Howard, Ben, All, Peirce, unlike Hertz, did not stop at a correspondence theory of truth. And that has made all the difference.
But of course we discussed all this ten or twelve years ago … Regards, Jon http://inquiryintoinquiry.com > On Sep 18, 2014, at 11:42 PM, Howard Pattee <[email protected]> wrote: > > At 10:39 AM 9/18/2014, Benjamin wrote: > >> Only humans (at least here on Earth) do sociology, psychology, biology, >> chemistry, or physics. I have no evidence that elementary nature does even >> simple physics, or even wears a lab coat. > > HP: I agree. These are all fields in which humans make models of their > experiences. They may agree on their models but still disagree on different > epistemologies, realism, nominalism, eliminative materialism, and so on. > These epistemologies are interpretations of their models with respect to what > they believe exists or what they believe is real. > > Epistemologies are not empirically decidable, e.g., not falsifiable. True > belief in any epistemology requires a leap of faith. There are degrees of > faith, skepticism being at the low end. In my own view as a physicist, > nominalism requires a much safer leap of faith than realism. However, I often > think realistically. I see no harm in it as long as I don't see it as the > one true belief. > >> BU: Being alive, instantiating life, is far from enough to do biology. >> Instantiating mathematical structure is far from enough to do mathematics. > > HP: Again, I agree. That does not mean that "doing math" is the same as > "doing physics". Mathematics is the best language that we use to describe > physical laws. There is an inexorability in physical laws that does not exist > in the great variety of mathematical concepts and rules. > >> > [HP] No one has discovered a point or a triangle or a number, the infinite >> > or the infinitesimal, in Nature >> >> BU: In your sense, nobody has discovered a physical law in nature either. >> Rules, constraints, norms, distributions, etc., are not animals, vegetables, >> minerals, or particles. Therefore by your standards they are not real. > > HP: Here I disagree. You are not distinguishing mathematical rules from > physical laws. Mathematics provides the most exact symbolic language in which > the laws are described. Symbolic rules are not like physical material forces. > Specifically, laws are inexorably time and rate-dependent. Logic and > mathematics do not involve time and rates. That is why I say that "only > humans do mathematics" (manipulate symbols), which they do at their own > rates. Humans cannot "do forces and laws". Forces act at the lawful rates > whether we like it or not. > >> By saying that X is "real," Peirce means that X is objectively investigable >> as X. You won't use the word "real" in that way. > > HP: I do not understand. What I call real depends only on my epistemic > assumptions, and I am not at all sure that defining "real" is important to > have a good model. What we need to understand is what Wigner called the > "unreasonable effectiveness" of our mathematics in describing laws. There is > no good reason for this effectiveness. Wigner quotes Peirce: " . . . and it > is probable that there is some secret here which remains to be discovered." > > Peirce, as a chemist (1887) also agreed with Hertz's epistemology (1884): > “The result that the chemist observes is brought about by nature [Hertz: “the > image of the consequents of nature”]; the result that the mathematician > observes is brought about by the associations of the mind. [Hertz: > “consequents of images in the mind”] . . . the power that connects the > conditions of the mathematicians diagram with the relations he observes in it > is just as occult and mysterious to us as the power of Nature that brings > about the results of the chemical experiment." [W:6, 37, Letter to Noble on > the Nature of Reasoning, May 28, 1987. (1897)] > > Hertz: "As a matter of fact, we do not know, nor have we any means of > knowing, whether our conception of things are in conformity with them in any > other than this one fundamental respect [Peirce's "power that connects"]. > > Howard > > >
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