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Originally Posted by Joe Durnavich
Because many people talk about models being more or less faithful to some underlying absolute reality. That suggests a notion of the model being an inferior copy of the thing modeled.
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No, it just doesn't. An inferior copy is like a poor musical recording of a live performance. A model of music would be something totally unlike either. I'm sure some efforts have been made to "model" music, and I'm sure that many composers have benefited from their consideration, but I suspect that a lot of the creation of music is still in a form that is quite poorly modeled. That is no surprise, science is not intended to be all things to all people-- yet it is intended to use models, and must understand why a model is not an "inferior copy".
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I read that as a rule to allow only certain kinds of theories and to exclude others that don't qualify. In stating and applying such a rule we don't literally create some sort of universe that is the same everywhere, one that may or may not correspond to the genuine article.
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Obviously. Why do you persist in claiming that models "create universes"? That's utter nonsense. The rule is a way of limiting the
models we need to consider, not a way of limiting the
universes we need to consider. There's only
one of the latter, so far as we know.
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Think of what you would do if on the first trial the robot overshot the hole. You might remeasure and tweak the system to zero in on a good putt.
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Yes, I might build a better model. There is no issue that the creation of a model involves feedback, and trial and error, and humans, and what the humans ate that day, and their childhood influences, etc. None of that is in the least bit relevant to the issue of what a model is, and how they can be used to get a robot that can sink putts. We all know that doing science is a process, and it involves the human mind. What we are trying to understand is how that process relies on models, and what models are. You are seriously confusing that question by consistently mistaking them for something else, as if they claimed to be something else.
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You are describing a system that is sensitive and responsive to those aspects of the environment--the club, the ball, the green, and the golfer or golf-robot--that are required to sink the putt. Perhaps you, the programmer had to measure and enter the data. You become part of the loop then.
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But again that's all quite obvious, and irrelevant to the issue of what a model is. You are describing the behavior of a person creating a model. Shall we be surprised that such a description would sound like something behavioral? Hardly. Your argument would be like trying to understand a mathematical theorem (perhaps the recently claimed proof of the Riemann conjecture), by studying the process by which a person becomes a mathematician. I think one is better served by learning math.
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I could incorporate your position into my thinking better if I understood in what ways scientific theories are models and how being in possession of a model is useful.
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You're kidding, right? In truth, we begin making models when we are little babies. You have only to look at your own life to see what models are, and how they are used in science. In physics, the process is formalized, because models are generally quantitative, but their main purpose is to make predictions and to unify observations-- just like the little baby.
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Surely there must be clear-cut examples of models and a way to show that theories fall under the same category.
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Um, yes, there are clear-cut examples of models. How about the model "Mommy" in the mind of a baby, for example? A baby sees a face that responds to crying by supplying crucial sustenance and comfort, and builds a model that there is some kind of entity there (who knows how a baby conceives of their model, we don't recall) that if they are within earshot, can supply these needs. The baby uses that model to make the prediction that when he/she cries, he/she will have the need met. This is a very useful prediction, even though of course the baby has not the least idea of what a "mother" really is, nor does their model of such resemble terribly closely yours or my present idea of what a "mother" is. I'd say this is a pretty clear-cut example of a model, we just formalize these in physics by making them mathematical and quantitative, because that is part of our goal-- a baby has less need for that.
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Keep in mind that I fully understand why we liken the achievements of science to being in possession of models that probably are not fully faithful to what they model. Such notions are handy, but, in my opinion, can be safely set aside for philosophical discussions.
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To do so would be to set aside virtually everything that science is, and therefore have nothing left at all to talk about
but philosophy.
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I do find it surprising that I seem to be the only one here arguing that science keeps us in fuller contact with the world than we would have without it. Others seem to be suggesting that the elaborate theories of science have an isolating or insulating effect, that a theory is a sort of barrier to some sort of absolute truth that is said to be lying beyond it.
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I hardly see that as an "either/or" proposition. Science does keep us in fuller contact with the world, and it
also has an insulating effect, because it requires one to function. Does not a famous surgeon save lives, and can he/she not also be insulated from the lives that they save? Why do you see a contradiction there?