My view? Not this, not that... Unless, of course, you are speaking
statically/conventionally.
On Jun 2, 2011, at 5:09 AM, MarshaV wrote:
What relevance does the term scientific realism have for those of us who
are not professional philosophers of science? Check for yourself what sort
of perspective you have on scientific assertions, regardless of your
philosophy. As you look at this page, you see a sheet of white paper with
black markings on it. Touch the page with a finger and feel its smooth
texture and its relative coolness or warmth. Now sit back and ask yourself:
do I think of the whiteness, texture, and coolness of the paper as qualities
of this material existing in it independent of my senses? Do those qualities
exist out there, in or on the paper, unrelated to my awareness of them?
They certainly seem to be attributes inherent to the paper, and if we
believe that they exist in that way, then we are adherents of everyday
realism. There are problems, however, in this viewpoint. If we assert that
such qualities exist out there as they appear to, we are implicitly assuming
that our visual and tactile sense faculties play an utterly passive role in
the perception of them. That is, these faculties would act simply as clear
windows through which color, texture, and coolness flow from the object to
the perceiving subject. Much research has gone into studying the functioning
of our sense faculties, but none of it has led to the assertion that they
function passively as simple receptors of objective color, texture, sound,
and so on. Moreover, if we reflect on the wide range of visual faculties of
fish, insects, birds, and mammals, for instance, it seems exceedingly hard to
believe that they all se the world in the same way. What they see is created
in
p
art by the specific types of visual organs that they have.
Now a new question is raised: if the above sensory impressions exist only
in relation to the subjective senses, what is really out there that causes
our senses to be stimulated so that we perceive colors and so forth? In
other words, what is the nature of the real world as it exists independent of
human perceptions? What is truly out there? This question has been asked by
thinkers of Greek antiquity, and since then a myriad of theories have been
devised to describe and explain the nature of such reality. These range from
thoroughgoing idealism to materialism, and insofar as we adopt any such
theory, we become adherents of _transcendental realism_: we believe in a
theory about the real, intrinsic nature of the world as it exists behind the
veil of the senses. It is a metaphysical perspective that purportedly
transcends sensory appearances and reaches the inherent nature of reality
that lies beyond.
Do we believe that the real, objective nature of color pertains to a
certain range of frequencies of electromagnetic waves? Objectively speaking,
is sound another form of wave pattern that moves through various media such
as the atmosphere and water? Are warmth and coolness really a matter of
kinetic energy of random movements of molecules that make up the physical
world? It transcends the misleading, subjective impressions of the senses
and penetrates to the objective reality that exists independent of
perception.
While scientific realism as defined above is no longer considered tenable
by most philosophers of science, it is still the metaphysical view that
saturates most instruction in science today. Yet this metaphysical stance is
rarely mentioned in classrooms or the popular media when discussing
scientific theories. It is simply taken for granted: a metaphysical
viewpoint that is regarded by philosophers as highly problematic is absorbed
unconsciously and uncritically. It nevertheless exerts a powerful influence
on the thoughts and attitudes of those that hold them.
(Wallace, B. Alan, 'Choosing Reality, : A Buddhist View of Physics
and the Mind', 2003, pp.46-48)
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