On 3/21/2013 12:18 AM, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote:
On 20.03.2013 22:59 meekerdb said the following:
On 3/20/2013 1:01 PM, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote:
On 20.03.2013 20:18 meekerdb said the following:
On 3/20/2013 2:22 AM, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote:
...
At the Occam's time, realists were people who have believed that
universals exist. Occam has employed his razor to strip universals
from the reality and his position has led to nominalism. That is,
universals are just creation of the mind and it does not make
sense to search for them in the real world.
Presumably his positions about atoms were the same, an atom is just
a concept created by the mind - hence it does not make sense to
search for it in reality. Here is the irony.
That's a false dichotomy. You are assuming that because something,
like an atom, is an element of a model which was invented to describe
reality that it is *just* a concept. No, it is a concept which is
part of very successful model and which we therefore have reason to
believe captures some aspect of reality. It makes perfect sense to
"search for it" in the sense of test the predictions of the model to
see if they agree with observation.
I completely agree with the last sentences. This is exactly what Van Fraassen says. Yet,
physicists like Deutsch seem to believe for example that multiverse exists as reality -
see his The Beginning of Infinity and his defense of realism.
But Deutsch is just making the argument that instrumentalism is wrong and that when we
create models we're aiming to explain reality. It doesn't follow that our model IS
reality and it doesn't follow that it IS NOT reality. When you say be believes the
multiverse exists (I don't think it adds anything to say "as reality") he's just saying he
thinks it's the right model, it's the one to try to test and extend and use in explaining
things. It doesn't mean he wouldn't change his mind if it failed some test.
Brent
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