Can you clarify what you mean by “observation”? Do you only mean phenomena that are directly accessible with our senses, such as “The sun turns red during a sunset”? If I experimentally verify a prediction of special using the help of scientific equipment, does that count as an “observation”? I am just confused what you mean by “reality beyond the physical constraints of observation”.
I agree that common sense observations, such as our subjective perception of time and space, should not be dismissed when trying to think about philosophical questions about space and time. They should be considered alongside with evidence from specialized experiments which reveal to us what happens in extreme situations. However, we also have to be cognizant of the limitations of our senses and intuition. Any philosophy of time and space must be consonant with both types of “evidence”.
However, my overall impression from this discussion and your prior posts is that:
- You are reluctant in wrestling with the weirdness of the consequences of SR, so you prefer to put the experimental evidence of SR under the heading of “how matter behaves” and differentiate between that and “what fundamental reality is”.
- You have in mind some arguments defending the absolute nature of time and space from subjective perceptions and common sense, which seem to conflict with standard interpretations of SR.
- You conceive the evidential situation as follows:
a) Box A contains the scientific evidence supporting SR, which are “weird” and counterintuitive (from point 1).
b) Box B contains the more familiar arguments from common sense supporting absolute time and space (from point 2). - You view Box A and B as inherently in conflict, and one has to discard one versus the other.
- Using what you describe as “inference to the best explanation”, you regard the arguments in Box B as stronger than that in Box A, and thus you discard Box A entirely and view only Box B as telling us something actually true about reality.
- Because you discard Box A, you are accused of being anti-realist or instrumentalist with regards to scientific evidence.
My assessment: the problem here is viewing Box A and Box B as irreconcilable and in conflict. If you must hold to the idea of an absolute space and time, then for your view to be respectable you must wrestle with the things in Box A. You cannot simply sweep it under the rug as “how matter behaves”. Even if you are an instrumentalist, you still have to explain how the instruments result in Box A despite the true nature of space and time being absolute. Are the results simply wrong? Are we interpreting them incorrectly? How exactly are we doing that?
This is why philosophers who hold to an absolutist notion of space and time must be able to wrestle with the mathematics and experimental of SR in a rigorous way, such that they are able to philosophically re-interpret the results in a way that matches up with their absolutist philosophy. Some people have done that, but there are issues and problems. See this discussion for an example: Science and the Metaphysics of Time. This is the task in front of you if you want to go down that path. You can’t just whip out the “abductive reasoning” and “instrumentalist” cards and discard pieces of evidence that don’t line up with your preferred view. Your final view has to attempt to harmonize all the evidence from both Box A and B.