Yes, I would say there is arguably sufficient evidence to make such an inference. But with further investigation it could in principle be verified. 
Seems obvious to me. Why do you think otherwise?
Can you explain why?
Seems obvious to me that that it isn’t. Because you didn’t provide any explanation whatsoever for why gravity causes clocks to run slow without time dilation. You only pointed to a correlation between strength of gravitational force and the behavior of clocks. I can similarly point to the myriad of other correlations between gravity and other phenomena in nature, but that doesn’t necessarily constitute an explanation of those phenomena.
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In other words, the concepts make the equations. Observations verify the equations, and therefore verify the concepts.
Actually, the constant speed of light is an observation.
When observations match those equations then those concepts are verified.
Then you are arguing with yourself.
I would prefer if you would just explain where you’re trying to go with this line of reasoning.
In a way, I’ve already dealt with this issue in other posts here more than once, most recently here. So we’re kind of going around in circles again.
But in a nutshell my question to you is, what’s your explanation of how time itself is a physical entity that can slow down, and that its slowing down somehow has a physical effect on atomic clocks? That seems more obviously not a plausible inference than the inference I’m making. And equations don’t explain it. They just describe the effects that are in need of an explanation.
So if I need to explain my proposed explanation of gravity somehow affecting the clocks, then you need to explain your proposed explanation of time itself slowing down and somehow affecting the clocks. But it seems to me that proposing an explanation is as far as it can go since the explanations are inferences neither of which can be accessed in a physical way.
And in explaining the explanation, I’m assuming you mean an explanation in physical terms.
If you’re talking round trip speed, maybe. But one way speed has to be assumed as far as I’m aware.
I"m OK with saying that the verification of the equations is evidence for the truth of the concepts. But it sounds to me like you’re saying the verified equations entail the truth of the concepts. Is that correct?
That’s a bizarre statement. Obviously I’m arguing with you. Are you an anti-realist? How are you defining verified?
Take two objects, and with a ruler to measure, find their distance from one another to be one meter. What is the explanation for that effect? What is the underlying reality? If I insist I need an explanation for that, can someone argue why such an expectation in that case is not valid?
Relativistic equations just predict what measurements you would expect.
Right. But measurements are just measurements. Effects are events that result from causes. The causes are what explain the effects. A measurement can be an effect in terms of the process. Someone is responsible for taking the measurement, and something is used as the instrument for taking the measurement. So in that sense the effect is the results of the reading given by the instrument, and the cause is the person who used the instrument to make the measurement. But that’s not relevant to the discussion.
What about special relativity? The only difference in “causes” between events in two inertial frames is the relative velocities, by definition of inertial.
It is relevant in this respect. You have been challenging equations and measurement as a description of reality or underlying cause. Any theory, including relativity, will ultimately yield equations which simply predict measurements. There will never be a theory, from yourself or anyone else, which produce a theory which supports some underlying reality beyond what can be gleaned from equations which at least in principle predict measurements. That is plenty challenging in and of itself.
Not really. Better put, what I’ve been challenging is the position that verified equations entail the truth of concepts. And I’ve also been challenging the notion that, besides being employed by successful theories, there is other evidence for the truth of those concepts.
Not exactly sure what you mean here. I would say that, as a metaphysical realist, knowledge of underlying reality can be reasonably established based on sufficient evidence.
And if what you’re saying is that the verified effects predicted by equations are the only evidence to support any inference to some underlying reality in the context of a scientific theory, I would argue that scientific theory isn’t meant to deal with such type of questions in the first place.
The way I see it, that’s a question for metaphysics, not physics. And I think that in a metaphysical context whatever can be used within reason to support an inference about underlying reality should be allowed as evidence.
I think?? we agree here.
If you cannot measure it, observe it, detect it, how is it evidence? Is that not like the prosecution at a trial bringing in a medium or spiritualist to raise a bony finger - “He is the one…”, and entering that into the record as metaphysical evidence. So I expect you mean something else, along the lines of
But reason is not synonymous with evidence.
OK. That’s good to know, I think.
That’s what evidence is in a scientific context. However things like consciousness, thoughts, morals, abstract objects, and experience cannot be measured, observed, or detected, but in a metaphysical context I think they are potential evidence for the possibility of some form of existence beyond what can be studied by science.
That would only be within reason if there was sufficient justification for doing so, like the same person having a long established record of being right in other such circumstances. And then it would only be supporting evidence, not proof.
That may be, but evidence can arguably take on many forms, including arguments from reason.
I don’t see why that would matter. Why would it not be a constant speed in one direction but constant in two directions?
I am saying evidence is verification. Truth with a capital “T” is different than verification.
You are saying that there is unverifiable verifiables. You are arguing with yourself.
Let’s put this a different way. Why isn’t relativity one of the verifiable parts of reality?
But intuition is not evidence for things that can be studied by science.
Consider the Ptolemaic vs Copernican cosmological models. The Galileo affair is often portrayed as an exhibit of an anti-scientific church, but that is a caricature. Until things got political, many in the church were quite open to his ideas. Much of the push back Galileo received wan not based on religion, but the more general objection that, as the Copernican system required that the Earth revolved around the Sun at great velocity, why do we not feel that movement? We might trivialize this objection today, because travelling a high speed on smooth surfaces is a common aspect of our lives, and so we have routine experience of inertia. But back in Galileo’s day, nobody traveled faster than a good gallop, and there you kind of felt the movement; hard to tell. So Galileo was the one with extraordinary claim - that the earth moved at great velocity and yet the ground under our feet felt at rest. The onus was on Galileo, and he spent a good deal of time writing of inertia.
Of course, the Jury is back, having found that the evidence favors Copernicus. But the verdict had nothing to do with any subjective introspection or intuition, these having proved worthless and misleading. Instead the answer was found in models and math developed by Kepler and Newton, who stood on the shoulders of Copernicus and Galileo, and confirmed with the observations made possible by the instrumentation and measurements of science. Whatever the merits of intuition as a guide, it is not in any way evidence as concerns the physical world.
Good question. But regardless, since it’s not possible to measure directly it has to be assumed.
Evidence is verification? You must be using verification in a rather general sense. I’m using it in the sense of empirical verification which is what I figure would be generally assumed in a scientific context. That means observation or detection of some sort. And there’s just no way to empirically verify the concepts we’re talking about. And again, the only relevant evidence I’m aware of for these concepts is their use in successful theories.
And where there is no way to empirically verify a claim, the truth has to be reasoned to from relevant evidence by abductively inferring what is plausible to explain the evidence and then by comparison arriving at the most probable of the plausible explanations. And depending on the strength of the evidence there can be room for disagreement as to what is the most probable of the available explanations.
If science is defined as the study of only what can be empirically verified, then that would be so. However, if things like concepts which cannot be empirically verified are included, then that is a different story. I would argue that anything that is empirically unverifiable is technically not a question for science, but for metaphysics. But I don’t think that’s a distinction that is generally recognized nowadays.
The way I see it, just because there are particular cases where intuition ends up being contrary to where the weight of the evidence leads, it doesn’t follow that it is always contrary. It still counts as evidence (whether inside or outside a scientific context depends on how science is defined) in relevant situations and needs to be considered along with any other evidence relevant to whatever is being investigated.
If you can’t give us a reason why the two way speed of light would be different than the one way speed of light then the two way speed of light is all the observation we need.
In the scientific context, evidence is verification.
Why not?
Never said it was an unreasonable assumption.
Are you talking in terms of verifying an hypothesis? That’s the only thing I can find that would somewhat make sense of how you’re using the term. But even then it does seem to be about the Truth with a capital T of an hypothesis. So if that’s what you’re referring to, what exactly did you mean about it not being about truth? And evidence alone wouldn’t necessarily be verification in that sense unless it was clearly sufficient to warrant making that claim.
But I’m not really sure how verification of an hypothesis applies here, since what we’re concerned with is not the hypothesis/theory in its entirety, but just the aspect of the concepts they contain. And nonetheless when I’m using the term I mean empirical verification. And in regards to empirical verification, I think it would be correct to say that it would entail either observation of a cause, or detection of an effect.
OK. I"m assuming empirical verification is about either observing a cause or detecting an effect. So take the concept of time slowing down. The only way to empirically verify that time itself is some kind of physical entity that can actually slow down is through observation. Clocks can only measure rates of change. So what instrument do we have that can actually observe time in a purely physical sense and track it as it moves through space?
That’s what scientific means. Science is the process of testing hypotheses, and evidence that supports a hypothesis is verification of the hypothesis.
Now you are just replacing the word “verification” with “sufficient”. It’s nothing but word games.
A hypothesis is a concept. You are playing word games again.
The definition of rate is change over time. If you are measuring a rate you are measuring time.
Again, you are playing word games.
Sorry, but it seems a bit disingenuous to say I’m playing word games. Really all I’m doing is just asking a simple straightforward question, “How is it justified to claim that a concept can be said to be true based solely on the evidence of it being employed in a successful theory?” It is not related to the question of verification of an hypothesis in any way that I can see.
And unless a deductive argument can be made to show it is entailed, the only alternative available that I’m aware of is some form of non-deductive reasoning of following all the available evidence where it leads. So unless a valid and sound deductive argument can be made, or some other justifiable objection can be raised, I think I’m warranted in holding to that position.
The justification is the correlation between the predictions made by the theory and the observations made.
You claim that certain things can be verified. What do you think makes them verifiable?
Do you think a conclusion is not justified if it is based on inferences from mountains of observations? If so, then you must reject most, if not all of science because all of science is based on inference.
What’s at issue are empirically unverifiable concepts as causes.The predictions and observations you are referring to are of empirically verifiable effects, not the empirically unverifiable causes, at least as I understand it.
They only tell us that something exists that is causing the effect, not what that something is. The only evidence for the concepts as the causes that I’m aware of is their employment in successful theories. What the concepts depict cannot be observed and therefore are empirically unverifiable.
Never said that. But inferences based on what has been empirically verified, like inductive inferences, are not the same as inferences based on what cannot be empirically verified, what I believe are generally referred to as abductive inferences.
What I’m really challenging is the notion that scientific method, i.e. theories, can determine issues about the empirically unverifiable. My position is that metaphysics is meant to handle those issues through non-deductive reasoning. Science arguably needs to stick to the realm of the empirically verifiable which is what it was originally meant for.