He should have kicked the stone too to let his sore toe tell him about reality…

Modern quantum theory posits that a phenomenon does not ‘exist’ until observed [not necessarily by humans only]

Good ol’ Bishop Berkeley. ;-)

Arthur Glass (11:49:40) :
Of course a theory can be either true or false.
It seems that people around here can’t read. The truth is not about the theory, but about the data. The data is the truth the theory has to explain. “”"

Amen to that.

“”"This explanation itself is neither true nor false. It is a useful theory if it allows predictions of not yet observed values and those predictions come out correctly within the bounds of observational error. The phlogiston theory was useful when it was proposed, because it explained observed facts. When further facts [the truth] became available, the theory failed, as will [probably] all theories eventually. “”"

The “theory” describes the behavior of a “model”. All of it is fiction including the mathematics which we made up out of whole cloth to manipulate the models.

It is comparison of the data “the facts”; from real observations, with the fictional behavior of the model; that leads to conclusions as to whether the model is a sufficient facsimile of the real universe. In a sense, the model doesn’t have to “be like” the real universe; it doesn’t even have to be unique; you could have a dozen models all described by a dozen theories; but what we require of any of them is that their behavior replicates the “facts” ; the real data gathered by real observations of the real universe.

As for the models; they have no reality; just usefulness as tools to perhaps predict what other observations we might be able to make in the real universe to glean new “facts”.

George

Modern quantum theory posits that a phenomenon does not ‘exist’ until observed [not necessarily by humans only], so the measure is the man, in a quantum mechanical sense. The spin of an electron is a superposition of all possible spins until observed, at which time the spin becomes what is observed. The act of observation gives the spin a definite value.

If the common modern view of Western philosophy has a weakness it is the idea that there is nothing useful between Aristotle and Descartes: not least because it was mainly the province of clerics.

Arthur, if you haven’t read ‘Against Method’ by Paul Feyerabend, you must.

It contains a delightful chapter entitled:

Aristotle not a dead dog.

Data is neither accurate nor inaccurate. With a stated uncertainty, the data just is and is a accurate as the uncertainty species, not in absolute terms. The data, to the stated accuracy, represent the real ‘truth’ about a phenomenon.

Or more correctly, from a philosophical standpoint, the data, to the stated accuracy represents the truth about the aspect of the phenomenon the data measures. It does not encapsulate the phenomenon itself. The measure is not the man.

I would say that the dust the scientists have kicked up is the cloud of their unknowing which prevents them from understanding the context of their quest for truth within the wider corpus of human knowledge.

That’s why we need a discipline called ‘The philosophy of Science’ to help them out of their confusion on ontological and epistemological issues. ;-)

Bishop Berkely of Cloyne was a subtle thinker, and there is much of interest in his writings beyond the usual anecdotes of the hapless Johnson toe stubbing incident.

Perhaps you could test that proposition: collect some empirical observations and report your findings.

As in all things philosophy has its fashions.

Western philosophy was was very much influenced by Christian beliefs from about 500 A.D. on and this did not begin to fade until the Age of Reason. Russell’s opposition to this is very much of it’s time with its strong anti clerical bias: the black crows.

Just as Newton could boast ‘Physics, I invented it’, which does some injustice to Hooke and others, I think Aristotle has a good claim to be the father of NP as we understand it today.

But the rise of Christianity meant that God got involved in NP, which caused thinkers from about 500 A.D. onwards to view the world in a different way in that God was the prime mover.

In actual fact they were quite free thinking but as the Roman Catholic church became a great secular power so dissent became dangerous. It could not of course ban ancient texts so these increasingly became almost holy writ incorporated into its dogma.

This after all was the charge used against Galileo: to his bemusement.

But the idea that these Christian thinkers before about 1100 A.D. had nothing to say is quite wrong, they produced many novel concepts, albeit ones distorted by the prism through which they saw the world: which is why Russell and many others have unfairly condemned their work as worthless.

Thus in the Age of Reason, especially in France with its strong anti clericalism, the last prince strangled with the entrails of the last priest etc, they were taboo.

And whilst the French tradition based on Descartes is very narrow it has its strengths, I don’t imagine that the Duality of Nature could have been conceived by anyone not brought up in it.

In England the tradition of language and logic to which you refer came from religious and political constraint, the mediaeval disputation which cared nothing for the premise only the arguement: and once freed from that it has proved a powerful tool.

So I think you could say that modern NP is essentially derived from the English tradition and is much closer to Aristotle than its French and indeed European counterparts: and that it owes even less to Oriental philosophies.

Kindest Regards

I read recently, in immediate sucession, The Concept of Mind, Gilbert Ryle’s classic demolition of the Cartesian ‘ghost in the machine’, and Sir Anthony Kenney’s Aquinas on Mind, which argues that Aquinas, and indeed scholastic philosophy in general, had more in common with 20th c. English phiosophy’s emphasis on logic and language than did the tradition descending from Descartes.

Russell demotes Aquinas from the ranks of philosophers because instead of following a free inquiry, he constructed rational accounts of what he already believed on other grounds. Kenney makes the point that in the
Principia, Russell takes a hundred pages to prove that 2+2=4, something that Russell had belived all his life.