One thought on “Burning Down The House”

1. mls March 6, 2023 at 9:34 am

   I have been reading your site, given our unfortunate exchange elsewhere.

   As much as you despise philosophy, you ought to try and read the first section of Kant’s “Critique of Pure Reason.” I say this because of your post denying substantival space and time. I should note that a similar debate is ongoing with respect to spacetime. The statement,

   “Ontic structural realists argue that what we have learned from contemporary physics is that the nature of space, time and matter are not compatible with standard metaphysical views about the ontological relationship between individuals, intrinsic properties and relations.”

   is from the SEP page,

   https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/structural-realism/

   It is compatible with the opinions expressed in Chapter 8 of Bohm’s book on quantum mechanics.

   One of the reasons Bohm’s work is denied is the extensive use of Ockham’s razor among the science community. That is, one cannot “produce” a pilot wave (Yes, I saw the link to the bouncing droplets. It is encouraging.) And, a second reason is the propensity of people to engage in the “prove me wrong” attitude.

   Because of your site, I searched for the term “mathematicism.” It does not really occur in the debates common to the foundations of mathematics. It appears that the word entered the lexicon in the early 20th century. I also found an interesting paper from around that time discussing Descartes. It seems to be the case that Descartes pursued mathematicism in response to the skeptical philosophy of Montaigne,

   https://iep.utm.edu/montaigne/#H3

   Thus, a historical analogy exists with Kant. Kant’s critical philosophy had been a response to the modern skeptical argument of David Hume. And, because Kant had suggested that our notions of space and time were grounded in our personal experience, I considered his argument reasonable.

   But, I did not realize that the objections to Kant had actually arisen from mathematicism.

   In a footnote of his introduction, he clearly separates scientific principles from his questions concerning mathematics. Obviously, mathematicists do not.

   I am not an enemy of science. After our unfortunate exchange, I went through the Wikipedia links on empiricism. The principle influence in English-speaking countries will be the section on British empiricism. Within that list, you will find David Hume and his skepticism mentioned. However, empricism generally assume that one must work from sense data and subjective experience.

   When you visit the page on empirical evidence, however, you will see that the philosophy of science carefully separates the concept from subjective experience. For the purposes of science, empirical evidence is merely the tool by which theories are confirmed or rejected. The science community may have consensus opinions — but, they are just opinions.

   That is basically honest. But, it relegates science to being a mere tool for others, just as scientists have relegated mathematics to being a mere tool for their purposes.

   For what this is worth, Bohm writes that causality and determinism need to be understood in terms of a statistical limit. The spin statistics of Stern-Gerlach experiments provide that possibility. This is because they relate to cosines in the limit.

   To the best that I can tell, all primitive notions of “independent variable” (thus, not speaking of a random variable) used in mathematics are essentially an application of the criterion for linear independence from linear algebra. That criterion fundamentally assumes orthogonality. In turn, orthogonality is understood relative to cosines. Thus, as cosines may be understood as a statistical limit, all of the algebra which accounts for the “theory ladenness” of scientific theories depends upon a statistical limit interpretation.

   If you look at the Wikipedia link,

   https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory-ladenness

   I believe you will find that the source of my disagreement with you involves the beliefs about mathematics within the science community as opposed to what mathematicians do. And, for what this is worth, I am opposed to using the philosophy of mathematics as a way to “define” mathematics so that “science” is truth.

   Good luck to you budrap. Thank you for the comments on your site. Feel free to remove this comment if you find it objectionable. And, I do not think we need to engage. I regret our previous exchange, and, I see no reason for us to talk past one another again.

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