(Gerald L. O'Barr) wrote in message . com...
(Patrick Reany) wrote in message . com...
[snip]
Reany wrote:
. . . I have been saying that people ought not to
be making, in the name of physics, metaphysical
claims of what really exists merely by proffering
models from theories that work. I'm talking about a
normative ethical standard in physics regarding
metaphysical claims.

Gerald L. O'Barr comments:
You are making a mountain out of a mole hill.

(Google claimed that this was posted but an error message came with
it, so I try it again.)

The revealed view of most posters here regarding anything
epistemologic! I think that you people realize just how weak your
justfications are to what you believe so you prefer to just not go
there at all costs! Epistemology is about revealing and analyzing your
justifications for your knowledge claims. Why don't you try it
sometime.

Every day in physics, we say: F = ma. Do we have to
say, every time we say this, that it might not really
be true?

You miss the point, as usual, but yes! Don't you even recognize its
restriction to the domain of Newtonian mechanics? F = ma is NOT
generally true in physics!


Every day we say that PV = nRT. Do we
really have to say, every time, that this is only an
artificial relationship,

Yes. In fact, think it so at least twice a day before breakfast, on
the principle of out-of-sight-out-of-mind. If you forget the
artificialness of these equations, you could go wrong, and it seems
that you have. Don't you understand what is "ideal" about the Ideal
Gas Las?

that it is only due to a
summation of a multiplicity of physical interactions?
There is absolutely nothing wrong with presenting
what appears to be the most reasonable or normal
assumption that can be offered.

I never said that there was anything wrong with doing so; just don't
present "reasonable according to a particular formal point of view" as
Truth. Remember that Hertz found it unreasonable -- according to his
personal formal point of view -- to talk about force at all and he
re-did mechanics without the use of force. Hertz was neither right nor
wrong about his formal point of view -- because formal points of views
are not falsifiable.

[snip]

Reany wrote:
. . . A model is a representation, and a
representation is not necessarily identical with
what it represents. In some circumstances I can get
good predictions by explaining the behavior of a
gravitationally interacting system of mass objects
by treating the masses of large bodies as
continuously distributed, but that doesn't imply
that mass is really continuous.

O'Barr comments:
Perfect logic, as said here. But you seem to want
to go farther than just saying that a model is not
necessarily identical! You want to insist that a
model is never able to represent reality.

I get this idiotic response a lot from so-called intelligent people.
Prove it by giving even one quote from me (in context) that supports
this allegation of yours. And please stop using the term "represent"
to mean "is identical with or to." A 7in plastic model of a spitfire
plane is not identical to a real spitfire plane. Could you make that
minor consession in the cause of fairness and truth, pretty please?

To the instrumentalist the representation afforded by physical models
is not metaphysical; it's behavioral.

You
indicate that one should never take the model to be
adequate.

I have no idea what you mean. By my pragmatic use of "adequate" (were
I to use the term), a model is "adequate" if it finds itself used
within a theory that works. But being "adequate" does not imply being
true of deep reality. To be "adequate" is to be "adequate" relative to
some goal. The instrumentalist goal is the invention of theories that
work, not of reverse-engineering deep reality. We have no direct
contact with deep reality because we cannot directly observe it. The
acid tests of physical theories are always within the observable realm
(physical reality).

However correct this might really be,
there is no advantage with always requiring one to
always state this every time a model is used. It
just is not necessary!

I guess to some people, wishing is superior to honesty. Ironic indeed
that those who are the most obsessed with gaining the TRUTH about the
"real" world (the scientific realists and rationalists among us, on
this NG anyway) are the most unTRUE about how one can obtain it. It
seems to me that true-by-self-delusion is their preferred means of
attaining their precious "truth." It truly is a "physics as religion."


Reany wrote:
. . . I claim is that there is no logical
connection between the models used in a theory that
works and the metaphysical truth of the models.

Gerald L. O'Barr comments:
And this is where you go over the line! It is
impossible to say what you say. How do you really
know how good or how bad a model really is, until we
have the theory of everything?

My claim is a challenge for those who believe otherwise to produce a
counterexample, not merely produce more rhetoric, like you do. Either
prove me wrong or shut up. Produce the logical connection between them
for us right here right now, Mr. I-Know-Deep-Reality!

Physical concepts are free creations of the human mind,
and are not, however it may seem, uniquely determined
by the external world.

Concepts include conceptual models.

We have to know that
our models cannot be too far off, or else they would
not work as good as they work.

I do not buy your rationalist axiom. One could argue by your reasoning
that phlogiston must be real because it works in a theory. I hold to a
different starting point: It takes absolute truth to beget absolute
truth, and since science does not begin its mission with any absolute
truths, it cannot claim to produce any.

So, you believe in "closeness to truth"? Closeness is a metrical
concept. Do you have the metric you use for judging "closeness to
truth"? Present it to us. To calibrate this metric you must have had
some absolute truth to prime it with, right? You just will never get
it, will you. You are self-deluded, just like Weston and Bilge: Three
posters here who cannot agree on anything accept one thing: to forever
irrationally argue against instrumentalism. Your favorite means to
"argue" against it is to misrepresent it. The instrumentalist position
on metaphysics is to leave it for metaphysicists (physics is NOT
metaphysics), and to the physicists is the pragmatic domain of the
invention and testing of theories that work. But the three of you run
on intuition and pretend that it is scientific to do so in
epistmological matters.

The physical content of physics is this: Physics adopts a conventional
formal point of view on how to arbitrarily chop-up the world into
"objects" and then it studies the behavior of those "objects."

Prove to us all that there is a real thing called a hydrogen atom.
Since the model (at least one of the many models of it) works, by your
dogma the model must be literally true of deep reality. So, prove to
us all that there really is a physical thing called the hydrogen atom,
having its own identity! Prove that hydrogen exists independently of
human consciousness, which has bestowed upon it special importance as
a special subset of all matter in the universe.

Possibly you are too
confining. Maybe you are only considering the
theories that are in the boundaries of our knowledge.
In the boundaries areas, such as QM and GR, of course
we might be very wrong with what we think. But in
those areas where we have extensive coverage and
over-lap and multiplicity of confirmations by
independent approaches, our assumed theories must be
very close to being correct.

By instrumentalist standards, to be correct is merely to make correct
predictions about behavior. Period. The theory that works is the end
goal of physics in itself. Inferring deep reality from a theory that
works is a profoundly nonscientific activity which lies with your
personal natural philosophy. It's perfectly alright to use scientific
theories to attempt to reverse-engineer deep reality; just don't
pretend that the doing so is a scientific activity in itself, or that
the end result is scientific truth. When two or more distinct but
predictively equivalent theories emerge from the effort to invent
theories that work, one theory should win out of the group as the
preferred theory, but the criteria of choosing the winner are
subjective.

On the other hand, if you say that within your personal natural
philosophy that you believe that hydrogen atoms exist, I will not
contest that at all! In fact, I will say, "Bravo!"

[snip]


Reany wrote:
In other words, one cannot claim that a model is
true of reality simply because it finds a use in a
theory that works.

O'Barr comments:
True, but so what?

If you can say "True, but so what?" you are hopelessly inconsistent
about your beliefs and convictions, and I cannot argue truth with a
closeminded person. You hold to gross inconsistencies. You hold true
all my basic principles yet flatly deny their combined implications.


Upon what facts (test results) do you base your
science that models cannot represent reality?


I never said that in my notion of science that "models cannot
represent reality"! Just the opposite. I said that they surely do --
the successful ones, anyway! However, being a representation and being
"identical with" are two VERY different relationships!! You have this
dogma that the purpose of science is to reverse-engineer deep reality
and you are never going to change that view, are you? It is the root
cause of all your inconsistencies! It is the root cause of all such
idiotic statements such as "science shows us that ether is real" or
"science shows us that spacetime is real."

I defined "reality" for use in physics as the observable realm
(observable to the human senses, that is). I defined a model as a
representation of a thing, concept, or relationship. The
instrumentalist view of successful theories as models of the world is
just this: A successful theory (i.e., a theory that works) represents
what we can KNOW about the BEHAVIOR of the observable realm. We are
free to invent ANY physical model/s whatsoever we want, so long as the
goal of inventing a theory that works can be achieved.

Patrick

"Patrick Reany" wrote in message
om...
(Gerald L. O'Barr) wrote in message
. com...
(Patrick Reany) wrote in message
. com...
[snip]
Reany wrote:
. . . I have been saying that people ought not to
be making, in the name of physics, metaphysical
claims of what really exists merely by proffering
models from theories that work. I'm talking about a
normative ethical standard in physics regarding
metaphysical claims.

Gerald L. O'Barr comments:
You are making a mountain out of a mole hill.

(Google claimed that this was posted but an error message came with
it, so I try it again.)

The revealed view of most posters here regarding anything
epistemologic! I think that you people realize just how weak your
justfications are to what you believe so you prefer to just not go
there at all costs! Epistemology is about revealing and analyzing your
justifications for your knowledge claims. Why don't you try it
sometime.

Every day in physics, we say: F = ma. Do we have to
say, every time we say this, that it might not really
be true?

You miss the point, as usual, but yes! Don't you even recognize its
restriction to the domain of Newtonian mechanics? F = ma is NOT
generally true in physics!

Maybe true in a strict sense but, as pointed out to you by Steve Carlip,
simple generalizations apply in QM and GR. It goes over unchanged in SR.

Thanks
Bill



Every day we say that PV = nRT. Do we
really have to say, every time, that this is only an
artificial relationship,

Yes. In fact, think it so at least twice a day before breakfast, on
the principle of out-of-sight-out-of-mind. If you forget the
artificialness of these equations, you could go wrong, and it seems
that you have. Don't you understand what is "ideal" about the Ideal
Gas Las?

that it is only due to a
summation of a multiplicity of physical interactions?
There is absolutely nothing wrong with presenting
what appears to be the most reasonable or normal
assumption that can be offered.

I never said that there was anything wrong with doing so; just don't
present "reasonable according to a particular formal point of view" as
Truth. Remember that Hertz found it unreasonable -- according to his
personal formal point of view -- to talk about force at all and he
re-did mechanics without the use of force. Hertz was neither right nor
wrong about his formal point of view -- because formal points of views
are not falsifiable.

[snip]

Reany wrote:
. . . A model is a representation, and a
representation is not necessarily identical with
what it represents. In some circumstances I can get
good predictions by explaining the behavior of a
gravitationally interacting system of mass objects
by treating the masses of large bodies as
continuously distributed, but that doesn't imply
that mass is really continuous.

O'Barr comments:
Perfect logic, as said here. But you seem to want
to go farther than just saying that a model is not
necessarily identical! You want to insist that a
model is never able to represent reality.

I get this idiotic response a lot from so-called intelligent people.
Prove it by giving even one quote from me (in context) that supports
this allegation of yours. And please stop using the term "represent"
to mean "is identical with or to." A 7in plastic model of a spitfire
plane is not identical to a real spitfire plane. Could you make that
minor consession in the cause of fairness and truth, pretty please?

To the instrumentalist the representation afforded by physical models
is not metaphysical; it's behavioral.

You
indicate that one should never take the model to be
adequate.

I have no idea what you mean. By my pragmatic use of "adequate" (were
I to use the term), a model is "adequate" if it finds itself used
within a theory that works. But being "adequate" does not imply being
true of deep reality. To be "adequate" is to be "adequate" relative to
some goal. The instrumentalist goal is the invention of theories that
work, not of reverse-engineering deep reality. We have no direct
contact with deep reality because we cannot directly observe it. The
acid tests of physical theories are always within the observable realm
(physical reality).

However correct this might really be,
there is no advantage with always requiring one to
always state this every time a model is used. It
just is not necessary!

I guess to some people, wishing is superior to honesty. Ironic indeed
that those who are the most obsessed with gaining the TRUTH about the
"real" world (the scientific realists and rationalists among us, on
this NG anyway) are the most unTRUE about how one can obtain it. It
seems to me that true-by-self-delusion is their preferred means of
attaining their precious "truth." It truly is a "physics as religion."


Reany wrote:
. . . I claim is that there is no logical
connection between the models used in a theory that
works and the metaphysical truth of the models.

Gerald L. O'Barr comments:
And this is where you go over the line! It is
impossible to say what you say. How do you really
know how good or how bad a model really is, until we
have the theory of everything?

My claim is a challenge for those who believe otherwise to produce a
counterexample, not merely produce more rhetoric, like you do. Either
prove me wrong or shut up. Produce the logical connection between them
for us right here right now, Mr. I-Know-Deep-Reality!

Physical concepts are free creations of the human mind,
and are not, however it may seem, uniquely determined
by the external world.

Concepts include conceptual models.

We have to know that
our models cannot be too far off, or else they would
not work as good as they work.

I do not buy your rationalist axiom. One could argue by your reasoning
that phlogiston must be real because it works in a theory. I hold to a
different starting point: It takes absolute truth to beget absolute
truth, and since science does not begin its mission with any absolute
truths, it cannot claim to produce any.

So, you believe in "closeness to truth"? Closeness is a metrical
concept. Do you have the metric you use for judging "closeness to
truth"? Present it to us. To calibrate this metric you must have had
some absolute truth to prime it with, right? You just will never get
it, will you. You are self-deluded, just like Weston and Bilge: Three
posters here who cannot agree on anything accept one thing: to forever
irrationally argue against instrumentalism. Your favorite means to
"argue" against it is to misrepresent it. The instrumentalist position
on metaphysics is to leave it for metaphysicists (physics is NOT
metaphysics), and to the physicists is the pragmatic domain of the
invention and testing of theories that work. But the three of you run
on intuition and pretend that it is scientific to do so in
epistmological matters.

The physical content of physics is this: Physics adopts a conventional
formal point of view on how to arbitrarily chop-up the world into
"objects" and then it studies the behavior of those "objects."

Prove to us all that there is a real thing called a hydrogen atom.
Since the model (at least one of the many models of it) works, by your
dogma the model must be literally true of deep reality. So, prove to
us all that there really is a physical thing called the hydrogen atom,
having its own identity! Prove that hydrogen exists independently of
human consciousness, which has bestowed upon it special importance as
a special subset of all matter in the universe.

Possibly you are too
confining. Maybe you are only considering the
theories that are in the boundaries of our knowledge.
In the boundaries areas, such as QM and GR, of course
we might be very wrong with what we think. But in
those areas where we have extensive coverage and
over-lap and multiplicity of confirmations by
independent approaches, our assumed theories must be
very close to being correct.

By instrumentalist standards, to be correct is merely to make correct
predictions about behavior. Period. The theory that works is the end
goal of physics in itself. Inferring deep reality from a theory that
works is a profoundly nonscientific activity which lies with your
personal natural philosophy. It's perfectly alright to use scientific
theories to attempt to reverse-engineer deep reality; just don't
pretend that the doing so is a scientific activity in itself, or that
the end result is scientific truth. When two or more distinct but
predictively equivalent theories emerge from the effort to invent
theories that work, one theory should win out of the group as the
preferred theory, but the criteria of choosing the winner are
subjective.

On the other hand, if you say that within your personal natural
philosophy that you believe that hydrogen atoms exist, I will not
contest that at all! In fact, I will say, "Bravo!"

[snip]


Reany wrote:
In other words, one cannot claim that a model is
true of reality simply because it finds a use in a
theory that works.

O'Barr comments:
True, but so what?

If you can say "True, but so what?" you are hopelessly inconsistent
about your beliefs and convictions, and I cannot argue truth with a
closeminded person. You hold to gross inconsistencies. You hold true
all my basic principles yet flatly deny their combined implications.


Upon what facts (test results) do you base your
science that models cannot represent reality?


I never said that in my notion of science that "models cannot
represent reality"! Just the opposite. I said that they surely do --
the successful ones, anyway! However, being a representation and being
"identical with" are two VERY different relationships!! You have this
dogma that the purpose of science is to reverse-engineer deep reality
and you are never going to change that view, are you? It is the root
cause of all your inconsistencies! It is the root cause of all such
idiotic statements such as "science shows us that ether is real" or
"science shows us that spacetime is real."

I defined "reality" for use in physics as the observable realm
(observable to the human senses, that is). I defined a model as a
representation of a thing, concept, or relationship. The
instrumentalist view of successful theories as models of the world is
just this: A successful theory (i.e., a theory that works) represents
what we can KNOW about the BEHAVIOR of the observable realm. We are
free to invent ANY physical model/s whatsoever we want, so long as the
goal of inventing a theory that works can be achieved.

Patrick

What in hell are you yammering about here, like some female realtor
at a cocaine convention, in her own cellar!

Patrick Reany wrote:

(Gerald L. O'Barr) wrote in message . com...
(Patrick Reany) wrote in message . com...
[snip]
Reany wrote:
. . . I have been saying that people ought not to
be making, in the name of physics, metaphysical
claims of what really exists merely by proffering
models from theories that work. I'm talking about a
normative ethical standard in physics regarding
metaphysical claims.

Gerald L. O'Barr comments:
You are making a mountain out of a mole hill.

(Google claimed that this was posted but an error message came with
it, so I try it again.)

The revealed view of most posters here regarding anything
epistemologic! I think that you people realize just how weak your
justfications are to what you believe so you prefer to just not go
there at all costs! Epistemology is about revealing and analyzing your
justifications for your knowledge claims. Why don't you try it
sometime.

Every day in physics, we say: F = ma. Do we have to
say, every time we say this, that it might not really
be true?

You miss the point, as usual, but yes! Don't you even recognize its
restriction to the domain of Newtonian mechanics? F = ma is NOT
generally true in physics!

Every day we say that PV = nRT. Do we
really have to say, every time, that this is only an
artificial relationship,

Yes. In fact, think it so at least twice a day before breakfast, on
the principle of out-of-sight-out-of-mind. If you forget the
artificialness of these equations, you could go wrong, and it seems
that you have. Don't you understand what is "ideal" about the Ideal
Gas Las?

that it is only due to a
summation of a multiplicity of physical interactions?
There is absolutely nothing wrong with presenting
what appears to be the most reasonable or normal
assumption that can be offered.

I never said that there was anything wrong with doing so; just don't
present "reasonable according to a particular formal point of view" as
Truth. Remember that Hertz found it unreasonable -- according to his
personal formal point of view -- to talk about force at all and he
re-did mechanics without the use of force. Hertz was neither right nor
wrong about his formal point of view -- because formal points of views
are not falsifiable.

[snip]

Reany wrote:
. . . A model is a representation, and a
representation is not necessarily identical with
what it represents. In some circumstances I can get
good predictions by explaining the behavior of a
gravitationally interacting system of mass objects
by treating the masses of large bodies as
continuously distributed, but that doesn't imply
that mass is really continuous.

O'Barr comments:
Perfect logic, as said here. But you seem to want
to go farther than just saying that a model is not
necessarily identical! You want to insist that a
model is never able to represent reality.

I get this idiotic response a lot from so-called intelligent people.
Prove it by giving even one quote from me (in context) that supports
this allegation of yours. And please stop using the term "represent"
to mean "is identical with or to." A 7in plastic model of a spitfire
plane is not identical to a real spitfire plane. Could you make that
minor consession in the cause of fairness and truth, pretty please?

To the instrumentalist the representation afforded by physical models
is not metaphysical; it's behavioral.

You
indicate that one should never take the model to be
adequate.

I have no idea what you mean. By my pragmatic use of "adequate" (were
I to use the term), a model is "adequate" if it finds itself used
within a theory that works. But being "adequate" does not imply being
true of deep reality. To be "adequate" is to be "adequate" relative to
some goal. The instrumentalist goal is the invention of theories that
work, not of reverse-engineering deep reality. We have no direct
contact with deep reality because we cannot directly observe it. The
acid tests of physical theories are always within the observable realm
(physical reality).

However correct this might really be,
there is no advantage with always requiring one to
always state this every time a model is used. It
just is not necessary!

I guess to some people, wishing is superior to honesty. Ironic indeed
that those who are the most obsessed with gaining the TRUTH about the
"real" world (the scientific realists and rationalists among us, on
this NG anyway) are the most unTRUE about how one can obtain it. It
seems to me that true-by-self-delusion is their preferred means of
attaining their precious "truth." It truly is a "physics as religion."

Reany wrote:
. . . I claim is that there is no logical
connection between the models used in a theory that
works and the metaphysical truth of the models.

Gerald L. O'Barr comments:
And this is where you go over the line! It is
impossible to say what you say. How do you really
know how good or how bad a model really is, until we
have the theory of everything?

My claim is a challenge for those who believe otherwise to produce a
counterexample, not merely produce more rhetoric, like you do. Either
prove me wrong or shut up. Produce the logical connection between them
for us right here right now, Mr. I-Know-Deep-Reality!

Physical concepts are free creations of the human mind,
and are not, however it may seem, uniquely determined
by the external world.

Concepts include conceptual models.

We have to know that
our models cannot be too far off, or else they would
not work as good as they work.

I do not buy your rationalist axiom. One could argue by your reasoning
that phlogiston must be real because it works in a theory. I hold to a
different starting point: It takes absolute truth to beget absolute
truth, and since science does not begin its mission with any absolute
truths, it cannot claim to produce any.

So, you believe in "closeness to truth"? Closeness is a metrical
concept. Do you have the metric you use for judging "closeness to
truth"? Present it to us. To calibrate this metric you must have had
some absolute truth to prime it with, right? You just will never get
it, will you. You are self-deluded, just like Weston and Bilge: Three
posters here who cannot agree on anything accept one thing: to forever
irrationally argue against instrumentalism. Your favorite means to
"argue" against it is to misrepresent it. The instrumentalist position
on metaphysics is to leave it for metaphysicists (physics is NOT
metaphysics), and to the physicists is the pragmatic domain of the
invention and testing of theories that work. But the three of you run
on intuition and pretend that it is scientific to do so in
epistmological matters.

The physical content of physics is this: Physics adopts a conventional
formal point of view on how to arbitrarily chop-up the world into
"objects" and then it studies the behavior of those "objects."

Prove to us all that there is a real thing called a hydrogen atom.
Since the model (at least one of the many models of it) works, by your
dogma the model must be literally true of deep reality. So, prove to
us all that there really is a physical thing called the hydrogen atom,
having its own identity! Prove that hydrogen exists independently of
human consciousness, which has bestowed upon it special importance as
a special subset of all matter in the universe.

Possibly you are too
confining. Maybe you are only considering the
theories that are in the boundaries of our knowledge.
In the boundaries areas, such as QM and GR, of course
we might be very wrong with what we think. But in
those areas where we have extensive coverage and
over-lap and multiplicity of confirmations by
independent approaches, our assumed theories must be
very close to being correct.

By instrumentalist standards, to be correct is merely to make correct
predictions about behavior. Period. The theory that works is the end
goal of physics in itself. Inferring deep reality from a theory that
works is a profoundly nonscientific activity which lies with your
personal natural philosophy. It's perfectly alright to use scientific
theories to attempt to reverse-engineer deep reality; just don't
pretend that the doing so is a scientific activity in itself, or that
the end result is scientific truth. When two or more distinct but
predictively equivalent theories emerge from the effort to invent
theories that work, one theory should win out of the group as the
preferred theory, but the criteria of choosing the winner are
subjective.

On the other hand, if you say that within your personal natural
philosophy that you believe that hydrogen atoms exist, I will not
contest that at all! In fact, I will say, "Bravo!"

[snip]


Reany wrote:
In other words, one cannot claim that a model is
true of reality simply because it finds a use in a
theory that works.

O'Barr comments:
True, but so what?

If you can say "True, but so what?" you are hopelessly inconsistent
about your beliefs and convictions, and I cannot argue truth with a
closeminded person. You hold to gross inconsistencies. You hold true
all my basic principles yet flatly deny their combined implications.


Upon what facts (test results) do you base your
science that models cannot represent reality?


I never said that in my notion of science that "models cannot
represent reality"! Just the opposite. I said that they surely do --
the successful ones, anyway! However, being a representation and being
"identical with" are two VERY different relationships!! You have this
dogma that the purpose of science is to reverse-engineer deep reality
and you are never going to change that view, are you? It is the root
cause of all your inconsistencies! It is the root cause of all such
idiotic statements such as "science shows us that ether is real" or
"science shows us that spacetime is real."

I defined "reality" for use in physics as the observable realm
(observable to the human senses, that is). I defined a model as a
representation of a thing, concept, or relationship. The
instrumentalist view of successful theories as models of the world is
just this: A successful theory (i.e., a theory that works) represents
what we can KNOW about the BEHAVIOR of the observable realm. We are
free to invent ANY physical model/s whatsoever we want, so long as the
goal of inventing a theory that works can be achieved.

Patrick

Jack Jones wrote in message ...
What in hell are you yammering about here, like some female realtor
at a cocaine convention, in her own cellar!


We are truly blessed on this NG to get such well thought out and
intelligent replies from posters like Jones, aren't we.

Patrick