Flannel Jesus wrote: ↑Wed Aug 17, 2022 11:41 am
Right, so I get that there's a model in our minds, and I get that that model may not match reality as it is, and usually doesn't in fact,
but the common sense interpretation is that there is *something* that exists,
I tend to agree. And I truly doubt that the implications of taking the other position are ones that VA is ready to defend. He wants to use scientific research conclusions when he sees fit and those of course generally assume both the existence of not only dich an sich but futher that their research is about the ding an sich.
that we are bumping up against when we drink and touch water, and our models are deeper and deeper attempts at understanding just what that something is.
Yes, and wise of you to go for touch contact. I notice a habit of most people who want to deny the existence of an independent reality to focus on vision and color. With that we can have a qualia party, but it's a whole different thing with tactile sensing. I tend to use a running through a field with clumps of grass and holes and how I do better than blind people, especially newly blind people. It seems like my seeing, even, is giving me information about ding an sich.
If we put quantum mechanics aside for a moment, I think we have a lot of really solid evidence that our model of atoms and how they form bonds with each other is not JUST a model, but that it has a strong tethering to something that *really is happening*. In fact, that's largely the point of the development of this model in the first place.
Yes, I am not denying chemistry or saying there is a good position to do so. It's more like conceding that when we refer to things, the images we have in our minds and our sense of what they are may have nothing to do with what they are like. That we can make salt out of sodium and chloride doesn't get ruined by this. I am often a kind of pragmatist in relation to knowledge. So, in a way I don't care about ontology. I don't have VA's position, because his is ontological.
It was a bad tactic on his side. He could have simply been agnostic
I know some people like to take the very philosophical approach to say that science isn't about discovering truths about how the world works, but just about developing models that make useful predictions. There's validity to that, but if you've ever read the writings of real scientists, plenty of them are really and truly drawn by the idea of understanding reality, real reality. It's naive, perhaps, when compared against the ultra pragmatic view of science as a useful tool that doesn't tell strict truths, but that naivety is pervasive among the most intelligent, most accomplished scientists, the biggest drivers of scientific advancement.
And you take up similar issues here. I should have waited to read. Well, it's mainly the physicists for obvious reasons who are much more open to ontological surprises and variety. And many of the best drivers there had ideas and models that radically challenge most people's realism
In any case, here we are in a philosophy forum, so it seems to me if he was clear and consistant his positions would not be ridiculous. And I think a real dialogue could take place.
And so our atomic model is in that vein. Yes, it is a model, but the functioning of that model and the root of it may still be literally and naively correct. And the success of the model - and it has indeed been remarkably successful - is further indication that the model has some real tethering to what's really going on.
I think actually the physicists might not agree with that. Of course, they're a diverse bunch, but I think they would see the model as effective for some things, but ontologically off.
I accept a moderately naive vision of reality. I accept the reality of weakly emergent phenomena. I accept that, when a model has as much evidence as atoms do, that that model is probably saying something really true about reality. My exact mental picture of it almost certainly doesn't identically resemble what's really happening, but I think there's enough reason to think that aspects of the model are basically and generally naively correct.
Reality is messy, but there's something really there, and I think we're doing a remarkably good job at prodding into it to discover real truths, whatever that means.
I generally agree, though as with a fluid, variable ontology that as a pragmatist I am not very attached to.
My main point in bringing things up is that as long as people are going to regularly interact with VA, it might be useful to find the best possible explanation of what he is saying.
That when we refer to and think about reality we are thinking and refering to 'things' that are a mingling of our advanced primate minds filters, sensory organs, our time bound nature (we experience time in sequence, not say as a block universe). Even all scientists have a kind of shared subjectivity in how they refer to things and how they must experience them given our bodies and minds. This does not mean that scientific knowledge is merely subjective, just that the phenomena (that interaction, the experiences of reality) is specifically human. And when we talk about it, we are always talking about something that is a mix of us and it.
I think in some way VA believes something like this. It is not totally wrong, has seeds of something important in it. Not for an organic chemist analysing a hormone in a new species of orchid, but for philosophers and people dealing with ontology. The position itself is not in the least a threat to that chemist's work.
So, if VA gets dismissed, he thinks you are missing a lot of stuff. Much less of it has value than he thinks, but his stubborness may have a seed of validity in it.
And obviously note: I am not sending bits of advice to VA. He doesn't read me, but I probably wouldn't anyway. I don't think he can tweak his communication approach.