On 08/05/07, marc.geddes.domain.name.hidden <marc.geddes.domain.name.hidden> wrote:
Well of course I agree with you in this case. 'Election' is a human
> construct. That's why it was a horrifyingly unfortunate typo on my
> point. The point is that if you try to apply the same reasoning to
> everything, you'll end up saying that *everything* is just a human
> construct - and throw the scientific method out the window. We don't
> 'construct' those things in reality which are objective. Our concepts
> *make reference* to them. The concepts may be invented, but there has
> to be a match between at least *some* of the informational content of
> our theories and the informational content of objective theory (or
> else the concepts would be useless). Think computers and information
> here. Objective reality is information. And our concepts are
> information too. So there has to be a partial match between the
> information content of useful concepts and objective reality. That's
> why we can refer a failure of reductionism from the concepts we
> invented which proved useful.
>
Yes, but the theory is our idea of that "partial match" and is a human
construct. As a human idea, the theory is something separate. But the
objective reality of nature (whatever it is) is not something separate to
the objective reality of nature. Maybe we are quibbling about words, but it
is in the spirit of Occam's Razor to have the minimum number of entities
possible.
--
Stathis Papaioannou
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Received on Tue May 08 2007 - 02:03:28 PDT