You missed the part where metaphysicians claim that what they are doing isn’t metaphysics at all, but science and logic, or something along those lines.
No, I didn’t. I agree with that. I have literally written an entire book criticizing how people conflate the mathematical models of modern physics with philosophical interpretations of those models, and then pretend their metaphysics is not philosophy but something “proved by the empirical evidence.”
The book was motivated precisely by the question I raised in my previous comment: does the common man’s position really have to be abandoned?
Philosophers, including physicists who write philosophy, very commonly point to modern physics as establishing the need to abandon certain common worldviews and adopt a new metaphysics. But they often present this not as metaphysics, but as something directly established by empirical reality, such that questioning it is treated as equivalent to denying science.
One example is the dominant interpretation of special relativity, which claims that space and time are ontologically relative. We can experimentally verify that clocks drift from one another exactly as the mathematics predicts, such as when two airplanes fly in opposite directions and meet again. The conclusion is then presented as empirically proven: space and time themselves must be relative.
But John Bell pointed out in “How to Teach Special Relativity” that the same mathematics can be given a different philosophical interpretation while preserving the same empirical predictions.
You can instead assume that spacetime is absolute, while objects in motion undergo physical effects that cause moving clocks to slow and rulers in the direction of motion to contract. The measurements of rods and clocks would then be emergent properties produced by absolute space and time plus these physical effects. The mathematics remains the same, but its ontological interpretation changes.
If physicists object that such an absolute rest frame could never be experimentally identified, that does not prove it does not exist. It means only that its existence is empirically undetermined. At that point, the usual response is Occam’s razor: if we cannot directly detect such a frame, we should eliminate it from our ontology.
My point is not that this is wrong. It may be a perfectly reasonable philosophical choice. My point is that Occam’s razor is a philosophical argument.
You have not empirically proven that space and time are relative. You have shown that relativity follows from the mathematics given a particular interpretation of what the mathematics represents. Choosing that interpretation over another requires an additional philosophical argument. If there were motivation to make an argument in response (which is a whole other topic, but I argue one can mount a strong counterargument), then it would lead to a philosophical debate, and that debate could not be settled empirically.
This is the broader point I am making: the same mathematics can be compatible with multiple ontological interpretations. Empirical evidence can constrain those interpretations, but it does not necessarily determine them uniquely.
So, if you are an extremely conservative skeptic who refuses to abandon the common man’s worldview unless doing so is strictly necessary, you can always ask whether the new worldview actually follows necessarily from the mathematics and empirical evidence.
Often, it doesn’t. The physical evidence motivates the metaphysical debate, but it does not wholly determine its outcome.
No, I didn’t. I agree with that. I have literally written an entire book criticizing how people conflate the mathematical models of modern physics with philosophical interpretations of those models, and then pretend their metaphysics is not philosophy but something “proved by the empirical evidence.”
The book was motivated precisely by the question I raised in my previous comment: does the common man’s position really have to be abandoned?
Philosophers, including physicists who write philosophy, very commonly point to modern physics as establishing the need to abandon certain common worldviews and adopt a new metaphysics. But they often present this not as metaphysics, but as something directly established by empirical reality, such that questioning it is treated as equivalent to denying science.
One example is the dominant interpretation of special relativity, which claims that space and time are ontologically relative. We can experimentally verify that clocks drift from one another exactly as the mathematics predicts, such as when two airplanes fly in opposite directions and meet again. The conclusion is then presented as empirically proven: space and time themselves must be relative.
But John Bell pointed out in “How to Teach Special Relativity” that the same mathematics can be given a different philosophical interpretation while preserving the same empirical predictions.
You can instead assume that spacetime is absolute, while objects in motion undergo physical effects that cause moving clocks to slow and rulers in the direction of motion to contract. The measurements of rods and clocks would then be emergent properties produced by absolute space and time plus these physical effects. The mathematics remains the same, but its ontological interpretation changes.
If physicists object that such an absolute rest frame could never be experimentally identified, that does not prove it does not exist. It means only that its existence is empirically undetermined. At that point, the usual response is Occam’s razor: if we cannot directly detect such a frame, we should eliminate it from our ontology.
My point is not that this is wrong. It may be a perfectly reasonable philosophical choice. My point is that Occam’s razor is a philosophical argument.
You have not empirically proven that space and time are relative. You have shown that relativity follows from the mathematics given a particular interpretation of what the mathematics represents. Choosing that interpretation over another requires an additional philosophical argument. If there were motivation to make an argument in response (which is a whole other topic, but I argue one can mount a strong counterargument), then it would lead to a philosophical debate, and that debate could not be settled empirically.
This is the broader point I am making: the same mathematics can be compatible with multiple ontological interpretations. Empirical evidence can constrain those interpretations, but it does not necessarily determine them uniquely.
So, if you are an extremely conservative skeptic who refuses to abandon the common man’s worldview unless doing so is strictly necessary, you can always ask whether the new worldview actually follows necessarily from the mathematics and empirical evidence.
Often, it doesn’t. The physical evidence motivates the metaphysical debate, but it does not wholly determine its outcome.