On 11/8/2014 5:09 AM, David Nyman wrote:
On 8 November 2014 07:54, LizR <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>>
wrote:
Are not the relations between the subsystems part of the ontology?
Explicitly so in arithmetical realism, I would say.
Not really. Perhaps I could respond both to you and Brent in one here. I'm trying to
make an explicit distinction between an assumed ontology and its (possible)
epistemological consequences. In comp, the assumed ontology is restricted to basic
arithmetical relations; physics likewise is a search for a fundamental level of
explanation in terms of which everything else can explicitly (at least in principle) be
rendered. Of course, one can speak in terms of systems and sub-systems composed of such
basic entities and relations. But it is surely a guiding principle of reductive
explanation that such composites, and the relations between them, must ultimately be
exhaustively accountable in terms of the fundamental ontological assumptions.
So is the value of the fine structure constant and its role in coupling photons and
electrons part of the ontology? Is s() in arithmetic fundamental? I'm not clear on what
it means to account for relations in terms of the fundamental ontology. Are you saying
relations can't be in the fundamental ontology? And I don't see that subsystems are
necessarily composite.
Brent
If that were not the case, the attempted "reduction" would merely have been
unsuccessful.
Indeed it is only in terms of some explicit point of view that we are ever forced to
contemplate a strong form of emergence, or "realism", about any level of composition
over and above the reductive base.
?? Can you give an example? What does "forced to contemplate" mean?
Strictly speaking, composite systems and relations are *epistemologically* real, rather
than ontologically so, in any strong sense.
That again seems to deny reality to relations. Yet some philosophers and physics think
things can be entirely defined in terms of their relations.
In fact so-called "weak emergence" isn't really emergence at all as, objectively
speaking, nothing is to be conceived as being "there" over and above the basic entities
and their relations.
So the relations are back into the fundamentals.
So my point is that it is simply self-defeating to deny that there is in fact any such
thing as epistemological realism,
Epistemological realism would be a theory that says knowledge is real?
Brent
as Graziano explicitly does. In attempting to do so, he simply cuts the ground from
under his own claim.
David
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