New answers tagged philosophy-of-science
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Yet another version of this is Terrence McKenna's notion of novelty-driven evolution.
You can look at "homeostasis-with-novelty" as something that was established for physical particles by the time the Higgs boson retired, eventually established for chemical patterns, then for life forms, and now for civilizations, with innumerable options and various ...
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In the United States our east coast is sinking while the sea level is rising so there are already problems we are dealing with today. Problems at the Norfolk Naval Station, problems in Miami, Florida, both with flooding at high tide. People are dealing with this now.
Civil engineers can do amazing things (we have all probably heard of the Dutch engineers) ...
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Whether the climate change being currently observed in various geographic areas of the world is, in every case, caused by human carbon loading of the atmosphere is one question.
The other question is, what is the scientific basis for the claim that human activity has caused such an imbalance within the relative bounds of climate change that a tipping point ...
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An interesting parallel here is with the debate on an earlier global climate problem. This was the effect of CFCs on the ozone layer and motivated an international consensus to limit and phase out their use. This was achieved within a relatively short time frame and without a great deal of controversy of about the scientific evidence.
Since the 'debate' on ...
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Judea Pearl's book on causality[1] was written precisely due to such type of issue, mainly to define a method to establish the causal relationship of a fact of perception with another (I think he says somewhere that people did not believe the causal link between vaccines and sickness, so he tried to formalize the process to establish causality with such book)...
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First, there was outright denial. People didn't believe the climate is changing. (Back then, climate change was commonly called "global warming," though that term was a little simplistic.)
As the evidence became ever more overwhelming, people were forced to admit that climate change is real. So they tried a different approach; they simply described it as a ...
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I will answer your question by defining 'pseudo-science' then compare and contrast climate change denial with canonical examples of pseudo-science.
there are some valid arguments
I assume you mean scientific arguments? Then yes, it's a pseudo-science, because you are trying to pass it off as science, but it is not scientifically tenable. Science is what ...
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First, let me point out that the term 'pseudoscience' is badly misused in the modern world. Pseudoscience points at a particular activity: the attempt to portray something as a scientific result without actually engaging scientific methodologies, procedures, or reasonings. You can think of it as an effort to obtain the political/social authority of 'being ...
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Your question has a simple answer. Long answers on matters as wide as this just add confusion and incoherence.
Philosophy is the root discipline dealing with all knowledge. Philosophy deals about the final truth.
Science is just one type of knowledge, featured by the scientific method. Science deals about empirical truth.
Example: thermodynamics describe ...
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How does one find Truth is the same as it's always been: seek with an earnest heart. Perhaps that is what you are doing now, so here is my answer from the universe.
Dr. Phillips is wrong. Just like Hegel suggested you can find a synthesis between two opposing viewpoints without compromising either. There is always another line between any set of data. ...
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What is technology ? (is it only material? aren't abstractions and cognitive processes also technologies in a way?) What about the importance of rationality in Western thought ? Can we think technology as separated of rationality?
See the idea of techno-capitalism for instance to grasp the moral universe (understand it as ethos) gravitating around the ...
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"Man finds himself in a perilous position…A far greater danger threatens [than the outbreak of a third world war]: the approaching tide of technological revolution in the atomic age could so captivate, bewitch, dazzle and beguile man that calculative thinking may someday come to be accepted and practiced as the only way of thinking. What great danger then ...
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Without endorsing Dr Phillips' perspective — more because I find it presumptuous and arrogant than because I think he is factually wrong — the way to evaluate a scientific claim is on the preponderance of evidence. The 'preponderance of evidence' scheme implies the following:
The one makes the effort to incorporate all relevant observations as evidence for ...
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One line of reasoning to assess the truth or falsity of a belief system is to look at what Jesus would call the fruit in an individual or society that holds that belief. In other words, if you want to know whether someone's thought processes are sound, take a look at the outworking of their thought in the life that they live.
Perhaps you might say that the ...
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Most of the problems are caused by a lack of clarity about the difference between 'something' and 'nothing'. Many commentators on this problem are naive realists trying to protect their position.
The 'Nothing' of the mystics is the only one that makes any sense to me. At any rate, the idea that physics can solve metaphysical problems is absurd. What ...
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I like Thom's answer. But it could be that you're asking a question slightly different than the one he answered. Maybe, for example, you're asking about the kinds of causal "first-ness" that feature in Aquinas's arguments about God as first mover, or first efficient cause (i.e., the first two of his "five ways" here). So just in case, I'll offer another ...
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Metaphorically speaking, see here
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1VZEvPXlY0cYdw3XXWmiC1XS5lhZLHPvG/view?usp=drivesdk
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1/0 = ∞
One (1) is infinitely larger than zero (0)
So it is with Existence (something), infinite to ‘non-Existence’ (nothing)
In the infinite Existence, the concept of non-existence can exist
The concept of existence however cannot exist in ‘non-Existence’ (because it cannot hold or contain anything)
Because you exist (the fact you are reading this), proves ...
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The best answer that I can give is that of the impossibility of actual infinity. Actual infinity is impossible because allowing it would allow all sorts of absurdities, such as Hilbert's Hotel. Therefore, the infinite regress must stop at some point, at which we have an uncaused cause. If God were to exist, then he would be an uncaused cause, so it is ...
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God did have a choice. If anyone can be said to have libertarian free will, it is God. Not even an omnipotent being can violate the law of non-contradiction. So, every universe created by God has to be self-consistent. However, the fundamental constants and laws of nature were created by God in such a way as to support life, and specifically human life. If ...
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For Aristotle, all change is change of or in a substance. Substances are what ultimately exist and are the fundamental bearers or subjects of change. If a substance undergoes change in its essential, defining properties, in the sense that it loses those properties, then it ceases to exist as that substance. If a human being is essentially (definably) a ...
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What is the value of a formal model in science?
To some extent, this question is the basis of the divide between realist and anti-realist positions in the philosophy of science, so it's a very broad question with a lot of metaphysical territory to cover; however, some gross oversimplifications follow:
First, from Mary Hesse, on page 300 of Blackwell's A ...
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First a point that may or may not be clear: we care about the 'target system'; the model is in many ways incidental. The target system is some system or process that exists in the real world, outside (as Wittgenstein would put it) the limits of our language. We create models to capture elements of that system in language (including the language of ...
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Since the questioner mentions the Philosophy of Science, here is a response to 'What role does Philosophy play in the realm of Science?' Your creating models conundrum gives voice to the concern that science performed for its own sake, with no limits or guidelines is problematic. At the moment there does not appear to be any systematic, science based ...
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Suppose that M is a formal (mathematical) model and T is a target system. Then interpretation can be thought of as a map I:M->T. You can think of M and I as of "a picture" of T. The picture (as usual) can be to some degree accurate. Nevertheless its accuracy can be verified by comparing M via I with the target system T. Now suppose that you verified your ...
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See Christian Wolff, Philosophia prima sive ontologia, § 884 and § 886.
See also : Kant Lexikon, Rudolph Eisler
The term " causality " as used in contemporary philosophy derives from Wolff through Kant.
Wollf calls " causatum" the relatum of a cause ( = that to which a cause is related, as a " cause of").
Not all " causatum" is an " effect" for there ...
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Teleological argument as form of fine tuning isn't refuted.
In fact in an academic paper, Man Ho Chan has argued from mathematical analysis and systematic comparison of different hypothesis, and shows that as per current understanding, data strongly prefer theistic explanation.
From paper:
Among the available hypotheses, the chance-alone hypothesis, ...
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