Philosophy Now Forum

I've had this discussion with a few people here with regards to science where there seems to be a confusion on whether some people mistaken the models for reality. I open this thread because I think it is imperative that we recognize how models, as 'ideas', are both very real and can manifest what is real even with no mind to perceive these ideas.

Why do I raise this question and propose what I do?

When we think of the question of those proposing "God" as a source of all things at least in a Deistic way, many have argued Anselm's Ontological Argument as a justification on the basis that since we can conceive of the idea of a collective whole, this represents a certainty about reality itself. While I thought the argument interesting, when I first read it, I realized that the error lay in the fact that he simply begged this idea to be labeled as "God", like a variable or model to stand for this absolute 'whole'. Then he hoped that the readers would transfer this meaning to the religious interpretation of what "God" meant to most.

This transference is the problem, not the argument in itself. But this points to how or why most today do not accept using abstract ideas to represent something 'true' about reality itself. It is what Obvious Leo here on this site as well as others would see as "mistaking the map for the territory".

Anselm was not the first to try to use ideas as real things. The "forms" of Plato referred to the same idea with much better clarity. I believe, however, this topic has always been repeated through time likely from our initial origins of communication. The differences in the discussions on these are usually just renewed using different terms. In more recent times, this was what the fuss was about with Logical Positivists among other philosophers attempted to do by finding a means to demonstrate that logic itself could provide justification for all things real. At least, if we could find something substantially real about math/logic, when we use it in things like science, we can be more trustworthy of at least using logic and math to determine truth about the Cosmos.

Gödel'sIncompleteness Theorem was intended to end this topic once and for all by showing how there is no complete and consistent set of axioms for all of mathematics, including logic. This extends to ideas themselves. Yet I began to question whether we cannot ourselves question whether reality requires completeness or consistency with respect to the whole. And within logic itself, what seemed to be the problem came from how we create the rules of contradiction. That is, when we accept contradiction as an end to dismantle an argument, does not the very contradiction serve to motivate one to do something to find resolution by finding a place in totality for which these things can coexist?

This does not mean that we require accepting contradictions of people's arguments as mapping reality to anyone's wild opinions. Rather, it allows us to default to presuming any possibility as 'true' about totality as a whole with the aim of classifying things which operate contingently in our world as opposed to other ones. It aims to determine which descriptions of reality correspond to a one-to-one relationship between the ideas (models) and the real world.

I raised a comparison of the original problem using computer programming and architecture. I will reintroduce this here to show what I mean.

Human consciousness is akin to a computer program where the architecture represents our brain or the physical reality that defines how we are conscious. If we think of each experience we have as involving both processes and states, we can try to make sense of this as follows:

In all computer programming, the assembly or machine language predetermines the reality of the ability of a program to succeed. It is the hardware that initially precedes a priori the capacity of any program to behave. In the computer, the function of contingent reality comes from either memory or ports (which are indistinguishable from memory as data sources). To a computer, each of these may either hold a one or a zero for each bit memory or port possibility. As such, each of these act as variables.

The analogue for human consciousness is that the state of all information we experience uniquely (qualia) are as to the possible ones or zeros from memory or ports that get used to create the infinite variables. These may come from either our senses OR from our memories. Those from our senses are akin to the ports whereas those we internally reflect are our memories.

There are also many ways the electronics can be designed to create the architecture of the computer. This is just the same with respect the complexity of our brain to evolve in different ways. Like a computer program, our consciousness does not know nor care about the architecture as it defines how the computer programs or consciousness must 'obey' to some functional rules beyond their absolute control.

So how does a human infer whether the information and processes they are defined by are real or not? Is there a kind of test we can use to at least determine that something in us exists that is true a priori to our experiences? Using a computer analogue, one way for a program to do this is by assigning a variable label that maps onto a memory location. Even though the label only creates a symbol for the programmer to refer to, the hardware actually arbitrarily assigns a spot in physical memory that uses the label as a link to it. Now here when I say "arbitrary", this doesn't mean that the computer randomly does this. It can just do it by assigning any new defined variable name to consecutive memory units beginning from some designated starting memory. If this is the '0th' location, then each new variable places it in the next available memory, the '1st' location. But this starting point can be assigned by the hardware at any beginning location.

Similarly, we don't have to worry about how or where our experiences are placed in respect to particular spaces within the brain. But we just assign each experience as a variable from the domain of possible elemental experiences, referred to as 'qualia' by some (I assume this is a derived word to describe an elemental experience as a quality like a specific interpretation of what 'redness' means for sight data, or a particular pitch is heard as sound data.)

After assigning a variable label, a computer program may 'test' it by trying to see what value it holds. By default, this is usually zero since it represents no charge in the hardware. But upon this initial test, if it should return a zero, there is no way to be certain that any memory unit actually corresponds to this variable label. If it tries to check what is in some memory location that doesn't exist, it would obviously have nothing to 'return' and so would be interpreted as a zero anyways.

So what is needed is to then assign a value, like '1' to the variable label. Then test it again to see if it returns a '1'. If it still returns a zero ('0'), then this variable actually does not exist and so even the label we assign to it has no real link to anywhere. However, if it returns a '1', then the program has evidence that this variable location exists, even if it doesn't know where or why. To be certain it remains variable, the program can reassign this variable to become '0' again and then retest. This is how you can find a means to test whether there is some substantial meaning to an a priori existence beneath or beyond the program. And in a similar way, we can and do test this with respect to our experiences in kind.

For instance, on this site, click the "Post Reply" on the bottom or top of this thread. Without doing anything, you should observe a work space that is empty. If you wanted to determine whether it is functional or useful as a 'real' operating space (or function), you can't simply just see that it exists empty. Now place anything you want in it by typing something intentionally there. As soon as you confirm that what you intended to type appears on the screen, this proves that you can assign something to that space and get a 'return' that confirms your experience.

This proves that the editing space is a real 'variable', meaning that you can vary it with anything from your domain (the letters you can type) in that space. The "label" of the generic variable is "Post Reply" where the potential title you can place in the "subect" line is a more specific label you can opt to assign to your unique post. Even though you can also 'vary' the names of the labels, you don't get confused by assuming that the label IS the post. The "ideas" are actually the contingent data you type in the edit area. While you can imagine an infinite possible such ideas can be printed there, the data that you post is still a reality. The labels we used to reference them, such as the post subject name or number of position in the thread, etc, represent arbitrary labels as variable places to refer to. It is NOT important what you label these things as, they themselves do not act as the reality but rather act as pointers to the reality.

Therefore, this proves that "ideas" themselves are real, even if they don't necessarily require mapping to any real eventual posting. But where they are proposed, they exist at least in 'some' real form. This is what the Platonic Forms were intended to suggest.

I'll leave it at this for now to see if and how others respond to this so far as this is already long for an intro to this thread.

Ideas are real. The "architecture" of the brain is real. The manifestation of ideas is real.

But the way we understand things and the means of undestanding are not real or at least not real in the sense they they are reflective and consistent with reality. If you ask a reasonable person to add one apple plus one orange you might get an answer like "two fruit". But nature doesn't work this way. Nature doesn't know a fruit from a comet and these are artefacts of language, not reality. Indeed, nature doesn't even know how to make one apple as evidenced by the fact that no two apples are identical possibly suggesting she's still trying to get it right.

We are constantly imposing our ideas of what an apple is on nature. But it goes far further of course since we also try to apply "miles" to a universe that doesn't conform to our senses of distance and any possible underlying reality. We say things like d = 1/2 A x t ^ 2 and expect it to apply to everything in nature at all times despite the fact nature is beholden to none of it. The mathmatical part is natural logic and part of the human brain but the rest (including the numbers and quantifications themselves) are human constructs. That this applies to nature is certainly obvious but that it only applies as a tiny spectrum of reality and only under "proper" conditions; all equations and all knowledge can be misapplied and almost always are. Visceral (experiential) knowledge is different and is usually correctly applied.

The problem with seeing the world in terms of models is that it reduces our ability to make obsevation of the unexpected because it redefines what is expected. We see what we expect and if we see the world in such terms most things are expected.

Models are fine and it might be unavoidable that most experts are trained in such a way as to give rise to their thinking in such terms. But there are several tweaks that can be made in education so that people can better know what they know; so they can better appreciate what they don't know. More emphasis on proper observation at younger ages and much more emphasis on metaphysics at much younger ages is necessary. Also another step needs to be added to the scientific method; metaphysical implications. I believe it would be wise to tweak language a little. Part of the reason we see reality in slices is caused by communication. Modern language is fine for thought but it is poor at commuunication and as a framework imposed over the architecture of the brain. It provides a perspective that propels us to see models as reality by removing the observer from the observed.

We cannot escape using models regardless of whether they act as appropriate descriptions of reality or not. While not all models are appropriate to express or point to a reality, all realities are derived by what we refer to as "laws" as the logic nature uses to manifest them. The 'truest' models are the actual contingent objects and activity of our world as we observe them. But the generalizations we reduce them to are also real. They are just the deduced rules of some thing or event in nature. Our particular human models, definitions, or constructs do not necessarily assure us that we haven't left some significant rule out to describe something. But if we were to actually know and apply all that enables a true model to manifest reality, this actually would cause the very things we are examining. It is pointless to denounce the symbols we use as insufficiently real to matter unless you completely abandon use of them and only deal directly with each contingent reality.

The problem you mentioned, cladking, only arises if we make improper models of our experiences. You also seem to be implying that all ideas arise out of ones mind alone. All our ideas in our head are as equally derived from our environment including our brain's capacity to test various elemental experiences by combining them together to form new ideas. This is "creativity". And while some creative ideas may not come to fruition, many of them initiate what will eventually become realities in one form or another.

Either way, if we accepted our consciousness experiences in the way most do with regards to assuming ideas as non-real, then nothing can ever be determined as 'real'. So I would suggest they have no more to bother speaking of reality at all. In science, the input axioms are what are considered our observations. But even any input represents ideas as our actual sensation of observations act only as indirect symbols of the reality just as the colors we see are not actually colors but a unique effect of our biology to distinguish the effects of environmental frequencies within the electromagnetic spectrum. Even the scientific theories that find these generalized inferred truths, like that light are wave-particle events that enable us to see them, are no more or less 'real' than any other referenced ideas.

Another major point is that observations can be in error just as magicians can demonstrate easily. And as a last point, even the 'laws' of logic come from real observations. You gave the example of two apples and an orange. While it may be contradictory to attempt to add these as "2a + o", as each cannot both be two apples and an orange, you used what I said is my preferred 'rule of contradiction' to absolve by recognizing a dimension to which both can be true in the larger universal called, "fruits".

cladking wrote:The problem with seeing the world in terms of models is that it reduces our ability to make obsevation of the unexpected because it redefines what is expected.

Exactly. We delude ourselves that the objects of our observation are specifying for our cognition of them but the exact opposite is the case. It is our cognition which specifies our objects. An apple is only an apple because that's the way we've mutually agreed to label a particular configuration of matter and energy. The great man said it best.

"It is the THEORY which determines what the observer will observe"...Albert Einstein.

The methodology of science precludes it from making models of reality. Science can only model a particular narrative of reality and if we could send a spaceship to Pluto by using only the cosmology of Ptolemy in our modelling then such a science would be just as real as the one we're using. However I shudder to speculate what the mathematics might look like. We use the Copernican model solely because it's SIMPLER, not because it has any intrinsically superior truth value. Likewise if we could develop all of our modern technologies by using only the basic Aristotelian elements of earth, air, fire and water then this would be better science than that offered by the periodic table. Unfortunately we can't.

'A scientific theory must always be as simple as possible but no simpler"....Albert Einstein.

cladking wrote: It provides a perspective that propels us to see models as reality by removing the observer from the observed.

This is the single greatest error made in physics and it accounts for ALL of the various paradoxes and counter-intuitive absurdities which the models imply. The observer is always placed outside his observation and observes his world from the outside looking in. However the observer is himself no more than a particular configuration of matter and energy and thus must always observe his world from the inside looking out. This means we are always looking BACKWARDS down the arrow of time at a holographic projection of our own past.

Scott Mayers wrote:We cannot escape using models regardless of whether they act as appropriate descriptions of reality or not.

I don't believe this is at all true. Perhaps at the current time it's accurate to say we can't as a species escape the use of models but most assuredly there are ways for individuals to escape seeing the world this way. Indeed, I believe it would be most highly beneficial to train large numbers of people as "generalists". A generalist simply doesn't look at parts of the spectra but focuses on it in its entirety and tries to see how it all fits together and what's the nature of the darkness.

Indeed, by increasing emphasis on metaphysics in education models would decrease in importance even aomng specialists. Some fields don't really need specialists at all. It's a mistake to award doctorates in basket weaving and while the number of specialtiees must continue to increases we can control their sprad somewhat.

Using models wouldn't be as detrimental if we all better understood when we are.

While not all models are appropriate to express or point to a reality, all realities are derived by what we refer to as "laws" as the logic nature uses to manifest them. The 'truest' models are the actual contingent objects and activity of our world as we observe them. But the generalizations we reduce them to are also real. They are just the deduced rules of some thing or event in nature. Our particular human models, definitions, or constructs do not necessarily assure us that we haven't left some significant rule out to describe something. But if we were to actually know and apply all that enables a true model to manifest reality, this actually would cause the very things we are examining. It is pointless to denounce the symbols we use as insufficiently real to matter unless you completely abandon use of them and only deal directly with each contingent reality.

If I understand you I have several problems here.

The only "reality" in models or how they are achieved is the effect of reality on experiment. Experimental results are real and are known to be real because they can be replicated and they are real because reality affects experiment in a logical way. If the experiment is thought out wrong then it's not excluding nonrelevant considerations. We look at the various experimental results and use it to model nature but all that's is there is nature as it applies to the relevant experiments.

Once you step outside the lab then all of nature comes into play; all the forces of nature affect everything. We can manifest the lab in steel and plastic to build machines which are forced through design to accomplish our tasks but these are still at the whim of nature and still breakdown or experience unplanned events or operation.

The problem you mentioned, cladking, only arises if we make improper models of our experiences.

All models are improper and not reflective of reality. Obviously some understanding can be extrapolated to build machines or make accurate predictions but the model is still simply a higher quality model. Very few models in any field can actually make predictions outside the characteristics that can be isolated in the lab. You can't predict which world leader will be assasinated next or what the repercussions will be because you can't isolate any of the variables in the lab nor even identify the relevant variables. Even when prediction is more straight forward prediction is still impossible. A few years back here there was a compact car smashed between a stopped and speeding semi. They peeled a woman out of the wreckage nearly uninjured and rescuers said the space she was in was shaped just like her. The car was only about 4' long. Even though most of these variables could be quantified and the whole thing could be well modeled no one would predict a survivor. No computer model would predict a survivor.

It's not only that nature never cooperates but that there are far more variables and forces than we can even imagine. It wasn't magic that saved the woman just a strange set of coincidences.

You also seem to be implying that all ideas arise out of ones mind alone. All our ideas in our head are as equally derived from our environment including our brain's capacity to test various elemental experiences by combining them together to form new ideas. This is "creativity". And while some creative ideas may not come to fruition, many of them initiate what will eventually become realities in one form or another.

I believe all ideas are individual and are the only thing of true value on the earth. Products and things have monetary value but ideas are their basis. Ideas are the basis of humanity and progress.

God only knows where ideas come from but they pop into the minds of individuals.

Either way, if we accepted our consciousness experiences in the way most do with regards to assuming ideas as non-real, then nothing can ever be determined as 'real'. So I would suggest they have no more to bother speaking of reality at all. In science, the input axioms are what are considered our observations. But even any input represents ideas as our actual sensation of observations act only as indirect symbols of the reality just as the colors we see are not actually colors but a unique effect of our biology to distinguish the effects of environmental frequencies within the electromagnetic spectrum. Even the scientific theories that find these generalized inferred truths, like that light are wave-particle events that enable us to see them, are no more or less 'real' than any other referenced ideas.

I take reality as being axiomatic. We can't really know reality directly but we can get glimpses of it.

Another major point is that observations can be in error just as magicians can demonstrate easily. And as a last point, even the 'laws' of logic come from real observations. You gave the example of two apples and an orange. While it may be contradictory to attempt to add these as "2a + o", as each cannot both be two apples and an orange, you used what I said is my preferred 'rule of contradiction' to absolve by recognizing a dimension to which both can be true in the larger universal called, "fruits".

Magicians get people to misobserve. It is the art of drawing peoples' attention to what you want them to see. Frankly I prefer different words here. Observation is the root of both ancient and modern science. Obviously all observations aren't repeatable and our senses can always fool us. If we don't have enough time, light, sound or some other needed thing to make a proper observation we can come up wrong. Optical illusions and a host of other problems can cause even the best trained scientist to mis-see something.

Obvious Leo wrote:
This is the single greatest error made in physics and it accounts for ALL of the various paradoxes and counter-intuitive absurdities which the models imply. The observer is always placed outside his observation and observes his world from the outside looking in. However the observer is himself no more than a particular configuration of matter and energy and thus must always observe his world from the inside looking out. This means we are always looking BACKWARDS down the arrow of time at a holographic projection of our own past.

I have more respect for Einstein with each passing year.

I believe this placement of the observer on the outside and at infinite distance is an artefact of language. Scientists only do it because of language and the effects of language on metaphysics (and our brains). This is a relatively new idea for me and is derived from the way ancient language placed the observer on the inside unless a different perspective were named.

cladking wrote:I have more respect for Einstein with each passing year.

As a philosopher of physics he's always been my greatest hero because he was wrong and knew he was wrong and wasn't frightened to say so.

cladking wrote:I believe this placement of the observer on the outside and at infinite distance is an artefact of language.

In physics it's also an artefact of the methodology, sometimes known as "doing physics in a box". You refer to this yourself when you speak of the impossibility of isolating a physical system from the universe, which is essentially what physics does.

The map I not the territory, but a worldview without a map leads to absurdity.

I did not imagine that in a philosophy forum I would be asked what is meant by “unifying principle,” so I was caught completely off-guard when asked to clarify what I meant. The absurdity of it still leaves my head shaking. Someone who is confounded by something as elementary as a “unifying principle” is not going to grasp the need for a common ground or "map." “Whatsoever you do, you do unto greater self” is certain to be empty rhetoric to their ears.

“Prove it. What evidence do you have that such a lawfulness exists, that it is real?” This is like the student of philosophy who asks, “What makes you think the universe is rational?” (Another absurdity I've seen in this forum. Talk about feet planted firmly on thin air!) The professor replied, “Do you want an answer that is comprehensible, an answer that makes sense, or will just any answer do?”

If everything is subjective, why is there general agreement between people looking at the same thing at the same time? My answer: Because the observers and the observed share the same logical inner structure; they emanate from the same lawful and ever-becoming ground. The knee-jerk response from some here was essentially, “You're invoking a god and you are obligated to prove such an entity exists because I don't believe in fairies!” This, of course, is also absurd. Nothing was said about the “ground” being some kind of “entity.” But if in their mind what I said implies a “God” or "fairies," then chalk one up for gods and fairies.

“The way we see is the way we think.”(physicist David Bohm) The reverse is also true: the way we think is the way we see. When we care about every particular thing, we see the random dots in an autostereogram, but not the image therein. People can argue about whether there really is an image hidden in the dots, until the end of time, but in the end, those who see it see it and those who don't. It's just a matter of perspective.

When we ask what we demand from philosophy, we are asking what we demand from ourselves. Do we want to meet the Absolute by way of our own growth towards it through effort and understanding which takes place through systematic conceptual knowledge? Or do we want to meet the Absolute where it, is without the intervention of ideas? Or both? (And, of course, there will always be someone who asks, "What do you mean by the Absolute?")

Atheist or theist, materialist or idealist, we all try to make sense of our experiences. Felt values are part and parcel of that experience –- and we think more with them than about them. Unfortunately, our values are usually more about us or a particular cause than the universal lawfulness from which we and the quantifiable universe emerge. But if we believe that the findings of physics give us an accurate picture of what's 'out there,' we must also believe that the set of classical laws is the perceived average rather than what's really there. To deny this is to deny the most successful and most tested theory in the history of science and the world. (And, yes, I've been asked what documentation or evidence I have that this is true.)

Absurdity after absurdity, and the prolific use of profanity, seems to be the dominant form in this "philosophy" forum.

The Inglorious One wrote:
Atheist or theist, materialist or idealist, we all try to make sense of our experiences. Felt values are part and parcel of that experience –- and we think more with them than about them. Unfortunately, our values are usually more about us or a particular cause than the universal lawfulness from which we and the quantifiable universe emerge. But if we believe that the findings of physics give us an accurate picture of what's 'out there,' we must also believe that the set of classical laws is the perceived average rather than what's really there. To deny this is to deny the most successful and most tested theory in the history of science and the world. (And, yes, I've been asked what documentation or evidence I have that this is true.)

We're right back at square one. You say we emerge from lawfullness (which we understand as models) and aver that the universe (or anything in it) is quantifiable. For all we know the universe emerges from from us or, more likely, only appears to follow "laws" because of our perspective; understanding reality through experimental results. I personally don't have a lot of problem with the notion that nature behaves laws but I certainly have a problem with the absurd notion that we understand all those laws and the nature of the laws. I have a problem with the way people assign numbers to things that are unalike. But my biggest problem is the widespread belief that nature is understood in terms of models and also that people tend to see only the models rather than what's actually there.

I don't know what reality is or how nature operates but I know that most others think they do. Most people think they're all communicating on the same page. Most people never notice that we can't project our models into the future to make accurate predictions or even agree on the causes of past events. We're all adrift from one another by different understandings and a sort of "disbelief" in reality. We believe in the laws we assume govern reality rather than reality itself.

cladking wrote: We're right back at square one. You say we emerge from lawfullness (which we understand as models) and aver that the universe (or anything in it) is quantifiable. For all we know the universe emerges from from us or, more likely, only appears to follow "laws" because of our perspective; understanding reality through experimental results. I personally don't have a lot of problem with the notion that nature behaves laws but I certainly have a problem with the absurd notion that we understand all those laws and the nature of the laws. I have a problem with the way people assign numbers to things that are unalike. But my biggest problem is the widespread belief that nature is understood in terms of models and also that people tend to see only the models rather than what's actually there.

I don't know what reality is or how nature operates but I know that most others think they do. Most people think they're all communicating on the same page. Most people never notice that we can't project our models into the future to make accurate predictions or even agree on the causes of past events. We're all adrift from one another by different understandings and a sort of "disbelief" in reality. We believe in the laws we assume govern reality rather than reality itself.

Overall, I think this comes under the second absurdity. It could also be listed as another absurdity, saying: "Maps are imperfect and therefore all maps are completely useless." But the underlined is something I allude to with an elephant analogy: We can have perfect knowledge of an elephant's brain and the correlation between its neural activity and the elephant's behavior, but never can we know what is like to be an elephant. This is why having perfect knowledge of the laws of physics is not in itself a "unifying principle." But this does not mean that maps are useless.

Map and territory, models and reality, coexist in a kind of feedback loop. They are interdependent. Each is meaningless without he other.

The Inglorious One wrote:Overall, I think this comes under the second absurdity. It could also be listed as another absurdity, saying: "Maps are imperfect and therefore all maps are completely useless." But the underlined is something I allude to with an elephant analogy: We can have perfect knowledge of an elephant's brain and the correlation between its neural activity and the elephant's behavior, but never can we know what is like to be an elephant. This is why having perfect knowledge of the laws of physics is not in itself a "unifying principle." But this does not mean that maps are useless.

There's a huge difference between a map of an area and a map of reality. Any half intelligent person can use most maps to navigate. But a "map of reality" means what the reader thinks it means. It is just a bare outline without even a "You Are Here X" on it.

We are very much on the same page, cladking.

cladking wrote:universe .....only appears to follow "laws" because of our perspective; understanding reality through experimental results.

The so-called "laws" are only the property of the observer. We observe patterns of self-organisation in nature and this self-organisation is a real phenomenon which manifests as a simple consequence of cause and effect. A causes B causes C etc in an orderly and causal manner. However, the way we choose to model these patterns is entirely our own affair and such models can make no statement about an underlying objective reality. This doesn't mean that there isn't something "really" going on but it does mean that this so-called "objective reality" is an unrealisable abstraction and not a physical attribute of the universe. The "quark-ness" of a quark is no more a property of the universe than the chair-ness of a chair is.

None of this is breaking news because Kant laid all this out exquisitely in his "Critique of Pure Reason".

Inglorious. I suggest you read the above title before you embarrass yourself further.

cladking wrote:Most people never notice that we can't project our models into the future to make accurate predictions

A statement of such transparent obviousness and yet one which the models of physics denies. If Newtonian physics were a true representation of reality then the entire future of the universe would be predictable down to its very last detail. This is clearly bollocks because it assumes a conflation of determinism with pre-determinism. The only law in the universe is that "shit happens". The fact that it often happens in an orderly fashion is what draws us to the unwarranted conclusion that it happens according to a plan but the assumption of such a plan is unnecessary.

cladking wrote: We believe in the laws we assume govern reality rather than reality itself.

It's simply a matter of not making the distinction between linear and non-linear determinism. Newton's determinism is linear and defines reality as a gigantic unwinding clock. This is nonsense because determinism in all naturally occurring systems is non-linear, a simple fact acknowledged in every science except physics, a science which consequently makes no sense. It is reality that makes the "laws of physics", not the other way around.

It is not a matter of "models versus reality"; what we have is models OF reality.

And even the concept of reality is itself a model.

Hegel lays out a withering criticism of the notion of knowing reality without ideas.