• substantivalism
    262
    For awhile now I've been searching for a diagnosis of what the exact philosophical issue is that collectively Mainstream, Non-mainstream, and layman physicists have had regarding modern scientific practice.

    The Mainstream is rather consistent in stressing empirical virtues such as falsifiability, empirical adequacy, and the mathematization of nature in general. However, such approaches are usually met with a disapproval at colloquial ideas of understanding, visualization, or explanation and in certain situations such notions are even seen as unscientific addons that in truly objective science. . . away from popular science articles, science fiction stories, or documentaries. . . can be eventually abandoned. Classical cases regarding this usually revolve around Special/General Relativity and Quantum mechanics/field theory where if any such colloquial understanding/explanation is found lacking they are directed not to 'better approaches' but to the mathematics simpliciter. Our language and our visualizations pail in comparison to the supreme abstract generalizer of mathematical/logical syntax.

    Non-mainstream opponents, crackpots, and other assortments of fringe scientists seem to regard such 'shut and calculate mentalities' as a platonic obsession with mathematics that has clouded our intuitive judgements. A lack of philosophical work in general regarding a widespread acceptance of the notions of visualizability and intelligibility of scientific results or theorizing has allowed for, by their words, for incoherent reification of abstractions to take center role. However, in attempting to alleviate these concerns they usually then fall back on a rather narrow idea of visual analogue modeling which is no less dogmatic than their opponents.

    It seems strange to advocate or better demand that science or physics in general be visualizable given the pop-cultural scientific mentality that nature is in some sense: Incoherent to our sensibilities, far stranger than anything we could think of, paradoxical, and esoteric in rather astoundingly unintuitive ways. We will fail if we try to view nature on our terms conceptually. . . so why even try. Better to abstract away far as possible from any specific notion.

    Further, visualizability or an emphasis on analogical/metaphorical language as opposed to mathematical/axiomatic frameworks to understand scientific theorizing seem so antiquated. The usual responses I see regarding this say something along the lines of, "How can you know, prove, or convince me that the world really is such as your analogue models presents it as? This was high science a century ago but its been found lacking come the modern era." They object that, "Any approach that one could take to analogue model modern mathematical models are bound to fail." So while layman might need such subjective vices, objective science demands no such need.

    There is something greatly misguided about these ten cent objections as if either science is supposed to be so abstracted and VAGUE that we may not even understand what it is that we've been theorizing about for decades.

    That, or advocate for a strange scientific ESOTERICISM that regards talk of nature in incoherent or paradoxical fashions demanding no requirement of our own to attempt to make sense of what comes out of our mouths. Then celebrate this incoherency and un-intelligibility of our assertions rather than clarify them in some more intelligible fashion.

    “I think I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics.” - Feynman
    ___________________________________________________________________________________

    Visualization of the sciences did briefly vanish at the outset of quantum mechanics and quantum field theory but as of late its been appearing more often usually in fluid analogues to understand interpretations of quantum mechanics or various analogue models in service of deciphering hawking radiation in a table top experimental apparatus.

    Its not something that can go away and its saddening that logical positivists along with their ilk had buried it for so long under dense logical axiomatic formulations of theories (syntactic understanding of theorizing) or mathematical abstraction (semantic understanding of theories) in a sisyphean attempt to grasp natures objectivity by removing us along with understanding/explanation as well. I.E. the ten cent phrase that, "Science ONLY deals with description and not with explanation."

    Part of this failure seems to be that if you are not able to showcase something as true/false, to present its potential falsifiability, or make some strong explicit choice among numerous options then its altogether pointless. . . therefore irrelevant to objective scientific practice. Contrary the Aether obsessed non-mainstream opponents and the anti-visualizibility advocates of modern scientific practice you don't prove/disprove visual analogue models but this does not make them pointless or dispensable.

    They are useful beyond being mere tools to dumb it down to the level of those who are not as mathematical oriented.

    Further, anti-realists and their numerous underdetermination arguments put forward to all of science in particular or subject specific (conventionality and realism in the philosophy of spacetime for example) would then doom the majority of scientific results to the waste bin as well given their holistic un-falsifiability. I would see it as tremendously dishonest/inconsistent if this were not done as well.

    The somewhat ever present conventionality in the choice of the analogue model does not negate their objective usefulness in furthering our ability to make abstract connections or feel as if we've grasped nature beyond merely cataloguing it.

    The inability or difficulty in constructing visual analogue models is not a bid against them and rather any such similar objections would seem to be advocating for laziness regarding any sense of creative advancement. In the modern age of extreme theoretical abstract modeling (string theory, alternative models of gravitation, quantum gravity, etc) it demands GREATER attention, which has been neglected, as to how we construct and use such modeling techniques so that they can be used as powerful heuristic tools to get past the current mainstream gridlock.

    Here is a lecture given by Henk W. de Regt which showcases what I'm getting at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SY1vySjRFdA \
    ___________________________________________________________________________________

    There is so much more work to be done here as in what sense to clarify understanding or explanation which aren't as strictly objective in an un-informative sense as certain approaches to scientific explanation are while retaining their pragmatic features which make them so malleable.

    Further, what classes of visual models exist and how can we characterize them?

    There are strictly mechanistic models which were popular mental inventions for centuries using strict analogues such as: Billiard balls, balls and springs, and other such solid rigid or soft body dynamics. All with sometimes rather clear objective rules for how they are meant to be constructed or used.

    However, there is nothing stopping you from creating an analogy between phenomenon that themselves might still be rather mysterious. For example, treating atomic phenomenon as similar to our solar system giving rise to the solar system model of the atom or the Rutherford model. Such analogues wouldn't in a classical sense be seen as mechanistic but in the realm of analogy there is nothing stopping you from doing just this.

    What implications does the relationship between the analogue models we construct/use have with regards to contemporary philosophical discussion?

    Forms of reductivism which are so popular are easy to interpret as by-products of numerous approaches to visual models BUT perhaps the notion of STRONG EMERGENCE could be conceptually better understood by treating such language as having to do with some mental HIERACHY change of the models we use. This would require an analysis of how language as regards nature CHANGES model to model such as the change of heat from a qualitative property of things to being weakly emergent from things that themselves are not hot. Rather, heat is then redefined or thought of as the motion of microscopic bodies.

    Static property --- by a re-interpretation via a certain analogue model ---> Dynamic property

    In that analogue model if you froze the universe their wouldn't be heat as heat is a by-product of these microscopic bodies.

    ___________________________________________________________________________________

    I hope some fruitful discussion can be held here and await your responses. I do apologize for the great amount of text but I needed to get it down and out. I'm tired of this merely bouncing around in my head.
  • kudos
    403
    Further, visualizability or an emphasis on analogical/metaphorical language as opposed to mathematical/axiomatic frameworks to understand scientific theorizing seem so antiquated. The usual responses I see regarding this say something along the lines of, "How can you know, prove, or convince me that the world really is such as your analogue models presents it as? This was high science a century ago but its been found lacking come the modern era." They object that, "Any approach that one could take to analogue model modern mathematical models are bound to fail." So while layman might need such subjective vices, objective science demands no such need.

    The image is the concern of the scientific understanding and is characterized by a certain distance from formal logic. This is not the same logic as the axioms and their application, boolean, or otherwise. It is so strange that nowadays we talk about 'models' as opposed to explanation, elaboration, or insights. The idea is of the subject as 'fake' (model of...) when we simultaneously make the case that the subject is 'real' (image, or likeness of...). That is, it seems caught in angst about a sort of impoverished bad scepticism, caught in a synthesis of real and representation.

    There is something greatly misguided about these ten cent objections as if either science is supposed to be so abstracted and VAGUE that we may not even understand what it is that we've been theorizing about for decades.

    What you talk of is only the idea of the truth of the object. That is, you see the idea in concrete form. What is lacking isn't in the content, but that we cease to see what is represented in its conceptual basis. The image is the viewpoint of the understanding as viewed from inside, and this inner dimension is how it is seen in concrete form. But the scientific method always seeks to explain externalities, and it thereby falls short in realizing truly philosophical scepticism. At best, it represents scepticism and uses the form to justify scientific rigour and absolute objectivity. We purposefully obscure the absurdity inherent in the absolute as viewed from inside in order to realize a superior science.

    In general, STEM fixationalists justifiably steer away from philosophical investigation of their scepticism, because it is not part of the imaginary meaning in their will. Business works just fine without it, and as things go we ditch things that we can do without.
  • T Clark
    13.7k
    Interesting. A lot going on here. Some thoughts.

    quote="substantivalism;d15543"]The Mainstream is rather consistent in stressing empirical virtues such as falsifiability, empirical adequacy, and the mathematization of nature in general. However, such approaches are usually met with a disapproval at colloquial ideas of understanding, visualization, or explanation and in certain situations such notions are even seen as unscientific addons that in truly objective science. . . away from popular science articles, science fiction stories, or documentaries. . . can be eventually abandoned. Classical cases regarding this usually revolve around Special/General Relativity and Quantum mechanics/field theory where if any such colloquial understanding/explanation is found lacking they are directed not to 'better approaches' but to the mathematics simpliciter. Our language and our visualizations pail in comparison to the supreme abstract generalizer of mathematical/logical syntax...[/quote]

    This doesn't strike me as true at all. Special and general relativity are full of what you call "ideas of understanding, visualization, or explanation," e.g. space curved by mass. The only place I've heard a "shut up and calculate" approach is in relation to the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics. Given all the interpretations of QM developed to help us picture what is really going on at the subatomic scale, this clearly is not a general prejudice in that area either.

    It seems strange to advocate or better demand that science or physics in general be visualizable given the pop-cultural scientific mentality that nature is in some sense: Incoherent to our sensibilities, far stranger than anything we could think of, paradoxical, and esoteric in rather astoundingly unintuitive ways. We will fail if we try to view nature on our terms conceptually. . . so why even try. Better to abstract away far as possible from any specific notion.substantivalism

    I don't think science or even physics in general is seen as "incoherent to our sensibilities." People call QM weird, but as far as I understand it, it's just the way things are. Maybe dispensing with metaphysics, i.e. visualization and explanation, is the right way to approach it. Why should we have to expect that the behavior of the universe at that scale has to be comprehensible in the same terms as baseballs and toothbrushes.

    Further, visualizability or an emphasis on analogical/metaphorical language as opposed to mathematical/axiomatic frameworks to understand scientific theorizing seem so antiquated.substantivalism

    Again, I don't understand the basis of this claim.

    They object that, "Any approach that one could take to analogue model modern mathematical models are bound to fail."substantivalism

    Who are these "they?"

    the ten cent phrase that, "Science ONLY deals with description and not with explanation."substantivalism

    I have never heard this. I have heard science only deals with how things work, not why. That's not the same as your phrase and it makes sense to me in most situations.

    In the modern age of extreme theoretical abstract modeling (string theory, alternative models of gravitation, quantum gravity, etc) it demands GREATER attention, which has been neglected, as to how we construct and use such modeling techniques so that they can be used as powerful heuristic tools to get past the current mainstream gridlock.substantivalism

    As I noted, maybe at this scale it makes sense to dispense with metaphysics. Why kill ourselves trying to fit quantum gravity blocks in classical mechanical holes if they don't fit. I don't know. It's way out of my league.

    Forms of reductivism which are so popular are easy to interpret as by-products of numerous approaches to visual models BUT perhaps the notion of STRONG EMERGENCE could be conceptually better understood by treating such language as having to do with some mental HIERACHY change of the models we use.substantivalism

    I'm not sure that this is an issue where the question of emergence is useful. We use different models of physical behavior at different size and energy scales all the time independent of whether they arise because of strong emergence, e.g. microscopic vs. macroscopic descriptions of the behavior of gasses.
  • substantivalism
    262
    This doesn't strike me as true at all. Special and general relativity are full of what you call "ideas of understanding, visualization, or explanation," e.g. space curved by mass.T Clark
    You are not wrong. There are many rather illustrative thought experiments that Einstein and others had or continue to construct which do serve a role in bringing about some sort of understanding through visualized mental experiments.

    However, there is a lack of clarification about what exactly the references or type of understanding are being creating here. Are we understanding something about nature? Or merely the manner in which we mathematically model it? Are we referencing noumena or symbols on the black board?

    Further, there is usually a lack of clarification about the metaphors being used. Space as a substance is a metaphor that treats a rather abstract concept of space by comparison to other substances. Space as a container is another such metaphor.

    Such metaphors don't have to carry any ontological weight and perhaps they shouldn't. They are just manners of speaking which our mind has an obsession with partaking in despite the vexing frustration of physicists. They don't imply any grand philosophical consequences, they don't have to, but does that therefore mean they should be cast into the flames?

    I don't think science or even physics in general is seen as "incoherent to our sensibilities." People call QM weird, but as far as I understand it, it's just the way things are. Maybe dispensing with metaphysics, i.e. visualization and explanation, is the right way to approach it. Why should we have to expect that the behavior of the universe at that scale has to be comprehensible in the same terms as baseballs and toothbrushes.T Clark
    Its actually completely irrelevant whether its comprehensible or not at those scales.

    Whether we agree on how to determine this or not and what methods will achieve this.

    We will continue to have a mind which treats it as meaningful. That nature can be understood on our terms and if that wasn't the case. . . then the majority of scientific practice is an insult to greater objective sensibility. A pathetic useless gesture in attempting to grasp a world that is un-graspable. A form of scientific mental nihilism.

    You give a coherency to your understanding of something in whatever means possible NOT because nature is shown to be coherent but because being coherent is the only manner (through visualizations, analogies, metaphors, abstractions, etc) in which a rational person could understand it. I'm advocating then for a form of scientific existentialism perhaps. Except meaning in this comparison is replaced with explanatory approaches and the understanding they bring.


    Further, the language of quantum mechanics are derivative of analogues, metaphors, and analogue modeling. The bias you hold about it as, 'just the way things are,' seems to forget where those philosophical certainties came from. . . the same place you just said you are dispensing with.

    Where do you think quantum physicists got the language they are using to express its strangeness? Where did they abstract it from?

    I have never heard this. I have heard science only deals with how things work, not why. That's not the same as your phrase and it makes sense to me in most situations.T Clark
    Descriptions serve this role of expressing how things take place because they do not go beyond observables or mathematical synonyms for said observables with logical connectives to link one to another. If you want to express or interpret it as 'how'/'why' instead of 'description'/'explanation' then go ahead.

    Again, I don't understand the basis of this claim.T Clark
    Usually, examples of analogue models which are presented fall along the lines of billiard balls or old Aether vortices which have been forced out of the modern era by the great Einstein paradigm shift. They are seen as a part of the previous generation which we have passed and are 'long dead' figuratively speaking along with their progenitors who are literally dead.
  • Count Timothy von Icarus
    2.7k
    If you are not aware of it already, you might be interested in the "received view" of scientific theories and some of the more mathematical responses to it. These seem to best represent what you are talking about in terms of a "shut up and calculate view."

    On this view, a scientific theory should be thought of as a set of axioms or propositions (ideally expressed in formal logic), which is then divided into “empirical terms” related to observations” and strictly “theoretical terms,” which explain the observations. On such a view, theories are deductive systems where predictions about the world can be logically derived and then tested through observation and experimentation, but they are also purely formal, and avoid any "metaphysics" (i.e. discussions of what the world actually is).

    Although this view has come under significant attack, many of the proposed alternatives are equally "anti-metaphysical." For instance, there are Bayesian models where all inquiry is reduced to statistical analysis, with observational data shuffled through models in order to maximize predictive power.

    To be sure, scientists themselves often pay little attention to the “philosophy of science,” but we can see how this view of the sciences can bleed into the sciences themselves, and on into the popular imagination. For instance, there is the physicist Max Tegmark’s book, Our Mathematical Universe: My Quest for the Ultimate Nature of Reality, which proposes the “Mathematical Universe Hypothesis,” the idea that the universe just is a mathematical object (some computational patterns produce consciousness) and things just are the math that describes them in models. Tegmark’s book is perhaps and extreme example, but many other physicists authoring popular science titles have embraced pancomputationalism, which tends to look at causation and nature as whole as a sort of step-wise logical process.*



    "Science ONLY deals with description and not with explanation."

    By way of contrast, we could consider the earlier distinction between different types of demonstration.

    A prompter quid demonstration shows why something is the case (not just that it is the case). It explains the "why," "because," or "in virtue of which" of things. It seems fair to say that in the natural sciences, these are generally the types of explanations we are (naively?) hoping for, particularly vis-a-vis the productive sciences (e.g. medicine, "why do deformed elastin fibers cause glaucoma?" - the "why" answer here will help us to develop treatments).

    In the contemporary context, we might be inclined to say that the sciences only focus on efficient and material causation. Yet this isn't quite right. Even if many biologists exclude teleology, they have some need for "function" or "teleonomy," and this would seem to introduce a notion of final cause (albeit in some cases significantly modified). And at any rate, the social sciences do include an explicit notion of final cause when explaining phenomena such as market externalities. Likewise, formal cause seems to show up in many cases, interdisciplinary studies focusing on information theory might be a prime example since they abstract away the concrete particulars.

    But, are such explanations truly possible? Should we seek them?

    I'd argue that we have such demonstrations in well understood areas on inquiry, and that we consider them "well-understood" precisely because we have these sorts of explanations.

    Second, we have a second sort of demonstration, quia demonstrations. These reason from effect to cause. For example:

    Premise: When the moon is eclipsed, the earth is interposed between the sun and the moon
    Observation: The moon is now being eclipsed
    Conclusion: The earth is now interposed between the sun and the moo

    In this example, the person knows that things are such-and-such, but they don't know why.

    The more controversial question is if there is any way to distinguish between these in logic? The closest thing I have seen is work in AI which try to create algorithms for causal reasoning, but I figured someone else might know more.


    For a bit of background:

    Knowledge of the fact (quia demonstration) differs from knowledge of the reasoned fact (propter quid demonstrations). [...] You might prove as follows that the planets are near because they do not twinkle: let C be the planets, B not twinkling, A proximity. Then B is predicable of C; for the planets do not twinkle. But A is also predicable of B, since that which does not twinkle is near--we must take this truth as having been reached by induction or sense-perception. Therefore A is a necessary predicate of C; so that we have demonstrated that the planets are near. This syllogism, then, proves not the reasoned fact (propter quid) but only the fact (quia); since they are not near because they do not twinkle, but, because they are near, do not twinkle.

    The major and middle of the proof, however, may be reversed, and then the demonstration will be of the reasoned fact (propter quid). Thus: let C be the planets, B proximity, A not twinkling. Then B is an attribute of C, and A-not twinkling-of B. Consequently A is predicable of C, and the syllogism proves the reasoned fact (propter quid), since its middle term is the proximate cause.

    From Aristotle's Posterior Analytics I.13:

    I answer that it must be said that demonstration is twofold: One which is through the cause, and is called demonstration "propter quid" [lit., 'on account of which'] and this is [to argue] from what is prior simply speaking (simpliciter). The other is through the effect, and is called a demonstration "quia" [lit., 'that']; this is [to argue] from what is prior relatively only to us (quoad nos). When an effect is better known to us than its cause, from the effect we proceed to the knowledge of the cause. And from every effect the existence of its proper cause can be demonstrated, so long as its effects are better known to us (quoad nos); because since every effect depends upon its cause, if the effect exists, the cause must pre-exist.

    From St. Thomas' Summa theologiae I.2.2c:

    If anyone would like to go more in-depth on this, this is a good starting point: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/demonstration-medieval/#5


    * Despite the critical framing here, I am a big fan of Tegmark's book. I disagree with the MUH and think the arguments for the multiverse from the Fine Tuning Problem are incredibly weak, but it's quite good otherwise. For other examples of pancomputationalism, there are the articles in Paul Davies’Information and the Nature of Reality: From Physics To Metaphysics or Vlatko Vedral’s Decoding Reality: The Universe as Quantum Information.
  • J
    506
    For awhile now I've been searching for a diagnosis of what the exact philosophical issue is that collectively Mainstream, Non-mainstream, and layman physicists have had regarding modern scientific practice.substantivalism

    This is an interesting topic, but I had trouble following you in the ensuing paragraphs. Is it possible for you to offer a fairly short answer to the question you're posing, above? What is the best diagnosis, according to how you understand the issues? Or are there several candidate answers you could draw our attention to?
  • T Clark
    13.7k
    However, there is a lack of clarification about what exactly the references or type of understanding are being creating here. Are we understanding something about nature? Or merely the manner in which we mathematically model it? Are we referencing noumena or symbols on the black board?substantivalism

    Isn't this the question of all metaphysics, or conceptualization, or envisioning, or whatever you want to call it. Our concepts are never the same thing as what they describe, explain, or denote.

    They are just manners of speaking which our mind has an obsession with partaking in despite the vexing frustration of physicists. They don't imply any grand philosophical consequences,substantivalism

    Everything that can be put into words is a metaphor. That's all thinking really is - metaphors piled on metaphors piled on more metaphors. That's what reality is. But that seems to me to be a much broader question than the one you were asking in the OP. I thought we were talking conceptual models vs. shut up and calculate specifically in science and even more specifically in physics.

    Its actually completely irrelevant whether its comprehensible or not at those scales.substantivalism

    I'm not sure about this. I've been thinking about it for a while. At human scale, the conceptual model, the narrative, the object; i.e. what you call "colloquial ideas of understanding, visualization, or explanation," came first. That's what we call "reality." Now, at sub-atomic scale, it is what you call "empirical virtues such as falsifiability, empirical adequacy, and the mathematization of nature" which came first. I think people just find that confusing, disorienting, and I'm not sure how big a deal it actually is.

    the language of quantum mechanics are derivative of analogues, metaphors, and analogue modelingsubstantivalism

    As I noted, all of what we call reality is "derivative of analogues, metaphors, and analogue modeling."
    They are seen as a part of the previous generation which we have passed and are 'long dead' figuratively speaking along with their progenitors who are literally dead.substantivalism

    You said this before and, as I noted then, I don't see that this is true.
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