This comment seems uncharacteristically uncharitable for you, guessing due to a certain level of frustration. Could be misreading it.
She seems to vacillate between “realism is a philosophical idea” and “realism is false”.
She does no such thing. She doesn’t even use the terms true or false! She says it’s not something she needs in her scientific work. You wouldn’t be confusing atheism with agnosticism, would you?
And this is simply asserting nonrealism:
She is not saying that something exists or doesn’t, just that it doesn’t matter for the purposes of of evaluating the quality of a hypothesis.
How does this idea behave in unusual cases such as the person claiming there’s an invisible pink dragon in their garage?)
She is doing physics, not linguistics or cognitive science or psychiatry. Or, as in your example, more like sophistry. Russel’s teapot has nothing to do with the topic.
This seems like another instance of “people who say they’re not doing philosophy are in fact doing bad philosophy.”
Pot. Kettle. Her philosophy (or non-philosophy) certainly works for her and for most physicists, look at all the successes in physics over the last century. While certain people are still stuck on logical counterfactuals.
Her philosophy (or non-philosophy) certainly works for her and for most physicists,
Success and failure have to be gauged against what someone or something is intended to do. Science is intended to output knowledge about the world, so ceasing to even attempt that is failure.
This comment seems uncharacteristically uncharitable for you, guessing due to a certain level of frustration. Could be misreading it.
She does no such thing. She doesn’t even use the terms true or false! She says it’s not something she needs in her scientific work. You wouldn’t be confusing atheism with agnosticism, would you?
She is not saying that something exists or doesn’t, just that it doesn’t matter for the purposes of of evaluating the quality of a hypothesis.
She is doing physics, not linguistics or cognitive science or psychiatry. Or, as in your example, more like sophistry. Russel’s teapot has nothing to do with the topic.
Pot. Kettle. Her philosophy (or non-philosophy) certainly works for her and for most physicists, look at all the successes in physics over the last century. While certain people are still stuck on logical counterfactuals.
OK, the above was just as uncharitable to you.
Success and failure have to be gauged against what someone or something is intended to do. Science is intended to output knowledge about the world, so ceasing to even attempt that is failure.