Edwina, When I was talking about model-relative theories of reality, I was definitely *not* advocating a kind of cognitive relativism.
> we have to consider that some models more accurately represent this external reality than others - and also, Peirce did feel that we could, among the 'community of scholars', over time - reach a more and more accurate representation of this reality... Yes. When I listed those many different models in my previous note, I was not claiming that they were contradictory. All I said is that each one emphasized aspects of reality that the others did not consider The results of chemical experiments, as they were described in 19th c. books, are just as valid today as they were then: Na + CL -> NaCl + Heat. The fact that physicists today can calculate the amount of heat by quantum mechanics does not invalidate the old results. For most purposes, the amount of heat is easier to measure that to calculate. Similarly, Newtonian mechanics is just as reliable as relativity and quantum mechanics for the motions of common objects on the earth's surface. And engineers continue to use it because the calculations are simpler. > we must not move into 'cognitive relativism' so to speak, where we simply accept a diversity of models and their cognitive interpretations without evaluating them for their realism. Certainly. But the most accurate model of physics -- quantum electrodynamics -- is so complex, that engineers almost never use it -- except for extreme cases, such as computing what happens in a nuclear explosion. See the attached file -- CP8_187.txt for some quotations. Note the passage that begins "Now the different sciences deal with different kinds of truth ; mathematical truth is one thing, ethical truth is another, the actually existing state of the universe is a third..." John
CP 8.187. Confining ourselves to science, inference, in the broadest sense, is coextensive with the deliberate adoption, in any measure, of an assertion as true. For deliberation implies that the adoption is voluntary; and consequently, the observation of perceptual facts that are forced upon us in experience is excluded. General principles, on the other hand, if deliberately adopted, must have been subjected to criticism; and any criticism of them that can be called scientific and that results in their acceptance must involve an argument in favor of their truth. My statement was that an inference, in the broadest sense, is a deliberate adoption, in any measure, of an assertion as true. The phrase "in any measure" is not as clear as might be wished. "Measure," here translates modus. The modes of acceptance of an assertion that are traditionally recognized are the necessary, the possible, and the contingent. But we shall learn more accurately, as our inquiry proceeds, how the different measures of acceptance are to be enumerated and defined. Then, as to the word "true," I may be asked what this means. Now the different sciences deal with different kinds of truth ; mathematical truth is one thing, ethical truth is another, the actually existing state of the universe is a third; but all those different conceptions have in common something very marked and clear. We all hope that the different scientific inquiries in which we are severally engaged are going ultimately to lead to some definitely established conclusion, which conclusion we endeavor to anticipate in some measure. Agreement with that ultimate proposition that we look forward to, agreement with that, whatever it may turn out to be, is the scientific truth. CP 8.188. Perhaps there will here be no harm in indulging in a little diagrammatic psychology after the manner of the old writers' discussions concerning the primum cognitum; for however worthless it may be as psychology, it is not a bad way to get orientated in our logic. No man can recall the time when he had not yet begun a theory of the universe, when any particular course of things was so little expected that nothing could surprise him, even though it startled him. The first surprise would naturally be the first thing that would offer sufficient handle for memory to draw it forth from the general background. It was something new. Of course, nothing can appear as definitely new without being contrasted with a background of the old. At this, the infantile scientific impulse, what becomes developed later into various kinds of intelligence, but we will call it the scientific impulse because it is science that we are now endeavoring to get a general notion of, this infantile scientific impulse must strive to reconcile the new to the old. The first new feature of this first surprise is, for example, that it is a surprise; and the only way of accounting for that is that there had been before an expectation. Thus it is that all knowledge begins by the discovery that there has been an erroneous expectation of which we had before hardly been conscious. Each branch of science begins with a new phenomenon which violates a sort of negative subconscious expectation, like the frog's legs of Signore Galvani.
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