Worldly imprecision

被引:6
作者
Miller, Michael E. [1 ]
机构
[1] Univ Toronto, Dept Philosophy, Jackman Humanities Bldg,4th Floor, Toronto, ON M5R 2M8, Canada
关键词
Precision; Quantities; Empirical success; Fundamentality;
D O I
10.1007/s11098-020-01591-z
中图分类号
B [哲学、宗教];
学科分类号
01 ; 0101 ;
摘要
Physical theories often characterize their observables with real number precision. Many non-fundamental theories do so needlessly: they are more precise than they need to be to capture the physical matters of fact about their observables. A natural expectation is that a truly fundamental theory will require its full precision in order to exhaustively capture all of the fundamental physical matters of fact. I argue against this expectation and I show that we do not have good reason to expect that the standard of precision set by successful theories, or even by a truly fundamental theory, will match the granularity of the physical facts.
引用
收藏
页码:2895 / 2911
页数:17
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