Clark, John, list,
still having in mind "reverse-engineering", which does not underly copyright:
I think, when Duhem says, that the real causes are supernatural, and physics only saves the appearances, these two aspects are not contradictorial or contingent with each other, i.e. not parallel alternatives, but they are in a line. It is like Newtonian and Einsteinean physics: Newtonian physics is not an alternative, but a border case of Einsteinean physics. Another example is: You can believe in both, evolution and God, by saying: Organisms are created by the evolution, but God is somehow responsible for the evolution. I think, if in informatics reverse-engineered programs are not due to the copyright of the original program, then either the function is different too, or the patent office worker has not compared both with each other thoroughly. I donot believe, that there can be two ways of proving a truth, with the two ways being not derivable from each other. Like eg. the creationists say, that God has made things up, like hiding dinosaur bones in the soil, in order to test peoples belief in Him. This is to claim, that God has a severe neurotic psychological problem, and that contradicts the definition of God as being wise. So, my work-hypothesis is, that there can not be alternative parallel ways of proving a hypothesis, and that the causes in a proved hypothesis must be the same as in nature. Perhaps the causes themselves are products of wave functions? This also would be in line, not alternative.
Best,
Helmut
On May 20, 2016, at 2:56 PM, John Collier <[email protected]> wrote:There are versions of what science is supposed to do that don’t worry about causation, but just try to find regularities. The more extreme forms of this are instrumentalism (like Mach) or Pierre Duhem’s antirealist view of physics in Aim and Structure of Physical Theory. Duhem thought that the real causes were supernatural (he was very religious) and were not captured by physics, which merely “saves the appearances”.I prefer the causal view of scientific explanation because it puts on a stronger constraint (though Bas van Fraassen, another believer, would argue that it doesn’t really). In any case, testing scientific theories typically requires interacting with their objects, which can only be done causally – our connection to the natural world is causal. If there is no difference in detectable causes, then there is no real difference in the theories. This is not quite the same as Peirce, but not so different to his pragmaticism either.
It’s worth asking how Peirce would have seen Dewey’s particular form of instrumentalism. Of course Dewey’s tendency to deny that truth was relevant for such instruments goes against Peirce’s particular conceptions. But I think once we break out the ideas of “in the long run” as Peirce’s conception of truth from more short term facets of instrumental use that perhaps Dewey and Peirce are more compatible here than many assume.
I confess I get skeptical about the way causation tends to get thrown around in descriptions. Perhaps it’s just from calculating far too many Hamiltonians in my undergraduate education. With the Hamiltonian it’s just harder to think in terms of causation rather than evolution of the wave function.
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