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This is a very common issue when dealing with science. Much of science's approaches to Truth (with a capital letter) is through abduction, an approach which assumes the most likely hypothesis is true. If you read the linked SEP article, this is fraught with nuances, as you suggest.
Personally, I am a fan of radical skepticism, and the Aggripan Trilemma. ...
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The quoted paragraph starts off with the wrong meaning of extraordinary by taking it to be synonymous with supernatural when it means remarkable or exceptional so everything that follows must be wrong.
What that extraordinary quote means is simply that big claims need big evidence. For example if you saw a rainbow coloured car, I could be convinced to ...
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The kind of philosophy exemplified by Hegel's Science of Logic, Wittgensteins Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus and Kant's Critique of Pure Reason can be understood as "scientific investigation of logic", even conceived as a "capability of human beings" (at least in Kant's and Hegel's case), but not "as objective performance", I think. I'm guessing you take a ...
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Science is about describing and predicting phenomena. So science will be "done" when it can accurately and precisely describe and predict all phenomena that can be scientifically determined.
If the rules and any additional assumptions can be shown to meet those requirements, plus can be shown to be irreducible, then we'd be finished. It's probably fair to ...
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From a science perspective, we don't know that what we know is right. You could argue that at the most fundamental level the only thing that an individual knows is that they exist, that they are conscious.
It is also a mistake to say that science can "understand" natural phenomena. Scientific theories can really only describe natural phenomena. They do ...
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Here's philosopher Eric Steinhart's answer to the question (the math part anyways), his book More Precisely: The Math You Need to Do Philosophy. From the publisher's website:
More Precisely is a rigorous and engaging introduction to the mathematics necessary to do philosophy. Eric Steinhart provides lucid explanations of many basic mathematical concepts ...
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So far as I am aware the demarcation principle, in Popper at least, serves merely to distinguish science from non-science. A scientific theory is empirically falsifiable while pseudoscience (e.g. astrology) and metaphysics are not.
A certain confusion arises from the fact that Popper also inclines to regard the non-scientific, as specified by his examples, ...
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Do any falsificationist philosophers actually argue this, that if some theory isn't falsifiable then it cannot be justified?
Definitely. Although, not with regard to just any "theory", but with regard to any claim to empirical knowledge.
Popper's rationale for falsificationism, as explained in his seminal essay "Science: Conjectures and Refutations", is ...
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What is an extraordinary claim?
Let's step away from the question of the supernatural for a moment. If someone told me that gravity is only real if you believe in it, and that I could fly like superman if I tried, I would be very skeptical. Why? Because it contradicts a lifetime of accumulated experience. It also runs counter to reason - since babies ...
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The use of the word "extraordinary" may be a way to shift the burden of proof. Here is Bo Bennett's description of that which may be an informal logical fallacy:
Making a claim that needs justification, then demanding that the opponent justifies the opposite of the claim. The burden of proof is a legal and philosophical concept with differences in each ...
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[..]he only difference between an "extraordinary claim" and an ordinary one is that there is usually less tangential knowledge surrounding what is described as an extraordinary one[..]
The above quote from the last paragraph is tossed out and very casually and dismissively and then glossed over. What the author calls "tangential knowledge" is one of the ...
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The special theory of relativity may provide a way for measurements to be different from the perspective of four dimentsions rather than from three dimensions. Here is Wikipedia's description of relativity:
Special relativity is based on two postulates which are contradictory in classical mechanics:
The laws of physics are the same for all ...
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It is not assumed that reality has "dimensions" in all cases. Dimensionality is a purely mathematical concept, and whether it applies directly to reality itself depends on whether reality is made of mathematics or not. That particular question is an open question in philosophy.
What does have dimensionality are the scientific models we use to make sense ...
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Your question is vague and close to gibberish, it will likely be closed unless you clarify it.
The short answer is yes, string theory for instance posits 'rolled up' additional dimensions, and the holographic principle suggests our universe is like a 4D surface curved in 5D. The general underlying principle is that dimensions are directly equivalent to ...
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One of the most influential definitions of knowledge dates back to Plato, and describes knowledge as "justified true belief." We cannot "know" anything that is not true, we cannot be said to "know" something that we do not believe, and we don't actually "know" something if we don't have any legitimate reason for believing it (even if it's true).
From the ...
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It's impossible for everything we know to be wrong.
There is certainty in our thought.
Consider the following: (i) not everything is what it seems. This means that the objects of our thinking can differ from what we think they are.
This claim cannot be disputed without assuming its validity first. Thus, trying to dispute this claim necessarily leads to a ...
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