On Mon, May 20, 2019, at 20:55, 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List wrote: > > > On 5/20/2019 2:35 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote: >>> Physics (and the other sciences) are unreasonably effective at describing >>> and accounting for our experiences. Platonism does not have any runs on the >>> board at all. >> >> Platonism is a metaphysical position that is not in opposition to physics or >> any of the other sciences, on the contrary. >> >> Physicists are funny. You guys have the most successful of all scientific >> fields, but not for the reason you imagine. You went so deep that you came >> full-circle back to philosophy. But you refuse to admit it, because of some >> weird insecurity. > > Not at all. We're modest and don't claim to know the ding an sich things. The > way I put it is that we seek a virtuous circle of explanation. Something like: > > > ->physics->chemistry->biology->evolution->perception->intelligence->language->mathematics->physics->
Right, I know this very well. I was scientifically "raised" on this model. What I think you fail to appreciate is the strange loop hiding in the virtuous circle. "Physics", "chemistry", "perception", "intelligence", this is all "language". "Language" is also "language". Your virtuous loop contains infinite meta-loops that through everything in a loop if you think about it. (sorry for the bad puns) > > although there are other ways of naming things drawing a loop. My point is > that we must always explain something in terms of something else we > understand. There is no "primitive" in explanations. We build up the virtuous > circle by extending its scope to, ideally, encompass everything. Good > explanations tend to have predictive power, but prediction is not the same as > explanation. Consilence is coherence of explanations across levels. Ok, again I think we agree on a lot of things. What I think we fundamentally disagree on is this: that there is some ideal loop (in your model, with physics at the bottom) that is the optimal way to understand reality. I don't think there is. I think scientific fields are just prisms, they allow you to look at reality from a certain angle but this costs them some blind spots. I don't know why things are this way, but I think they clearly are. I would say that Physics is not a particularly important field at the moment. I would say that we live in an era where sociology is the weakest link. That is why, as someone wrote here the other day, we discover how to split the atom and immediately go to the brink of total destruction, or we discover how to create a network of instant communication that spans the globe, and immediately turn it into an oppressive panopticon. > > Platonism is a strictly hierarchical scheme based on language, not > explanation or prediction. Platonist want to find a god of the philosophers > to replace the Big Guy in the Sky. I think there's a bit of projection there. I think it's the physicalists who want to replace the Big Guy in the Sky with something. Platonism is just the consequence of taking the dream argument seriously, which leads you in the direction of less ontological commitments, not more. Telmo. > It's not so much in opposition to science as orthogonal to it. > > > Mathematicians create imaginary, but logically consistent worlds. Platonists > want to live in them. > > Brent > "The duty of abstract mathematics, as I see it, is precisely to > expand our capacity for hypothesizing possible ontologies." > --- Norm Levitt > > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Everything List" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. > To view this discussion on the web visit > https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/07130b72-95bb-88a0-17f1-a730f27d95ee%40verizon.net > > <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/07130b72-95bb-88a0-17f1-a730f27d95ee%40verizon.net?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer>. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/6109636d-0761-41b4-bba1-b55946c4c1e1%40www.fastmail.com.
