for applied philosophical questions about the study of science, the pursuit of scientific knowledge, and the scientific method

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Quantum Mechanics and Logic

I heard several times that the results of quantum mechanics (double-slit experiment for instance ) challenge our logic. One example of that is the famous physicist Lawrence Krauss. He keeps ...
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Why do adult humans play popular sport as a profession? [closed]

Why do adult humans play popular sport as a profession? Why won't everyone play it as a recreation? Technological innovation has brought us to the modern world. Leadership and politics have shaped the ...
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41 views

What is our knowledge of the universe dependent on? By what method do we gain more knowledge? [closed]

Is our knowledge of the universe based on measurements and observations being used to approximate natural (physical) law or is it the other way around, where we have a physical law and try to get ...
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18 views

What is necessary in life? [closed]

I feel deep within myself that everything we do here except searching for one's own reason of existence is futile. Yet, I cannot run away from this material world due of apprehension of being called a ...
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133 views

Why do we assume that we know there is a difference between something and nothing?

For example, we ask questions like: Why is there something rather than nothing? it implies that we know the characteristics of what constitutes nothing and something. What if what we perceive as ...
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1answer
66 views

Are electron fields physically real?

Although atoms had been discussed since antiquity as a theory of matter it was only at the beginning of the 20th century that convincing evidence was found, through brownian motion - in fact this was ...
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68 views

Are there thought experiments in the discourse of continental philosophers?

This isn't a serious question of philosophy, but more about philosophical style. For example: Nagel's Bat and Searle's Chinese room & Frank Jacksons's Knowledge argument are all thought ...
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45 views

Must explanatory mathematical systems of the world lead to infinite regress?

Call the world as it presents itself to us world-1 The regularity & order in the world demands explanation - hence we have a mathematically consistent description of the world. Call this world-2. ...
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71 views

What kind of universe would there be with entirely different physical laws?

Fine-tuning of constants in the standard model is an acknowledged mainstream physical question and not an eccentric one. Looking at this carefully what one is saying is why do the parameters of this ...
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74 views

Are simple physical laws actually simple?

This is a question about the philosophy of physics. If one takes a glance at the philosophy of mathematics its easy to see that the idea of number is filled with philosophical niceties and is a much ...
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32 views

Is the Anglo-Analytical tradition founded on rejecting the principle of sufficient reason?

In this blog-post on a criticism of Nagels book Mind & Cosmos the author makes the assertion: This is no surprise because analytical philosophy was founded in the act of rejecting PSR. Our ...
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62 views

Is the teleological argument for God completely refuted?

Teleological arguments for the existence of God have a long history and straddle Greek Antiquity (Platos Divine Artificer), Islam (Averroes) and Christianity (Aquinas) and currently and most famously ...
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52 views

Can something exist without energy?

Einstein showed that energy is matter; for something to exist in a physical sense it must be incarnated as matter. So on the face of it - it seems that the answer should be no. However what about ...
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Physics and Nozick's explanatory self-subsumption

What happened with Nozick's idea of the self-subsuming explanation after his Philosophical Explanations? In particular and actually only, I'm interested to learn about published attempts to use or ...
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97 views

Is the conservation of energy actually a characterisation rather than an imposed or deduced law?

Historically speaking, the conservation of energy has been deduced from the quantitive physical theories from the Renaissance onwards. Gradually the importance of this law was recognised and ...
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1answer
45 views

Can planets be subject to entanglement? [closed]

Proven in Quantum Physics when two particles become entangled, the spin of one directly correlates with the spin of the other. Is this possible on a larger scale with the spin of planets? Could ...
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49 views

Do all humans share the same soul called god? [closed]

If the soul was ingrained in the human body, it would be removable. One could conclude that an arm was to be lost, that person would still be himself and the soul intact. And that arm lost would ...
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423 views

What makes Humans different from a chemical computer?

Are we all robots? Is our DNA the 0's and 1's of computer code? Are we an advanced computer system, with instead of keyboard and mouse input... input from our senses. Our database being our brain ...
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2answers
114 views

Is human consciousness encoded in DNA in an infinitely regressive way?

Human DNA contains roughly 3 Billion base-pairs. That is 1.5 Gigabytes of data. This can easily fit onto a small usb memory stick. Can something as complex as a human consciousness be derivable from ...
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45 views

What is the actual process of realization?

What is the actual process of realization? What are the factors that must coexist at the same time in order to set the brain's state of realizing something? I found that In probability and ...
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33 views

Attribution of quote “The apparent duck becomes an obvious rabbit”?

The quote The apparent duck becomes an obvious rabbit refers to a paradigm shift. I've only seen one paper including it, and the author uses it as if it is common. Is it used elsewhere, or with ...
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65 views

How is the idea of an explosion represented in a purely Aristotelian physics?

Given the need to explain an explosion of a flour mill, assuming a purely Aristotelian paradigm, what concepts could be used to explain the mill's destruction? This question is to help more ...
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71 views

Is the anthropic principle in physics falsifiable?

The Anthropic Principle states that the fundamental physics of the universe must allow the possibility of conscious life in the universe - as that is an observable fact. It's often qualified as ...
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2answers
68 views

How exactly does antireductionism undermine the scientific method?

I was reading a wikipedia article on Antireductionism. What I cannot understand is how exactly does antireductionism undermine the "scientific method" to a certain degree?
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285 views

Can we dispense with ontology in physics?

Is it possible to have a satisfactory physics which is content to describe everything in terms of operational (functional) properties? Could it therefore be the case that ontology is a useless concept ...
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171 views

A Popper question about corroboration

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Problem_of_induction#Karl_Popper The rational motivation for choosing a well-corroborated theory is that it is simply easier to falsify: Well-corroborated means ...
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175 views

Is meditation valid to study consciousness scientifically?

In the study of consciousness, neuroscience observes mental phenomena through physical correlations, using techniques such as fMRI, PET and EEG. These are considered valid and reproductible, and can ...
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79 views

How does one explain (apparent) nonexistence?

There is quite a bit of fun in building a little web of questions and answers throughout StackExchange. (Let's call it an exercise in interdisciplinarity.) "Molecular biologist Robin Holliday has ...
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221 views

What are the most basic assumptions one has to make in order to conduct science?

I often wondered: What are the most basic assumptions I have to make before I can even start thinking about life, universe and the rest? So far I have boiled them down to three: There is a world, a ...
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175 views

What does Einstein's quote “If the facts don't fit the theory, change the facts” mean?

What did Einstein really mean by saying: If the facts don't fit the theory, change the facts.
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4answers
233 views

Does Albert Einstein's interpretation of Ockham's razor violate it?

An often-quoted version of Ockham's razor (that can not be verified as being posited by Einstein himself) says "Everything should be kept as simple as possible, but no simpler." Doesn't it violate ...
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121 views

Does everything which can be figured out through observation disqualify as philosophy?

Does a scientific question which we have not yet had the resources or time to answer scientifically classify as philosophically relevant? Or does everything which can be figured out through ...
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32 views

Suggested intro level readings for Realism vs. Anti-Realism in Philosophy of Science?

So I'll likely be teaching an undergraduate class on Realism vs. Anti-Realism in the Philosophy of Science next fall. I figured I'd fish for some suggestions on accessible and engaging literature in ...
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117 views

Was Karl Popper a “dedicated opponent of all forms of scepticism”? If so, why, or how?

While reading the Wikipedia article on Karl Popper, I was surprised to find that one of the article's sources, in its lede paragraph, claims that Karl Popper was a "dedicated opponent of all forms of ...
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74 views

How susceptible is the scientific community to politics and other intrusion? [closed]

As someone who has just obtained his BSc. in Software Engineering, I'd like to think that I have seen a fair bit of both the good and bad in human tendencies. One of the bad tendencies is to be ...
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125 views

Is materialism actually material?

physicalism allows for forces such as gravity which on the face of it are not material as say the cup of tea I have to hand. So materialism literally taken seems to be wrong. But looking at this more ...
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219 views

Is discreteness an emergent property?

The Riemann zeta function is a continuous function which encodes the properties of the primes; string theory, a proposed theory of particles, considers continuous objects; through QM discreetness of ...
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104 views

How would you describe the relationship of science and philosophy of science?

How would you describe the relationship of science and philosophy of science? Is it a worldview that sets a tone to scientific jargon? I mean that statements of eg. physics are under submission of the ...
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90 views

Can sheaf-theory help interpret Quantum Mechanics?

The Copenhagen interpretation posits a boundary in the World between the observer and the non-observer (that is the rest of the World). There is knowledge (Observables measured) associated with each ...
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Has there been any success in using modal logic to interpret Quantum Mechanics?

Quantum Mechanics rather famously has problems in interpretation - straightforward realism doesn't appear to work. Is there any work with modal logic that throws light on this question? The SEP has ...
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228 views

What can suffice as a scientific proof for God? to what domain can such a proof belong to? [closed]

"Scientific" theories require proof, and there are certain guidelines and standards for the proofs to be acceptable to the "scientific" community in that domain (Algebra, Computer Science, etc.). ...
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170 views

Is scientism a self defeating epistemology?

Some who have argued against the validity of scientism have argued that the view that only science can uncover truth is not a scientific discovery but rather a epistemology. Hence it has been claimed ...
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Is there any evidence that any philosophers in Antiquity viewed space itself as a something?

In Lucretious poem De Natura, he has They [atoms] move through the void In contemporary usage a vacuum is the the removal of all matter from space, it stems from Latin adjective vacuus for empty ...
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81 views

Was Kants formulation of mathematics as synthetic a priori a forerunner to the Russellian campaign to reduce mathematics to logic?

Kant showed that mathematics was synthetic a priori. For example the laws of arithmetic or of euclidean geometry, and noted that this had escaped the notice of previous thinkers, they had assumed them ...
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103 views

existence of objects under the microscope

Can there be any difference between the existence of things we sense directly and things we sense using instruments like microscope? Along the same lines , is it possible that some objects around ...
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72 views

Is there a philosophical antecedent to the physical idea of waves in media?

In Physics there are two large themes in conceptualising the world - atoms & waves. I'm familiar with the work of the greek atomists, is there a philosophical precursor to waves? From what I've ...
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Are social sciences currently 'real' sciences? [closed]

Examples for natural sciences: physics, chemistry, astronomy, geology Social sciences: psychology, sociology, criminology, psychiatry Natural science has very good mathematical laws and algorithms ...
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131 views

Anti-realistic and relativistic perspectives on science

Examples for natural sciences: physics, chemistry, astronomy, geology Social sciences: psychology, sociology, criminology, psychiatry Scientists construct knowledge in order to better understand ...
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321 views

What would a quantum interpretation without ontology be like?

Luboš Motl keeps insisting quantum mechanics invalidates ontology, and has made ontology obsolete, just like phlogiston. What would metaphysics without ontology look like, where words like "existence" ...
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Philosophically what does it mean to be committed to the existence of electrons? [closed]

In our immediate perception electrons are not seen and their existence must be inferred. Are we in the same position as say the ancient greeks were when they were speculating that the Earth was a ...

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