I’m not sure that does much to unpack what scientists were investigating, when they held scientific debates about the reality of atoms.
Nor to explain what we’re trying to ask, when we say “is the physical world actually real?” “In what sense does the world exist?”. Humans feel like there’s a question there; I feel like there’s a question there; but I’m confused as to what exactly I’m trying to ask. It would be nice to dissolve the question, so that there’s no blank spot left in my head where “is real” or “exists” used to live. As noted in the article, I’m hoping that looking at specific scientific controversies might be a useful warm-up, and might help more than just remembering that the map is not the territory.
Could you expand on why you feel like there’s a question there? What does ‘physical’ mean? (Is it a distinction between your perceptions being the result of a high-resolution computation where other brains or stars or non-observed phenomena are also computed in detail and sent to your brain and a low-resolution computation where lots of computationally expensive details are left out and replaced with just barely imperceptibly simplistic high-level generators? That is, a physical universe would be detailed/expensive, whereas an… er, algorithmically simple/inexpensive universe would be algorithmically simple/inexpensive (speed prior-wise). Or were you thinking of a different distinction?)
For awhile I tried to make a distinction between existingness and realness (everything exists and nothing exists as made clear by ensemble universe theories, but, say, only directed acyclic graphs are real, or only things of decision theoretic significance are real, or what have you), but eventually I felt like I wasn’t getting much traction from it. I’ve had a lot more luck with a distinction between ‘right’ and ‘good’.
In person some time, I’ve already bitten off more than I can chew with my ‘memes are real, dualism is correct’ meta-contrarianism elsewhere in the comments. Sorry Anna...
I feel like the question there is “Does the map match the territory?”
If atoms are real, then there is something in the territory to which the symbol atom on our map refers.
I’m tempted to say that if an atom is real, then any sufficiently accurate model must include something that refers to them. However, wouldn’t that lead to the conclusion that no, atoms do not exist, we were mistaken? Really quantum wave functions exist, and an atom is just a shorthand for referring to a particular type of collection of electron, quark, and gluon wave functions. (um, oops, exceeded my knowledge of quantum mechanics here, replace what I said with whatever quantum mechanics says an atom is.) Or would it lead to the conclusion that atom is a name for a particular well-defined class of collections of wave functions?
If something such as an atom is not real, then they are just a convenient organizing principle that let us achieve a simplified, but necessarily incorrect, model. Whether to keep using the known incorrect model tends to depend on its usefulness, but you must always account for the incorrectness. (For example, we keep using Newtonian Mechanics and the Ideal Gas laws, even though both are known to be incorrect. We just know what domains they are accurate enough in to keep using.)
“is the physical world actually real?”- The words physical and real are very close together in my map and with out know how they are spaced in your map I can not gain traction in helping answer this question for you.
“In what sense does the world exist?”
In the sense that it is repeatable. I currently live under the assumption that this repeatability derives from the world being external to myself and objective; this map as of yet fits what I have observed of the territory.
I’m not sure that does much to unpack what scientists were investigating, when they held scientific debates about the reality of atoms.
Nor to explain what we’re trying to ask, when we say “is the physical world actually real?” “In what sense does the world exist?”. Humans feel like there’s a question there; I feel like there’s a question there; but I’m confused as to what exactly I’m trying to ask. It would be nice to dissolve the question, so that there’s no blank spot left in my head where “is real” or “exists” used to live. As noted in the article, I’m hoping that looking at specific scientific controversies might be a useful warm-up, and might help more than just remembering that the map is not the territory.
Could you expand on why you feel like there’s a question there? What does ‘physical’ mean? (Is it a distinction between your perceptions being the result of a high-resolution computation where other brains or stars or non-observed phenomena are also computed in detail and sent to your brain and a low-resolution computation where lots of computationally expensive details are left out and replaced with just barely imperceptibly simplistic high-level generators? That is, a physical universe would be detailed/expensive, whereas an… er, algorithmically simple/inexpensive universe would be algorithmically simple/inexpensive (speed prior-wise). Or were you thinking of a different distinction?)
For awhile I tried to make a distinction between existingness and realness (everything exists and nothing exists as made clear by ensemble universe theories, but, say, only directed acyclic graphs are real, or only things of decision theoretic significance are real, or what have you), but eventually I felt like I wasn’t getting much traction from it. I’ve had a lot more luck with a distinction between ‘right’ and ‘good’.
What was your motivation for this distinction? Also, can you summarize the progress you made?
Tangentially, the usual distinction is that ‘right’ applies to actions and ‘good’ applies to states of affairs, with some slippage.
In person some time, I’ve already bitten off more than I can chew with my ‘memes are real, dualism is correct’ meta-contrarianism elsewhere in the comments. Sorry Anna...
I feel like the question there is “Does the map match the territory?”
If atoms are real, then there is something in the territory to which the symbol atom on our map refers.
I’m tempted to say that if an atom is real, then any sufficiently accurate model must include something that refers to them. However, wouldn’t that lead to the conclusion that no, atoms do not exist, we were mistaken? Really quantum wave functions exist, and an atom is just a shorthand for referring to a particular type of collection of electron, quark, and gluon wave functions. (um, oops, exceeded my knowledge of quantum mechanics here, replace what I said with whatever quantum mechanics says an atom is.) Or would it lead to the conclusion that atom is a name for a particular well-defined class of collections of wave functions?
If something such as an atom is not real, then they are just a convenient organizing principle that let us achieve a simplified, but necessarily incorrect, model. Whether to keep using the known incorrect model tends to depend on its usefulness, but you must always account for the incorrectness. (For example, we keep using Newtonian Mechanics and the Ideal Gas laws, even though both are known to be incorrect. We just know what domains they are accurate enough in to keep using.)
“is the physical world actually real?”- The words physical and real are very close together in my map and with out know how they are spaced in your map I can not gain traction in helping answer this question for you.
“In what sense does the world exist?” In the sense that it is repeatable. I currently live under the assumption that this repeatability derives from the world being external to myself and objective; this map as of yet fits what I have observed of the territory.