Clark, list, sorry, a few corrections/additions in *bold red*. - Best, Ben
On 9/30/2014 1:58 PM, Benjamin Udell wrote:
Clark, list,
You wrote,
> [CG] It’s a subtle issue that’s hard to get terminology for.
(Probably one should do a literature search and see how others have
solved it - but I don’t have time for that unfortunately) I’m not
sure I like more or less general either since the more or less is in
different areas.
[End quote]
Another problem with 'general' is that 'general among' very nearly means
'universal among'. If something is general among horses or general to
horses, one might mean that there could be exceptions, but the
exceptions would be special cases that don't really invalidate the
general rule; but the general rule might not be by definition of the
class or by the essential nature of the elements of the class. That
nuance is involved in 'generic', which sometimes now replaces 'general'
- something generic to horses is something that they have by essential
nature or as implied by (sufficiently detailed) definition, e.g., four
legs, but definition and nature allow of accidental exceptions.
A problem that would arise again even with an invented word to replace
'universal' in the sense of 'true in one case and exceptionless
elsewhere' is that something universal to elements of a set or class is
a general in the larger universe but not necessarily universal to
everything in that universe. That creates a risk of confusion rooted not
merely in conventional language but in logic. So the conflict of senses
will recur. I think that the word translated as 'universal' in Aristotle
is _/catholikon/_. Greek _/catholikon/_ , as far as I can tell, usually
means 'universal' in pretty much the everyday English sense. So the use
of 'a universal' without qualification to mean something true of as few
as two things *among many* seems an unfortunate turn in the history of
terms; such universality is relative to *as few as two things among
many*. To avoid the semantic influence of cases of relative
universality, one would need a special set of terms or phrases for the
non-relative cases.
You wrote,
> [CG] Whether the “nearly real” is good enough is a reasonable
question. Like you, I see it as good enough, but I think there are
important caveats one has to make which is why I mentioned that on
practical grounds for many entities they act like instrumentalists.
[End quote]
I'd say that they're acting as fallibilists. They may also hold that a
theory should be evaluated not for the plausibility of its assumptions
but the only for the success of its predictions, and it's more tempting
to call that approach instrumentalism. Some have even held that it's
okay and even necessary for the assumptions to be 'descriptively false'.
Now, that could mean merely seemingly false by omission of factors that
one would have thought to be pertinent, and I do think that is part of
it. However, sometimes the assumptions clash with things that we think
that we know, and the theory's success is telling us that some of our
supposed knowledge is false. So, in expectation of unknown unknowns, we
shouldn't rule a theory out automatically solely because its assumptions
conflict with at least one of our beliefs. Still, I'd call that
fallibilism, not instrumentalism, although it reflects the spirit of
some who call themselves instrumentalists. Such considerations may also
be involved in reconciling the idea of plausibility above and Peirce's
idea of plausibility, which I think is something a bit different. But
even Peirce's idea of plausibility is more about developing a theory
than about evaluating its success. Most scientific hypotheses, including
quite a few highly plausible ones, get disconfirmed, and I don't think
that Peirce held that hypotheses that stand up to testing generally turn
out to have been the most plausible in advance.
*The case of the incomplex hypothesis which one really doesn't expect to
be true is the closest, I think, to instrumentalism, but it's a case of
treating a hypothesis instrumentally without embracing the view called
'instrumentalism', which holds (or originally held, according to what we
find in Peirce's account of it) that theories don't affirm objective
laws or norms but merely predict particular results.
*
*Still, insofar as fallibilism applies to our beliefs, and incomplex
hypotheses aside for the moment, how does one characterize other than as
'instrumental' one's attitude _/toward/_ the tentative or experimental
hypothesis or theory that conflicts with a belief that one holds? I
would call it 'successiblism', the attitude that said hypothesis or
theory is 'successible', i.e., it could be true, and that one could find
the real through it. Even the incomplex hypothesis has to be granted
some provisional credibility, as a kind of possible approximation to the
truth. Of course one needs both fallibilism and successibilism about
one's beliefs and one's doubts, hypotheses, etc.; but sometimes one or
the other stands out more as what one needs. With the terms
'fallibilism' and 'successibilism' obvously I'm trying for the kind of
informative etymological counterbalancing involved in 'verifiable' and
'falsifiable' but with a much smaller morphological mess.*
Best, Ben
On 9/30/2014 12:26 PM, Clark Goble wrote:
On Sep 30, 2014, at 9:21 AM, Benjamin Udell wrote:
If one is a realist _/only/ _ about things that one doesn't know,
then one implies that the real is not cognizable. I suppose that one
could say in a loose sense that one is partly an instrumentalist
about simplified models, but one may regard such models as still
being close to the truth, and thus as reflecting something nearly
real, and in that sense one is not an instrumentalist. In "On the
Logic of Drawing Ancient History from Documents", EP 2, somewhere in
pages 107–9, Peirce speaks of _/incomplexity/_, that of a hypothesis
that seems too simple but whose trial "may give a good 'leave,' as
the billiard-players say", and be instructive for the pursuit of
various and conflicting hypotheses that are less simple. One could
loosely call that instrumentalism, but to regard the incomplex
hypothesis as offering some degree of promise of leading to a true
theory about something real, is not instrumentalism.
The way this is often dealt with is via convergence - traditional
scientific realism being one example. I’m not sure this implies the
real is not cognizable, although that’s definitely been a position.
(Wasn’t Dummett’s views on realism tied to that? A set with one
uncognizable element - it’s been too long since I read him)
There are other solutions of course - Heisenberg actually wrote a
little book discussing objects like tables and then fundamental
objects. It’s been years since I read it so I don’t want to say too
much about it. I vaguely recall it being a kind of realism that allows
macro-objects to be real. But I may be misrecalling that.
Whether the “nearly real” is good enough is a reasonable question.
Like you, I see it as good enough, but I think there are important
caveats one has to make which is why I mentioned that on practical
grounds for many entities they act like instrumentalists.
Peirce makes the distinction between mechanical qualities and
qualities of feeling, see CP 1.422-426, circa 1896. Particularly
interesting is that here he calls qualities generals - but qualities
only as reflected on. http://www.textlog.de/4282.html
Thanks. I thought he’d said something like that but I couldn’t find
it. That’s closer to the distinction I was poorly making.
I'd think that laws of physics are more general than a sensible
quality like 'yellow', which is less widely applicable than the laws
of physics in our known physical universe, even if one does think
that sensible qualities are real.
Except when discussing 'universal' as understood in physics, it might
be better to stick to 'more general' and 'less general', rather than
trying for a distinction between 'universal' and 'general' that (A)
merely involves different degrees of generality and (B) gets tangled
up in terminological history.
It’s a subtle issue that’s hard to get terminology for. (Probably one
should do a literature search and see how others have solved it - but
I don’t have time for that unfortunately) I’m not sure I like more or
less general either since the more or less is in different areas.
Regarding A-time and B-time, I thought that those were questions in
philosophy of physics, not in physics. Do you think that they have
something to do with the unification of space and time in the sense
in which that unification is understood in physics - such as to
modify the idea of the signal speed limit as a common yardstick of
space and time?
I think the distinction between physics and philosophy of physics is
blurry despite many physicists having a negative view of philosophy.
Lee Smolin argues that it should be even blurrier and that physicists
should pay more attention to philosophy. And it seems often that when
physicists do philosophical thinking they often tend to jump in
ignorant of what’s been done in philosophy. (I can think of a few
major recent works where a little more research in philosophy would
have benefited the book significantly)
With regards to the A/B debate, I think if there is an absolute time
ontologically and measurements just behave akin to time distortion
then that implies a lot about time/space relations. I’m very skeptical
about such views. I was actually surprised when I first encountered it
that there was such a large philosophical literature arguing against a
more literal view of GR. I do think these issues end up being
pertinent for searching for a grand unified theory. I don’t think most
physicists have paid much attention to such things. But then I do
notice more and more are appearing at arXiv.org <http://arXiv.org> so
perhaps they are having a bit of an effect. I’m not sure I’m really
qualified to say how influential all this is since I’ve been out of
physics for quite a few years now.
-----------------------------
PEIRCE-L subscribers: Click on "Reply List" or "Reply All" to REPLY ON PEIRCE-L
to this message. PEIRCE-L posts should go to peirce-L@list.iupui.edu . To
UNSUBSCRIBE, send a message not to PEIRCE-L but to l...@list.iupui.edu with the
line "UNSubscribe PEIRCE-L" in the BODY of the message. More at
http://www.cspeirce.com/peirce-l/peirce-l.htm .
