Reply to comment

"a new object for the study of physics might be about the nature of the mediation — we might even begin to develop a kind of “physics of mediation”."

I'm attracted to this idea and, as per Kuttner, some physicists certainly are as well. Some, at least, always have been aware of the issue. Einstein cautioned "Physical concepts are free creations of the human mind, and are not, however it may seem, uniquely determined by the physical world."

Many physicists though are less inclined to turn physics into neurobiology. And probably with good reason. Using the assumption that "our senses are perceiving some kind of ultimately tangible objects ... that are ... outside us," physics has done a pretty good job of expanding human understanding (including raising new and intriguing questions). And it seems likely it will continue to do so for the forseeable future. To put it differently, noticing and questioning a basic assumption of physics isn't a requirement for inquiry in physics to be meaningful, within physics or for the rest of us.

There's probably a useful general lesson here. The "real world out there" assumption is itself a form of "mediation." And so the existence of "mediation" clearly doesn't preclude meaningful inquiry in physics (or, by extension, in any other realm). Indeed, if all understanding is indeed necessarily "mediated" by the brain, then there is no escaping "mediation."

One may be attracted by, and pursue, "inconsistencies" that perhaps imply mediation as an avenue to new understandings. Or one may pursue other things. There is no "optimal" strategy for inquiry, only an uncertain bet as to what seems most likely to yield new understandings over some time period of interest. I'd bet on a "physics of mediation" but am inclined to encourage my physics colleagues to make their own idiosyncratic bets.

"observed physical phenomena may actually be said in some respect to be the brain examining itself"

Here too there is an interesting bet to be made. That all of our understanding is, and always will be mediated, doesn't require the conclusion that all that exists is "the brain examining itself," though that is certainly a possibility. An alternative possibility, one I'd be inclined to pursue, is that there are things out there but we can describe them only in mediated ways. This, among other things, opens the intriguing question of how, in lieu of a correspondence theory of truth, one adjudicates among mediated understandings. From which might follow a new theory and practice of inquiry itself?