Article  Theories are never true, they are only more or less useful (philosophy of science)

https://iai.tv/articles/theories-are-nev..._auid=2020

INTRO: We think our theories about reality – whether in physics, philosophy, or psychology – should aspire to be faithful descriptions of how reality actually is. But philosopher of science Manuel Delaflor makes the case that this aspiration is incredibly dangerous. Instead of thinking our theories map onto an underlying reality, Delaflor asks us to stop worshipping our models, even though we cannot stop modelling any more than we can stop breathing. Evaluating our theories by what they can do, and not by what they claim to be, will make us far more productive and happier... (MORE - details)

As Rorty points out, truth is a property of sentences. Why do we limit ourselves to speaking and writing what aspires to be true--to correspond to some event or state that has already happened? Is this not redundant? Has it not already happened once? Let us rather rise to the task of articulating what is not yet true. To not just report what is, but to bring forth truths for the first time unfettered by the dictates of the past. But there is no word for this. Not just original. Not just creative. More like a making true what has yet to be true. A speaking that carries within itself a whole redefinition of "being true" itself. Language's highest calling is making conceivable what was before inconceivable. It makes possible new things to be known.

"Philosophy is not the reflection of a pre-existing truth, but, like art, the act of bringing truth into being."---M Merleau-Ponty

(Mar 29, 2026 08:29 PM)Magical Realist Wrote: To bring forth truths for the first time unfettered by the dictates of the past.

https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/gIHSCtPB26s

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As usual - I don't get on well with philosophy and 'philosophers'.

Every step we take, in any direction, starts from where we are now. The 'where we are' may be a social construct or .. it doesn't even matter.

Back when we lived in trees we had to make sure the branch we intended to hang from was strong enough to hold our weight or we would potentially fall out of the tree and die. Are branches in trees real? Is dying real? Do you have to hang from a branch to find out how strong it is? Darwin selected the folks that didn't have to find out the hard way. We've moved on .. Darwin selects the folks that choose the best models .. be it females, finance or fiddling your tax returns.

Are females real, is finance real, is fiddling your tax returns a real thing?

Seems you only have an issue with idealism which says everything is constructed by a non-physical source, either our own minds or some Cosmic Mind or some kind of simulating supercomputer. I personally object to that on the same grounds. I cannot in principle so easily explain away trees and houses and people as just mental constructs of the mind. That's why I cater to dualism where there are both physically real and mentally real aspects of the world. How they interact and ultimately unite (if they do) remains a mystery though.

(Mar 30, 2026 02:00 AM)confused2 Wrote: As usual - I don't get on well with philosophy and 'philosophers'.

Every step we take, in any direction, starts from where we are now. The 'where we are' may be a social construct or .. it doesn't even matter.

Back when we lived in trees we had to make sure the branch we intended to hang from was strong enough to hold our weight or we would potentially fall out of the tree and die. Are branches in trees real? Is dying real? Do you have to hang from a branch to find out how strong it is? Darwin selected the folks that didn't have to find out the hard way. We've moved on .. Darwin selects the folks that choose the best models .. be it females, finance or fiddling your tax returns.

Are females real, is finance real, is fiddling your tax returns a real thing?

Like it. The tree we hung from also went on to evolve stronger limbs but thankfully I haven’t heard one philosophize about it.

Newtonian or classical physics still hangs around for its utility in predicting macroscopic motions (etc), but is still either out of fashion or absorbed by successors. Despite GR passing one test after another, few scientists except those working in it or depending on it for their projects believe in its ontological and temporal implications. And its incongruity with QM continues to beg a quantum gravity theory that would either assimilate, replace, augment or obsolete some ingredients if ever introduced and approved. Evolutionary theory seems to be a slam dunk from the broad perspective of organisms changing over time, but at the level of particular details it has been refined and revised since Darwin's era (and will continue to be).

“Everything that I know about the world, even through science, I know from a perspective that is my own or from an experience of the world without which scientific symbols would be meaningless. The entire universe of science is constructed upon the lived world, and if we wish to think science rigorously, to appreciate precisely its sense and its scope, we must first awaken that experience of the world of which science is the second-order expression. Science neither has, nor ever will have the same ontological sense as the perceived world for the simple reason that science is a determination or an explanation of that world.

Scientific perspectives … always imply, without mentioning it, that other perspective - the perspective of consciousness - by which a world first arranges itself around me and begins to exist for me. To return to the things themselves is to return to this world prior to knowledge, this world of which knowledge always speaks, and this world with regard to which every scientific determination is abstract, signitive, and dependent, just like geography with regard to the landscape where we first learned what a forest, a meadow, or a river is.”
― Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception