It looks like everybody here agrees that the scientific method is not obsolete. However, Newton does not provide a "why" or an "underlying mechanism" for why the planets move as they do. Here's Isaac:

Westfall also writes:

Hence, Newton tells us about the behavior of planets but not about an underlying mechanism behind it. Newton's view on this is that his theory is the better for it because whatever the underlying mechanism turns out to be, his theory will still hold.

These newfangled computational techniques likewise address the behavior of the data, so to speak, omitting an underlying mechanism. They are similar to Newton's methods in that regard.

(Ken: This illustrates where you and I differ in the model, mental, etc. discussions. Some people might think that Newton talks about a hidden or underlying force, but all he can discuss is what he sees, that is, the behavior of objects. You seem to think that "model," "mental," "circle," and the like likewise refer to something underlying or hidden ("in the mind"), whereas I think that all we can and do talk about is what we see happen--behavior--and that do so profitably without having to uncover underlying mechanisms or whatever. We make do with characterizing behavior. I don't consider that which we see as inferior symptoms of a superior underlying principle. You can think of me as championing the visible.)

Actually, I completely agree with Newton here, not with what you are imagining I am thinking. What you are missing is that Newton is not "discussing" anything, he could do that until he was blue in the face, with long treatises, perhaps waxing poetical. No, what Newton did was to create a model, pure and simple. And it was pure, and it was simple-- it unified a vast amount of phenomena under a few simple principles. That is exactly what a model is supposed to do.

We already had the visible, long before Newton. What we needed from Newton was a model that made the visible understandable and predictable, and that's just what we got.

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Logic is the grammar of truth.

Meaning and absolute certainty are incompatible, and profound meaning and absolute certainty are profoundly incompatible.

The only thing intelligence is capable of is recognizing itself.

Continuing the conversation with Ken G, in particular:

Intro (Nereid comes late to the party)
kitchen sink fishing nets (KG's ideas briefly expounded)
my confusion (request for explanation through examples)
KG's clarification#1 (complete and completed simulations; simulations in the observation process vs the guts of simulations to explain observations)
me groping towards understanding, request for a specific example (clarification re simulation in observation)
part2, my playback for confirmation (and some tidying up)
KG's specific example (M-L relationship in stars; also some tidying up).

So, second playback, to see if I've got it better ...

* the intricacies etc of what observers do are not part of what makes KG go home unsatisfied from various (AAS?) meetings

* neither is stuff where the physics is not really known, or not really understood; for example much (most?) of cosmology, work on CDM, AGNs (SMBH, accretion disks, jets, etc).

But now I'm stuck, again.
I'm sure that some of this can be applied to the combined work being done on SMBH+accretion disks+jets+feeding mechanisms+..., but I feel your description simply does not fit most work here.

Is this an area you are sufficiently familiar with that you could comment on it? If so, how do you think it differs (if at all) from the M-L relationship in stars example you gave?

(you guessed right: I couldn't relate closely enough to your stellar models example to make much more than superficial comments).

On the M-L example, though, here's one superficial comment: to what extent are you saying that the theoretical models (kitchen sink and all) are weak because a bunch of 'sanity checks' or 'existence proofs' are missing (or wrong)?

Probably not. Each subdiscipline has its own culture, and the areas I know best are stellar physics. Still, I'd be surprised if the culture in accretion-disk simulations is so much different. The equation I often see is "observation + theoretical simulation that agrees with observation = completed observational/theoretical synergy, next problem." We can leave the "what happened" issues up to the textbooks for students, and a cartoon level explanation should suffice in many cases.

Now, one can certainly file this under the heading of "pet peeves" and note that this description is not always applicable. Whether it is mostly applicable or mostly unfair is also not so obvious, and that question is likely where our disagreement centers. The more conservative way to sum it all up would be to say "let's be on guard against this phenomenon, in case it should rear its head", and paint me as someone akin to the child in the story "the Emperor's New Clothes". It is not my intention to take to task the whole astrophysical community, but rather to point out that sometimes the most fertile possible soil for discovery is found after one gets simulations that agree with observations, not necessarily while the observations remain mysterious-- even though the latter is where much of the attention gets focused while the former often gets relegated to a kind of "niche" market.

I'm not saying the kitchen sink models are weak, indeed I think they must be very strong that they make so many correct predictions. The problem lies in what was done with them once they succeeded in making those predictions. The two main issues that then cropped up were:

1) Since people did not really analyze why they got the results they did, it was not clear how much flexibility existed to fit systematic changes in the observations. There is a tendency to think a theory should fit "the observations", but there really isn't any such animal. The observers don't realize all the optional tweaks the theorists had at their disposal to try and get that agreement, and the theorists don't realize the potential for systematic errors in the observations. (There's an old joke that the observer is the only one who doesn't believe her observations, and the theorist is the only one who does. But I think the first part is actually the one that applies in both cases.)

So what you find is, some new observational effect is interpreted differently and all the datapoints shift, and sometimes this makes it "in better agreement" with the theory, as if that meant anything, and everyone is happy, or sometimes it makes it in worse agreement, and people get all bothered. But how can this be a source of either contentment or concern until we know what the observational systematics that are still out there might do, or how many free twiddles are still available for the theory? It's kind of a shell game as long as we are dealing with black boxes instead of unifying principles.

2) The answers people arrived at to explain "why" the kitchen sink simulations found that massive stars were more luminous varied from being quite incomplete to being demonstrably false (look for any mention of high pressure or strong gravity in hot stars, or any mention that the elevated temperature causes the luminosity to be higher because of the temperature sensitivity of nuclear burning rates). Yet they are propagated in authoritative places willy nilly, particularly on the web and in the minds of professionals who work with these stars. How can this be? These people are no fools, so it can only be that they never really tried that hard-- they never really cared to know the real explanation that actually happened in the simulation, as long as the cartoon explanation seemed to work.

That's just like people who think the phases of the Moon are caused by the shadow of the Earth-- when a cartoon works because it's never subjected to careful scrutiny, it can flourish and propagate despite being anathema to the goals of science. I'm saying we remain closer to that pitfall than we may realize, whenever we fail to subject simulations to that level of scrutiny, settling instead for cartoon descriptions that "seem to work" on the grounds that what "really matters" is that the simulation got it right.

__________________
Logic is the grammar of truth.

Meaning and absolute certainty are incompatible, and profound meaning and absolute certainty are profoundly incompatible.

The only thing intelligence is capable of is recognizing itself.

Maybe one difference is that no one believes that any simulations are good enough to capture everything important, yet (well, if they are honest they wouldn't) ... the physics is just sooo darn complex, and by necessity the simulations, models, etc are just too obviously restrictive to be 'good enough'; For example: 'relativistic MHD in strong field conditions' is something no one would dare claim they could model!

Aside from that, there's the rapid pace of improvements/extensions in observations - compare 2MASS to UKIDSS, for example, or Compton to GLAST - so whatever goodness of fit you have today, in a year or ten there'll be a dozen kinds of new observation that you can apply. Of course, this applies to a great many areas in astronomy, perhaps most.

IIRC, there was a bit of a mini-crisis in stellar atmospheres some time ago; when good data from new wavebands/windows (I think it was the UV, but it may have been the NIR or FIR) became available, 'the textbook' on stellar atmospheres had to be rewritten (I'm exaggerating, of course), because the models gave the wrong answers. Back then, if I read your comments correctly, there were few 'kitchen sink' models, so it was a different kind of shortcoming than what you're describing here, but at some level I think the principle is the same (IIRC, the resolution involved first gaining a deeper understanding of what physical processes were actually involved in photospheres, chromospheres, etc).
Well that's something I agree with ... "completed" simulations/models are great for pushing research forward! If you skim astro-ph regularly, you'll find a steady trickle of preprints that seem to have originated in someone looking over some 'case closed' files (kitchen sink simulations or otherwise), taking a fresh look, and finding something most curious. Not many such of course, but certainly non-zero.

And that's one place where I misunderstood your point, earlier: 'observations' today are what pops out the ends of extremely long chains of logic, physics, modelling, etc, etc, etc; the existence of unrecognised systematics is very real, and one frustration I sometimes have is with papers that (to me) clearly do not treat these seriously enough. For example, somewhere in some chain or other may be an indirect link to one of your highly successful 'kitchen sink' simulations, a link that no one paid much attention to, and an overlooked link that may come back to bite us all.

The history of the distance ladder, out to z ~0.2, is an excellent example, except that it predates kitchen sink simulations (similar principle though?).
And that's why, thank the FSM, we are blessed with Feynmans and Bahcalls and {insert your fave 'asks, innocently, really simple but extremely deep questions' here}, as well as Davises, Hulses, ...

There is certainly something right with a system where people like that percolate to the top.

The bubbly doth ascend; the dense don't.

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Lighten up! This is a stellar board!

You still haven't spoken of models directly. The problem is probably at my end. I am not directing you towards the type of answer I think you should be able to provide given the ontological status of models suggested by your posts.

You learn basic Newtonian mechanics. You learn to apply some of the same equations to both a falling apple and the moon. You and I see unification in that. You feel a need, however, to supply a "wires and pulleys" explanation, where a model is the underlying mechanism (and not just something we ascribe to the visible scientific practice). You said:

A theory can be a form of description. You posit a mental version of this theory and attribute to it special unifying powers. That's what I wanted you to directly address. You need to show that you there is such an entity and how a such an entity might unify elements of the world.

I posted the quotes from Newton to show that we can usefully speak to what is visible and forego a "wires and pulleys" explanation. We see in our lives scientific theories unifying human practices in the world. To want to explain the unification by attributing what we see to an underlying mental model that has unifying powers is like wanting to explain a person's observed behavior by attributing it to an inner ghost of that person. That doesn't accomplish anything.

You suggest that by denying the role of models as I do, that I reduce people to simple trained pigeons. There's a quote from Gilbert Ryle in his book Concept of Mind that is relevant to the subject of models as well as ghosts: "Man need not be degraded to a machine by being denied to be a ghost in a machine. He might after all, be a sort of animal, namely a higher mammal. There has yet to be ventured the hazardous leap to the hypothesis that perhaps he is a man." We don't want to overlook how sophisticatedly we conduct our lives and the fact that we can and do recognize this sophistication--while omitting details of underlying mechanism.

I gather that a Cartesianist or Idealist view such as that is attractive because it appears to explain why we are sometimes in error or why we don't understand something fully. We want to posit a model or some sort of inferior representation of the real thing that then becomes the direct object of our cognitive activities. That has the odd implication, however, that we fully understand with complete certainty our inferior model. (Philosophers sometimes posit a special, error-free form of awareness for supposed inner entities called "immediate awareness" or somesuch. For example, they point out that you cannot be wrong about being in pain. I suppose, then, that you cannot be wrong about your model, otherwise that would involve the creation of a (wrong) model of the model, and the cycle would repeat.)

There is no need to talk like that. Understanding is an achievement verb. We understand toys. We just understand them more or less well. There can be many reasons why we might be wrong about toys. Understanding is constituted by proficiency, by how well we do. If you allow someone to assess their understanding purely introspectively, you are prone to get something like this, quoting an actual conspiracy theorist verbatim: "Im not a scientist but have done alot of intrest in it. It doesnt take a scientest to be educated! Check out youtube for good and informative vids on it."

The word "toy" and its many uses are not replacements for toys.

Look at this new toy train set I bought.
Go pick up your toys!
Don't toy around with these dials. You might break it.
You have quite a collection of classic toys here.
I had that toy as a kid.
Hand me that toy on the table.

Language, generally, is far too sophisticated to be replacements or pictures of the world. Rather, you will find that there are many and varied "forms of life," to borrow a phrase, surrounding the use of a word. That's why we have to learn language primarily from the context of use. Words are more like tools that we use to achieve particular ends. A hammer is not a replacement for a nail, of course, but something used to build a house.

Yes, there is more than one way to skin a ca--err, model something. You talk about a model changing here, but what we would actually see would be something like: I trip over a toy and the next time I am in such a room, I carefully look around and step over the toys on the floor. How I interact with the world has changed. We can still say that my model has changed, but here the purpose of the term "model" is not to refer to a model under my care, but to liken the change in my behavior to a change in a model (in the sense of the plastic solar system model).

If we feel a pressing need to explain why I became more careful around toys, my tripping over a toy as well as the results we have achieved by being careful would explain it. The world and the way it responds to me does shape my behavior.

You talk about "unified conceptual aspects" and "drawing a connection," but what we would see might be a teacher pointing out planets in the night sky and then configuring the model so that the students can get overhead and other perspectives on the orbs. What the students achieve is the ability to apply methods used on the model to the planets in sky. It's the system involving the model, the planets, and what the students say and do that the teacher is continually fine tuning until particular results are achieved.

The simplifications are due the solar system, the plastic model, the students, and the students' needs, and the way it all interacts. The plastic model presents some of the same visual characteristics the solar system would if viewed from a deep space perspective. The students learn to take advantage of that. To simplify is to treat the world simply, and to get away with it.

If a plastic model does not produce simplicity, then why should we think a mental model does? These sorts of problems vanish when you consider that simplicity becomes apparent only in the larger context involving the environment, the students, and how they perform in it.

If you do not count defining them, and giving examples of them, as "speaking of them directly", I think you must have a nonstandard understanding of that phrase.
Good, so far we are in agreement.
Ah, there is your problem, right there. You still don't understand what a model is! Nowhere in my definition, or examples, of "models" did I ever say, or even intimate, that a model has anything to do with imagining "wires and pulleys", or any equivalent. This is all in your head. Of course you would not understand the usefulness of models if that's what you think they are!

Physics never includes "wires and pulleys" in its models, for if it does, then the wires and the pulleys themselves become the model, not the things they attach to and pull on. If wires and pulleys were not models too, then how would you know what to count as a wire or a pulley? You are modeling the actions of those things, and using that model to say what a wire is and what a pulley is. So if your understanding of a model is correct, wires and pulleys would need wires and pulleys too, to make them "work".

A theory cannot be anything else.
I do not posit a "mental version" of a theory; theories are mental descriptions, there isn't any other kind of theory that I could be talking about a "version" of.
I need to show no such thing, the theories obviously do that. It sounds to me like you are saying I need to show that a car can drive before I'm allowed to get in and drive it. I'll just get where I'm going and say "I did not need to show anything, I just did it."
Are you ever going to do anything other than purport a particular way of looking at connections between scientific theories and human practices? Because if that's all you plan to do, I can say right now with no hesitation that scientific theories have a connection with human practices. That's obvious. The point I have argued against is your claim that there is no point in thinking about scienitific theories (or models) in any way other than as a type of human practice. I have said, and will say again, that this is a particularly useless and ill-advised limitation to place on one's own view of what scientific theories are, because it fails to maintain a suitably tight focus on what one is thinking about. In the process, it resolves no paradoxes without introducing worse ones, and I generally so no particular value in it at all. That doesn't make it a wrong thing to do-- what is wrong is to claim that it is a better approach.

I'm certain that what Einstein had for breakfast on the day he had his most important breakthrough in general relativity in some small way influenced that breakthrough. Maybe he wouldn't have even had that breakthrough that day if he'd been sleepy from too many carbs, or unsettled from too much bacon. I'm equally certain that had he ate something else that day, the theory of general relativity that we use today would not be different by one iota. So this is what I mean when I say that although it is obvious that "human practices" interface with scientific theories, to require that we see them in that light is to miss a great deal of what is important about scientific theories, and science itself. Science is about what you get to throw out, it is not about why you need to include everything that interfaces with it, and your understanding of science needs to embrace that scientific principle. That is what models do for us.

Your position here is just patently false, there's not much more I can say. You have a completely wrong idea what models are, and you are demonstrably incorrect that they "don't accomplish anything". It is perfectly obvious that models are widely used and are vastly useful, and that you think otherwise can only be attributed to the clear fact that you don't use the correct definition of what a model is, despite quoting that definition in your last post.
I'm sorry, but I find that quote singularly unenlightening in regard to the practice of science and the use of models. It is making up its own problems and saying, hey, this isn't a problem. No kidding, I never thought that was a problem! I see no need to claim that man is a "ghost in the machine", nor to deny it, I see no relevance whatever to the entire concept. It certainly has nothing to do with making models, unless one takes that action way too literally (as is precisely the problem with the incorrect wires and pulleys approach).
It has no such implication, that is simply not correct logic. I have never claimed we can "fully understand" a model rather than the real thing, I have simply said that models are the only things we can understand because understanding is a mental relationship and a model is a mental construct. There is nothing we can understand but concepts that we construct in our minds, obviously, but that in no way claims that we understand these concepts "fully". I'm sure every human has many times experienced what it is like to understand vaguely or fleetingly some concept formed by our own mind.
You have simply chosen to define "understand" in terms of behavior, but it begs the question of what a toy is. If you define a toy by how someone behaves when they have one, you clearly cannot also say that we understand toys by that same behavior, or the word "understand" is synonymous with "define". In short, it loses its value as a concept separate from a definition. That is not a useful way to use "understand" in the context of scientific models, as it really misses the boat badly.

Sure you can define words any way you like, including behaviorally. You can define pain by the grimace on a face, or love by a pucker to kiss. But these are frankly quite silly ways to define concepts that we all know quite well simply from experiencing them, or if we have not, no amount of behavioral observations will remotely convey the same meaning as experiencing them. The same may be said for "understanding". I just see a really empty and useless landscape for application of a purely behavioralist approach to everything. More often than not, one is forced into a clunky and awkward way of talking about concepts with meanings that are much simpler, more elegant, are more useful, when thought about in a more direct manner. And no clearer example of that is our whole discussion about "models" and their absolutely central role in doing science. Is it not obvious that the definition I offered is something that is commonly used, indeed inseparable, from the science you have seen? What does that tell you?
Says you. I see that as quite a clunky and awkward way to think about how understanding is "constituted". For example, generally when I understand something, I can tell right away that I understand it, without waiting to see if I am "proficient" in practice. Other times I am surprised to discover I don't understand as well as I thought when the practice of something extends additional challenges, but that's just because experience is a great teacher. I still see no need to use behavioral proficiency as a way to define understanding, I still see understanding as something that is happening in my mind and is fully testable entirely within that mind.

Indeed, you cannot test it anywhere else. If you think that your behavior tests your understanding, you are mistaken, because it is always your mind that must pass the value judgement on the matter, regardless of the behavior. This discussion, for example-- is it a behavior that you are hitting certain keys and imagining that it all means something, or does it actually mean something that is coming from your mind? Behavioralism is pretty barren most of the time, presenting its own paradoxes even as it claims to resolve others.
And why do you think you understand the point you are making to me here? Is there some behavior you have engaged in that I'm not aware of that gives you that sense? Did you just create these thoughts here, or have you "vetted" this precisely identical argument elsewhere and noted the "behavior" of those who heard it, judging that as somehow encouraging to your behavior of making the argument? Or if you did that with a similar, but not exactly the same, argument, what makes you think that there is indeed a similarity, if not by "pure introspection"? Don't you see the paradoxes you are introducing simply by claiming that "pure introspection" is paradoxical? Thinking is different from behavior, get over it!

And that logically requires that words not be replacements or pictures for something, because there are many forms of these pictures and replacements? I don't follow that logic.
Obviously we learn language from the context of use. That's always the way we form our models of everything, from testing against experience, that's "context of use".
Of course a hammer is not a replacement for a nail, but the word "hammer" is certainly a replacement for the thing you might use to pound in a nail. You can only pound in nails with words in certain cartoons.
We can say that, if we want to replace a wonderfully concise and elegant concept of a model for an incredibly clunky and awkward list of behaviors surrounding it. But it would be a bad idea. That just sums up everything that you are saying about models, and that is precisely why no one who works with scientific models uses that awkward and clunky approach to them. It simply misses what is most important about them, I can't say it any more clearly. Instead of thinking that you have an insight that will help everyone who uses models, don't you think it's intellectually stubborn to fail to recognize that no one does it that way for a reason? Or are we back to the trained pigeons again?
Again, you feel you are solving paradoxes, but you are actually introducing them. How will you define "simple" in your behavioral approach? Will you only use it whenever more people are able to use something successfully? That's not a definition of simple, simplicity is an inherently mental construct, and is not synonymous with "easy". By replacing it with something more akin to "easy", you have simply lost its meaning in science.

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Logic is the grammar of truth.

Meaning and absolute certainty are incompatible, and profound meaning and absolute certainty are profoundly incompatible.

The only thing intelligence is capable of is recognizing itself.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

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...

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"A witty saying proves nothing" Voltaire.
"All your bias are belong to us" Ara Pacis.

Gilber Ryle captures, I think, the essence of our discussion in the introduction to The Concept of Mind: "The philosophical arguments which constitute this book are intended not to increase what we know about minds, but to rectify the logical geography of the knowledge we already possess."

Pretty much, we are trying to find the home for models, or if they even have a home at all. Once we corner one, then perhaps we can understand how a model makes us, well, understand at all. That plastic solar system model doesn't seem to be doing much sitting on the table. It hasn't been clear to me yet how its supposed mental counterpart could be more effective.

Modern philosophy sees language not as words, but as "forms of life", that is, us going about our business in this or that fashion. Words are like tools that we use amongst ourselves to accomplish, to query, to console, to love, to humor, to chide, and so on. In a word: experience.

Let me make it clear that I am not disagreeing with you in the sense we posters often disagree with each other on these forums. I am not accusing you of anything wrong. Going back to Ryle, at best I am suggesting an alternate logical geography, or organizing things a little differently.

First, notice that you cannot make a direct argument for the model. You are trying to show there is a model here, but all that is on hand here is a clerk bumbling a financial transaction. As an explanatory device, the model here is no better than a creationist who follows everything said by a biologist with, "And God created it to work like that!"

And second, and most importantly, you tried to draw my attention to some model changing, but what actually changes here in this example is the clerk handing back the correct change. Perhaps he also tells you (or thinks privately), "Oh, I see, 20 minus 17 is 3. I won't make that mistake again." And perhaps he always gets that transaction right in the future. There is a wider pattern of action and interaction that has changed. You observe that pattern, which prompts you to ascribe a faulty inner model that the clerk revises as an explanation. That technique works in practice whether there is a model or not. In the latter case, talk of a model avoids having to consciously scrutinize and describe the details of the activity. That's the nature, and advantage, of folk psychology. (A consequence of "model" being your ascription to the clerk is that you have a hard time finding the model when a spoilsport like me comes along and pesters you directly identify the model!)

It's telling that what prompts Len, Ken, and yourself to speak of models are acts of human failure. It shows that if the term "model" refers to anything, it is to those acts and their consequences.

I might say here that theory is a species of human procedure. I have likened a scientific theory to a cookie recipe in other threads. "Do something using simpler portions of the data" describes an economy of procedure, that is, getting the same bang for fewer of the bucks. Newton put the cosmos in reach of the talents of high school students.

Science shows us how to act economically. It discovers and teaches techniques that can be applied to many particulars, perhaps an antibiotic that can treat several types of infection. In that sense, science is of the particular, just groups of them.

That's the spirit. Keep an eye out for metaphor in philosophic arguments. A good deal of modern philosophy tackles philosophic problems by dissolving them through working to get clear about the language and its role.

We are just trying to get clear here on what is actually getting built and how having that built thing helps us in any way. If a plastic model of the solar system is not knowledgable, how does a mental version of it make us so?

Yes, maps are clear-cut instances of models. I am asking for the equivalent in the case of a scientific theory or of the clerk who handed back the wrong change.

While we are on the subject, consider a map for a moment. A map is just ink markings on paper. Ink markings and paper in and of themselves cannot be right or wrong, faithful or faulty, correct? There is a context of environment and of activity that surrounds the map, that makes the map a map of something. The fault exist only in the wider context that includes the map, human map reading and navigating procedure, and Columbus' ships failing to reaching Asia. If you try to narrow down to a single something, a model, then the property of fault vanishes. I suppose some have gone off course because they did not use the projection system of their map appropriately. In that case, either the map or the navigation process could be revised to resolve the fault. Fault is a property of the larger dynamic system.

Newton worked for hours timing pendulums and pestering astronomers for measurements. He kept changing his procedures, his recipes until he could apply them to both pendulums and planets. He placed himself in a dynamic feedback loop with the world in a way nobody ever achieved before. He wasn't building a replica of the world, a model if it, as much as he was finding a way to best take advantage of its affordances. We must act to live well. How to act is the problem scientists solve for us.

Ken, you say that when the student identifies 19 as a prime, that he must have created a model to do so. Maybe I can use that to identify the model in all this. Some possibilities I am considering:

(1) The model consists of the steps he performs to calculate the next number in the sequence.

(2) The model is an active agent inside him that works out the next number in the sequence for him.

(3) You (Ken) can describe only your (Ken's) model of the student. Whether the student has a model is unknowable. However, whenever you see him correctly list sequences of prime numbers, at some point you will pipe up an say, “See, he has a model of the primes.”

Are any of these correct?

What you would choose to call those "steps" would actually represent making a model of the process the student used to make his model. The actual model is more like the instructions for what steps to take, whereas what you mean by "steps" sounds too subjectively connected to that individual. Probably what you would end up doing is applying behavioral model-making, and the whole problem with behavioral model-making is that it's a very clunky way to learn about his model, if that's all you want to know. If all you want to know is his model-- just ask him what it is.Only if you don't take that picture too literally would it be useful. For example, there's no reason to animate the model, nor to keep the model "inside him". He can easily write it down for all to see, and then it's "in" anyone who chooses to learn it.
My goodness, that would be the clunkiest of all! This is exactly what I mean about the uselessness of behavioral models if you want to understand how someone is generating the next prime number. It's all about maintaining objectivity and not bogging down unnecessarily in subjective issues, which is precisely what behavioral approaches fail to do. Hence, such approaches are only even remotely advisable when subjective issues are the focus of the investigation.
I may do that, if the student is my point of interest. If it's instead his model, I will probably not be interested in that moment.

The first is the closest to the usual meaning of a model. But one can, as with the other two, give it an unnecessarily complicated behavioral interpretation of a question whose focus is just a lot simpler. I am not interested in how the model was generated or at what moment I would say that it has been, I merely know that it was, and my interest will be in what the model is. You see, it is perfectly obvious that any behavior by humans involving models is going to be an example of human behavior involving models, so it says nothing interesting to point that out. The interesting question is, what is the model, and what does it do for us. Science is very much a process of knowing what you don't have to pay attention to, so you can focus on what matters to a given issue.

Well since this thread has come back to life a little, perhaps I can take the opportunity to reply to your post above. I only really want to deal with this one point - the rest of your post has helped me see where you are coming from. It does seem clear that within this holistic approach that you take, the very notion of a mind independent reality introduces a separation between being fully immersed in reality (as you put it) as sentient beings and a reality that stands outside of that. So even if I went along with your perspective, at some point I seem to come up against empirical evidence that suggests such a separation occurs.

If we have an observer and a source that can emit (say) electrons in line with a screen separated by vacuum, landing positions will appear on the screen. We have no idea what exists in between the source and screen during this process, whatever it is is not directly accessible to us. Now just that fact for me places the whole experiment in the category of a model, i.e. we think of electrons leaving a source and hitting a screen with no direct knowledge of what is really happening in between - the picture is a simplification of what may be the underlying reality. However, your holistic approach neatly side steps that issue (assuming of course that I do have a grasp of your perspective) by treating this setup as a "whole", the results obtained are a state of knowledge that are part of this setup - the fact that we cannot account for the bit in between in terms of observation has no relevance to this state of knowledge that allows us to predict the probabilities of the landing positions of what we call "electrons". For you, the relationship of this experiment to any deeper reality is a non issue - "electrons" (whatever they are, I of course consider them to be a human representation of the absolute - a model!) and unobservable events are not simplifications of a deeper reality detached from our involvement, they are part of our involvement and should be viewed as such.

But what are we left with when we realize that this holistic picture cannot escape from implying a notion of mind independent reality? It means that in fact there is an aspect of reality that is "out there" and inaccessible - something that is clearly distinguishable in principle from your holistic state of knowledge that admits to no modeling of an absolute. You cannot under any circumstances assimilate mind independent reality into your holistic state of knowledge, it stands out like an unreachable beacon always separated from our involvement. So it is not philosophy that forces a duality on to us, it is experimental physics and the results it gives!

However I think I know what your answer is going to be, it is this posted by you early on in this discussion (post 31):

But are you really happy with this response? It seems to me that the notion of mind independent reality gives a context to the way we represent nature in terms of having this "bottom line" of reality - out of reach, but none the less real. It places into context all our notions of particles and fields, space and time as being real enough for us, but in the context of nature itself, they are human representations of some underlying inaccessible reality. I don't think of this notion as being some philosophical entity that can be safely ignored. At the level it is pointed to by physics, it seems very real to me, not in the sense of something material, rather in the sense of "something" quite separate from our involvement with nature, however you wish to view that involvement, either from your very holistic perspective of "states of knowledge" or from a perspective of "models all the way down".

I agree with what I think Ken G and (possibly) Disnfo Agent are saying in that you can choose to view science from your very holistic perspective if you wish, maybe as part of an overall personal philosophical standpoint you have with regard to our place in the world, but what real advantage does it offer? For me, it offers no advantage, it just seems to complicate the relationship we have with nature at its most fundamental level in the form of mind independent reality. I don't want to hide from that relationship, I want to acknowledge it.

The notion of mind independent reality I gleaned from Ken G in my early involvement with this forum. But the notion I refer to here specifically (in terms of quantum mechanics) stems from Bernard d'Espagnat who has written extensively regarding it from his position as a physicist and philosopher. d'Espagant outlines the nature of quantum mechanics in terms of predicted observations - the idea that a particle is localized independently of our knowledge is not assumed. The Born rule yields probabilities not for the particle to be present at such and such places at such and such times, rather probabilities for the particle to be found at such and such places and times if it is looked for - there and then - by means of some appropriate device (the screen). He defines this process as being weakly objective as explicitly or implicitly referring to some human procedure, or to put it more formally:

"A statement is "weakly objective" when it implies (directly or indirectly) the notion of an observer but is of such a form (or occurs in such a context) that it implicitly claims to be true for any observer whatsoever."

d'Espagnat is specifically here referring to outcomes that cannot be separated from the notion of an observer, thus the experiments themselves point to "something" underlying our inseparable involvement with the experiment, an underlying mechanism that is not accessible. You are right to say that QM does not provide us with any details of this underlying reality, all it can do is to offer us the notion.

I doubt that my knowledge of Quantum Mechanics is any greater than yours, so if you were to contest the validity of this notion of mind independent reality in terms of the technicalities of quantum mechanics I suspect we wouldn't get very far. Whilst I feel that I pretty much understand what d'Espagnat is saying, ultimately I admit to making use of his thesis on his terms. But I do find it striking that his thesis matches Ken's perspective regarding mind independent reality, albeit, the notion is arrived at in different ways - Ken does not see a sharp distinction between QM and classical physics in the way I think d'Espagnat does.

Hence if you were to contest this notion of mind independent reality as being pointed to by quantum mechanics, then I suppose this post becomes a little irrelevant, but what really interests me is the way in which you would reconcile a possible agreed concept of mind independent reality with your holistic perspective of science, although as I stated above, I think I have a hint of what your approach would be - out of sight, out of mind, but is that not skirting the issue to some extent?

If I asked him what his model is, he would answer with the steps he takes to determine the prime numbers. That's why I said "steps." In that context, I don't see a difference between steps and instructions. As for being connected to the individual, well, you had me look at the student's success in identifying 19 as a prime as evidence of him having a model.

A troubling circularity is lurking here. If the student's model is what he recites to me when I ask him what his model is, then his model doesn't explain unification or understanding of primes. His model is then a bunch of words, which by your account, requires another set of models for intellectual backing, and then we go on an infinite regress. A model could never explain the student's ability to list or identify primes.

There is another way of noting this circularity. You said to me of my drawing a circle:

If I did compare my drawn circle with an inner model, I would need to know which of the many models I possessed was a circle. But I could only "bring up" the circle model if I already knew what a circle was independent of the model. Your notion of model doesn't explain what you want it to explain; it assumes what you want it to explain.

A related troubling aspect is if a model provides understanding of circles or primes, how can you build the model in the first place? You must know when to stop building; you must know that you have accomplished the tasks required to finish a circle or prime number model, and this knowledge must be independent of the model under construction.

We very well may model, but understanding (and unification) is found only in the wider context involving both the person, the environment, and achievement in that environment.

The only ones we would say who have learned it, however, are those who can demonstrate proficiency or who we can reasonably expect to demonstrate such proficiency based on past demonstrations. There are no special inner criteria such that one can immediately, directly, and instantly "see" that one understands it. But note that one could privately run through some primes and be confident in one's understanding. We do that before tests. It's the proficiency based on public criteria that's relevant. There is no gazing upon an inner model and knowing right away, "I understand it!" This should be no surprise. Understanding is not just about private contentment while sitting back with a fine cigar and brandy, but, more broadly, about mastery of one's life in the world.

I said: (3) You (Ken) can describe only your (Ken's) model of the student.

I wrote that because you said to me things like, "What you are missing is that Newton is not "discussing" anything, he could do that until he was blue in the face, with long treatises, perhaps waxing poetical. No, what Newton did was to create a model, pure and simple." And, "We never understand toys, we only understand our models of toys." I took your position to be that we never can get beyond the models in our heads, which made me wonder how you knew the student built a model, or what gave you a basis to declare to me how things were in the world and how my writings did not correctly describe them.

Feel free to focus then on the model. Your talk of a person telling me what his model is, a student identifying 19 as the next prime, or of me correcting a drawn circle takes us right back to behavior.

I wasn't sure quite what you meant by "steps", i.e., whether they were mental instructions or actual behavior. If the former, then yes, that's a model. My point there was any individual would obtain a similar result if they used the same model, i.e., it is objective. If you had literally meant the "steps" taken by that individual, it might reference specific behaviors that are subjectively connected to that person (say, they counted on their fingers, while someone else might have memorized the sums, that sort of irrelevent behavioral element that one might include in "steps" if that had been the meaning).

Circularity is often not troubling at all. It is only a problem in a formal logical process, not in a process that has some objective that is testable.
I figured that was where you were going, but again, that type of circularity is no kind of problem. It is only a problem with clunky analyses that are not allowed to simply consider what the model is and test its results. Fortunately, the latter is just what we do in science, so the circularity of saying that words require models of their own is just no problem at all. It's just how thinking works!

Indeed, some see self-reference as a crucial element of conscious intelligence, and again, if that implies circularity it is no problem. Conscious intelligence is a process that is capable of generating logic, but it need not be a logical process itself. Indeed, I doubt it is, as it invented logic so it had to pre-exist logic, or at least it had to be something else developing concurrently with logic.

Not only could a model do that, but I have no doubt such models already exist. One merely has to model the process of analyzing possible prime-number models, i.e., one has to model the action of intelligence. It is difficult, and we are in the early stages of that type of model, but they do exist and difficulty is not evidence of impossibility.

That is simply false. Your circle model is addressed in your mind under the label "circle", so when someone mentions that label, you call up the model. No problem at all. Alternatively, if they don't use the word "circle" but instead describe a model of a circle, you call up your model by comparing its attributes to the description given. In neither case do I need to know what a circle is independent of my model, I merely have to be able to scan my own memory addresses and attributes. That humans have that capability is perfectly clear, or we could not use language at all.

This argument rather flies in the face of the simple fact that I have indeed explained my notion of model, if is a definition, and that definition accomplishes exactly what I want it to. For one thing, it empowers me to create models and to recognize when I'm using others' models. So frankly, I find it pretty silly to claim that the concept is unexplained. The concept of a model works wonderfully, and I'm fully satisfied with it. If you are not, then perhaps that merely undercuts your own ability to use them effectively (or more likely, you simply pretend you are not using them when in fact you are, you just insist on behavioral models even when other types are more direct).
Again there's nothing "troubling" about that, it's the simplest answer of all-- you "stop" whenever you want to, whenever you feel the goals of the scientific model have been met. That is independent of the specific model, no problem there. Note that in pure mathematics, you don't make models, you simply define the attributes of some conceptual object. What makes it a "mathematical model" is when you use it as a unifying device for something else, something from the world of actual experience.

In other words, we have to test out models before we know if they are good or not. I'm sorry, I don't find that surprising. The real issue here is the "individual and the environment" piece, if taken too seriously, will bring in all kinds of subjective elements that will only serve to bog down the understanding of the model. The more objective the focus, the sharper will be the understanding of the scientific model.
In other words, the only people who can use the models are those who have learned how to use the models. Again, this is not a news flash. Behavioral modeling is rich in generating the obvious, and thin in generating any useful insights, that's the whole reason science doesn't use it (except behavioral science, of course).

That claim flies in the face of what I see as a fairly clear fact, that the vast majority of the concepts we claim to "understand", we make that claim based on a self-referential impressions in our own minds. Rarely do we wait for confirmation from anywhere else before we generate our own concept of understanding. We can often be wrong, but that doesn't change the place where that impression comes from: our own minds. Still, it would make no important difference were that not true, a model would still be the same thing.

Certainly, we can practice our model.

It is the performance of the model that counts, of course. That also does not change the most direct and useful way to understand what a model is.

You haven't learned a lot of models, have you? That is exactly what the experience is like. I don't know what you mean by "right away", obviously you have to think about it sometimes. But the testing of one's understanding is quite a different experience than the generation of the sensation of understanding. Personally, I rarely wait to be told I understand something before I get the sense that I understand it, whether I'm right or not.

So you think you can draw a meaningful differentiation between "mastery of one's life in the world" with "private contentment"? Sitting back with brandy and a cigar sounds like sufficient "mastery" to me, that would be quite nice. I'm afraid your insistence on behavior over conceptual content is biting you there.
I'm afraid I don't know what you mean by "beyond" the models in our heads. We are talking about the models in our heads, why do we need to get "beyond" them?
It is tautological that humans are simply not capable of anything except behavior, as one can even define thought as a behavior. The issue is, do I need to clutter up the understanding of what a model is by embedding it in a larger behavioral context. I claim what is really happening there is that people who have had success understanding certain things (largely in behavioral science) by modeling the connections with behavior often make the incorrect extrapolation that this will always be an essential or even useful thing to do. But in many cases, such as physics models, it is demonstrably true that this is counterproductive.

This whole affair boils down to the simple question: Are you actually suggesting that physics will produce better models, perhaps unifying quantum mechanics and gravity, if they would just pay more attention to how their models are examples of "achievement in the environment", rather than simply imagining that the model is being checked against experiments?

__________________
Logic is the grammar of truth.

Meaning and absolute certainty are incompatible, and profound meaning and absolute certainty are profoundly incompatible.

The only thing intelligence is capable of is recognizing itself.

Circularity is a central charge some philosophers make against inner theories of meaning, where we are said to essentially do an inner lookup against a mental filing cabinet to understand a word, a diagram, and so on. The problem is that the inner lookup is offered as an explanation for how we understand something, but it must presuppose the understanding that it sets out to explain.


Note that I don't bother with the “how” in regards to understanding and the like. That's what I mean by not switching to a “wires and pulleys” explanation. Discovering the “how” will involve more than just drawing an analogy to a person retrieving a file form a filing-cabinet. In lieu of that we can note the types of situations we use the word “understand” in and for what purposes. In that broader context we can see that understanding is a form of success in life.



You would have me ask the student what his model is. He tells me. I complain to you, “Those are just words. Where is the model?” It's clear that I will never find out what the student's model is because all he can do is say things to me or show me things, all of which you suggest are not the model. The model is supposed to provide understanding. I'm trying to drill down to the entity that you think provides understanding, unification, and all the other selling points you have made about models.



We both need to be careful. One might validly charge here that this is being made up as we go along. There is no process of retrieval-by-address that we witness. We would be saying what must be true for the theory to hold. The claim is now that we can match labels to addresses all prior to having any model in hand. Consider if the “label” is a brand of apple that you haven't seen before, but that you identify anyway as an apple. There would be no address for that specific apple, yet you knew which model file to retrieve from the cabinet. The unification the model was supposed to provide occurred before you had the model in hand.



Let's consider me drawing that circle again, botching it, erasing part of it, and correcting it. You say that I must be comparing to an inner circle to be able to correct the circle. But from the perspective of my eyes relative to the circle on the paper, I don't see a circle, but a geometrically projected circle. In fact my head and eyes are probably in constant motion, meaning I am viewing a changing figure on the page. I could not be comparing to an inner perfect circle.


Yet, after correction at least, I recognize the figure on the page as a circle. You might say that I must have built a model of a circle that incorporated all projections, but consider that even a child recognizes a circle from various perspectives, yet is in no position to master projective geometry well enough to build a model that incorporates it. If I ask him what his model is, he surely won't be telling me about a principal axis and transformations.


By the way, you referred to my circle drawing as pure muscle memory. I may have been misleading. The paper, the pencil, and myself are in a visually and tactilely-guided feedback loop. There can be many things in the loop that affect how I draw and how I correct. And no, what I had for breakfast is not relevant, well, except perhaps for the coffee that gave me the jitters.


The point here, Ken, is that human intellectual abilities are far more sophisticated, yet efficient and real-time capable than our model-and-filing-cabinet-lookup analogies suggest. A dead, static entity like a model will not explain anything. As an alternate analogy, I believe some work has been done using neural circuits (simulated in silicon) to (potentially) sort mail by the handwritten zip code. The system had to be trained to recognize handwritten zip codes correctly, but it does not store and “call up” a model of them. The environment has shaped the system into a mail-sorter. Human beings themselves are intelligent. Intelligence is not something that accompanies them and gives them powers.



There is a definition of leprechaun as well. It's an actual model I am trying to chase down here.



You often use the phrase “build a model.” But one must understand airplanes before one could know how to build a model airplane. If one didn't, one wouldn't know what to put into it.



Individual and environment will not get bogged down because the environment, which includes society, encourages or forces the individual to economize. We don't factor in Einstein's breakfast into his theories because they don't make a difference to the outcome.



We aren't discussing science's use of the term “model”, but your use of it. Science's use is primarily for illustrative purposes, whereas you are using it in this thread as an explanatory device. You have models explaining why we do things the way we do. I agreed all along that we can profitably analogize what we do and how we improve to models. You try to reify models, but it is not clear that is necessary for you to say what you need to say.



I know the feeling you speak of here, but in the general, we don't say that one understands just because one feels that one does. Consider taking a final exam. Under your view, the student would already know that he understands and that the purpose of the exam is so that the teacher can infer that the student understands. Generally, however, the demonstration of proficiency is the fact we observe that prompts us to declare that the student understands. Note that understanding doesn't have to exist here in any one place inside or outside the student. Rather it is a word we use to describe particular set of circumstances.

I do not have that problem, for I do not need to say how I understand, I only need to be able to notice when I understand. A model does not need to say how it is understood, it suffices to understand it. As I said, the philosophy only bogs the process down, and that's why science doesn't use it. That pretty much sums up this exchange.
I quite agree, and I don't think we are even remotely close to answering that at this point in time. It simply is not the scientific question on the table at this juncture.

Obviously, but that tells me nothing useful or interesting about understanding that separates it from, say, sleeping.

And I answer, "if you can't see, then I can't help you. Too bad you have simply chosen to be so crippled in the use of models." That's my bottom line: why would you make that choice? I see no sense in it at all. If a perspective is crippling rather than empowering, why adopt it? How does that give you "success in life" (other than success in filling behavioral journals)?

Yes, a model is evident here. We use flying objects as a model of the phenomena exhibited by the emitter and screen. Ken will want to restate that we use our model of flying objects as the model, but the point is that we study flying objects, and become proficient in working with them, and then treat aspects of the experiment in many of the same ways. Referring to all that simply as “our model of flying objects” is fine.

As a relevant aside, the discussion between Ken and I centers on whether there is a distinct entity, mental or otherwise, that would constitute “our model of flying objects.” Gilbert Ryle says such thinking is a category mistake. He draws an analogy to a university to illustrate:

Wittgenstein might say here that “university” has a different use than college, library, museum, playing field, etc. Ken, I take it, would feel that if we speak of a university, there must be a special entity that serves as the referent of the term. He locates that entity in the mind. My position, in effect, is that there can be no special form of a building that is not the colleges, library, museum, etc. but somehow is them. Words don't always have to refer to objects, physical or otherwise. Rather, the meaning of words are found in their use. We sometimes talk of the “university” as if it were a distinct building like “the Bodleian Library,” but not always. The pattern of use of “university” is different from the use of “library.”

To relate all that back to the current discussion, much of my arguments surrounding the word “model” are similar to Ryle's discussion of the word “university.” If there is no distinct building that is the university or no distinct entity that is the model, there is nothing that “moves closer to reality” or “corresponds” or not to reality. Many philosophic issues involving “truth” dissolve once we note the metaphorical language. You asked me what the advantage of my position is, dissolving philosophical non-problems is one of them.

Getting back to the experiment, the experiment is, of course, real, as are flying objects. You seem to feel angst over not having a mechanical-type of explanation for what happens between the emitter and the screen. Another advantage of my view is that it accounts for science's success and not just its failures. (I am often one of the very few in a philosophic discussion praising our cognitive achievements while others worry that everything could be an illusion or a dream.) Let's not overlook the achievement here: People discover that they can treat emitters and phosphor screens in many of the same ways they treat flying objects. Students study flying objects and electrical equipment and the next thing you know, one young Joe Durnavich is watching Batman and Hogan's Heroes episodes at home. Suddenly, the world is a better place. Later, other talented and hard working folks come along and achieve more success by treating emitters and screens not as if there were flying objects, but as if dice were being rolled. Now a much older Joe Durnavich can watch Hogan's Heroes reruns on his DVD player and large screen rear projection TV. The world is an even better place.

Science must be set in the larger context of human achievement. When quantum mechanics replaced classical techniques, science did not get access to some reality that was previously inaccessible. The experiment was always real and accessible. The pattern of life and the resulting technology surrounding the experiment changed. We could do more than we could before.

Nobody really talks like that. A group of radio communications engineers may speak of electrical fields not to represent some underlying inaccessible reality, but to reconfigure their hardware to achieve an extra db of signal strength out of the antenna. To say that “field” must refer or represent something else is to make the category mistake described earlier in this post. Language is far more sophisticated than we may at first suppose. Words are tools that we use to achieve some end. We use a hammer to construct a building (among other tasks), but not to represent a nail. Words like “field,” “particle,” or “electron” have a use, but the use does not have to be, say, for an electron to refer to an ultra-tiny billiard-ball-like object or some other unimaginable reality. If you must find a referent of electron to put your mind at ease, look at the things and the situations people learn about electrons from in the first place. There is no one thing you can put your finger on that is the “electron,” but after training in those circumstances, people go on to use the word “electron” to their, and our, benefit.

Notice that everything is real and accessible here. Science takes what is accessible, what is within reach, and shows us how to make the best use of it. Just because a driver may not understand the “underlying mechanism” of his car's engine does not make his driving somehow unreal nor does it mean he does not drive anywhere. It means that he cannot do some things that people who understand engines can. He could not repair the engine if it broke down.

If reality was really inaccessible, then it could not affect the outcome of what we think or do. We need to keep reality around so that being wrong matters, that is, so that it has real consequences.

Yes, it can serve that illustrative purpose, but note that in real life, you probably never speak of “inaccessible mind independent reality.” Philosophers may talk like that, but us normal people say, “That's wrong. Let me show you how to do it.” We use the terms “right” and “wrong” as feedback to fine tune the manner in which we do things.

I try to describe what actually occurs in the situations mentioned. I point out the intricate and complex ways we manage those situations. I point out the strategies we use such as drawing analogies and speaking metaphorically. The advantage is that I can be epistemologically optimistic. I can begin to understand why science works, not just why it fails. I can continue to talk and think like a normal person once we step away from this philosophic discussion. I don't have to tell people that “reality is inaccessible” or “you can never understand toys, but only your model of toys.” If somebody gets a train set working, I can simply congratulate them for finding the working wiring and track configuration.

Or, should we say that it points to the fact that we are intricately bound to reality. We are equally real as an emitter/screen experiment. As our physics progresses, we don't access a part of the experiment we couldn't access before. We change our lives around the experiment (although we likely change the experiment as well). We treat it differently, we create new technologies, we solve problems that we couldn't solve before.

I think saying reality is inaccessible has the opposite effect of what is intended. We do want to say that we could be wrong, but for that to have any effect, being wrong has to matter. If reality was out of reach, then being wrong wouldn't matter. It could swing at us without ever landing a punch.

The purpose of drawing an analogy to a model and an inaccessible reality behind it is not so much to say something about our access to reality, but to keep us alert for signs we are acting contrary to our goals, to caution against overconfidence, and to acknowledge the frontiers that are yet to be explored.

Actually, the existence of the model of fllying objects is far easier to establish, both philosophically and scientifically, than the existence of any such "objects" themselves. That's Len Moran's point here, and I agree. I find it quite odd that your position is basically, we all know the objects exists, but do the models? No, we don't all know any such thing, the models are all we ever get to "know". That's simply clear from examining the mental process we are using.
If Gilbert Ryle believes that the statement "there are different categories of things" should come as a surprise to anyone, he is quite mistaken. What is lacking from this excerpt is any actual useful or meaningful evidence that what we are talking about, models, is somehow a "category mistake" to talk about. Similar logic would claim that "libraries" and "fields" from his quote represent similar category mistakes-- where's the mistake?

The relevant question here is, does it make sense to group together buildings that contain books into a concept of "library", and does it make sense to group certain conceptual constructions together into the concept of "model". The answer, in both cases, is "yes of course, it would be very silly to object to doing that."

__________________
Logic is the grammar of truth.

Meaning and absolute certainty are incompatible, and profound meaning and absolute certainty are profoundly incompatible.

The only thing intelligence is capable of is recognizing itself.

Here is an example of how to apply this method. From a birth and death registry of say twenty million people, mine the data to see if any planetary alignments at birth or death consistently match longer or shorter life spans. Approach the data without a specific hypothesis except that correlations may exist, with the aim simply to look to see what is there. Such correlations have eluded searches at the 'kilobyte' level but might be amenable to data mining at the petabyte level.

Correlation supersedes causation, and science can advance even without coherent models, unified theories, or really any mechanistic explanation at all.

No it can't, because correlation without understanding the relationships that cause the correlation or successfully sifting alternatrives to find the relationship cannot advance science.

I saw a classic example of this at a conference two weeks ago. A research group did multi-variant correlation analysis in relationship to acid groundwater in a particular region. The best correlation was with vegetation, ergo the acidity was caused by the vegetation. They did not consider the opposite possibility, that the acidity was controlling the vegetation.

I have seen this happen time an again when people mine the data without understanding relationships, and think that greater computing power = better science.

Jon

"ergo the acidity was caused by the vegetation"

Something that basic can be tested. I don't think computers and data are supposed to replace scientific testing, but lead to a faster method of reaching the experimental stage.

Ergo, the old scientific method is dead.

__________________
Smile, and the Universe smiles with you. Frown, and everybody stays out of your way. And once, everything was a pie.

When science does provide that understanding, has it not merely found yet another correlation?

It may have found another correlation of sorts, but it has certainly not "merely" done that. The work your word "merely" is doing there is similar to the word "just" in the statement "evolution is just a theory". The real question is, can the kind of correlation you are alluding to be found from statistical analysis applied to the process of data mining? And if you think it can, then how do we understand correlation well enough to look for it?

It seems to me that the use of "correlation" varies a bit among the "sciences". And the softer the science the greater the reliance on statistical analysis and correlation.

Mathematics has no use for correlation whatever, except in theoretical work which defines and investigates, but does not actually use, the concept. Of course, mathematics is not really a science since it does depend on a relation to the physical world and is not concerned with experimentation.

Physics is fundamentally grounded in "laws" that one at least expects to hold 100% of the time. When the correlation of predictions from those laws deviates from experimental data, outside of error bounds on the experimental data, then one looks for new and better laws. Physicists generally work on the premise that there are precise laws of nature that can in principle be understood. Even the non-deterministic laws of quantum mechanics are viewed as true laws and not just "correlations". There is causality, and it is meaningful. Confusion of correlation with causality is a grievous mistake.

Other sciences are sometimes satisfied, and are forced to be so by the complexity of the systems with which they deal, with less than perfect prediction and hence use correlation a bit more freely. In those areas the basic principles do not have the same weight as "laws" do in physics. If one were to be sufficiently loose as to call economics a science, then one would be hard pressed to find a principle with 100% correlation to anything. Biology in many areas must also accept less than perfect correlation.

Reliance on correlation comes with a steep price. Witness the numerous early correlations in medicine that have turned out to be misleading.

The role of correlation vs causation in science in general is probably too general a topic. It is too dependent on the specific discipline.

But mindless data mining without the organization of data via unifying principles is not good science in any discipline. It is not even good scholarship.

No, it's found an underlying mechanism through the use of formal, symbolic reasoning.

Understanding is much deeper than mere correlation. It means you some appreciation the causal relationships. Mere correlation is not enough. You have no idea which way the relationship runs, or even whether they may be other factors that you have not considered.

Jon

So, a structure is apparent: correlation above ground and causation underlying it. To see how this applies, where do Kepler's laws fall? Do they describe correlations in orbiting body motions, or do they describe an "underlying mechanism" of those orbiting bodies?

Kepler's laws are a correlation.
Newton's laws are an underlying mechanism.

__________________
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