New answers tagged philosophy-of-science
0
"The Passing Thought is itself the thinker," as William James said, and it is all "passing thoughts," but passing thoughts of a pre-established whole.
If you follow all the matter in the known universe back to its infinitely small starting point you come to the plausible threshold of Idealism, where, as James mystically suggested: "Consciousness is ...
0
The question is focused especially after Popper essentially "removed" (though I don't know if successfully, tell me if not) the dialectic method at the core of those Idealists as pseudo-science.
Well Joseph Brenner has written in Logic in Reality (2008):
I thus claim that logic not only should but can be extended to reality,
provided one takes into ...
0
Is Quantum Bayesianism a viable solution to interpretational problems of quantum mechanics? [closed]
Could Qbism treatment of probability be considered a good way to understand probability in QM for physicists?
How QBism understands probability is exactly the same as how probability is understood in QM; in both cases it is epistemic. Moreover, QBism
maintains that rather than (either directly or indirectly) representing a physical system, a quantum ...
0
Why is the explanation of the triboelectric effect or the electrostatic effect(indicative examples) not deductive?
This is because the world is given to us but we are not given an axiomatic system. By finding the appropriate questions to ask and then understanding the how and the why we construct a theory of the world and then we can attempt to put it in ...
1
Astrology is not falsifiable. It does not make falsifiable predictions, and your notion that it is making those predictions and they are already falsified is a misunderstanding of the system. Because Astrological rules are wrapped around religious assumptions, if an astrologer finds out that the specific things they have predicted are contradicted, they ...
1
One very traditional solution here is 'non-overlapping magisteria' -- the idea that science and religion are talking about different things in the same terms, and never conflict with each other, except when they are already wrong on their own terms. (In more modern terms, they are playing different language-games, which establish different kinds of power, ...
1
I see two factors at play. First our cognitive bias to structure the world in terms of intentions, those of ourselves & others. And supervenient explanatory layers, where units in those layers are causes in their own terms, but the layer is constituted fundamentally or reducibly of the physicists world of regularities.
We learn physical skills and the ...
1
When we talk about the rules of chess, we mean the rules that govern the movements of individual pieces. In other words, we can enumerate a short list:
All pieces capture opponents by occupying their space, except as noted for pawns
Pawns move one space forward, except:
When capturing, they move on the diagonal
Their first move, they may move two spaces, ...
7
Short answer: Life goes on, and there is no point spending all our summer days preparing for winter storms.
Longer answer: It's strange you'd single out CERN for this question. The US alone spends trillions on a bloated military, when some of that money could easily be redirected into health and welfare. Entertainment industries suck up billions more ...
1
I wouldn't say that advantageous heuristics reduce to the underlying rules of the game, although you could do this if you can define "advantageous" strictly in terms of those rules. I think we can at least say that this is a case of supervenience where a given set of effective heuristics supervene over the rules or possibly a combination of the rules and ...
2
The fields of Health and Physics are clearly barely, if at all related. Their justifications are therfore also barely, if at all, related. The burden is therefore on you to make an argument for/against Physics research which is not based on Health issues.
1
Kαλημέρα! What's left of the dwindling Greek community in Chicago sends its regards.
The nature of your question really generalizes to a good philosophical question. How is an empirical explanation like that of electrostatics not deductive?
The short answer is, it is to an extent. However, it is not primarily a deductive activity. There are many ways ...
1
Science is not a theory. It is a method. The difference, therefore, between science and pseudo-science is a difference of method, and not, at least not necessarily, a difference in the truth of theories. Thus, it is probably true that the body adapts to training so that training for running adapts the body to running, at least to some extent.
The article in ...
2
Is Quantum Bayesianism a viable solution to interpretational problems of quantum mechanics? [closed]
What the issues are, and what "effectively solving" them means is largely in the eye of the beholder, people decide among interpretations largely based on their personal core beliefs about realism, determinism, the role of science and the like. Quantum Bayesianism, with its mix of realism about physics with anti-realism about the structure of quantum theory, ...
2
The Atomists thought that collisions cause motion. But that's only half right. Collisions are where an exchange of motion (momentum, energy) happens. A collision assumes there's already some kinetic energy--i.e. motion-- in the system of particles that are colliding. So saying collisions cause motion doesn't explain much.
That collisions cause motion is ...
3
There is a simple, straightforward reason that memetics has not 'caught on' and become more widely accepted: the concept underlying it — depending on how one interprets the term 'meme' — are either philosophically derivative or nonsensical pseudoscience. The mere fact that I have to qualify that statement by pointing out that the term 'meme' is in dire need ...
1
Where semiotics is essentially the study of symbols and their manipulation for their own sake, memetics is a "neo-Darwinian" evolutionary theory of the ideas communicated via those symbols.
Besides Dawkins, Daniel Dennett and psychologist Susan Blackmore have contributed most strongly to the theory of memetics. Whether it will end up as a branch of ...
1
Have a look at Satya P. Mohanty’s Literary Theory and the Claims of History: Postmodernism, Objectivity, Multicultural Politics, in particular Chapter 6, entitled, "On Situating Objective Knowlwdge," where he discusses the de facto relationship between post modernist/post structuralist theoreticians' (eg Derrida) and the anglo post positive/anti empiricist-...
0
I believe saying "Botany isn't a science" is merely meant to be derogatory, not a serious philosophical statement. The speaker simply doesn't respect Botany. It is intended in much the same vein as the assertion "Real Men don't eat quiche".
0
You misunderstand Aristotle's metaphysics, as well as his prime mover argument.
Aristotle's prime mover:
God (the prime mover) necessarily exists. Because:
I. Something cannot be the efficient cause of itself. a) If A exists, another caused it (another necessarily caused the potential of its existence to become reality).
II. A thing's continued ...
1
Economics is currently and usually defined as the social science studying the production, distribution, and consumption of wealth and of goods and services. It is a social science that uses mathematics and mathematical models, but its mathematical hypotheses and models are often not testable or verified experimentally. So it does not follow rigorously the ...
1
In answer to your request. Michael Harrington: [The] Twilight of Capitalism. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1977.
A good book. Terrible timing. Ronald Reagan came in in 1981!
This title may seem unpromising, but If my memory serves (it may not), you will find this issue of tools covered in the book. Sraffa is mentioned.
I guarantee it will help your ...
0
If something is logically necessary, then it should be logically incoherent to question it. And theoretical physicists postulate all sorts of alternatives as to how our universe works, and effectively postulate what turn out to be alternate universes when (most of) their speculations end up not matching this one. This, in general, is how all science works -...
0
When I try to imagine 'nothing', I try to imagine that there is no matter, no space, no time, no colour, no one to describe that, no one to observe that, it has never existed and never will. The best I can get to is a black void, and I try to make that black void shrink and disappear but I fail each time. It's hard for me to imagine nothing.
Yes, I agree ...
0
According to my understanding, all mental concepts are grounded in or refer to some phenomena that exists and can be perceived with the five senses. Either physical phenomena, perceived through the five gross senses (ears, smell, touch, taste, and sight); emotions that are felt with the heart; cognition that is perceived in the brain... There are 7 major ...
0
A way to view it:
Is there a fundamental entity of some sort?
E.g. your brains (solipsism)?
If this fundamental entity disappears, then do the things around it continue existing?
Therefore, is sensory input relative to this fundamental entity? Then what does (fundamental, ideal) nothingness relate to? Disappearance of fundamental entity? But can the ...
0
A couple of non-elucidating quotes:
Starlight asked Non-entity, saying, 'Master, do you exist? or do you
not exist?' He got no answer to his question, however, and looked
stedfastly to the appearance of the other, which was that of a deep
void. All day long he looked to it, but could see nothing; he listened
for it, but could hear nothing; he ...
0
Theoretically, practically and above these (I mean, in all aspects) your consciousness must be there to know about nothing/nothingness (to know even about that nothingness that makes you scary). Nothing/nothingness is meaningless/nonsense unless you give it a greater meaning; especially while perceiving this material world.
Will you be able to call it ...
0
The situation is clouded because figures such as Leibnitz were both great mathematicians and great philosophers. Moreover Leibnitz once wrote how
"In imagining that there is a machine whose construction would enable it to think, to sense, and to have perception, one could conceive it enlarged while retaining the same proportions, so that one could enter ...
1
Your assertion of predictability [which incidentally was also made by the mathematician/physicist Simon-Pierre Laplace] is now known to be incorrect. Other responders have pointed out that QM makes it impossible to know the current state of the universe exactly (since some measurements cannot be made simultaneously with infinite accuracy). Compounded on ...
2
The notion of science as 'data driven' is misleading. Science is usually either goal driven or anomaly driven (which in the end amount to the same thing).
Goal driven science means that someone wants to do something (or maybe just do something better), and they start trying different things as common sense or inspiration dictates. These efforts produce ...
0
There is no room for non-determinism in this world. And, I would argue nor even in a hypothetical world.
I admit, I don't know the mathematics of QM. But, when people ask us to accept that the nature is random at its fundamental level, that randomness is the universe's fundamental property, probably, haven't thought about randomness itself a lot.
...
Top 50 recent answers are included
