On 06 Jun 2015, at 02:00, Bruce Kellett wrote:
meekerdb wrote:
On 6/5/2015 4:29 PM, Bruce Kellett wrote:
meekerdb wrote:
On 6/5/2015 12:22 PM, John Clark wrote:
On Fri, Jun 5, 2015 , meekerdb <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]
>> wrote:
>> It's very relevant if you want to know what is a
simplified
approximation of what. And we both agree that a electronic
computer is vastly more complex than it's logical
schematic,
so why can we make a working model of the complex thing but
not make a working model of the simple thing when usually
it's
easier to make a simple thing than a complex thing? The
only
answer that comes to mind is that particular simplified
approximation is just too simplified and just too
approximate
to actually do anything. That simplification must be
missing
something important, matter that obeys the laws of physics.
> The trouble with this argument is that the laws of physics
are
mathematical abstractions.
Mathematicians are always saying that mathematics is a language,
but what would be the consequences if that were really true? The
best way known to describe the laws of physics is to write then
in the language of mathematics, but a language is not the thing
the language is describing.
I agree the laws of physics are descriptions we invent; but even
so they are abstractions and not material and what they define is
only an approximation to what happens in the world. That's what
makes them useful - they let us make predictions while leaving
out a lot of stuff.
So what is this "lot of stuff" that the mathematical abstractions
leave out? In response you your initial point that "the laws of
physics are mathematical abstractions", the obvious questions is
"Abstractions from what?"
Abstractions from physical events. We find we can leave out stuff
like the location (and so conserve momentum) and the position of
distant galaxies and the name of the experimenter and which god he
prays to etc. Of course what we can leave out and what we must
include is part of applying the theory. Physicists work by
considering simple experiments in which they can leave out as much
stuff they're not interested in as possible in order to test their
theory. Engineers don't get to be so choosy about what's left out;
they have to consider what events may obtain. But they also get to
throw in "safety factors" to mitigate their ignorance.
In other words, in this account, the pre-existing physical world is
taken as a given, from which laws are simplified abstractions. Fine,
that's the way I think it is.
No problem when doing physics. But when working on the mind-body
problem, we get reason to think that is not the way things are.
Physics needs not to be physicalist, even if it is so FAPP.
Bruno
Bruce
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