Questions tagged [philosophy-of-science]
for applied philosophical questions about the study of science, the pursuit of scientific knowledge, and the scientific method
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Logic as an obstacle to knowledge
Has there been any philosopher making an argument along the lines that logic is an obstacle to knowledge about the world?
The informal argument could go something like: logic is created by humans (...
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Does Euclidean geometry implicitly assume an observer?
Let's consider a point particle at rest in space relative to an observer. Without a coordinate system, the observer can still determine that the particle occupies a specific point in space. However, ...
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Life and Death as one and the same?
Life-death, heavy–light, hot–cold and slow–fast are some of the most conventionalized pairs along the semantic dimensions of existence, weight, temperature and speed that require contextual motivation ...
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Is subjective probability falsifiable?
If I say that I have a high credence of belief in A and a low credence of belief in B how do I justify this? If I cannot, should these be dismissed or kept?
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The location of a single object in empty space
Is it correct to assume that if there is only one object in the void (really empty void), then its location (the answer to the question “where” this object is) cannot be established?
You need at least ...
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Should the plausibility and imaginability of a theory play a role in its prior probability?
In Bayesianism, every theory has a certain prior probability. Now of course, this can be a very subjective task, and so I am anticipating that there is no correct answer, but am still curious for a ...
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Is all of philosophy unfalsifiable?
How do you know you’re wrong about anything? Without having to use underlying philosophical theories that themselves involve axioms that can’t be proved, how is someone proven wrong about quite ...
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Are philosophers better at reasoning than non philosophers?
The more I learn about philosophy, the more it seems that there is no correct answer to literally anything. Of course, certain things are true and false. But proving that they are seems an arduous ...
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Isn't every theory or model wrong?
I'm currently in class 12 and I was about different models of atoms in my school chemistry book and there were like 3 or 4 atomic models Rutherford's model, Thompson's model , Bohr's model then ...
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Are there any empirical categories that do not have vague boundaries?
The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy has an article on vagueness that struck me as odd because it seems to assume that vagueness is a property of only certain kinds of propositions or predicates, ...
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What is the correct counter argument, if there is one, to a uniqueness argument for design?
I have a friend who argued that Islam is true because the Qur'an is a unique piece of literature. Apparently, the textual styles of the book are unique in such a way that no other book can be ...
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Was Time invented or discovered?
Me and my elder brother were just talking about some stuff then he asked me a question: Was time invented or discovered and how we define time?
So I googled and it says this:
The measurement of time ...
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Is partial symmetry one of the most fundamental concepts or laws of reality?
Brain is partially symmetric, planets are, most of the object that look symmetric, are actually partially symmetric. Is partial symmetry in some sense a fundamental concept of our mind or fundamental ...
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Ontic structural realism: what's the difference between 'structures are all there is' and 'all there is are structures'?
I'm a physics student reading a philosophy essay about ontic structural realism and quantum field theory. In that paper, the author presented ontic structural realism(OSR) and radical ontic structural ...
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Are there concepts of laws-of-physics where the laws have a "fail rate"?
The closest to this idea I could find was talk of ceteris paribus laws, but it was hard to tell how much this concerned physics, even just potentially/speculatively. But having decided to believe that ...
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Maudlin and Chomsky on Newton and the shift toward "unintellgible" science
My questions arise after listening to Chomsky and Tim Maudlin talk about Newton's theories.
Maudlin:
"it turns out that at this moment in history [now] the physicists have to a large extent ...
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Why are empirical and theoretical knowledge connected?
There is a web of issues pertaining to the theoretical underpinnings of science that I would like to read more about, and so if anyone could take a look at the following claims and questions and ...
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Are information, matter and energy improper concepts?
In Proper and Improper concepts (1927) Carnap argued for the distinction between proper concepts (the ones that are explicitly defined)
”It is essential to a proper concept that for any object it is ...
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Husserl and Science
If Husserl is not concerned with proving that the external world exists unlike Descartes then how does his findings on the nature of consciousness help to provide indubitable foundations for all ...
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What is (or should be) the logical structure of a demarcation argument?
I am working on a scholarly article that attempts to define "theory" in my scholarly field, which is a social science. (My field is information systems, mainly a hybrid between information ...
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Does every possible event have non-zero probability?
Almost every human being would agree that 2 + 2 != 5. In a sense, this is a logical impossibility.
However, almost every human being would also agree that pigs can't fly. Some, however, are adamant in ...
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Why is falsification of a hypothesis possible and proving it is impossible in science?
I am a math student and I don´t understand one thing. If scientific hypotheses can be falsified, why not falsify the negation of a hypothesis, proving the original conjecture?
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Reference request for books on the foundations of science
I have lately been interested in the foundations of science. I checked Wikipedia if there was an article on the foundations of science, but there was no such article. So, I am asking for books and ...
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The Vienna Circle and metaphysics
The Vienna Circle opposed to metaphysics.
This is exposed in depth in Carnape's paper "'Überwindung der Metaphysik durch Logische Analyse der Sprache' in Erkenntnis, vol. 2, 1932 (English ...
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Are some emergent properties non-falsifiable by science?
Are some emergent properties non-falsifiable as a causal necessity by science? Since we cannot determine why emergent properties are what they are from physics and chemistry laws, I am guessing that ...
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Thomas Kuhn applied to formal sciences
In The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Thomas Kuhn focuses on the natural sciences.
Are there applications to formal sciences in his works or by others?
In my research in the usual places, I am ...
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Can computer science be used to "test" theories of logic?
I feel like this might be a stupid question, like I think I've read at least one major text according to which, "Of course logics can be tested in a computer-science context, not necessarily in ...
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How much and what kind of evidence is needed in order to improve on "cherry picked" information?
How much and what kind of evidence is needed in order to improve on "cherry picked" information?
If e.g. citing only a few studies constitutes cherry picking, just as citing small sample ...
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How meaningful is the notion of now here on Earth?
Special relativity and the lack of a now moment is causing me a bit of grief.
How meaningful is the notion of now here on Earth between each of us? Does the lack of an objective now moment in any way ...
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What is the relationship between the scientific experimental method and the two espistemologies of empiricism and rationalism
What is the (historical and theoretical) relationship between the scientific experimental method and the two espistemologies of empiricism and rationalism?
I can read here and there that the ...
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What does it mean for something to be "more likely"? Whether you would bet on it? Whether history suggests it to be true? Or both?
What does it mean for A to be more likely than B? For example, suppose two people are throwing darts. The first person gets a bulls eye 6 out of 10 times. The second person misses every single time by ...
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What did Kant have to say about atomism?
I've been trying to understand whether on not Kant accepts the atomic model (that matter is composed of smallest pieces) based on his writings in Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science.
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How can this counterexample to Bayesian reasoning be addressed?
I'm having a hard time rationalizing how a particular theory is confirmed by Bayesianism in a particular example and yet seems to be completely unintuitive. As a reminder, in Bayesianism, an ...
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Is scientific knowledge personal or general?
This question was considered off topic in "History of science and mathematics". According to a comment by Alexandre Eremenko it belonged to philosophy.stackexchange.com. I don't understand ...
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Are the priors of Bayesianism really subjective?
Many people say that the priors in Bayesianism for certain kinds of theories are subjective. But there is a difference between an unfalsifiable but wrong theory and a theory that just hasn't been ...
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How come when theories of concepts are made, there is never an agnostic point of accepting that there may be things we will never know? [closed]
Before you read this and write it off as a absurd contradicting paradoxical juxtaposition. assume that a observable contradiction is a phenomenon in of itself.
Are some things ameasurable?
Anything ...
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Are random processes equivalent to unpredictable processes
I have seen random and unpredictable used interchangeably but sense there is a subtle difference that I have difficulty articulating.
My sense is that predictability is based on my own personal ...
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Is the Bayesian idea of a continuous degree of belief incorrect?
I'm having a hard time understanding how this concept makes sense or is rational in any shape or form. I would wager that this works with things that have prior probabilities and data behind them. But ...
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When is observation A better evidence of a theory than observation B?
What does it mean to say that A is better evidence of a causal process than B?
There are cases where this seems very intuitive. For example, if one observes a person's fingerprints on a dead body's ...
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If the gambler's fallacy is real, why should our belief in propositions depend on past events?
Suppose a random person comes up to you and says "Think of a number between 1 and 10." You think of one. He guesses it correctly. You seem slightly surprised but ask him to do it again. He ...
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How is the concept of a topos in mathematics relevant to philosophy?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Topos
Topoi behave much like the category of sets and possess a notion of
localization; they are a direct generalization of point-set topology.
My understanding is that ...
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Is finding meaning in something in hindsight the same as predicting it?
Suppose you are about to play a football game. Your lucky number is 150. At the end of the game, you throw a game winning pass with 1:50 (1 minutes 50 seconds) left to play. The game ends up finishing ...
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Is the concept of having a degree of belief rational?
There are many statements I feel more confident in than others. For example, I would wager that almost everyone would feel more confident in the statement "The sun will rise tomorrow" than &...
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Does prediction really have epistemic value?
I am having trouble understanding why the act of predicting something gives it any sort of value or makes a theory more likely to be true. If a scientific theory explained everything in hindsight, ...
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Determinism vs prediction
What is the difference between determinism and predictable. I have heard classical mechanics is both predictable and deterministic , chaos theory is deterministic but unpredictable , quantum mechanics ...
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Is an event that is predicted less likely to come about by chance? [closed]
Imagine as if you're thinking about a number between 1 and 10 million. You go to a restaurant and when you get the receipt, you look at the order number and it ends up being exactly the number you ...
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Is analytic philsophy the most associated with "armchair" knowledge and is that subject to change?
*By armchair I mean knowledge one can gain by not going out into the world very far. And by my title I get the impression (perhaps mistakenly) that if armchair knowledge was lessened, so too would ...
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How and where do I learn philosophy?
I am very new to philosophy, in what ways can I gain deeper knowledge about the subject itself and explore all the branches and truly understand what philosophy exactly is?
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Recommendation for books that list abstract philosophical ideas used in sciences
I once saw people saying that sciences are about specific theories that matches empirical evidences, while in philosophy one is more interested in the idea behind such theories (e.g. the concept of ...
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What is the limit to how much humanity can advance in the physical sciences?
I currently adopt the view of reductive physicalism. Yet, I can’t help but wonder to what limits we can understand the universe. After all, are’t these fields firmly based on empirical evidence, ...
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