On 13/01/2021 18:33, Jim H wrote:
> I don't buy the*TOTAL*  debunking of anything based only on "we can
> never know for sure and thus everything is only belief." This is
> little more than sophistry in my book. The smart money goes with
> widely accepted (among scientists) science as being correct at least
> as far as it goes. There always seems to be more that builds on what
> is already known. Rarely, at least in the last several centuries, does
> it throw everything we "know" into a cocked hat.
The problem is deep and you are sweeping it under the carpet, and it
goes to the heart of all 'knowledge' about the world, because all of it
is ultimately *models* - inductive propositions that are more or less
useful.  Nowhere in any of it is there the solid testability that allows
us to call it 'truth'.

The real point here is not to dismantle ordinary knowledge that works
pretty well, but to make us aware that ordinary knowledge that works
pretty well is not the only take we can have on the universe. It is the
antidote to 'One True Stickiness' that forces people to believe that
they have it right, and other people have it wrong.

Is Einstein truth, or just a model? - if truth then how come we believed
in Newton?


>
> That last said, I'd guess the poor "string theory" or "M theory" folks
> were a little disturbed when the Higgs boson predicted by the Standard
> Model of particle physics was proven to exist when the string or M
> theory model had no Higgs boson. Back to the drawing board. Not
> everything necessarily debunked, but it's a huge problem for a theory
> to deny the existence of thing that's proven to exist.
>
> Now don't tell be we only "believe" Higgs bosons exist.

Of course we only believe it. We only believe ANYTHING exists in *any
particular way*.

It is simply another *explanation* for what is pretty tenth hand
*experience*.

I assume from your position that you are ultimately a materialist who
believes something like 'consciousness is an emergent property of matter'.

I merely note that if you flip that and assume that the material world
is, at least in part, an emergent property of consciousness, a lot of
quantum stuff becomes a lot easier to model - and the 'problem of
consciousness' vanishes.

Or better still try a model along the lines of Kant's transcendental
idealism which is 'the objective world exists, but it isn't the world of
our experience: That is modulated by our consciousness to create
something we can relate to'.

Also, the further from inanimate objects we get, the more Idealism
works. When explaining people's behaviour, what counts more, what the
world *actually* is? Or what they *think* it is?

A multi-trillion global industry exists to ignore the former and control
the latter.

Materialism works reasonably well for physics. Idealism rules social
science. Everyone thinks they have the One Tue Stick.

That view needs to be transcended.


--
"What do you think about Gay Marriage?"
"I don't."
"Don't what?"
"Think about Gay Marriage."

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05