[ExI] Bad Epistemology?

Lee Corbin lcorbin at rawbw.com
Mon Jul 16 02:43:31 UTC 2007


Is my epistemology really screwed up at a fundamental level?

If so, it's got to be pretty subtle, and I would appreciate any
help from anyone:  professional philosopher or armchair
amateur alike.

An extremely thorough and carefully written book I'm reading
encompasses the most modern and sophisticated physical
theories impinges on epistemology. ("How is Quantum Field
Theory Possible?", by Auyang.)

First, let me lay out how I, as a loyal, reverent, and steadfast
realist, understand the world, i.e., what my epistemology is.

1. There is a real world "out there" composed of all manner
    of real things. We have names for these things, e.g., electron,
    quark, photon, gluon, and so forth. We even have names for 
    conglomerations of these things, e.g. "table", "star", "desk",
    "atom", and "galaxy".

2.  These real things *affect* each other, even though they're
     really all comprised solely of quantum fields according to
     our best and awesome and outstanding theories. These fields
     not only pervade space, but space in the absence of these
     fields is not even conceivable (according to the doctrines
    of quantum field theory (QFT)).  [All is plenum; Newton
    was wrong; nature indeed abhors a void; the doctrine of
    substantivalism is--or should be--dead.]

3. Loosely speaking, we erroneously call such real noumena,
    that is, the ding-an-sich, the things in themselves "objects".
    (We get away with this in everyday speech because it has
    no untoward consequences. In actuality, in QFT, an
    object is a theoretical construct: Kant was right.)

4. Objects as such---strictly speaking---do not reside in the
    mind. Nor do they reside in 3-space, any more than the
    number 6 resides in our minds or in space. Theories and 
    ideas and other patterns exist really and Platonically
    whether or not people, or cameras, or quarks, or space,
    or time, or any other things happen to exist

5.  The book engrosses upon the doctrine that the theory
     of objects encompasses several parts:

     (1) an abstract state space in which the (theoretical)
     states of an object can be said to exist under, for
     example, a probability distribution or in other ways
     (I'm very unclear here because I don't understand it
     well). This abstract state space is often in physical
     theories understood technically as a "manifold".
     Consult the mathematical definition of *manifold* if
     you are curious, though it's pretty technical.
     (2) a set of functions that map elements of the state
     space to n-dimensional coordinate domains, so that
     (ultimately) numbers may be attached in this fashion
     to states.  These functions can be thought of as
     "properties", "observables", "characteristics", etc.

Now I persist, despite all that, in believing that properties
reside "in" objects, or that objects have properties. That
a container may "have" a dozen eggs is a property of that
container.  In a horrifying but weak way, the container
also has the property that I bought it at the store last week :-(
(But maybe I'll heal from and recover from this spatial
localizing of properties, only time will tell.)

So the grand project---so far as I can see it---is to shoehorn
this last paragraph into the theoretical structure of 5's (1) and (2),
and I *will* do it.

I solicit any criticism, of course, but especially of 1 - 4.

If you are a realist, does anything I've said in 1 - 4 set off any
warning bells?

Thanks,
Lee




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