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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What is affirmative about Shoul Should climate ethics exist exist beyond Earth [closed]
affirmative about Should climate ethics exist beyond Earth
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How important is philosophy?
All I know is that it can arguably have political implications.
Have any philosophers delimited the value of philosophy?
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What is valid or invalid, or sound or unsound, about this argument that an unfalsifiable theory is a true theory?
Statement. An unfalsifiable theory is automatically a true theory.
Proof. Forward direction. Let this theory be unfalsifiable. Then an intelligent man can adopt it and use it indefinitely. Therefore ...
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Why is thermal energy a by product of work? [closed]
When a human or animal does physical work some of its mass is converted into heat so the sum of the energy it uses to do the work and the thermal heat adds up to the loss of mass.
Why is some of the ...
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Can science inform philosophy?
Philosophy can sometimes inform science. After all, science was once called natural philosophy, and the scientific method is a creation of philosophy. However, does the arrow of influence go both ways?...
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What is the importance of philosophy in the development of scientific and abstract thinking?
Is there evidence for this? In which books or articles could I find more information?
I've been researching, and it seems that logic and epistemology are relevant for developing scientific thinking, ...
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The Nature of Free Will [duplicate]
How does the concept of free will reconcile with the deterministic view of the universe, and what implications does this have for moral responsibility and personal agency?
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Can the earths rotation around the sun create perpetual motion on earth? [closed]
As the earth rotates around the sun there are natural cycles of freezing and thawing of water in situe on earth because of the seasons this rotation causes.
When this in situe water freezes it expands ...
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Does a simple and intuitive theory have better chances of being true?
A lot of times we try to predict specific things by models that describe empirical results of other things. For example how could Einstein predict that gravity is linked to relativity just by knowing ...
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Is the the standard model of physics related to the fibonacci sequence?
I know this is a physics question, however I am unable to ask questions, on that site because of confused questions I ask, when I am unwell and the moderators will not let me ask anything further.
So ...
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What is something that math cannot be applied to and doesn't involve math?
I have been asked this question, yet I am unable to answer it.
The issue with this question is that I have given all that I know, therefore I too am at a loss.
What I do know is it has no concept of ...
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Relations without Relata?
Ladyman’s ontic structural realism posits to the world is comprised of relations without relata. Can somebody please explain what this means conceptually? What are the reasons someone would have for ...
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Is Philosophy decaying into an antiquated subject? [closed]
Is Philosophy decaying into an antiquated Subject in 21st Century whereas lots of questions could be answered within modern Science?
Yes or No? Explain Why for your answer.
I have longed for asking ...
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Can natural decreasing temperatures in the world create energy to power it? [closed]
When the compound water experiences a drop in ambient temperature it freezes and becomes a solid.
When water freezes it expands.
Can you harness the energy in this expansion to produce energy such as ...
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What is more important: simplicity or induction?
An argument by analogy is an inductive argument for the existence of other minds. An argument by analogy is enough to justify the belief in the existence of other minds.
But Occam's Razor offers a ...
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Where do we go if we gain knowledge of the absolute truth? [closed]
One of the fundamental questions that humans since the dawn of time have asked themselves is why are we here?, or how are we here?, how did all this happen to be?
Philosophers try to answer these ...
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Any philosophical works that explicitly address the heat death of the Universe and its philosophical implications?
I have been trying to grasp my brain over the last couple years with this topic and it appears that while I now have a quite decent grasp on it from a physics perspective, meaning on how it works and ...
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Women who have recently contributed to the realism debate?
I'm struggling to find women who have contributed to the debate on scientific realism over, say, the last ten years - do you have any suggestions?
Edit
So we have 1 suggestion so far, and I'll add ...
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Revival of Logical Positivism?
Have there been any recent attempts to revive logical positivism? I've heard discussions that a modified version of the approach is gaining popularity, but I haven't seen any literature to that effect....
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Emergent Behavior: Observer-Constructed or Observer-Independent behavior of systems
I am seeking works that align with the following thesis: The emergent behaviors claimed to be observed in certain phenomena are not inherent to the phenomena themselves but are artifacts of the mental ...
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Chicken or Egg. Does everything begin or is the idea of start/first/origin related to the use of language?
The existence of beginning: origin/start/initiate. Do not all beginnings require something before? Are all just arbitrary measurements of traits we find of interest? The globally persuasive ideas of ...
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Is Decision making based on the measured outcome the only way a single elementary particle can make future uncertain in large macroscopic scale?
Richard Feynman wrote:
"It is not our ignorance of the internal gears, of the internal complications, that makes nature appear to have probability in it. It seems to be somehow intrinsic. Someone ...
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Why do many philosophers consider a past-eternal universe to be self-explanatory but not a universe that began with no cause?
In philosophical papers that argue against theistic interpretations, many philosophers fight to demonstrate that the Big Bang was not a true beginning but merely a transformation, arguing that the ...
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causality and locality in universe
In continuation to Mechanistic view of the universe my second question is does locality implies causality and vice versa ? We have seen in previous question where causality sometimes locality doesn't ...
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Mechanistic view of the universe
I was chatgpting and found Encouragement of the Mechanistic View The mechanistic view in physics is driven by several key principles:
Determinism: The idea that the future behavior of a system can be ...
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What principle protects the objective nature of the prior and the conclusion in Bayes’s theorem?
The Bayesian analysis begins with the "prior": some assumption about the world and the probability that the assumption is true.
But the prior seems to be based on nothing. The hypothesis and ...
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Is it ever rational or justified to believe in a claim X based on eyewitness accounts if X seems to contradict mainstream scientific theories? [duplicate]
Can the testimony of multiple credible witnesses challenge the conventional understanding of the laws of physics? If several trustworthy individuals report events that appear to contradict well-...
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Are there good examples of regular life being theory-laden?
There is a theory of science that says that observations are not independent of our theories. What we observe and what observations we consider relevant depends on how we conceive of what is going on. ...
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Is it epistemologically self-consistent to use the scientific method to justify some beliefs and non-scientific justifications for others?
Let’s call B(p) the set of all beliefs a person p holds. We can denote S(B(p)) as the subset of beliefs held by p for which they can provide a scientific justification, and NS(B(p)) as the set B(p) ...
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If the supernatural were real, would we be able to study it scientifically?
Hypothetically, if there were a supernatural realm, would it be reasonable to expect that we would be able to study it using the scientific method? On the other hand, is it possible that the ...
user66156
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Should entities only percievable through microscopes be considered unobservables?
The Wikipedia page on unobservables states that:
There is considerable disagreement about which objects should be classified as unobservable, for example, whether bacteria studied using microscopes ...
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Is parapsychology a science?
The Journal of Parapsychology is a biannual peer-reviewed academic journal covering research on psi phenomena, including telepathy, clairvoyance, precognition, and psychokinesis, as well as human ...
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What happened to the science of wisdom? [closed]
"At one time philosophy was the central intellectual discipline, now it
is peripheral. Few care about the ‘latest developments’ in
philosophy. Some might say there are none: that philosophy ...
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Are explanations entailments?
Some philosophers say that explanations involve an entailment relation, that is if X explains Y then that means that X entails Y. Is this a valid way of understanding explanations? If not, what does ...
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Is the B-theory of time only compatible with an infinitely renewing cyclical reality?
I'm not a mathematician and I may be misunderstanding some aspects of this concept.
According to the B-theory of time, the flow of time is an illusion, and every point in time exists equally. If this ...
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Is there any reference about critical rationalism with respect to historiography?
I am interested in history of the science and mathematics, and I wonder whether critical rationalism was ever suggested as a method by which to do history of the sciences or mathematics? Does it even ...
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Physical reality of physics properties
Is there an argument for the physical reality of physics properties? What I mean is the following: take force as an example. Suppose a tractor is pulling a plow with the same force as a nearby shed ...
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What is the relation between the uniformity of nature and determinism?
I read about Hume's argument that the uniformity of nature is a necessary condition for inductive reasoning to be valid, but we only have inductive reasons for believing in the uniformity in the first ...
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Presentism in Light of Relativity — It's About Time I Asked This Here
I've got a follow up question to Esmond's Does time exist if everything is in the present? and it goes like this:
According to presentism, only the present moment exists. But, according to Einstein's ...
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Does time exist if everything is in the present?
In the philosophical concept of presentism, it is posited that only the present exists. The past and future do not exist. This leads me to the thought : if everything is in the present, then does time,...
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Sheldrake's Fields as Formal Causes
Why do we not consider fields as formal causes, especially in light of Rupert Sheldrake's analysis of morphogenetic fields? How does Sheldrake's hypothesis of formative causation challenge our ...
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Can "Chance" be considered a metaphysic answer to the question of why evolution and similar happen to be? [closed]
So in the realm of evolution, abiogenesis but also Big Bang etc. I often get the explanation that these things happen by chance.
E.g. in evolution, there is the assertion that random mutations are ...
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What sorts of beliefs can be justified non-scientifically?
Can I be justified in believing in a proposition X through a justification that doesn't meet the standards of the scientific method? What sorts of beliefs would be justifiable in this way (non-...
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Why is time, when viewed objectively, in reverse from when it's viewed subjectively?
Consider the following sentence:
(Example A) "We need to go into the future and away from the past."
Every physicist sees time like Example A. The observer is moving towards some point in ...
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Are there non-scientific ways to have a justified belief in levitation?
Levitation, as a paranormal phenomenon, has been reported more than once. For instance, it is not totally uncommon to hear about reports of levitation among exorcists (e.g., see these sources).
Is it ...
user66156
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How do you respond to this common critique of American Pragmatism?
I frequently argue the virtues of anti-epistemological pragmatism(neopragmatism) with people who hold more traditional epistemological views. The most common argument that I hear is:
Well, if we take ...
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Does Popper's falsifiability criterion hold any utility?
I understand that Popper's falsifiability criterion is meant to demarcate science from pseudoscience. But, is that all one can expect from it?
I mean I do not care about science, but the values it ...
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What were the reactions to Hume's problem of induction from scientists practicing in the field?
I'm well aware of all the discussion in the field of philosophy of science spurred by Hume's formulation of the problem of induction:
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/induction-problem/
My question ...
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Is science value-free?
Some people, like Sam Harris, say that science has values of its own. According to him, even a statement like "Water is two parts hydrogen and one part oxygen" is value-laden. But I don't ...
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Does the philosophy of data analysis exist?
Is there such a field as "philosophy of data analysis"?
Questions that are of interest to me are
What are the distinctive features of data analysis as opposed to other elements of ...
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