First collisions at the LHC with unprecedented Energy! (Ask a particle physisicist)

[Pyrrho]

What I say above is just my standard opinion which I have voiced many times IRL

I .do have a question:  What would finish the sentence you started at the end of your post, which is quoted in full above?

Generally, I think that good philosophy of physics is important, because we do want more from our science than a black box of equations which reproduces certain experiments - because as David Deutsch rightly asks in "fabric of reality" (*), what would we have gained in understanding over someone who merely executes the experiment, if we did limit ourselves to such a concept of science as a predictive black box. We want more from our science - we want it to provide intuitions, explanations, we have a natural urge to see truth in our theories. To what extent we can have this and what it means, those are, in my opinion, questions of philosophy, not science, and questions one would not want to do without.

(*) I may be paraphrasing...

I don't think we can have it.  I don't even think we had it when Newton's ideas were thought to be correct.  It had a more intuitive feel and seeming "rightness" to it, but I don't think it ever adds anything to pretend (and I think it is only ever pretend) to have an ultimate explanation.  The desire for ultimate answers should, in my opinion, be resisted, for it is the same desire that leads to religious nonsense.  Or if you prefer, unverifiable gibberish.

We should be content to know what we can know, and recognize our limitations.  That ultimate explanations are not needed is proven by the fact that we presently don't have them, and yet science continues to progress anyway.

Yes, I have a very strong skeptical streak.  There are too many people who claim to know things that not only they do not know, but that they cannot know.  If you want to talk about philosophy and why I am skeptical, you might want to read David Hume's Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding.  It is online here, and that is a copy of what was the standard edition for many years, though Oxford has released a new edition that they evidently wish to become the standard edition.  I have the Selby-Bigge version (both the second and third editions), which is the old standard edition.  I will be happy to discuss it with you as you read it (or afterwards), either in a thread for that purpose, or in PMs or email.

Of course, I do not expect that you will regard my opinion as being of any great importance.  But I have a quote from someone who you might regard as a better source of recommendation.  Albert Einstein, in his essay "Remarks on Bertrand Russell's Theory of Knowledge" (which I first read in Ideas and Opinions), wrote:

Hume saw that concepts which we must regard as essential, such as, for example, causal connection ,cannot be gained from material given to us by the senses. This insight led him to a sceptical attitude as concerns knowledge of any kind. If one reads Hume's books, one is amazed that many and sometimes even highly esteemed philosophers after him have been able to write so much obscure stuff and even find grateful readers for it. Hume has permanently influenced the development of the best philosophers who came after him.

http://www.ece.umn.edu/users/cherkass/ee...wledge.pdf