RE: Re: RE: Re:realism
How are they like either of these or are you just being funny? The joy of greeting a loved one depends upon there being loved ones but I don't see how laws of physics depend upon this; also, they apply whether we see something beautiful etc. or not. I must confess that I am not sure what you are talking about in most of your posts on these matters. Hilary Putnam used to ask; are the laws of physics themselves physical objects? I was merely being suggestive in a free associative sense so as to shake up preconceptions or neglect regarding the aesthetic status of scientific statements and their relationship to the subjective/objective puzzles handed down to us in history. It sort of represents my attempt to come to terms with Doug's query and challenge on the nature/culture issue which is coincident with the realist/idealist subjective/objective pairings. The notion of the word law is what really concerns me. For instance, we say the laws of nature are beautiful but many on this list would agree the laws in societies are ugly and cruel. The unlikeness should lead us to question how the concept of law flowed from culture to a way of "mapping" nature; the / becomes malleable in potentially novel ways. Are invariance, computability, information, redundancy, symmetry/asymmetry isomorphic to the concept of law? The "nature as information" zeitgeist suggests different ways of thinking about the economy/nature binarism and the potential for new notions of property that we need to get a handle on soon, for the privatization of knowledge and the privatization of nature are flip sides[of a coin] of a potentially horrific attempt at a massive extension of social Darwinism and Malthusianism. If nature is irreducibly probabilistic [randomness at the Planck scale just for starters] why would we wish to cling to the use of law? Again, how do they connect with the subject/object nature/culture binarisms? If we say the laws of nature aren't like anything else whether tables, stars or emotions, why do we insist on a legal metaphor? I would submit that it is because scientists are developing new ways of uniting computer science and physics we should let go of the idea of nature as obeying laws. In which case the binarisms named above need substantive reappraisal just as Doug says. This would seem to have enormous implications for the way we view political economy, especially intellectual property. Apologies for muddles, Ian "No, there is no patent on the polio vaccine. You wouldn't patent the Sun, would you?" Jonas Salk "The only law is there is no law" John Wheeler
Re: Re: RE: Re:realism
Laws of course only exist in thought (except for pure Platonists, who believe that forms or ideas are more real than the actualities they refer to or describe). What exists outside of thought are the things in motion that the "laws" describe. "E=Mc2" is a thought, though it is a thought through which we grasp more or less accurately a reality which is external to thought. Hence the literal "e=mc2" is (itself) more like a sonnet by Keats than a chair, though "e=mc2" is much more helpful in understanding chairs than is a sonnet by Keats. Carrol
Re: Re: Re: RE: Re:realism
In a message dated 9/6/00 9:07:49 PM Eastern Daylight Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Laws of course only exist in thought (except for pure Platonists, who believe that forms or ideas are more real than the actualities they refer to or describe). What exists outside of thought are the things in motion that the "laws" describe. "E=Mc2" is a thought, though it is a thought through which we grasp more or less accurately a reality which is external to thought. Hence the literal "e=mc2" is (itself) more like a sonnet by Keats than a chair, though "e=mc2" is much more helpful in understanding chairs than is a sonnet by Keats. * * * Nancy Cartwright (How the Laws of Physics Lie) holds the view you maintain here, that laws are mere fictions. But that is a nonstandrad view. A standard Humean take on laws is that laws are statements of real regularities in the world (Hempel, Mackie). On the (David) Lewis possible worlds view, laws are sets of possible worlds in which a certain regularity holds universally. A realist "propensity" view of the sort I maintain, urged by Rom Harre EH Madden in their Causal Powers, is that laws state actual natural necessities in this owrld such that, in virtue of the causal structure of something, something else must occur in certain given circumstances. It's a complex topic.
Re: Re: Re: Re: RE: Re:realism
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: laws state actual natural necessities in this owrld such that, in virtue of the causal structure of something, something else must occur in certain given circumstances. It's a complex topic. I don't think you and I are in any real disagreement on this. "Laws *state*." "e=mc2" *states* something about light, but were minds not around to make the statement light would do just fine by itself. Carrol
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: RE: Re:realism
In a message dated 9/7/00 12:04:53 AM Eastern Daylight Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: I don't think you and I are in any real disagreement on this. "Laws *state*." "e=mc2" *states* something about light, but were minds not around to make the statement light would do just fine by itself. Actually e=mc2 states nothing about light, although it uses c, the velocity of light, to state the equivalence of mass and energy. But you are trading on the idea, which may be true--I am not sure, although I think not--that statements require minds to state them. Someone might say that statements are Platonic entities that are there and true or false whether or not anyone is around to state them. A reason we might want to say this is that we want to hold that e=mc2 was true in the several billiion years before there were, so far as we know, any minds or human language. Einstein formulated the statement about 100 years ago, but it would be true even if he had not done so and no else did, and even if there were no people, don't you think? --jks
Re: Re: Re: RE: Re:realism
If you read what you quoted from me, you should see that I do not associate Berkeley with the construct view. This is a figment of your free association. I agree that Berkeley thinks that there area really tables and chairs but I would rather say they consist of unified sets of actual and possible perceptions in individuals and actual ones in the mind of God, since tables and chairs exist when we are not perceiving them. But all of these sets are ideas and in minds that along with their contents are the sole reality. My comment about Berkely was meant to show that the supposed disjunction between ideas and tables and chairs is no disjunction at all for an idealist such as Berkeley. The next sentence refers to a certain issue in the philosophy of physics. I wondered if that is what Ian was talking about. Much of what he says is obscure to me.I thought that philosophers of physics of various persuasions dealt with this issue. Quine seems most radical and relativistic on issues of what there is. Cheers, Ken Hanly - Original Message - From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, September 06, 2000 10:38 PM Subject: [PEN-L:1370] Re: Re: RE: Re:realism In a message dated 9/6/00 8:54:51 PM Eastern Daylight Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: I guess if you follow Berkeley chairs and tables are ideas so they are certainly like them if they are like ideas! Are you talking about the question whether some "entities" in theoretical physics actually exist(like tables and chairs) or exist only as constructs (ideas) helpful in formulating theories. Berkeley does not think that chairs and tables are "only" constructs useful for forming ideas, but that there are chairs and tables (really!), which, if properly analysed, are understood to be essentially perceptions, constructed from ideas. The "construct" view is closer to certain ancient and little held views of the early logical positivists about theoretical entities. They rejected the idea that there was any sense to talking about what there "really" was. --jks
