On Mon, Feb 17, 2014 at 06:32:35PM -0800, meekerdb wrote: > On 2/17/2014 5:21 PM, Russell Standish wrote: > >On Mon, Feb 17, 2014 at 02:03:49PM -0800, meekerdb wrote: > >>On 2/17/2014 1:55 PM, Russell Standish wrote: > >>>On Mon, Feb 17, 2014 at 05:33:48AM -0800, Edgar L. Owen wrote: > >>>>Russell, > >>>> > >>>>All of science assumes an external reality independent of human > >>>>observation. > >>>Who says? I must have been asleep when they announced this in Physics > >>>101! Actually, I'm pretty sure they never did. > >>I'd say science assumes that we can agree on observations. The > >>success of this hypothesis is generally taken as evidence for a > >>reality independent of human observation. > >> > >By whom? > > Vic Stenger for one. Me for two.
and David Deutsch, for three, IIUHC. To which we can add Bruno Marchal and myself against the obviousness of that idea. But these are all rather unusual individuals, in a way. > > >That is a serious question. Of course, some scientists might > >speculate about this down at the pub, and certainly there has been > >some discussion along these lines on this list, but in everyday > >science, everyone is trained as a positivist, and tends to act as > >such, which is probably a worse syndrome than naive Aristotelianism. > > > >The notion that there is a real reality there, with solid things like > >tables and stones to stub your toes on has taken such a drubbing since > >the beginning of the 20th century, > > I'd say positivism has taken a lot more of a drubbing since Mach than realism. > Hmm - I'm not so sure. It was certainly the prevailing opinion back when I was closer to fundamental physics research. The sort of stuff I deal with now is much less abstract, though, so things like tables and stones (or people and dollars) are fundamental objects of analysis. Are people doing string theory utterly realist about the stuff they do? Seems hard to imagine it. > The replacement of tables and chairs by atoms and then by wave > functions is just changing our best guess about ontology - it's not > evidence that there is no mind independent ontology. The fact that > there is intersubjective agreement on observations is still evidence > for a mutual reality. Yes a mutual reality, but not a mind independent one. > > >that most everyday scientists usually > >just focus on mathematical descriptions of phenomena, and leave it at that. > > But if you ask them why mathematical descriptions are so successful? Wouldn't they just point at Occam's razor, if they've thought about it at all, that is? Or even go with Max Tegmark and say its all mathematics. > Or why do we all agree that's a chair over there? That one is obviously convention. Someone from remote Amazonia who's never seen a chair before wouldn't agree. > The existence of > some mind independent reality is always the working assumption. > Really? I don't think working scientists need to think about the issue much at all. Whether they assume there is some kind of mind-independent reality, or are outrageous solipsists would not affect their ability to conduct experiments or do theory. -- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile) Principal, High Performance Coders Visiting Professor of Mathematics hpco...@hpcoders.com.au University of New South Wales http://www.hpcoders.com.au ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
