Flannel Jesus wrote: ↑Wed Apr 05, 2023 9:14 am
All in all very interesting! Fantastic find.
And it goes to show that the people most accomplished in the scientific FSKs of physics and chemistry are, on average, philosophical realists AND believe that the phenomena they study have an existence independent of conscious awareness of that existence. In other words, chemists think H2O is a mind independent fact. (admittedly that's slightly a stretch, but not much)
Unfortunately, VA's response is to project his FSK system onto the scientists. IOW he sees them as, like him, walking around shfiting between FSKs. So, he is arguing that they are not clearly taking a stand. When in fact the scientists have a primary FSK, their scientific FSK, and no philosophy FSK hiding in their pockets. They answer with their view.
What is unfortunate about his response is that I don't think VA is a competent enough dialogue partner to separate out a valid discussion of what different FSKs might lead one to decide
from the discussion of what scientists believe.
The whole point of bringing in the survey of scientists' beliefs is to show that it is not some consensus position that realism is dead. VA regularly casts PH as some dinosaur, someone who is not up to date with current science. This implicitly and explicitly claims that now physics and physicists have deciding that anti-realism is the case. This is not true.
This doesn't mean that VA is wrong, that his anti-realism stance is incorrect. Hardly.
All it points out is his attempt to cast PH as easily dismissable is incorrect.
So, what his response to you does is shift focus from the scientists' position on realism, to yet another argument about FSK's.
That's a fine discussion, but it misses the context of me finding that study. Why I posted it. How it relates to ONE way he responds to PH. My intent was to remove one way he talks down to PH. But I think there is no reason to believe he will drop this or acknowledge the problem with implying over and over that science has moved on from PH's position.
I think there are posters who can follow this kind of thing. Keep track of the specific contexts of posts
and there are posters - I class VA and Iambiguous as being in this second class - who cannot keep track of these subcontexts.
They are so obsessed with their issues, that when specific points are criticized they always refocus on the general issue, their view of it. They repeat themselves.
Thus they never have to concede any specific point at all. It's a highly defensive pattern. Any specific point faces a repeat of the whole position.
I have followed your interactions with both of them and seen you be very careful and respectful and at no point can they manage to concede any point. They also are not able to follow any nuance related to what is being discussed in a given moment. Their habit is to slide the discussion back to the big issue, present it in
their framework, not address specific points, and misread.
I admire what I see as your patience in both cases.'
I actually think VA is the more valuable poster because despite his inablity to track dialogue, he does come into the discussion with new information and his positions have shifted over the years. The main positions have not, but in his defense he brought in all the ontological realism points, for example. And while he does not argue well in specific dialogues, this opened a lot of doors for discussion.
And to be clear, I don't see either of them consciously avoiding things. I don't see them rubbing their hands and saying 'OH, I'll avoid noticing that point or what the context is.' I think they feel quite justified.
The problem is one is not a good dialogue partner if you can't notice one's own discomfort when a certain point is made. The discomfort that makes one want to shift focus. To not get the context.
And that makes this and discussions in general so tricky. Because people really do feel victimized. They are unware of what they are doing.