I believe, more strongly than most in this community, that it is essentially impossible to draw a clear line between observation and theory. But the important issue is deciding what theories are worth paying attention to, not figuring what observations to attend to.
I believe, more strongly than most in this community, that it is essentially impossible to draw a clear line between observation and theory. But the important issue is deciding what theories are worth paying attention to, not figuring what observations to attend to.
This seems to me to entail a rejection of Egan’s law, but I should qualify that. It doesn’t reject the rule of thumb that a good theory preserves the phenomena (though it may overturn them too). As a heuristic about choosing between theoretical explanations, this is quite sensible.
But the thing I’m objecting to is the a priori claim that a true theory preserves observations. This originally came up in the context of an argument about free will in MWI. Egan’s law was there used as an argument for the claim that MWI is compatible with free will, and I’m objecting to the validity of any such argument (note that I’m not claiming that MWI and free will are incompatibile, just that this isn’t a good argument for their compatibility). In short, if theories may well overturn observations (since they cannot be entirely extricated from theory), then nothing prevents a true theory from overturning something like free will. It may have simply appeared to us that we have free will, in the way it merely appeared to me that the stick was bent.
In short, if Egan’s law is ‘All other things being equal, prefer the theory which preserves the phenomena’ then fine. But then Egan’s law can’t be used to argue that a given theory actually does preserve a given phenomenon.
I suspect whoever used free will as a component in an argument about MWI was somewhat confused. (I made that particular mistake personally, so I probably have a pretty good idea of exactly how.)
I suspect whoever used free will as a component in an argument about MWI was somewhat confused.
I used it, and was confused. I think something fundamental to ethics (maybe free will?) is incompatible with modal realism, and was considering the thought that it’s incompatible for the same reasons with the kind of realism concerning the mathematics of non-relativistic quantum mechanics which produces the MWI. I didn’t make any real headway, but quite a few people said that MWI couldn’t in principle conflict with the possibility of free will because of Egan’s law. I’m here objecting that any interpretation of Egan’s law on which this is a valid argument must be false.
Might I recommend reading some more philosophy of science? Particularly Kuhn (Structures of Scientific Revolutions), Feyerabend, and responses to them.
My impression is that “preserve the phenomena” is trying to preserve physical realism from the Kuhn-type arguments about how fundamental objects like epicycles and impetus were abandoned as science progressed. It is not an argument at all about how to choose scientific theories. In short, I think you are applying the principle at the wrong philosophical meta-level.
Might I recommend reading some more philosophy of science? Particularly Kuhn (Structures of Scientific Revolutions), Feyerabend, and responses to them.
I appreciate that. I’m student of philosophy, and I’ve spent some years with that material, though it’s not my area of speciality or anything. But to be clear, I’m not trying to apply or endorse a principle like egan’s law or ‘preserve the phenomena’. I’m just trying to figure out what ‘adding up to normality’ is supposed to mean. My impression so far is that it unless it’s a statement of the iterative nature of theoretical activity, then it involves a commitment to a foundationalist theory of empiricism.
I believe, more strongly than most in this community, that it is essentially impossible to draw a clear line between observation and theory. But the important issue is deciding what theories are worth paying attention to, not figuring what observations to attend to.
This seems to me to entail a rejection of Egan’s law, but I should qualify that. It doesn’t reject the rule of thumb that a good theory preserves the phenomena (though it may overturn them too). As a heuristic about choosing between theoretical explanations, this is quite sensible.
But the thing I’m objecting to is the a priori claim that a true theory preserves observations. This originally came up in the context of an argument about free will in MWI. Egan’s law was there used as an argument for the claim that MWI is compatible with free will, and I’m objecting to the validity of any such argument (note that I’m not claiming that MWI and free will are incompatibile, just that this isn’t a good argument for their compatibility). In short, if theories may well overturn observations (since they cannot be entirely extricated from theory), then nothing prevents a true theory from overturning something like free will. It may have simply appeared to us that we have free will, in the way it merely appeared to me that the stick was bent.
In short, if Egan’s law is ‘All other things being equal, prefer the theory which preserves the phenomena’ then fine. But then Egan’s law can’t be used to argue that a given theory actually does preserve a given phenomenon.
I suspect whoever used free will as a component in an argument about MWI was somewhat confused. (I made that particular mistake personally, so I probably have a pretty good idea of exactly how.)
[Edit] This wasn’t a particularly helpful comment; I’ll refer you here: http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Free_will
That seems likely. Free will used as a component of an argument for just about anything is confused.
I used it, and was confused. I think something fundamental to ethics (maybe free will?) is incompatible with modal realism, and was considering the thought that it’s incompatible for the same reasons with the kind of realism concerning the mathematics of non-relativistic quantum mechanics which produces the MWI. I didn’t make any real headway, but quite a few people said that MWI couldn’t in principle conflict with the possibility of free will because of Egan’s law. I’m here objecting that any interpretation of Egan’s law on which this is a valid argument must be false.
Might I recommend reading some more philosophy of science? Particularly Kuhn (Structures of Scientific Revolutions), Feyerabend, and responses to them.
My impression is that “preserve the phenomena” is trying to preserve physical realism from the Kuhn-type arguments about how fundamental objects like epicycles and impetus were abandoned as science progressed. It is not an argument at all about how to choose scientific theories. In short, I think you are applying the principle at the wrong philosophical meta-level.
I appreciate that. I’m student of philosophy, and I’ve spent some years with that material, though it’s not my area of speciality or anything. But to be clear, I’m not trying to apply or endorse a principle like egan’s law or ‘preserve the phenomena’. I’m just trying to figure out what ‘adding up to normality’ is supposed to mean. My impression so far is that it unless it’s a statement of the iterative nature of theoretical activity, then it involves a commitment to a foundationalist theory of empiricism.