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SUMMARY:Provisional knowledge - Paul Teller (University of California at D
 avis)
DTSTART:20070419T130000Z
DTEND:20070419T143000Z
UID:TALK6969@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:5500
DESCRIPTION:Physics\, and science generally\, rarely function according to
  the mechanist tradition of founding all scientific knowledge on 'shaped m
 atter in motion' of the parts of a system.  Rather we employ a vast range 
 of explanatory strategies  a great many of which work in terms of 'strippi
 ng detail' when detail is not relevant to the problem at hand.  Most of th
 ese strategies involve some level of idealisation\, inaccuracy\, or distor
 tion\, which raises the worry:  When accounts in science involve distortio
 n\, how can they count as knowledge?  This problem motivates reconstruing 
 knowledge\, and in particular its requirement of (exact) truth in its cont
 ent component\, in terms of the kinds of standards that require something 
 less than perfect precision and accuracy\, much as the context and interes
 t dependent standards that we apply for representational accuracy of thing
 s such as maps and pictures.  Since\, logically\, no \nevaluation by compa
 rison with an unrepresented reality is possible\, evaluation of any repres
 entational scheme can take place only on the basis of some other (in gener
 al) relatively precise and accurate scheme\; and the scheme that functions
  as our platform for the moment can only be evaluated pragmatically.
LOCATION:Seminar Room 1\, Department of History and Philosophy of Science
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