Status Updates From فلسفة العلم الفيزيائي

Struggling to make out what this position of his of selective subjectivism is meant to be. Even though I appreciate and agree with the sentiments of aspects of his view, the way in which he brings them together, doesn't seem to be based on any clear rationale or reason. Just seems a misuse of the term subjective to describe physical laws in such a way and certainly to try and call them concurrently a priori

What we need is to establish the relation or connection with reality as fundamental and not take anything for granted about either the constitution of a possible subject or object as existing before this relation.

Ultimately the problem he will have by framing things in this simplistic subjective way is that any sense of realism will be removed from the authority of science. Yes, we need to find a place for the knowing subject to understanding reality, but we need more subtle approaches akin to Kant, rather than rushing to a pure subjectivism or idealism.

Now it is to be remembered that whatever is accounted for epistemologically is ipso facto subjective; it is demolished as part of the objective world." [This is another incorrect statement for anyone who were to have a good appreciation of Kantian epistemology would realise] It seems to me that Eddington as a scientist coming later to philosophy is a bit of a dabbler who does not really know his stuff or terminology.

making in our claims based on the theory. I believe there is such a shared intuition lying in there deeply and subtly in a taken for granted manner, but it will take some real hard work extracting it, and it will involve not just epistemological pronouncements but metaphysical and ontological commitments, that will not have a subjective character.

Though I would argue this is also not likely to be the case. The whole Kantian epistemology needs to be dismantled and reassembled from scratch if we are to disentangle some a priori style elements to the structure of relativity theory. The result would have to be some core mathematical insight or intuition that underlies all the physics involved as a common structural prerequisite or presumption, that we are all...

I did not set out with any preconceived idea of the scope
of the epistemological method; and the conclusion that the
whole of the fundamental laws of nature can be deduced
from epistemological considerations was the result of trial.

[This claim also I believe to be clearly incorrect. At least it is not shown by the sciences of relativity and quantum theory. But perhaps could be true based on unrelated considerations

Kant never would use the word subjective in this sense, because it indeed would undermine a meaningful a priori quality to such truths. They have to be based on a transcendent apperception, that is not really subjective at all. The other problem is that we cannot see it in this Kantian way anymore, relativity undermined the synthetic a priori intuition of space and time.

.. Or, to put it equivalently, all the laws of nature that are usually classed as fundamental can be foreseen wholly from epistemological considerations. They correspond to a priori knowledge, and are therefore wholly subjective. [This seems to be a slightly garbled misunderstanding of the A priori and Kantian epistemology here by Eddington]

Here my conclusion, based on purely scientific investigation, is much more drastic than that of most of my colleagues. I believe that the whole system of fundamental hypotheses can be replaced by epistemological principles...

I do not see how anyone who accepts the theory of relativity
can dispute that there has been some replacement of physical
hypotheses by epistemological principles ; nor do I think that
those who accept the theory with understanding will be
inclined to dispute it. The more controversial question is.
How far can this replacement extend ?

Thus there are two ways ofdealing with the unobservables which have been inadvertently admitted in classical physics. One way is to reformulate our knowledge in such a way as to root them out altogether. The other way is to sterilise them; they can be allowed to remain provided that the assertions which contain reference to them remain true whatever value we ascribe to them

Since the discrimination of unobservables depends on a study of the procedure of obtaining observational knowledge, .. and not on a study of the results of carrying out the procedure, it comes under scientific epistemology; and a principle of unobservability, such as the special relativity principle, the uncertainty principle, or the modified mechanics of indistinguishable particles, is an epistemological principle

I think that I am here using the term “a priori knowledge” with its recognised meaning—knowledge which we have of the physical universe prior to actual observation of it. At any rate epistemological knowledge is near enough akin to a priori knowledge to arouse the same opposition from physicists of the traditional school. A priori knowledge has disreputable associations in science;

The plan must be sought for in the mind of the observer, or in the minds of those from whom he has derived his instructions. The epistemologist is an observer only in the sense that he observes what is in the mind. But that is a pedantic description of the way in which we discover a plan conceived in anyone’s mind.

[Sounds like here then he wants to retain a transcendental kantianism, tricky prospect I would say.]

The epistemologist accordingly does not study the observers as organisms whose activities must be ascertained empirically in the same way that a naturalist studies the habits of animals. He has to pick out the good observers—those whose activities follow a conventional plan of procedure. What the epistemologist must get at is this plan. Without it, he does not know which observers to study and which to ignore;

..categories to draw upon anymore, due to the failure of this part of Kants doctrine, given variable space-time geometries of Einsteins general relativity and general covariance, and the constant shifting ground in trying to find a piece of mathematics to ground the structure of thinking on solid "transcendental" ground.

[Eddingtons mistake here is trying to pursue a phenomenological style epistemological basis for physics. It can never break out of the sceptical circle, or the infinite regress of homunculi. You need to have a kind of realism to ground things, preceding the epistemology. Epistemologically dependent approaches, with us since Kant, always have this issue of irreality seeping in, when you have no transcendental...

This qualification of observations as “good”, which is the first point attended to in practice, seems often to have been overlooked in philosophy. In speaking of observation, there is often a failure to distinguish the special kind of observational activity contemplated in physical science from indiscriminately “taking notice”. The distinction is strongly selective;