David, On Tue, Dec 16, 2014 at 5:19 AM, david <[email protected]> wrote: > Dan quoted from Wikipedia on Anti-realism: > > > "The term was coined by Michael Dummett, who introduced it in his paper > Realism to re-examine a number of classical philosophical disputes involving > such doctrines as nominalism, conceptual realism, idealism and phenomenalism. > The novelty of Dummett's approach consisted in seeing these disputes as > analogous to the dispute between intuitionism and Platonism in the philosophy > of mathematics. ...According to intuitionists (anti-realists with respect to > mathematical objects), the truth of a mathematical statement consists in our > ability to prove it. According to platonists (realists), the truth of a > statement consists in its correspondence to objective reality." > > > > Dan said to dmb: > > I am the one who threw idealism into the mix. And yes of course I understand > the MOQ is neither. When you mentioned anti-realism I read idealism, rightly > or wrongly. I know that to professional philosophers who are much more > learned that I am the terms have a difference but to me they fall under the > same umbrella. ...Now it seems to me that anti-realism has more to do > with mathematics than metaphysics so I was unsure why it is being brought > into the discussion. > > > > dmb says: > > There is a dispute between realists and anti-realists in mathematics, > science, morality and all kinds of other areas. And, as it says in the quote > you shared, in mathematics the Platonists are realists (with respect to > numbers). Plato himself was a realist with respect to Ideas or Forms and he > is the king of Idealism or Rationalism. This is a very good reason not to > equate idealism with anti-realism. Idealists and materialists have different > views about what's "real" but both can be considered realists and they both > can subscribe to the appearance-reality distinction and the correspondence > theory of truth, where true ideas are the ones that represent the way things > "really" are. >
Dan: I'm not sure I agree with this. We could say some idealists are realists... however: "A platonic realist about arithmetic will say that the number 7 exists and instantiates the property of being prime independently of anyone's beliefs, linguistic practices, conceptual schemes, and so on. " [http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/realism/] See? Platonic realists state that the number 7 exists independently of anyone's belief. Isn't that in direct contradiction to what an idealist would say? Wait a minute... "Subjective idealists like George Berkeley are anti-realists in terms of a mind-independent world, whereas transcendental idealists like Immanuel Kant are strong skeptics of such a world, affirming epistemological and not metaphysical idealism." [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idealism] I think Nikolas just mentioned doing a paper on Berkeley so maybe if he has time he could weigh in on this. I suppose I must have been thinking about subjective idealists when I equated anti-realism and idealism. Be that as it may, I don't think it's proper to say that both idealists and materialists are realists, at least not in the sense I understand realism to be. >dmb: > > That Stanford quote on "Constructive empiricism" tells us, for example, that > scientific realism claims "to give us, in its theories, a literally true > story of what the world is like" whereas the constructive empiricist holds > that "acceptance of a scientific theory involves only the belief that the > theory is empirically adequate." So, yes, constructive empiricism makes no > claims about what is literally 'true' story about what the world is like. It > says our conceptual models can be empirically adequate or not, they can > successfully organize the relevant data or not, but it stops short of making > any metaphysical claims about these models corresponding to the "real" > reality beyond those appearances. Dan: So are you saying constructive empiricists are anti-realists? >dmb: > > The stance called constructive empiricism is very similar to (ZAMM, page 262) > Pirsig's lesson about Poincare and > alternative geometries. He says it doesn't really make any sense to "ask > whether the metric system is true and the avoirdupois > system is false; whether Cartesian coordinates are true and polar > coordinates are false. One geometry can not be more true than > another; it can only be more convenient. Geometry is not true, it is > advantageous." > > > Or, as I'd like to put it, geometry shouldn't be taken as True in the sense > that it corresponds to an objective, mind-independent reality but it's > pragmatically true in the sense that it agrees with experience. Dan: With everyday experience. dmb: > Pragmatic truths are the ones that work in practice, the ones that work when > you can actually use them for some purpose. What we get in the MOQ are just > empirical claims, not metaphysical claims. Dan: Aren't the metaphysical claims laid out in the four levels? dmb: > In the MOQ, the primary empirical reality is prior to language, outside of > language, and so it offers no definite claims about the "real" reality. It > can be known in experience but as soon as we start talking, we're dealing > with concepts and not the primary empirical reality. Idealists say ideas are > reality and materialists say physical things are reality but the MOQ says > reality cannot be defined. Dan: I'm not sure I like the sound of a 'real' reality so it would seem difficult to make any claim as to a primary empirical reality either. Certainly static quality patterns are defined. In one sense, patterns are the only reality we can know, at least in a static quality way. But we are constantly defining Dynamic Quality (or primary empirical reality) too: "Dynamic Quality is defined constantly by everyone. Consciousness can be described as a process of defining Dynamic Quality. But once the definitions emerge, they are static patterns and no longer apply to Dynamic Quality. So one can say correctly that Dynamic Quality is both infinitely definable and undefinable because definition never exhausts it." [Robert Pirsig, Lila's Child] So reality can be defined... but not completely. Does that make sense? > >dmb: > Ironically, the MOQ isn't metaphysical in the sense. Like the man said, it's > a contradiction in terms, a logical absurdity. Dan: Right. Still when you're hungry it's fun poking around in the frig and seeing what there is to eat. >dmb: > Hope that addresses most of your concerns. Partly... and I thank you for your time. Dan http://www.danglover.com Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org/md/archives.html
