On 10/30/2012 4:45 AM, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote:
On 29.10.2012 20:44 meekerdb said the following:
On 10/29/2012 11:33 AM, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote:
On 29.10.2012 19:21 meekerdb said the following:
On 10/29/2012 10:21 AM, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote:
Some more quotes from From Scientific Representation: Paradoxes
of Perspective by Bas C Van Fraassen.
p. 45 "Agreed, we cannot demonstrate that in principle, as a
matter of logic, mathematical modeling must inevitably be a
distortion of what is modeled, although models actually
constructed cannot have perfection reachable in principle. But
on the other hand, the conviction that perfect modeling is
possible in principle - what Paul Teller calls the "perfect
model model" - does not have an a priori justification
either!"
p. 83 "Suppose now that science gives us a model which
putatively represents the world in full detail. Suppose even we
believe that this is so. Suppose we regard ourselves as knowing
that it is so. Then still, before we can go on to use that
model, to make predictions and build bridges, we must locate
ourselves with respect to that model.
If the model is complete it must already include us - as well as
what we will think about it and do with it. But then this will
run into Godelian incompleteness. If it is true it will be
unprovable within the model.
The question would be how it should be done practically. Say let us
imagine that such a model is the M-theory (I am still impressed by
Grand Design by Hawking). How do I find myself in the M-theory?
In practice, which I'm sure you're familiar with, we don't 'locate
ourselves in the model'. The model is in the objective world that we
share with others who are also not in the model. An engineer
In this chapter, Van Fraassen has considered a map as a model for a typical model. A map
is in the objective world, as well as a scientific model, but to use the map one has to
find out where on the map he/she is located. I hope that you agree with that.
I don't agree with it because it's obviously false. I just looked a map to see how close
Sandy came to my brother's home in Virginia. I didn't need to locate myself on that map.
Brent
Yet, now this process, located oneself on a map, could be extended to other scientific
models. For example to those that engineers employ in their practice. An engineer has a
scientific model on one hand and real things on the other hand. Similarly it is
necessary to relate a model and reality and one needs a human being to achieve this goal.
Along this line of thought we come to a "perfect model model" that also is in the
objective world, as for example the M-theory. The question however remains.
Evgenii
designing an airliner considers the airliner carrying other people,
but he doesn't model them completely - only their weight, size, use
of the restrooms, entertainment, etc. He doesn't try to model their
inner thoughts unrelated to the airliner. So a model, to be useful,
cannot be complete because part of its usefulness is that it can be
communicated and must be 3p, as Bruno would say. That's not to say
that someone's inner thoughts cannot be in some model (the often are
in novels), but only that they can't be in that same person's model;
just like a Godel sentence unprovable in one system can be provable
in some other axiom system.
Brent
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