You call it trickery, I call it science. — T Clark

Making exceptions to the rule stipulated by the theory, whenever the theory fails in its predictive capacity, to account for these failings, instead of acknowledging that the theory is faulty, is not science.

Someone proposes dark matter as a solution to an inconsistency, so people go looking for it. Eventually, they find it or, if they don't, they have to change models. Isn't that the way it's supposed to work? — T Clark

Dark matter is posited as such an exception to the rule. Where general relativity fails in its predictive capacity, dark matter is posited to account for that failing. There is nothing to look for except the reasons why general relativity fails in its predictive capacity, i.e. the faults of the theory.

No really. Ask yourself, what is a pragmatist's ontology? Why pragmatism, of course. Truth is "made" not discovered. Surely you don't think Rorty is a naturalist at the basic level?

Following the rejection of causality Meillassoux says that it is absolutely necessary that the laws of nature be contingent. — Quentin Meillassoux Wikipedia Article

:yikes: I have neither the time nor inclination to study this philosopher, but everthing I've read about him raises red flags. Of current French philosophes, I far prefer Michel Bitbol. He's expert in phenomenology, Kant, Schrodinger and Buddhist philosophy. I've only read a small number of his papers but they seem congenial to my outlook.

All I want to say for now (or think I have grounds for saying now) is that we can see historically how the concept of nature as physical being got constructed in an objectivist way, while at the same time we can begin to conceive of the possibility of a different kind of construction that would be post-physicalist and post-dualist–that is, beyond the divide between the “mental” (understood as not conceptually involving the physical) and the “physical” (understood as not conceptually involving the mental) ~ Evan Thompson " — Joshs

Compare with this passage from a contemporary Zen teacher:

The biggest contradiction which Gautama Buddha must have faced in his thinking would have been between the subjective, idealistic thought of traditional Indian religion and the objective, materialist philosophies of the six great philosophers who were popular in India at that time.

I thought that Gautama Buddha’s solution to this contradiction was his discovery that we are in fact living in reality; not, as idealists tend to think, in the world of ideas, or as materialists tend to think, in a world of objective matter alone. Gautama Buddha established his own philosophy based on the fact that we live in the vivid world of momentary existence, in the real world itself. But to express this real world in words is impossible. So he used a method which brought together the two fundamental philosophical viewpoints into a synthesized whole. And the philosophical system he constructed in this way is the Buddhist philosophical system. But at the same time, he realized that philosophy is not reality; it is only discussion of the nature of reality. He needed some method with which people could see directly what the nature of reality is. This method is Zazen, a practice which was already traditional in India from ancient times. Gautama Buddha found that when we sit in this traditional posture in quietness, we can see directly what reality is. — Nishijima, Sōtō Zen roshi - Three Philosophies, One Reality

This 'seeing directly' is what is called in the Zen tradition 'satori', although there are constant admonitions from Zen teachers not to idealise what that might comprise.

Surely you don't think Rorty is a naturalist at the basic level? — Constance

Digression - isn't it the case that Rorty is controversially a part of the pragmatist tradition? I know he is described as a neo-pragmatist, but isn't he more of a post-modernist?

Serious question - Did Kant think that things-in-themselves changed?
— T Clark

I think Schopenhauer might have been the best interpreter of Kant.. — schopenhauer1

I'm not trying to be a smarty pants here, but does that answer my question. It doesn't seem like it does to me.

As a prefatory remark, I want to state my position that whatever differences there are between how you see things and how I do are metaphysical. They have to do with what we think are the best ways to represent reality. Neither is true or false. I've written a lot about this in the past on the forum. I'm sure you seen some of that. What that means is that the way to judge a position is based on what works best in a particular situation.

Obviously there are no things-as-perceived absent perceivers; does it logically follow that there are no things at all? — Janus

Things are concepts unless you're an idealist. I'm not. Concepts don't exist independent of there being someone to conceive of them.

You haven't answered the question as to how the totally amorphous, changeless thing in itself gives rise to perceivers who perceive change, and "carve up" the world in fairly cohesive and consistent ways. — Janus

The philosophy that means the most to me is Taoism. Taoism doesn't talk about things-in-themselves, it talks about the Tao. I think the concepts have things in common. The Tao is the original unitary undifferentiated oneness. That oneness becomes separated into the multiplicity of things when they are named. As to how namers evolved from the oneness - the Tao and the multiplicity of things are the same. It's just two different ways of looking at it. Metaphysics.

I assume you find this answer unsatisfying. There have been lots of discussions of Taoism and similar topics on the forum. I don't think it's especially related to the subject of this thread.

Making exceptions to the rule stipulated by the theory, whenever the theory fails in its predictive capacity, to account for these failings, instead of acknowledging that the theory is faulty, is not science. — Metaphysician Undercover

It's science until the attempt to verify the changes to the theory are investigated and not confirmed. If, at that point, people don't acknowledge that the theory is faulty, then it stops being science. Or at least it stops being good science.

Dark matter is posited as such an exception to the rule. Where general relativity fails in its predictive capacity, dark matter is posited to account for that failing. There is nothing to look for except the reasons why general relativity fails in its predictive capacity, i.e. the faults of the theory. — Metaphysician Undercover

No. General Relativity has been an incredibly successful theory for 100 years. You get to tinker under the hood for a while before you buy a new theory.

What does "phenomenology" or "pragmatism" or "Rorty" have to do with anything I've argued?

It's science until the attempt to verify the changes to the theory are investigated and not confirmed. If, at that point, people don't acknowledge that the theory is faulty, then it stops being science. Or at least it stops being good science. — T Clark

That's exactly the problem, it isn't science at all, because instead of acknowledging that the predictive failures of the theory are due to a faulty theory, people will assume the real existence a phantom entity, dark matter, as the cause of the unpredictable behaviour. It's no different from saying a ghost did it, or attributing the failings of the model to a dragon.

Why did the planet not move exactly where the perfect circular orbit predicted it would move to? Instead of designating the model of perfect circular orbits as wrong, and producing the true elliptical orbit model, I simply say that the dragon who moves the planet has a will of his own, and doesn't necessarily have to follow a perfect circle. And we have the same situation with dark matter. Light doesn't necessarily have to move in the way predicted by general relativity theory, because there's some otherwise undetectable matter scattered around throughout the universe, which causes the light to behave in the unpredictable way.

General Relativity has been an incredibly successful theory for 100 years. You get to tinker under the hood for a while before you buy a new theory. — T Clark

Actually general relativity has been demonstrated to be extremely limited. It is not applicable at the very small scale, quantum level, and it is not applicable at the very large scale where the existence of dark matter is called for. It has a very narrow range of applicability which is closely limited to the human sphere of spatial-temporal activity. Since we are human beings, living in that very narrow spatial-temporal zone of activity, the theory is very useful to us. But since the applicability of the theory is limited to this very narrow range, we can be sure that it does not provide a true representation.

but everthing I've read about him raises red flags. — Wayfarer

Just curious, what particularly did you read that is concerning? I haven’t read much else.

Here is an interview I found on a short Google search: https://www.urbanomic.com/document/founded-on-nothing/

What does "phenomenology" or "pragmatism" or "Rorty" have to do with anything I've argued? — 180 Proof

Derisive comments about Kant, and adoring ones about Peirce, et al, but then Peirce did have his "long run" views). But the traditional pragmatists are in their foundational views committed what could be called a pragmatist ontology. They could talk like naturalists, as did Rorty, James, Dewey and even Quine, but, well, to put the matter in a popular vein, tree falls in the forest, etc.? No sound, no tree, no falling, no forest. I call it pragmatic phenomenology, and the first great phenomenologist was Kant.

Look, no analytic philosopher worth her ink is going to think foundationally like a scientist. None do. Because they have all read Kant, at least, and know, not that the solutions to the issues will one day be achieved, but that they cannot be achieved because the matter goes to the structure of thought and experience itself: idealism cannot be refuted unless you move to language philosophy, which really is a radicalization of idealism, but certainly drops dichotomies and dualisms of the traditional sort.

Once you start asking real questions about basic epistemic problems, you find some form of Kantianism is staring you right in the face. Kant's problem was synthetic apriority. Dewey's experience" is similar, only it is not the presence of mind in space and time, it is pragmatism (in space and time?). Rorty's post modernism is obviously not Kantian, but what did Kant do?: he looked at judgment of the everyday kind and discovered it had form that could be analyzed. He was, arguable I suppose, the first language philosopher. Post modern thinking begins with this.

See Robert Hanna's KANT AND THE FOUNDATIONS OF ANALYTIC PHILOSOPHY for a well thought out argument.

Digression - isn't it the case that Rorty is controversially a part of the pragmatist tradition? I know he is described as a neo-pragmatist, but isn't he more of a post-modernist? — Tom Storm

Yes, that sounds right. But he followed Dewey, Heidegger, Wittgenstein, Kuhn, and Derrida and on the other side of the fence there was Davidson and others ( I can't keep up with him, clearly. I'm just an amateur). Dewey shared with Heidegger the idea that when we enter into, call them knowledge environments, we have this pragmatic relationship with the things around us, what Heidegger called instrumentality, ready-to-hand, like the chair, the latch on the door, the floors and lights and so on. These are NOT to be conceived spatially in the usual sense, but temporally, and this is Rorty's pragmatism. I think of it in the terms of the structure of conditional propositional (the essence of the scientific method): IF I reach out and push up on the switch, THEN the light will turn on. This is foundational for our knowledge relationships with the world. I hold that language itself is a pragmatic phenomenon. What Heidegger calls "presence at hand" far more interesting.
There is a lot more to it, obviously, but this idea that we make the world through these internalized pragmatic structures of relating to it is essentially pragmatic. Beneath this (all the greats have layers!) there is, of course, indeterminacy. My view is not to dismiss this as an unmade future waiting to be realized by my "free" creative acts, but to pull down
Rorty gave me my favorite turn the tables question to "realists" (whatever that could possibly mean): how is it that anything out there can get in here (one's head)? This is the way of materialism, and if you're going to be a materialist, then you will find this single impossibility that undoes your thinking.

That's exactly the problem, it isn't science at all, because instead of acknowledging that the predictive failures of the theory are due to a faulty theory, people will assume the real existence a phantom entity, dark matter, as the cause of the unpredictable behaviour. It's no different from saying a ghost did it, or attributing the failings of the model to a dragon. — Metaphysician Undercover

I don't agree.

Light doesn't necessarily have to move in the way predicted by general relativity theory, because there's some otherwise undetectable matter scattered around throughout the universe, which causes the light to behave in the unpredictable way. — Metaphysician Undercover

I am very, very far from being someone who can make a definitive statement in this area, but dark matter and dark energy seem like reasonable rationalizations worthy of being tested. If they can't be verified, then the theories will have to be changed. I sez that's science. You sez no.

Actually general relativity has been demonstrated to be extremely limited. It is not applicable at the very small scale, quantum level, and it is not applicable at the very large scale where the existence of dark matter is called for. It has a very narrow range of applicability which is closely limited to the human sphere of spatial-temporal activity. Since we are human beings, living in that very narrow spatial-temporal zone of activity, the theory is very useful to us. But since the applicability of the theory is limited to this very narrow range, we can be sure that it does not provide a true representation. — Metaphysician Undercover

General relativity actually can be applied to the quantum scale and directly leads, in combination with quantum fields, to Hawking radiation. The virtual particles around a black hole are real particles as seen from far away because of the equivalence principle. In the context of dark matter it can come to the rescue with primordial black holes being the dark constituent. Newtonian spacetime is a logical chimera in the context of general relativity, regardless of the successful quantitative application of Newtonian mechanics in the astronomical domain. Mass, cause, and effect don't make sense in an absolute spacetime. If the speed of light is infinite (as in Newtonian spacetime), everything happens at the same time, no cause and effect, and no mass would exist. Events would all be concentrated into one space and timeless event. "Kaboom!" The whole universum arisen, passed, and ended at once. Which obviously not the case. Little did Newton know... By which I don't wanna belittle his contribution, though it withheld science from (understanding) knowledge a couple of centuries.

Well, you're entitled to your ... that.

but everthing I've read about him raises red flags.
— Wayfarer

Just curious, what particularly did you read that is concerning? I haven’t read much else. — schopenhauer1

Mellaisoux is an advocate for what Kant would describe as transcendental realism - the conviction that the objective domain has an inherent or intrinsic reality.

Mellaisoux is an advocate for what Kant would describe as transcendental realism - the conviction that the objective domain has an inherent or intrinsic reality. — Wayfarer

Right that is indeed what speculative realists are all about..trying to disregard Kants limits of speculating on the real, non cognitive or pan cognitive reality.

General relativity actually can be applied to the quantum scale and directly leads, in combination with quantum fields, to Hawking radiation. The virtual particles around a black hole are real particles as seen from far away because of the equivalence principle. — Haglund

I'm surprised that you don't see the problem with this statement. The nearest blackholes are more than a thousand light years away. You cannot call this a quantum scale observation.

Why not? It's all happening in the imagination.

Observation all happens within the imagination?