At 04:46 AM 1/18/2015, Frederik Stjernfelt wrote:
Miller (from SEP): "It is rather the case that one can be
more-or-less realist about a particular subject matter."
FS: But this is a truism.
HP: I disagree. What Miller says and means is that one can be
more-or-less realistic about a single specific subject (like natural
selection, or a statistical distribution, or a wave function).
This is not a truism because it is seldom recognized in arguments
(such as this one).
FS: I know of no-one being a realist about any possible claim or any
possible universal!
All realists know it is only some universals which are real
("phologiston", "ether", "unicorn" and a host of others are not).
HP: In my mind this is a truism.
FS: In that sense, realism is the inclusive notion here, admitting
both realist and nominalist universals - while nominalism claims all
universals are but linguistic conventions.
HP: This is a narrow view of
<http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/nominalism-metaphysics/>nominalism
, which has at least as many interpretations as realism. Miller's
warning applies just as much to nominalism. There are degrees of
universals, or in modern language, there are degrees of abstraction
and degrees of what we call reality.
HP: I would add that one can be both a realist and nominalist about
the same theory or model. Namely, while there are real individual
events of birth and death going on, the word "selection" refers to
statistical consequences that are not real selections in any
recognizable sense. Selection is just a name (Darwin called it, "a
bad term") that we use to indicate only "a statistical bias in the
relative rates of survival" of a population distribution.
FS: But that "statistical bias" would then be real, just as birth
and death would it.
HP: You are begging the most controversial issue of probability
interpretations. Is a probability real or only a degree of
ignorance -- a state of mind? Is probability objective or
subjective? A currently popular interpretation of QM,
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_Bayesianism>Quantum Bayesianism
, says statistical bias is not real.
HP: Furthermore, there are many
<http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/selection-units/>levels of
<http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/selection-units/>selection, and
because selection processes are never-ending, one can never be sure
of the ultimately result. Consequently there is much controversy
(see link) which amounts to whether each level is real or nominal
(although biologists usually don't use these terms).
FS: Of course, but that is not a philosophical issue. It is about
what is scientifically true.
I tend to be realist about stable scientific results. Of course,
being a fallibilist, I know some of them will change, but not most of them.
HP: What is scientifically true is unavoidably also an epistemological issue.
FS: This also implies that there is no simple philosophical answer
to what is real and what is not. It should be developed from our
best scientific knowledge - also in the non-physical sciences. So
there are many open questions as to what is real and what not . . .
HP: Agreed!
FS: . . but that does not imply that ALL such questions are open.
HP: I would say that depends on your epistemology. Could we agree on
what questions are not open?
Howard
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