the existence of organelles, and then
the scientist would observe them with better microscopes.
Then the anti-realist would doubt the existence of molecules, and now
the scientists have seen them, with electron microscopes and with
crystalography.
Now the anti-realists are going to doubt what? Whatever we can't "see"
at the moment.
The anti-realist continually has to retreat and the scientist continues
to make new claims. Sometimes the scientist is wrong, but he seems to
always figure that out for himself, no help from the anti-realist.
JethroUK©
"Brian Fletcher" <bria...@bigpond.net.au> wrote in message
news:pHkQg.32947$rP1....@news-server.bigpond.net.au...
|
| "JethroUK©" <re...@the.board> wrote in message
| news:SChQg.34151$WV2....@newsfe2-gui.ntli.net...| > news:GpqdnTNw0aIjC4zY...@comcast.com...
| > |
| > | "tg" <tgde...@earthlink.net> wrote in message
| > | news:1158757834.2...@b28g2000cwb.googlegroups.com...
| > | >
| > | > Suzana wrote:
| > | >> We can't call them "real' if we can't observe them.
| > | >>
| > | >> I see it sort of like coherentism vs correspondence.
| > | >> Electrons, neutrons, quarks...seem to be part of a coherent theory.
| > Do
| > | >> they correspond to reality? I guess we will know when technology
| > | >> improves to the point when we will be able to make a devise that
will
| > | >> enable us to see them.
| > | > What does 'seeing them' mean? How is seeing different from any other
| > | > instrumentation?
| > | >
| > | > 'the same' light as was reflected from the object?
| > |
| > | Why shouldn't it be?
| > |
| > |
| >
| > because it's made of photons - which you might not beleive exists :o)
| >
| And what makes the photons,
| Dear Liza, Dear Liza ?
|
i only do science jokes - i'm totally out of my depth already :o)
gibbs
> Right, it doesn't answer the question. But it makes the anti-realist's
> argument arbitrary.
> If we were in 1600 the scientific anti-realist would doubt the
> existence of cellular life including germs.
> Then Antony van Leeuwenhoek would build a microscope and see some.
> Then the anti-realist would doubt the existence of organelles, and then
> the scientist would observe them with better microscopes.
> Then the anti-realist would doubt the existence of molecules, and now
> the scientists have seen them, with electron microscopes and with
> crystalography.
> Now the anti-realists are going to doubt what? Whatever we can't "see"
> at the moment.
> The anti-realist continually has to retreat and the scientist continues
> to make new claims. Sometimes the scientist is wrong, but he seems to
> always figure that out for himself, no help from the anti-realist.
I think the example can be turned around. In the 1600s the scientific
antirealist would have objected to bodily humors and in the 1700s he would
have been suspicious of the claim that phlogiston explains combustion. In
both cases, he would have been right to doubt those things. Both were
unobservable.
The SAR would accept whatever we can directly observe. The limitations of
science, for the SAR, is how far we can extended observation. Beyond that,
unobservable entities are useful or instrumental (hence the name
"instrumentalists" for SARs) in making empirical successful theories. But
if it can't be observed we can't know it exists until and unless it is
actually
observed.
andy-k
> "Sphere" wrote:
>> This, however, does not quite fit into the 'realism'/'antirealism'
>> debate. No substance is attributed to quarks, or for that
>> matter cats, here. Both are taken merely as a flux of
>> interaction which we have found convenient to partition off
>> and call a separate thing. No fundamental status is
>> assumed.
>
> This is a contemporary debate in the philosophy of
> science about theoretical entities. The debate in POS is
> called the "realism/anti-realism (or instrumentalism)" debate.
> It isn't the same debate as the metaphysical or epistemological
> realism/anti-realism debate.
It is if by "real" you mean "substantive". And if you don't then you're only
making a conventional distinction between real and unreal, and we can
agree to place that boundary wherever we find utility in doing so.
Roger Johansson
Daniel T. wrote:
> > Both logic and perception are very dependent upon each individual's
> > subjective way to see things. There is no logic and no perception
> > which is definitely the same for everybody. Only religious people
> > believe in an absolute truth and an absolute logic.
> The above is an attempt at a logical argument to convince a real person
> of a real position. If you don't accept either logic or perception, why
> use them?
Reason is a very important tool, especially for convincing others, for
coming to an agreement, but there are many ways to reason for different
models, in the end we have to use our own judgement and choose from all
the possible reasons for different choices and decide which ways to
reason are most fruitful and reasonable.
That is the difference between reasoning, logic, and rationality, human
judgement.
Every person must rely on his her own perception, but we must be aware
of how different our perception of the world can be.
The difference between science and religion is that science is based on
doubts and critical thinking, religion is based on belief and
uncritical acceptance.
At the end of a Beatles record, after the music has ended, one in the
band says into the microphone: "There's no doubt about it. In fact,
it's all doubt."
That is a pretty good summation of the position of science. There is no
doubt that the view of science is correct, but it is made up of a lot
of doubts.
We have come a long way from the magic world of the stone age, and the
road to a scientific rational view of the world has gone through step
after step of doubt and critical thinking.
"All this worldly wisdom was once the unamiable heresy of some wise
man."
Henry David Thoreau
Remember Giordano Bruno.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giordano_Bruno
http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/john_murphy/giordanobruno.html
"Pope John Paul is compiling a list of harms his church has caused. He
is going to apologize next year and freethinkers are anxious to see if
he will remember Bruno. Most folks have never heard of Giordano Bruno,
who was burned to death in the Square of the Flowers, in down-town
Rome, on February 16, 1600, for the crime of thinking. In 1889, when
freethinkers and rational religionists erected a statue of him, in the
same flowered square where he was murdered by the Catholic Church, they
were condemned by Pope Leo XIII. In 1942, Cardinal Mercati claimed the
church was right because Bruno deserved it. Since then the Vatican has
been silent on the matter.
The Church of Rome mated with the emperors of the Roman Empire in the
4th and 5th centuries. Church and state became united, and together
they set about killing off all other "pagan" superstitions, together
with various Christian sects, such as the Gnostics, who sought
knowledge rather than faith. Books were burned by the millions, so
that, by the 7th century, in all of Christendom, no library existed
with over 600 volumes and most of these dealt with the made up lives of
pious and useless saints. But knowledge seeped back into Europe, thanks
to the Moors with their love of learning, and the Irish monks who would
copy any book they could get their hands on, whether the pope liked it
or not."
--
Roger J.
Daniel T.
>>> What actions are those? Bear in mind, scientific anti-realists,
>>> aka instrumentalists, have no problem with what science claims to
>>> exists in the observable world.
>>
>> That's an invalid distinction. They are claiming that the object
>> must be observable only in certain ways to be real, but their
>> distinction about *how* the object is observable is arbitrary.
>
> How is that distinction invalid and arbitrary? It seems perfectly
> reasonable to me. If we never saw jets, but only the vapor trails
> of jets, we'd be in the same predicament.
Your acting as if "seeing" something infallibly makes it real. All
methods of detection are indirect. I grant that some are more direct
than others, and as such less fallible, but there is no reason to assume
that one particular method of detection cannot possibly detect what is
real.
>>> The agnosticism is over the theoretical construction of
>>> unobservable entities that science, in particular physics, claim
>>> to be real entities. As far as the observable world goes, most
>>> scientific anti-realists are realists.
>
>> They act exactly like the scientists who believe the sub-atomic
>> particles are real. If they don't believe the sub-atomic particles
>> are real, why act as if they are? (KO)
>
> Because even though scientific anti-realists are agnostic about
> whether or not subatomic particles exist, they don't deny that the
> theory has been empirically successful.
The theories in question say the particles are real. If anti-realists
don't deny the theory then they don't deny the reality of the particles.
By denying the reality of the particle, they deny the very basis of the
theory which they obviously (by their actions) accept.
> There have been empirically successful theories (ether as a medium
> for light in the light-wave theory of light) where an entity was
> never seen and was later determined not to exist.
And I've seen things that turned out to not really exist as well, should
I therefore deny everything I see just because my eyes have failed me in
the past?
Sometimes we think things exist and we later decide that we are wrong, I
don't deny that. The problem is when all evidence points to the
existence of a thing but one denies its existence anyway simply because
sometimes we find evidence that we were wrong.
Daniel T.
>> Boy, your eyes are very important to you aren't they. What of the
>> lowly paramecium? You can't "really" observe one you know. All you
>> can do is put a drop of water at one end of a microscope and
>> observe odd things moving on the lens at the other end.
>
> There you go. The paramecium can be directly observed.
Now you are just expanding the scope of "directly observed". Why stop
there, why not expand it further?
>> You (or they since you haven't actually claimed this as your
>> position,) are going down the slippery slope of
>> representationalism. If they don't believe these things exist, why
>> act as if they do? Electrons are every bit as real as trees; trees
>> may not "really" exist either, but if you don't act like they
>> exist, you will get a bump on your head.
>
> Yes, that's an assertion, but there is a difference between the
> existence of trees, which we can see, and electrons, which we can
> posit as having real existence. The question the SR/SAR debate
> raises is, "What justifies our claim that something we do not
> perceptually experience exists?"
What justifies our claim that something we *do* perceptually experience
exists? The answers to both your question and mine are exactly the same.
We can make predictions based on the supposition of the thing's
existence, and our predictions are accurate. Without the supposition of
things existence, we can't make the predictions.
> Note that the SAR don't say that electrons do not exist. They claim
> that we can never know that such things exist and it could turn out,
> as it has turned out before, that some theoretical entity did not
> exist. What the SAR applauds is that the theoretical construction is
> a successful one. But does the success of a theory mean that
> everything about it is true?
I addressed this in another post, if you already responded there, don't
bother repeating yourself.
> So the SR position is only this: electrons must exist because my
> experiments work.
Exactly, that is the exact same position one uses to prove the existence
of a tree.
Daniel T.
> "Chris H. Fleming" <chris_h...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>> We don't actually observe much then, including cells as they are
>> mere images through a lens other than our eye's, and also
>> including a ship far out on the horizon as viewed through a
>> telescope.
>
> I think those count as observations.
That is an arbitrary designation.
Daniel T.
Hence the flaw in this AR position.
Daniel T.
> "Wordsmith" <word...@rocketmail.com> wrote:
>>> Is having mass the prerequisite for existing?
>>
>> No, but it is *a* prerequisite for it.
>
> Light exists but it doesn't have mass. Football scores exist, but
> they don't have mass. I doubt that mass is a prerequisite for
> existence.
Really? Have you ever "directly observed" light? Ever "directly
observed" a football score?
gibbs
>>> Light exists but it doesn't have mass. Football scores exist, but
>> they don't have mass. I doubt that mass is a prerequisite for
>> existence.
>
> Really? Have you ever "directly observed" light? Ever "directly
> observed" a football score?
Sure, I've seen light. But I haven't seen a photon. And I've heard
football scores announced at a football game.
gibbs
"andy-k" <spam.free@last> wrote in message
news:%cAQg.36693$G72....@newsfe3-gui.ntli.net...
> It is if by "real" you mean "substantive".
I don't deal with ancient metaphysical terms.
Wordsmith
"Why ask why?"...an old beer ad.
W : )
Milan
It is not a matter of faith -it is an inference to the best explanation.
regards
Milan
>
Daniel T.
> "Daniel T." <dani...@earthlink.net> wrote:
>>>> Light exists but it doesn't have mass. Football scores exist, but
>>> they don't have mass. I doubt that mass is a prerequisite for
>>> existence.
>>
>> Really? Have you ever "directly observed" light? Ever "directly
>> observed" a football score?
>
> Sure, I've seen light. But I haven't seen a photon. And I've heard
> football scores announced at a football game.
Have you really seen light? I expect you have seen the sun, and maybe a
filament in a bulb that is bright, but light? And you have heard other
people discuss football scores, indications of them, but you haven't
seen actual scores. According to the anti-realist position, they don't
exist.
andy-k
> "andy-k" wrote:
>> It is if by "real" you mean "substantive".
>
> I don't deal with ancient metaphysical terms.
In which case you're only making a conventional distinction between real and
Craig Franck
> Suzana wrote:
>> gibbs wrote:
>> > Scientific realism, as the term is used in the philosophy of science,
>> > makes
>> > the claim that unobservable things, like electrons, actually exist,
>> > like
>> > chairs, rivers, and people, even though they cannot be directly
>> > observed.
>> > Instrumentalism (or scientific antirealism), on the other hand,
>> > disagrees.
>> > The electron, from this POV, is a useful fiction - useful to explain
>> > natural
>> > phenomena or to make scientific predictions.
>> >
>> > What do you think? Where do you come down in this debate? Are
>> > electrons,
>> > quarks, or neutrinos real objects or aren't they?
>>
>> We can't call them "real' if we can't observe them.
>>
>> I see it sort of like coherentism vs correspondence.
>> Electrons, neutrons, quarks...seem to be part of a coherent theory. Do
>> they correspond to reality? I guess we will know when technology
>> improves to the point when we will be able to make a devise that will
>> enable us to see them.
>
>
> What does 'seeing them' mean? How is seeing different from any other
> instrumentation?
Things directly perceived are given in experience. When a pilot sees a
runway on a clear day, he does not infer its presence from sense
experience. You also never infer sense experience; it's either given or
not.
At night, or when he does an instrument landing, he is given indications
of where the runway is located. Looking at his instruments through a
pair of binoculars doesn't make the runway appear closer, and the
relationship between the readouts and the runway are arbitrary.
> When you look through a microscope, is the light that hits your eye
> 'the same' light as was reflected from the object?
Yes. But when looking at a monitor, even though the direct causal chain
is broken, by convention, you are perceiving a person even if they are
on a screen of some sort (I believe this is called filmic realism).
--
Craig Franck
craig....@verizon.net
Cortland, NY
Chris H. Fleming
I would question the definition of scientific knowledge then. Things
like phlogiston, bodily humors, and even string theory are really
nothing but guesses. They are not scientific theories supported with
empirical evidence, even if every scientist believes they are true.
Craig Franck
> "gibbs" wrote:
>> "Daniel T." <dani...@earthlink.net> wrote:
>>> That's an invalid distinction. They are claiming that the object
>>> must be observable only in certain ways to be real, but their
>>> distinction about *how* the object is observable is arbitrary.
>>
>> How is that distinction invalid and arbitrary? It seems perfectly
>> reasonable to me. If we never saw jets, but only the vapor trails
>> of jets, we'd be in the same predicament.
>
> Your acting as if "seeing" something infallibly makes it real. All
> methods of detection are indirect. I grant that some are more direct
> than others, and as such less fallible, but there is no reason to assume
> that one particular method of detection cannot possibly detect what is
> real.
That's true, and I believe an important point, but there is the issue
of what it means to be mistaken about a particular level of reality.
If I believe I see a cat when one is not there, I had a hallucination.
If I believe I see a quark in a quark-gluon plasma when one is not
there, it would be incorrect to say I hallucinated it. This means
cats are directly given to the senses and quarks are not.
>>> They act exactly like the scientists who believe the sub-atomic
>>> particles are real. If they don't believe the sub-atomic particles
>>> are real, why act as if they are? (KO)
>>
>> Because even though scientific anti-realists are agnostic about
>> whether or not subatomic particles exist, they don't deny that the
>> theory has been empirically successful.
>
> The theories in question say the particles are real. If anti-realists
> don't deny the theory then they don't deny the reality of the particles.
> By denying the reality of the particle, they deny the very basis of the
> theory which they obviously (by their actions) accept.
They are not denying that certain events occur that have causes.
The problem is when dealing with terminal points in physical
theories, things are not defined the way they are with object of
sense experience. Matter, energy, fundamental particles are
subject to reinterpretation.
For example, you can deny electrons exist and say that everything
is a quantum field of one sort or another. So it's more a claim that
we don't know what an electron is, not that there isn't an electron-
thingy manifesting itself in an electron-thingy sort of way.
Sphere
Daniel T. wrote:
...
>
> The theories in question say the particles are real. If anti-realists
> don't deny the theory then they don't deny the reality of the particles.
> By denying the reality of the particle, they deny the very basis of the
> theory which they obviously (by their actions) accept.
>
Huh?
I don't exist in any substantial sense, but the neurons
make a good story which I accept. Accepting a
good story (description) is simple pragmatism. It's
too hard in daily life not to accept a useful description
even when we know that it doesn't precisely fit the
data. Can you imagine how hard life would be if
we had to use General Relativity daily instead of
Newtonian Gravitation?
---
No essence. No permanence. No perfection.
Miller
> Scientific realism, as the term is used in the philosophy of science,
> makes the claim that unobservable things, like electrons, actually exist,
> like chairs, rivers, and people, even though they cannot be directly
> observed. Instrumentalism (or scientific antirealism), on the other hand,
> disagrees. The electron, from this POV, is a useful fiction - useful to
> explain natural phenomena or to make scientific predictions.
>
> What do you think? Where do you come down in this debate? Are electrons,
> quarks, or neutrinos real objects or aren't they?
Scott
Sir Frederick
>Scientific realism, as the term is used in the philosophy of science, makes
>the claim that unobservable things, like electrons, actually exist, like
>chairs, rivers, and people, even though they cannot be directly observed.
>Instrumentalism (or scientific antirealism), on the other hand, disagrees.
>The electron, from this POV, is a useful fiction - useful to explain natural
>phenomena or to make scientific predictions.
>
>What do you think? Where do you come down in this debate? Are electrons,
>quarks, or neutrinos real objects or aren't they?
>
Not real.
The whole situation is a farce, a charade,
from top to bottom, but it is the only game in town,
so we play it. Even scientifically.
gibbs
> Your acting as if "seeing" something infallibly makes it real. All
> methods of detection are indirect. I grant that some are more direct
> than others, and as such less fallible, but there is no reason to assume
> that one particular method of detection cannot possibly detect what is
> real.
There is a difference between observation of something and detecting it. If
I find bear tracks in the woods, I've detected a bear but haven't observed
it. I don't think there is a claim here about fallibility or infallibity,
just a claim that observationa and detection are two different things.
Naturally, both are important.
> The theories in question say the particles are real. If anti-realists
> don't deny the theory then they don't deny the reality of the particles.
> By denying the reality of the particle, they deny the very basis of the
> theory which they obviously (by their actions) accept.
That's not true at all. The SAR claims, rightly so, that subatomic
particals are theoretical constructions. The SAR is also claiming that you
cannot make a claim for the existence of something that isn't observable.
We haven't detected or observed quarks, but positing them is at least
useful.
Sphere
I violently agree.
Does western philosophy even understand the
question of substantialism?
(Next we're going to have to introduce the distinction
between reincarnation and rebirth. A real problem
when distinctions are considered arbitrary.)
Sphere
I vote "everything is unreal." At least that way we know
it is metaphysics.
Of course, "everything is real" gives me my "little green
men who don't exist who live under my bed."
gibbs
"Craig Franck" <craig....@verizon.net> wrote in message
news:SZEQg.8219$zs6.4766@trndny07...
> For example, you can deny electrons exist and say that everything
> is a quantum field of one sort or another. So it's more a claim that
> we don't know what an electron is, not that there isn't an electron-
> thingy manifesting itself in an electron-thingy sort of way.
That's basically it. SARs aren't saying that it is unreasonable to assume
they exist for the sake of theory. What we don't know, unless we have
observed subatomic particles, is if they really exist.
gibbs
> Now you are just expanding the scope of "directly observed". Why stop
> there, why not expand it further?
That's a fair point. SARs don't deny a certain vagueness about what
observation is and that there are murky borderline cases. But that doesn't
mean there isn't a real distinction between what is observation and what is
not. Consider baldness. At what point do we call someone bald? Hard to
say, yet we wouldn't say that you can expand the scope of baldness to
include hirsute heads.
> What justifies our claim that something we *do* perceptually experience
> exists?
Because that's the definition of perceptual experience. When we say we
perceive something we are asserting that we perceive something that exists.
If what we perceived didn't exist then we would have hallucinated and not
perceived what we thought we had perceived.
gibbs
> It is not a matter of faith -it is an inference to the best explanation.
Or that.
gibbs
> I would question the definition of scientific knowledge then. Things
> like phlogiston, bodily humors, and even string theory are really
> nothing but guesses. They are not scientific theories supported with
> empirical evidence, even if every scientist believes they are true.
Why aren't they part of science? Science isn't a static enterprise. Old
ideas get tossed out a lot. Even old ideas that were well-supported by the
available evidence.
gibbs
"andy-k" <spam.free@last> wrote in message
> In which case you're only making a conventional distinction between real
> and unreal, and we can agree to place that boundary wherever we find
> utility in doing so.
Yeah, whatever.