I never replied to Joe, and since this thread has come back to live here goes.
Superficially, Joe's reply does not have much that I would disagree with. But I do feel that we keep saying different things about the essential.
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Originally Posted by Joe Durnavich
I agree. The terms knowledge and truth have different uses, different roles in our language and our lives. But it doesn't follow from that the knowledge refers to some sort of replica of truth (in the sense that a plastic model of the solar system is a replica, stand-in, or substitute of the solar system).
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Nothing follows from words. It is the facts -- experience -- which shows that scientific knowledge is but a model of the world as we sense it.
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Originally Posted by Joe Durnavich
Let's say you purchase something that costs $17 and hand the clerk a $20 bill. The clerk says, “Thank you, sir. Here is your change of $2.” When you correct the clerk and point out that 20 minus 17 is 3 dollars (to the clerk's surprise that this is the case), you are not correcting a model of financial transaction the clerk privately possesses, but correcting the way the clerk deals with you and the amount of change you are handed. Improving knowledge is improving the way we live.
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That is a way of looking at it, but it's not the only one. Here's mine: Why did the clerk give you $2 instead of $3? Because in his mind he had (temporarily) an incorrect model of the transaction. When you point out to him that 20 minus 17 is 3 dollars, you make him correct his model. Notice: the model, not the data. His data -- that you had paid for a $17 article with a $20 bill -- were the same all along!
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Originally Posted by Joe Durnavich
Scientific theories are not simplifications of data. Theories are not species of data. Rather, science discovers ways to do something using simpler portions of the data. Notice that science does not create a simple copy of the world. It simplifies by focusing on some aspects of the world and ignoring others. That is, science is better seen as a process of discovery and not of creation.
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First you say that theories are not a species of data (with which I can agree), but then you add that "science discovers ways to do something using simpler portions of the data". It looks like you're suggesting that science doesn't need theories; it's all done with data. We couldn't be more in disagreement there!
Science needs theories, because it's about making generalisations. There is no science of the particular. This is why there can be no science without theory. A whole mountain of data will not substitute a good, one-sentence theory.
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Originally Posted by Joe Durnavich
Observing and theorizing, for example, are two different forms of activity involving both people and the world. In that sense there are not two distinct sides isolated from each other with one side serving as some sort of picture of the other.
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I agree that observing and theorising are the two sides of the scientific process. However, even in a coin the two sides are distinct.
And I do not claim that the theoretical stage of science models the observational stage of science, as you seem to be saying. Rather, both of them are performed with the ultimate goal of modelling the world.
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Originally Posted by Joe Durnavich
I am a programmer. When I deliver a buggy program, my phone rings. At that point, I no longer feel isolated from the truth. The truth has my phone number. Our actions have consequences on our lives. How we act changes our lives. Science and all of our other pursuits are a matter of discovering ways to do things better.
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Seriously, Joe...!
You earlier described my argument as a mere figure of speech, but that piece of prose of yours is pure poetry -- and little more.
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Originally Posted by Joe Durnavich
Well said. Improving one's golf game is not an additive process either. There is nothing literally adding up somewhere, something whose quantity value is continually increasing with practice. Life is a richer and more complicated process than that.
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What about the practicing golfer metaphor (or any analogy to someone improving his craft)?
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I agree with it, and I also agree with another thing you said, that science is a process of discovery. The thing is, none of that is incompatible with science
also being a process of model building. In the times when Europeans were exploring the world, they sailed across the ocean, and found many things by accident. But not all was accident. They also brought with them maps of the new continents they were exploring. Columbus based his journey to America on maps that predicted he would reach Asia. His maps -- his models -- were faulty, and had to be corrected and completed by later explorers...