Re: What does physicalist science tell us about reality?
Posted: Thu Sep 02, 2021 11:58 am
Jim Cross wrote: ↑Thu Sep 02, 2021 11:07 am What does physicalist science tell us about reality?
Nothing.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/InstrumentalismIn philosophy of science and in epistemology, instrumentalism is a methodological view that ideas are useful instruments, and that the worth of an idea is based on how effective it is in explaining and predicting phenomena.[1]
According to instrumentalists, a successful scientific theory reveals nothing known either true or false about nature's unobservable objects, properties or processes.[2] Scientific theory is merely a tool whereby humans predict observations in a particular domain of nature by formulating laws, which state or summarize regularities, while theories themselves do not reveal supposedly hidden aspects of nature that somehow explain these laws.[3] Instrumentalism is a perspective originally introduced by Pierre Duhem in 1906.[3]
Rejecting scientific realism's ambitions to uncover metaphysical truth about nature,[3] instrumentalism is usually categorized as an antirealism, although its mere lack of commitment to scientific theory's realism can be termed nonrealism. Instrumentalism merely bypasses debate concerning whether, for example, a particle spoken about in particle physics is a discrete entity enjoying individual existence, or is an excitation mode of a region of a field, or is something else altogether.[4][5][6] Instrumentalism holds that theoretical terms need only be useful to predict the phenomena, the observed outcomes.[4]
Instrumentalism is itself a physicalist-dualist approch to science. It assumes a world "out there", a bunch of people with isolated mental realms passively observing that world and trying to recreate that world by way of ideas. None of that needs to be assumed or should be assumed when doing authentic science. I have already explained this to you. Hoffman doesn't assume that when he does science. Please do not bother replying that Hoffman is wrong and anyone who is wrong is not doing science. That is a profound failure to grasp what science is. And all your supposed "critiques" of his conclusions also assume physicalism is true. You are really the quintessential fish in water who assumes there is nothing else because that's all it knows.