Observable consequences are part of what controls the plausibility of a statement, but not its truth. An unobservable truth can still be a truth.
…
There is a thing called reality, which causes our experiences and a lot of other things, characterized by its ability to not always do what we want or expect.
If we’re going to distinguish ‘truth’ from our ‘observations’ then we need to be able to define ‘reality’ as something other than ‘experience generator’ (or else decouple truth and reality).
Personally, I suspect that we really need to think of reality as something other than an experience generator. What we can extract out of reality is only half of the story. The other half is the stuff we put in so as to create reality.
This is not a fully worked out philosophical position, but I do have some slogans:
You can’t do QM with only kets and no bras.
You can’t do Gentzen natural deduction with rules of elimination, but no rules of introduction.
You can’t write a program with GOTOs, but no COMEFROMs.
(That last slogan probably needs some work. Maybe I’ll try something involving causes and effects.)
…
If we’re going to distinguish ‘truth’ from our ‘observations’ then we need to be able to define ‘reality’ as something other than ‘experience generator’ (or else decouple truth and reality).
Personally, I suspect that we really need to think of reality as something other than an experience generator. What we can extract out of reality is only half of the story. The other half is the stuff we put in so as to create reality.
This is not a fully worked out philosophical position, but I do have some slogans:
You can’t do QM with only kets and no bras.
You can’t do Gentzen natural deduction with rules of elimination, but no rules of introduction.
You can’t write a program with GOTOs, but no COMEFROMs.
(That last slogan probably needs some work. Maybe I’ll try something involving causes and effects.)