Provisional Knowledge in Physics and Elsewhere — Discussion (contd.)

0:00 It was the nonsense that truth resides in what is useful. And somehow Chris Fuchs was very unhappy about this, and went on being a pragmatist and reading a lot of James and Pierce and other people. So I think you've just made one working Quantum Foundations happy. Well, he's not here, but you have an audience among the Quantum Foundations people, so you may want to go and talk to that guy. Point take, Kath. Just a small short question about what you said about the relationship between predecessor and successor theories. So we have one theory and we say it's true enough. Well, then we get another theory and we say we like to be able to see why it was in a certain context that theory works well enough so it was true enough. Is it the case once we've got the successor theory that for the predecessor theory we can still say in certain context it's true enough? So is between the mechanics true enough? Absolutely. So would you say the same in Aristotelian theory, that it's true enough in certain contexts? Yes, but we say that with discomfort because those contexts are so far removed from our current interests and needs. But I find I can, you know, I go back and think about the very limited uses to which physics was put in Aristotelian times, and yeah, it functioned, and I can get myself into the frame of mind unproblematically saying that that is true. this question comes up in I think even more painful forms when you ask well the Ptolemaic system works works very well if you're interested in navigating for example so does that make it true there are social respects in which claims about witches worked in Salem and other places to make these claims about which is true. I agree. This is the point at which, why it's very important, that point I made with the foot and shoe example. This notion of one of the things that

2:30 has to be done to get a useful notion of truth is we have to be able to say something about the breadth of problems to which the representation is going to apply. If it's too narrow, then it's not going to apply. Is it going to generate an absolutely sharp distinction between when it applies and it doesn't? But no distinction. Can we take a 10 minute break? That's not in itself an objection. This is really another place where the program, where this is a program and very much needs work. Let's thank our speaker. Alexei tells me that we have a 10-minute break. Maybe 15, if you know. Alexei always talks like that. What did you want to say? 10 minutes, that'll work. But it could be, you know. I thought that I had 15 minutes. Well.