Pragmatism and Physics
by astriede
Quine in Word and Object talks much about how our linguistic constructions cannot typically be translated intersubjectively without reference to the whole of a person’s language. Wittgenstein in Philosophical Investigations can be thought of saying a similar thing. I wish to construe the enterprise of physics in such a way as well. ‘Physics’ comprises a great body of theoretical statements about the world. I believe it constitutes a language by which we can communicate and interact with the world and that there are many other languages which produce empirically equivalent statements concerning the world but posit much different concepts concerning the world. Some people believe that our concepts are all that is there in the world. ‘Relativism’ and ‘subjectivity’ in it most broad and encompassing contexts makes claims such as: “All truth is relative or subjective”, “What is true for you is true for you but what is true for me may be different”, “Whatever I believe is true is what is true”.
A passing remark: If all truth is relative; which means what is true is completely definable by the subject, then the statement “All truth is relative” must also be relative. Although, since I take “All truth is relative” to be expressing a truth claim it then becomes self-refuting.
Quine takes truth to be relative to a linguistic framework (in our case, physics). Let us suppose we were to ask a physicist if it is true or false whether electrons exist in the world objectively. The physicist would then proceed to talk about the properties of an “electron”. He or she would bring to mind electric charges, electric currents, electric fields, and perhaps the whole story of quantum electrodynamics. From left to right in the above statement we have more and more theoretical baggage: it is hard to see how those to right could be true without those to the left being true as well. So, you would then probably question the physicist concerning his or her conception of “electric charge”. The physicist would then probably proceed to describe sensory experiences relating to the presence of negative electric charges. Quine’s genius was to see that the meaning of ‘electron’ for the physicist is simply the collection of all sensory experiences by which the physicist within his or her linguistic community would assent to the statement “electron” (or more appropriately “that, electron”). Therefore, the meaning of sentences in physics comes either directly from sense experience or complex theoretical connections between sentences of various “stimulus meanings”.
To get on to my point “ontological relativity” is not relativity in general. What I take Quine to mean is that truth may be “framework-relative”. So back to the above example we can envision devising many different theoretical frameworks by which to describe the world around us including the world of physics. We could associate certain sense experiences with different linguistic conventions to the point where the normal physics conventions would no longer need to be around to describe the sense experiences we have. At this point we would have two empirically equivalent ways of viewing the world: there is no way to distinguish between the two theories by an appeal to sense data. Thus, the question of whether or not “electrons” exist in the world is true given a modern physics framework but may not be true in other empirically equivalent linguistic frameworks. If left here we can say we have arrived at relativism, that is, some true propositions in my “language” or my community’s “language” may be false in yours. Although, I do not think that it does stop here because we can decide between two empirically equivalent linguistic frameworks by an appeal to the pragmatic maxim. The more appropriate framework to believe is whatever would be most expedient to believe, that is, whatever framework would make it easier for you to operate in the world with success. This means that the most appropriate linguistic framework to hold on to will be whichever one remains fixed, stable, and resists change in the face of all future sense experiences. This is about as true as things get. In this way none of us has freedom to believe whatever he or she wills or pleases because there is an objective world which provides constant sensory experiences which will modify our linguistic frameworks and our conceptions of the world. So, we do not create reality with our linguistic conventions because it is reality which constantly modifies them.
An interesting theory but I find it difficult to explain away truth . To me truth is constant, it never changes in the real world but maybe in the theoretical one. ???
I was not attempting to explain away ‘truth’, but I was not clear on that issue. I agree that truth never changes in the real world. What I was trying to say is that in the ‘theoretical’ world we have many different ways of picturing reality. Now truth located in reality never changes, but because we are finite and have only decent cognitive faculties we have to adopt one of many theoretical frameworks in order to simply operate in the world and to define what evidence can consist in. When the process of adopting one of these ‘theoretical frameworks’ is taken on faith; only after a period of time can we accumulate evidence for or against the truth value of our interpretive frameworks with which we view the world. So, maybe I should not have said ‘truth’ in the above post but something like ‘pseudo-truth’. Thus, ‘pseudo-truth’ would be our good but only approximate and subjective ways of getting at the exact, and objective truth located “out there” in reality.
Thank you very much for reading and posting on my comment. I hope you and your family are doing well down south.
Good blog post and some interesting food for thought. Would we then have to pick and choose parts of each framework as “truth”? Or would the more appropriate response be that one framework is appropriate for it’s area of study and perception of reality, and cannot be applied to other areas? Maybe my questions do not make sense, but there is always a chance you can un-muddle them.
Thank you for your comment! You have a good point and I think some of it can be answered in the reply I gave to Richard’s comment. I envision frameworks in a significantly more holistic manner. In a very real sense I believe that each person only has one framework. A person’s framework is essentially the sum of concepts a person throws at the world in order to allow that person a chance at even having evidence. Without a very large amount of conceptual baggage (a framework) there would be no such thing as evidence for anything; it would just be unmediated sense experience. I think you are hitting on a much more subtle point though. The account I give above is “fallibalistic”. This basically means that whenever you think you have arrived at a “true” proposition there is always a chance for that proposition to be “false”. So Frameworks, composed of all beliefs you may have about any sense experience and complexes of them, are “true” in an approximate sense if for long periods of time you have been able to successfully operate in the world by using that Framework. Pierce writing on similar issues (much of his work inspires mine) said that Truth in its strictest sense is whatever would allow man to live with the most success to the end of history. What I believe is somewhat close to this. I plan to write several more posts on this topic. I want this to possibly evolve into a master’s thesis. I hope this helps. Continue to ask questions if you have more. Thank again for reading the post.
A very interesting topic astriede. Sometimes I think that we can alter our own reality to fit our individual perceptions. Although your point is correct that reality can hit us without any warning all on its own.
Thanks for the deep thoughts….
Yes, that was my main point. I am trying to find an epistemology that balances subjectivity and objectivity. Thank you for your comment.