With “plogiston” I can sell how much more attractive this “oxygen” story is. Being anti-realist doesn’t teel what would be better or how to do “essential” (whatever that is) things better.
In particular I am worried that there is no acknowledgement of inductiveness. Sure it would be arrogant to know before hand what is the correct way to be inductive by for example priviledging a particular ontology. But insisting that the part of the models/lines where there is no underlying datapoints is unreal or a distraction is like saying that a finite amount of points is as good as a line.
When the theory of chemistry has advanced there has become better concepts to handle what used to be handled with the concept of plogiston.
With “truth” there is no replacement, just outright rejection.
You could have a theory of information where certain evidence is enough to secure a conviction. Then an extreme tool view would be that it’s just a method to lock people up should you want to do so. There would be no sense that the evidence is “reliable” or “accurate” just damning. Or someone could be interested in if certain evidentiary standards result in certain conviction what that tells of what the law has become, what kind of precedent it sets. The extreme tool view would say that no precedent is formed, there are just people in jail and talking about the “upheld law system” would be nonsense. It would make sense to insist that at any point in time multiple interpretations of the law are plausible so that there is no “one true law”. But it would be weird to say that outcome of hypothetical cases would be unconstrained. Cases form precedent, reveal something about the law system and the law system is not just the sum of all cases tried. If your original case doesn’t exactly match a previous case you are not without protection of the law. With predictiosn there are principles at stake not just outcomes.
“Shut up and calculate” serves as an excellent replacement for truth in most situations. It’s about hypotheses/theories and observations, not reality, so within its area of applicability it makes the idea of reality irrelevant.
“Shut up and calculate” no longer suffices when you want to figure out something about reality that is not about prediction of observations (or if you are interested in unusual kinds of reality, where even prediction of observations looks unlike it does in our world). So this concerns many philosophical questions, in particular decision theory (where you want to figure out what to do and how to think about what to do). The relationship with decision theory is the same as with physics: you want to replace reality with something more specific. But if you haven’t found a sufficiently good replacement, forcing a bad replacement is worse than fumbling with the preformal idea of reality.
The way you think about the concept of “phlogiston” I think about the concept of “truth”. Useful to a point, but then breaking down when pushed.
With “plogiston” I can sell how much more attractive this “oxygen” story is. Being anti-realist doesn’t teel what would be better or how to do “essential” (whatever that is) things better.
In particular I am worried that there is no acknowledgement of inductiveness. Sure it would be arrogant to know before hand what is the correct way to be inductive by for example priviledging a particular ontology. But insisting that the part of the models/lines where there is no underlying datapoints is unreal or a distraction is like saying that a finite amount of points is as good as a line.
Sorry, couldn’t understand the point you are making, even after rereading your reply a few times.
When the theory of chemistry has advanced there has become better concepts to handle what used to be handled with the concept of plogiston.
With “truth” there is no replacement, just outright rejection.
You could have a theory of information where certain evidence is enough to secure a conviction. Then an extreme tool view would be that it’s just a method to lock people up should you want to do so. There would be no sense that the evidence is “reliable” or “accurate” just damning. Or someone could be interested in if certain evidentiary standards result in certain conviction what that tells of what the law has become, what kind of precedent it sets. The extreme tool view would say that no precedent is formed, there are just people in jail and talking about the “upheld law system” would be nonsense. It would make sense to insist that at any point in time multiple interpretations of the law are plausible so that there is no “one true law”. But it would be weird to say that outcome of hypothetical cases would be unconstrained. Cases form precedent, reveal something about the law system and the law system is not just the sum of all cases tried. If your original case doesn’t exactly match a previous case you are not without protection of the law. With predictiosn there are principles at stake not just outcomes.
“Shut up and calculate” serves as an excellent replacement for truth in most situations. It’s about hypotheses/theories and observations, not reality, so within its area of applicability it makes the idea of reality irrelevant.
Definitely. When do you think it is not a good replacement?
“Shut up and calculate” no longer suffices when you want to figure out something about reality that is not about prediction of observations (or if you are interested in unusual kinds of reality, where even prediction of observations looks unlike it does in our world). So this concerns many philosophical questions, in particular decision theory (where you want to figure out what to do and how to think about what to do). The relationship with decision theory is the same as with physics: you want to replace reality with something more specific. But if you haven’t found a sufficiently good replacement, forcing a bad replacement is worse than fumbling with the preformal idea of reality.