those can all be ruled out with a simple device: if any of these things were the case, could that causate onto whether such an intuition fires? for all of them, the answer is no: because they are immaterial claims, the fact of them being true or false cannot have causated my thoughts about them. therefore, these intuitions must be discarded when reasoning about them.
Causation, which cannot be observed, can never overrule data. The attempted comparison involves incompatible types. Causation is not evidence, but a type of interpretation.
You draw a distinction between “material” and “immaterial” claims, without explaining how that distinction is grounded in neutral evidence. Neutral evidence here could mean graphical data like “seeing a red line moving”. Such data can become interpreted, as e.g. “the pressure is increasing”, leading to predictions, like “the boiler is going to explode”. Under this view, illusions are possible: our interpretation of the graphical data may be wrong, and there may not actually be any moving, red, line-shaped object there. The interpretation is necessarily under-determined.
For the convenience of the current iteration of physics, some people would prefer to begin in medias res, starting with the physical interpretation as the fundamental fact, and reasoning backwards to a sense impression. But this is not the order the evidence presents, even if it is the order that is most convenient for our world-model.
Criticism of one of your links:
Causation, which cannot be observed, can never overrule data. The attempted comparison involves incompatible types. Causation is not evidence, but a type of interpretation.
You draw a distinction between “material” and “immaterial” claims, without explaining how that distinction is grounded in neutral evidence. Neutral evidence here could mean graphical data like “seeing a red line moving”. Such data can become interpreted, as e.g. “the pressure is increasing”, leading to predictions, like “the boiler is going to explode”. Under this view, illusions are possible: our interpretation of the graphical data may be wrong, and there may not actually be any moving, red, line-shaped object there. The interpretation is necessarily under-determined.
For the convenience of the current iteration of physics, some people would prefer to begin in medias res, starting with the physical interpretation as the fundamental fact, and reasoning backwards to a sense impression. But this is not the order the evidence presents, even if it is the order that is most convenient for our world-model.
P.S. I like your lowercase style.