Some thoughts while reading a philosophy blog over lunch

Today's post at Scientia Salon is a series of blurbs from an academic philosophical article. That means it is difficult to understand for two reasons:

1. It was not written with a general layperson audience in mind.
2. The blurbs are just snippets of the arguments and won't convey the whole picture.

Nevertheless, I enjoyed it because I am interested in the topic, and I have done enough philosophical background reading to know what most of the jargon words mean. The topic and title is "Structural realism and the nature of structure." It addresses a specific model of scientific realism, which advocates for the reality of either our scientific theories or the objects in nature described by them. I think this article deals specifically with the epistemic question of scientific realism: are we in a position to know that our theories of nature are true?

The article is a critique of Ontic Structural Realism.

Ontic Structural Realism is a version of realism about science according to which by positing the existence of structures, understood as basic components of reality, one can resolve central difficulties faced by standard versions of scientific realism.

These difficulties are:

1. Pessimistic meta-induction, the view that since theories in the past have been shown to be false, there is reason to believe that our current theories will one day be shown to be false as well, so it is unreasonable to believe in their truth.
2. The "underdetermination of metaphysics by physics, which arises in non-relativistic quantum mechanics".... I will admit to not really getting what this means.

My point with this blog is not to go through and try to explain the blurbs of the philosophical article, not least because I don't understand it enough in the first place. I have defined pessimistic meta-induction here because it will come up later. My point is simply to share some thoughts I had while reading the blog over lunch.

I have recently been thinking about the nature of expertise, how we come about it, and why expertise in some fields (e.g. physics) is recognized and deferred to but not in others (e.g. racism in America). One day I may get around to formulating ideas into a blog, but with that as background, somewhere around this blurb I had to slow down:

The deflationary nominalist grants that mathematics is indeed indispensable to science, but resists the conclusion that this provides any reason to be committed to the existence of mathematical objects and structures. This is achieved by distinguishing quantifier commitment (the mere quantification over the objects of a given domain, independently of their existence) and ontological commitment (the quantification that commits one ontologically to the existence of something).

This is a good example of how understanding complex ideas is a difficult process. I had to think hard to translate "nominalist" into something meaningful (it has something to do with physical law), and I ignored "deflationary" as jargon I don't get. I had to re-read sentences a couple of times, and split them into chunks to understand phrases separately before bringing them back together into something coherent.

And then I had some thoughts about how important it is for us as a society, for humans committed to learning, to be comfortable being confused. ("If you aren't confused, you aren't paying attention." TM) Digesting complex ideas and turning them into increased understanding is a skill that should be learned in school and then used repeatedly as an adult, but the brain is a lazy and energy-saving organ. All too often we accept "common sense" answers because they are easier to understand, not because they are right.

Anyway, this is tangentially related to the differing types of expertise. Physics is acknowledged to be difficult to understand; ideas about physics are communicated via jargon and mathematics, so there is little chance of laypeople convincing themselves they understand when they really don't. On the other hand, much of the humanities - sociology, political science, literature - communicates with a mix of jargon and everyday words, and the subject of these fields are not quarks or electrons but people and groups of people. So, when a layperson is confronted with physics, they will usually defer to an expert, but when confronted with a subject like racism, they can refer to their everyday experience and may not even acknowledge that expertise on the subject exists. In this respect, the illusion of understanding is an impediment to understanding. (Abandon Certainty, etc.!)

Well... I wasn't planning on writing all that, but that happened. Let's move on. Here's the blurb from the article (remember, we were talking about ontic structural realism) that inspired me to start blogging today.

The very idea that there is a true, fundamental, underlying structure of the world - in whose existence we must believe - is difficult to make sense of, as the above arguments have indicated.

 My thoughts proceeded something like:

• I was following the argument and maybe agreeing, but I find it difficult to commit to this characterization. Even if we never can know what the structure is (because of the nature of our ever-changing scientific theories, i.e., pessimistic meta-induction), that doesn't mean that there is no fundamental structure to the world.
• But if you can't define what that structure is, how can you say that it exists?
• Exactly.

... I'm not sure I can sufficiently explain where that last thought came from. But if we are thinking about some fundamental structure to the world, it is easy to slip from an abstract notion of scientific theories (though they may not be the structure itself) that describe the way the world works, to more metaphysical notions of Brahman or the Tao, something indefinable that transcends all notions of being and non-being. Well, easy for me anyway. Also, my favorite movie contains this quote:

Dude: "I have an appointment to check out this African guy."
Other dude: "What African guy?"
First dude: "Exactly. What African guy?"

I haven't yet decided whether I believe there exists some fundamental structure to the world. If there is, on one hand, it seems reasonable that in order to say that something exists, you should be able to define what that thing is that exists. On the other hand, being able to define something doesn't fully get at what the thing really is... we have an idea (which already doesn't fully contain the essence of the thing) then distill that idea into language (getting further away from the real thing) in order to communicate... so whatever the fundamental structure of the world is, if one exists, cannot be defined, since surely it exists independent of human language and thought?

If I keep going I will go back and forth and this will become "some thoughts about my thoughts about a philosophy blog I read over lunch"... but I hope my thoughts sparked your own thoughts!