On 17 Nov 2014, at 23:02, LizR wrote:
On 18 November 2014 00:44, Bruno Marchal <[email protected]> wrote:
On 17 Nov 2014, at 07:21, meekerdb wrote:
On 11/16/2014 7:15 PM, Bruce Kellett wrote:
meekerdb wrote:
On 11/16/2014 10:51 AM, LizR wrote:
On 17 November 2014 00:31, Bruno Marchal <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]
>> wrote:
Heisenberg was influenced by the positivism of the time (The
Vienna circles, the young Wittgenstein, etc.). That was very bad
philosophy, and we can say that is is virtually abandoned.
Positivism is easily shown self-defeating or just an
instrumentalism which abandon fundamental research.
Isn't that the Popperian view - falsification and so on - that David
Deutsch is so keen on in FOR? Or am I getting my wires crossed? If
it is, I didn't know it had been abandoned.
I think Deutsch takes the view that explanation is the important
function of science, whereas positivist eschew explanation and aim
for prediction. Being falsifiable in principle is still considered
an essential attribute of any scientific theory, but "in principle"
can be pretty broadly intepreted.
It is a while since I read Deutsch, but I think one could categorize
his position as that of a (super)realist. Positivism does not really
eschew explanation: the characteristic of positivism is that
observation is paramount and theoretical terms are accepted only in
so far as they can be reduced to observational statements. This
philosophy has gone out of fashion as people have realized that not
all theoretical terms can be so reduced. The realist position is
that the theoretical terms of well-established scientific theories
actually correspond to 'elements of reality', or parts of 'the
furniture of the world'. Deutsch takes this to extremes with his
claim that quantum computing 'proves' the existence of the many
worlds of MWI.
I agree. And there's a good reason not to use terms like "proves",
when there are alternative explanations (e.g. t'Hooft's
superdeterminism). The scientist's reason for entertaining
different formulations and interpretations of a theory is that they
may suggest extensions of the theory, not because he wants the
certainty of "proof".
Concerning positivism and Popper (and Deutsch) I agree with you and
with Bruce. I hope this answers Liz, and John Clark.
I think so. IIRC Popper was one of DD's "4 strands" in FOR, so he is
obviously keen on his approach - but it looks like his approach was
more extreme than I realised. DD certainly thinks explanation is
key, and if Popper thinks it's a sort of add-on extra that puts them
rather at odds.
I am not sure. Popper is quite opposed to positivism. he is just aware
that we cannot know the truth, and we can just refute theories, but
Deutsch interpret this (correctly imo) as saying that we have to take
our theory seriously. Unlike the bible, scientific text must be taken
literally, so that we can improve the theories when we find a
discrepancy with experiments. I think that nobody take positivism
seriously, as it is easy to show being self-defeating.
I guess Tegmark's "reducing the baggage allowance of physics" is a
bit along the same lines as eschewing explanation that can't be
turned into statements about observations - at least in principle -
but he stops at a bedrock of maths, which presumably positivists
wouldn't think was valid.
Tegmark is unaware of the FPI (despite he "discovered" lately it in
his book). In fact he is unaware of the mind-body problem, except in
his last paper on consciousness which contradicts all his preceding
papers. he has not sen that QM looks very much like the solution of
the mind-body problem in the computationalist frame.
I also avoid use of "proof" in applied science (especially when
applied in the search of reality). I use proof only relative to a
theory, and in that case, the notion of "proof" is itself an object
of a theory (even if embeddable in arithmetic).
But even in math, "proof" is not related to certainty, because we
would be obliged to assume our own correctness, which is impossible
to do at the level of a theory. About reality, science is agnostic,
and can only give plausibilities, never certainties.
It is one of the lesson of incompleteness: proof = belief. A proof,
per se, is not an indication of truth, even if miraculously you
could know that the axioms of your theory is true. May be I doubt
this personally for elementary arithmetic (the so-called separable
part of math where all scientists agree), but I am not sure.
So AR = elementary arithmetic only.
By the UDA, and assuming computationalism. AR is really just the
belief that 2+2=4 is true, or false, independently of me.
But includes the notion of infinity?
Not at all. Only 2+2=4, or more sophisticate things like the fact that
24 is the only number N such that the sum of n^2 with n least of equal
to N is a square. The proof of this might be difficult and involve
infinities, but the truth of it does not requires them.
All scientists admits AR, and even more, most of the time. It as much
controversial that 0 + any number gives that number. Only rare
philosopher can claim that they don't believe in AR, but it is easy to
see the flaw, even if they will deny it. It does not assume any
infinity: only 0, s(0), s(s(0)) ...
Bruno
Bruno
Brent
"As an adolescent I aspired to lasting fame, I craved factual
certainty, and I thirsted for a meaningful vision of human life-- so
I became a scientist. This is like becoming an archbishop so you
can meet girls."
-- Matt Cartmill
Falsification is seen as an important element of science, but not
necessarily the final touchstone. Naive Popperian falsificationism
is clearly wrong, but there are no universally accepted
generalizations of falsifiability that measure up to all that one
might want. In sum, the Popperian quest for a clear demarcation
between science and non-science has assumed a less prominent role in
recent philosophy of science.
Bruce
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