"Robert J. Kolker" wrote in message news:Lcgec.116957$w54.831727@attbi_s01...
Patrick Reany wrote:



What precisely do you mean by "infer" here?

We make hypotheses which enable to interpret the readings of our
instruments as surrogates for world-states.

What is a hypothesis as used in science? Are "world-states" objective?

Is the image on your t.v.
an image of something that is there or is it something else. Before you
answer that, see the motion picture -Wag the Dog-.

We use instruments and machines to tell us about atoms.

Are these atoms you mention hypotheticals or are they inferred
truths by scientific standards?

What is it precisely that instruments and machines can tell us about atoms?

But have your or
I or anyone else ever seen an atom? It is only the interpretation theory
of the instrument that leads us to conclude things about that which we
cannot directly perceive. The experimental backing for science is theory
laden up to the laderboard. Ultimately we have to retreat from a pure
and simple correspondence theory of truth and settle for a coherence
theory.

The Duhem-Quine-Thesis?

We require that the stories we tell about what our instruments
say and the stories we tell about the world do not contradict each other.

Bob Kolker

Not contradict itself or not contradict all other theories?

How are these "stories we tell about what our instruments" produced?

Patrick