Questions tagged [philosophy-of-science]
for applied philosophical questions about the study of science, the pursuit of scientific knowledge, and the scientific method
1,380
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35 views
Praxeology and pseudoscience [closed]
The untouchable Popper (I'm a Popper fan) was a libertarian, Austrian, and helped found the Mont Pèlerin Society with Ludwig von Mises: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mont_Pelerin_Society (Popper's ...
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2answers
95 views
Can philosophers further the process of scientific progress?
Richard Feynman said that philosophies of science have as much to do with science as ornithology has to do with birds. Now that might be the case, but what have philosophers to say about that? I mean ...
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1answer
40 views
Did any philosopher address the question of why it is easier to write about grammar than to write about how to write well?
Did any philosopher address the question of why it is easier to write about grammar than to write about how to write well? I am not sure if I am very dumb to ask this question, but I am wondering why, ...
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2answers
96 views
References for books/papers about emergentism and reductionism
I am trying to look for resources to deepen some topics presented in this workshop Moving Naturalism Forward. Especially the point on emergence (and secondarily on evolution and determinism, but here ...
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0answers
31 views
Is peripheral attention an example of the intentionality of consciousness?
Suppose I fix my gaze on an object, say a flower. Without moving my eyes, keeping them fixed on the flower, so with the same exact visual experience, I can "direct my attention" towards ...
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2answers
83 views
Why not accepting a theory that has obvious advantages, like the rishon model?
Already in 1981, Haim Harari invented the Rishon model of elementary particles. It provides a natural way to accommodate the known elementary particles and reduces the number of elementary ones to the ...
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2answers
86 views
What are possible naturalistic explanations to the question of existence?
Non-philosopher here, though I enjoy reading about it. Without getting into complex deductive arguments, suppose I say the following: Define the entities of the material world however one likes (maybe ...
12
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7answers
2k views
Is Occam's Razor a Prior?
In Bayesian statistics, the posterior probability of a hypothesis is composed of two parts:
the prior, reflecting our initial belief in a certain hypothesis, and
the likelihood, which represents how ...
1
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2answers
80 views
What makes a fallacy… a fallacy?
According to Wikipedia, a fallacy is "the use of invalid or otherwise faulty reasoning, or 'wrong moves' in the construction of an argument". I'm curious, however, about how are some things ...
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3answers
160 views
What is the core problem of intentionality?
In the philosophy of mind, I have read that "intentionality" is a difficult thing to explain in a naturalistic fashion. But I don't necessarily see the heart of the problem in the same way ...
20
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14answers
3k views
What is information?
I am fascinated with information theory, as put together by Claude Shannon in the 1940s. It is amazing to me that this concept arose from analysing letters in the alphabet and then was later ...
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3answers
66 views
How does confirmation relate to induction?
My question deals with induction in the context of scientific enquiry and with the confirmation of scientfic hypothesis.
Discussions regarding induction rapidly turn into debates regarding ...
2
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1answer
31 views
What did Bernard Stiegler say about technology always progressing?
My uncle was reading Stiegler right before he died and he was saying something that Stiegler said technological advancement never ends. As a budding futurist; I find this very intriguing and would ...
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0answers
27 views
Are there models that seeks to explain and predict ethical phenomenons?
Are there models that seeks to explain and predict ethical phenomenons? By models, I mean something like a scientific model. Is there anything like that or did we choose to not use any mathematical ...
2
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3answers
83 views
Is a supernatural entity or existence constricted by the necessity of evidence?
It's a fact that natural existences are constricted by the necessity of evidence. Meaning evidence is necessary to prove an natural existence or natural occurrence, and if there's is no evidence the ...
2
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5answers
184 views
How does science treat supernatural claims?
The following claim X,
Something had a round trip from the Earth to the Mars within 1 second
might be treated by science as a supernatural claim because it violates the natural law (i.e. speed limit ...
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1answer
116 views
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2answers
136 views
Generating the simplest sort of Cosmological Argument
First, I am not a philosopher, but rather an applied mathematician. However, the Cosmological Argument has always intrigued me. At times I feel that all attempts are necessarily hopeless, at other ...
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0answers
60 views
Could a new method of understanding the universe be created?
Throughout history, we have used many methods of understanding the universe. Religion, Philosophy and Science (I know that the lines between these three are blurred but are significant enough to ...
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1answer
37 views
Did alchemy originate from the ancient Greeks?
Did alchemy originate from the ancient Greeks? I heard alchemy is based on ancient Greek philosophy. Is this true?
2
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0answers
53 views
What Richard Rorty understands by science?
I just read Philosophy and social hope, a collection of essays by Richard Rorty. Except for the excess of academicism, I can say I’m definitely inspired by it and happy with the discussions it threw ...
2
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0answers
53 views
How does meteorology resist Popperian analysis?
Graham Rees (who takes what one could say is a "middle of the road" approach to appraising Bacon's relevance to the practice of science in our times) writes in a 2002 article that (as a ...
3
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5answers
100 views
Can space be distorted without things that occupy the space being distorted?
Can space be distorted without things that occupy the space being distorted? I mean it is whether in reality or imagination?
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0answers
57 views
Did the philosophy of Heidegger lead to any advances in scientific knowledge? [closed]
Heidegger seems to be one of ther most controversial figures in philosophy as some philosophers consider him the greatest philosopher of the 20th century and others a charlatan.
Analytic philosophers ...
5
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4answers
195 views
The relationship between Rationalism and logic
Here is an excerpt from the book An Introduction to Philosophy by Russ W. Payne (2015) which is causing me some confusion.
Mathematics had long served as the rationalist’s paradigm case of knowledge ...
0
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2answers
57 views
What is the name of the idea that knowledge is dependent on past experience?
What would you call the idea that theories and knowledge more generally is merely the product of our past interactions with their associated elements? For example, if I were to let go of a ball, one ...
2
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0answers
63 views
Non-traditional (individuals = graph edges) views on societies
In his book Large graphs and graph limits, mathematician and Abel prize winner László Lovász says on page 4:
We can say that the whole universe is a single (really huge, possibly
infinite) network, ...
2
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1answer
166 views
What was Roger Bacon's contribution to the sign-interpreter relation in semiotics?
From some of his quotes that I found on wikipedia and his SEP entries it seems that he considered essential to a sign it's relation to an interpreter and it's signified object.
Can someone flesh out ...
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1answer
52 views
What would be the first indication that an Artificial Intelligence Entity (AIE) has become sentient?
... that you would believe! As far as I know, we really don't have something akin to a Turing Test for sentience. A blinded test where a human can't differentiate between a human and a machine really ...
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3answers
106 views
Textbook on the theory of definitions
I was wondering if some of you have a recommendation for a textbook with some good philosophy on (or some theory of) definitions, or at least some ruminations on what constitutes a good definition of ...
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2answers
598 views
Science as an example of infinitism
In the IEP article on infinitism, §4b, an objection to infinitism called "the proof of concept objection" is described. The problem is: if potentially endless nonrepeating sequences of ...
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1answer
164 views
What is the best way to model reality if it is a simulation?
Erwin Schrödinger proposed the quantum mechanical model of the atom, which treats electrons as matter waves.
So...
Quantum mechanics is a model, but it was not created on the assumption that the ...
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4answers
134 views
Why would laws of nature not be reducible to physics alone?
Is there any reason why special sciences like chemistry , biology , neuroscience and psychology would need their own immutable laws that aren't reflective of physical laws ?
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1answer
60 views
how can one distinguish between disorder and the supernatural?
Many strange things happen to us when we are asleep.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleep_paralysis
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Out-of-body_experience
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypnic_jerk
...
2
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3answers
187 views
Is it possible that the laws of nature don't exist?
Since scientific laws are approximations or observed regularities and generalisations(or an attempt at finding the actual laws of nature) rather than the actual laws of nature -- does such a ...
0
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1answer
59 views
Quote from Kant about science
I've just watched a video of a Philosophy Professor who said this in a conference:
"paraphrasing Kant, the scientist does not work as an observer of reality. He rather works as an interrogator ...
2
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1answer
130 views
Native English speakers! Please, help me to understand Wilfrid Sellars' complicated sentence in his “Philosophy and the Scientific Image of Man”
I am a Korean student who majors in philosophy.
Recently, I read Wilfrid Sellars' famous article "Philosophy and the Scientific Image of Man," but I'm faced with a lot of complicated ...
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1answer
50 views
Inductive strength & tracking requirement
An inductive inference is usually considered strong if its conclusion is probably true, given true premises. In Tracking Track Records, Peter Lipton (giving credit to Nozick) suggests that a strong ...
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0answers
38 views
A law about the importance of an activity and relation to its frequency?
I once read about a law (X's law), where from my memory it can be either of the following two:
You should keep doing something if you do it a lot (example sleep or eat)
If we keep doing something, ...
2
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1answer
284 views
What is a counter argument for the proposition that reaching the truth involves abandoning language and other intellectual instruments?
I have a linguist friend of mine who proposes that one should abandon all labels and paradigms to reach the ultimate truth, as they are deceptive. He proposes that you should strip all intellectual ...
4
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2answers
163 views
Does Bayesian epistemology solve Hume’s problem of induction?
Or, does it just sidestep it? Or, is it just completely unrelated to it? I’m having trouble seeing what the connection might be. It seems to me that Bayesians solve it by saying, take:
Your prior ...
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3answers
109 views
Aliens as a scientific explanation
Should we consider aliens as a scientific explanation for unexplained phenomena? Or is it outside the scope of what should be termed a scientific explanation?
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1answer
62 views
Which field in the natural sciences always requires accurate and precise scientific instruments? [closed]
I am a high school student that believes as many others that natural sciences is an area of knowledge that is about reliable information. However, I see that scientific instruments play an significant ...
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0answers
162 views
Does this example invalidate Popper's notion of falsifiability and science?
Consider the following two propositions:
A: There exists extraterrestrial life somewhere in the universe.
B: There does not exist extraterrestrial life anywhere in the universe.
B is just the ...
7
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2answers
393 views
Are There Any Hegelian Approaches to Modern Physics?
In his section on Force and the "inverted world" in "Phenomenology of Spirit," Hegel provides a dialectical account of Newtonian physics and gravity that I find very interesting, ...
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1answer
63 views
What would be a Philosophical Implications of Relativity Theory? [duplicate]
If you were to state one philosophical implication of relativity theory what would you choose and why?
2
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2answers
122 views
A question about the Ludwing Boltzmann idea of a scientific theory expressed in the book “On the significance of theories(1890)”
I don't understand a passage in which the great physicist Ludwig Boltzmann , talking about his epistemological point of view, says
I am of the opinion that the task of a theory consists in
...
2
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4answers
246 views
How are space and time related?
We know from Einstein's special theory of relativity that space and time together form a spacetime continuum and are interdependent. They share a mathematical structure and any fundamental theory of ...
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3answers
228 views
Why is the universe governed by very few laws of high generality instead of lots of particular ones?
The universe has a very wide variety of phenomena.
However, there is not, similarly, a zoo of physical laws. Instead, it appears that the universe is governed by a small number of laws that are valid ...
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3answers
221 views
Is the theory of relativity scientifically proven? [closed]
I am writing an essay and talked about a point of of the development in the force of gravity, I talked about Issac Newton’s findings and how they were later corrected by Albert Einstein. Was the ...
