> On Oct 21, 2015, at 11:07 AM, Ozzie <ozzie...@gmail.com> wrote: > > Regarding physics and gravitons: I asserted they are hypothetical. That is > widely known, and you didn't dispute it.
That part I agreed with. It was more the motivations I questioned. I think all physicists recognize they don’t have ultimate answers of why. Typically the common response is to disparage attempts to get at ultimates. My point was just that physicists didn’t postulate gravitons because they were stalled (making no progress) but because other theories suggested this was likely. That’s a significant difference that makes a difference. It can’t be neglected. What gets tested are more detailed structures. There’s never an end. This is rather key to Peirce’s conception of continuity as well as his conception of signs and realism. As I said, the complaint about black boxes versus “ultimately reality” inverts the nominalist position. The nominalist is the one who think only ultimate stuff matters and that the structures aren’t in themselves real. That is that the black box is a black box rather than a real structure rather than merely hiding what is real. That’s fine if you follow that critique of course. But it’ll put you quite at odds with the strengths (IMO) of the Peircean approach. Physics and to a lesser extent the other hard sciences are interesting in that they have a rather incoherent view. (Most scientists don’t spend enough time thinking about philosophy, although arguably one can do good science without it at times) They often embrace the nominalism that tends to be characteristic of our intellectual era but at other times speak of laws/structures as real on their own. And then there’s the instrumentalism I raised yesterday which is a bit more complex.
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