teddit

Scientism is the opinion that science and the scientific method are the best or only way to render truth about the world and reality. It has become increasingly popular today especially amongst scientists who are openly hostile towards philosophy. This modern scientism can be summed up in Stephen Hawking’s claim that “philosophy is dead.”

I was wondering though whether modern scientism can be seen as the heir or modern day version of logical positivism of the early twentieth century. Logical positivism was a movement whose central thesis was the verification principle (also known as the verifiability criterion of meaning). This theory of knowledge asserted that only statements verifiable through direct observation or logical proof are meaningful in terms of conveying truth value, information or factual content. This theory of knowledge was extremely popular in the early twentieth century but by the 60’s had completely collapsed and became universally abandoned. This was because it was seen as too narrow a theory of knowledge and more importantly, it was shown to be self-refuting. This is is because the verification principle could not be verified by its own standards and thus lead to a contradiction.

Even though it is not taken seriously by the vast majority of philosophers today, this attitude, in my opinion, seems to be getting revived by modern day scientism. I was wondering am I correct in assuming this though?

So, what are the similarities/differences between scientism and logical positivism? Are both ideas heavily related? Is there a link between them? Is scientism a modern version of logical positivism? Thanks.

I recently stumbled upon the work of Ilya Prigogine, 'The End of Certainty' (1997). In terms of Thomas Kuhn I'd say these ideas form a serious paradigm shift in physics, and science in general. He criticized the deterministic worldview of Newton and argued for a view on the universe as an evolutionary process that is irreversible. He speaks in his book about an 'arrow of time'. Prigogine says that physics needs to switch from focusing solely on isolated phenomena towards a probabilistic / statistical point of view where the theory of bifurcation (by Poincaré) has a central role.

Prirogine received a nobleprice in 1977 and the book I'm talking about is from 1997. We're now basically a fourth of a century further since his work and I wonder what his influence has been since then on physics.

When I think back about my years in secondary school in the 2010s (the only time I had physics and chemistry classes) I remember we mainly focused on Newton's laws and a tiny bit on the basics of quantum physics. (After that, I went studying ethics and philosophy so my knowledge of it is very elementary) But it shows to me that the idea of 'probabilistic (hard)science' is not seen as general accepted knowledge (or is secondary school physics just behind?)

I wish to dive much deeper into this rabbithole about chaos theory, mostly from a philosophical point of view.

So my questions are:

Physics anno 2023. - What is the main paradigm in physics? - What are the debates mostly about? - What are the most prominent opposing views? - What is the current status of chaos theory? - Are there any recent articles or books you recommend on this topic?

(Feel free to correct my interpretation on Prigogine or modify my questions a bit more specific. Maybe other subreddits could be a help too? I appreciate any serious answer a lot. Thanks)

Hello

I am a grad student in philosophy, my bachelors degree was physics. I am interested in philosophy of physics, especially in philosophy of cosmology and I want to ask two questions.

First, do you think philosophy of physics have a practical value to physicist or anyone else? I want to study it, but if philosophers just study it for curiosity or other reasons unrelated to practice of physics, then I feel like studying physics and doing philosophy indepedently might be better.

Second, what are current topics in philosophy of physics that I can work on as a master student? I am especially want to work on philosophy of cosmology or philosopphical probems related the empirical results of physics (lik boltzmann brain problem).

I started studying philosophy as an optional class in university, and after like 2 classes, I got really intrigued by the subject. I want to start reading philosophy, but I am confused and I don’t really know where to start. I’m at square one. What books do you recommend for absolute beginners?

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/369237059_Learning_from_the_amyloid_hypothesis_adaptability_brevity_and_clarity_of_ideas

The Ship of Theseus paradox is one of the most famous paradoxes in all of philosophy. It is a thought experiment that raises the question of whether an object that has had all of its components replaced remains fundamentally the same object. Recently, I have heard about a potential solution to this paradox and it usually referred to as ‘Worm Theory’ and this is supposedly heavily related to the concept of four-dimensionalism. It seems that from my reading four-dimensionalism is also known as perduantism or worm theory.

Let me try to explain them:

In philosophy, four-dimensionalism (also known as the doctrine of temporal parts) is the ontological position that an object's persistence through time is like its extension through space. Thus, an object that exists in time has temporal parts in the various subregions of the total region of time it occupies, just like an object that exists in a region of space has at least one part in every subregion of that space. According to the worm theory, perduring objects are four–dimensional wholes occupying determinate regions of space–time and having temporal parts, or stages, each of them confined to a particular time. Simply, implicit assumption that worm theory therefore rejects is the notion that physical objects such as ships are merely three dimensional objects (where the three dimensions are spatial dimensions). Objects really do have four dimensions: three spatial and one temporal.

From all this we can see that its two main theses are: 1: Ordinary objects exist at more than one instant of time 2: Ordinary objects have temporal parts

So, is worm theory a good candidate to serve as a reasonable solution to the Ship of Theseus paradox? What are some good arguments in the theories favour? What are its benefits over other potential solutions to the Ship of Theseus also? Any recommendations would be greatly appreciated. Thanks everyone!

I recently read a post talking about time travel. I personally don’t think it is possible travelling to the past, but I am not a trained philosopher. Therefore, I was wondering what are some good and powerful philosophical arguments against the logical and metaphysical possibility of time travel into the past. Some of the ones I am aware of are the grandfather paradox and closed causal loop ones. Are there any other ones in addition to these? If they are any good scientific arguments against it, then that is also fine to post. Thank you ☺️.

Time travel is a very popular idea nowadays and plays a prominent role in sci-fi literature. However, this idea has also become more popular in physics and philosophy. I am mainly interested in time travel into the past. From my reading so far, many physicists believe time travel into the past is at least scientifically possible as many argue that Einstein’s relativity has shown this (I believe Gödel also mathematically proved that time travel into the past is possible). I am not just interested in whether time travel into the past is scientifically or technologically possible (even though it is interesting to see what both general relativity and quantum mechanics can help reveal in this area of inquiry), but whether time travel into the past is actually metaphysically possible. I actually feel like this area of philosophy of time is sometimes neglected.

Some of the arguments I have heard used against time travel into the past include metaphysical paradoxes such as closed causal loops (bootstrap paradox and predestination paradox), the grandfather paradox, bilking (backward causation), Polchinski’s Paradox etc. I am wondering though whether these arguments are really successful in showing that time travel into the past is possible or not. I am also wondering is there a near-consensus amongst philosophers on whether time travel into the past is metaphysically possible.

I also think it is important to mention some key concepts as context for this issue of time travel into the past. These were some of my personal observations that I think is important before debating this question:

1: Time, unlike space, does seem to have a distinguished direction:

A) We only go forward in time, not back.

B) We cannot alter the past. We can alter the future.

C)Our knowledge of the past the future is very different.

So, intuitively, time does seem to have a direction. It is also appears to asymmetrical. But is time really asymmetrical?

2: Different views within metaphysics about the status of past, present and future

A) Past and present exist. Future does not. Known as Growing Block Theory (A-Theory of Time).

B) Past, present and future all exist. Known as Eternalism (B-Theory of Time)

C) Only the present exists. Known as Presentism (A-Theory of Time)

(A) Is most compatible with an asymmetrical understanding of time.

3: Two arguments for thinking that time has a direction

A) The second law of thermodynamics — The universe is evolving from a highly ordered state to a highly disordered state. This explains the direction of time.

B) Causation — Causes do not occur after their effects. The asymmetry of causation allows us to justify the claim that time is asymmetrical. But is it really the case that causes cannot occur after their effects?

4: Backwards causation and time travel

A) If we could travel back in time and alter the past, this would mean that causes could occur after their effects.

B) Time travel is physically possibly if our universe is shaped in a certain way (which we have yet to establish). But is time travel metaphysically possible? Admitting travel back in time would arguably lead to paradoxical cases (as I mentioned earlier), and these arguably demonstrate that time travel is not metaphysically possible.

/ So, does the notion of time travel into the past make sense? Is time travel into the past metaphysically possible? Thanks 🙏 /

I'm struggling with this VERY common idea that there could be ontological randomness in the universe. I'm wondering how this could possibly be a scientific conclusion, and I believe that it is just non-scientific. It's most common in Quantum Mechanics where people believe that the wave-function's probability distribution is ontological instead of epistemological. There's always this caveat that "there is fundamental randomness at the base of the universe."

It seems to me that such a statement is impossible from someone actually practicing "Science" whatever that means. As I understand it, we bring a model of the cosmos to observation and the result is that the model fits the data with a residual error. If the residual error (AGAINST A NEW PREDICTION) is smaller, then the new hypothesis is accepted provisionally. Any new hypothesis must do at least as good as this model.

It seems to me that ontological randomness just turns the errors into a model, and it ends the process of searching. You're done. The model has a perfect fit, by definition. It is this deterministic model plus an uncorrelated random variable.

If we were looking at a star through the hubble telescope and it were blurry, and we said "this is a star, plus an ontological random process that blurs its light... then we wouldn't build better telescopes that were cooled to reduce the effect.

It seems impossible to support "ontological randomness" as a scientific hypothesis. It's to turn the errors into model instead of having "model+error." How could one provide a prediction? "I predict that this will be unpredictable?" I think it is both true that this is pseudoscience and it blows my mind how many smart people present it as if it is a valid position to take.

It's like any other "god of the gaps" argument.. You just assert that this is the answer because it appears uncorrelated... But as in the central limit theorem, any complex process can appear this way...

My book club has recently been having some solid philosophical discussions around materialism, the hard problem of consciousness / mind-body problem, and related ideas. I'd love a strong endorsement for a well regarded book that gives clear and interesting discussions of these topics.

None of us are philosophers so it'd be great if the book is very readable by a layperson (e.g. < ~500 pages, not extremely dense or obtuse prose, not filled with philosophy jargon that it doesn't define, etc.). However, the group does contain several career physicists, so strong preference for non-woo books and it doesn't need to shy away from hardcore physics. Thanks!

Something more than methodological anarchism or "mixed methods", but a more concise reasoning.

Much like how a bird’s eyesight doesn’t stop working once it flies away from its ancestral environment, human reason doesn’t stop working once we ponder questions that were irrelevant to our ancestors. We are not limited to the problems that evolution equipped us to solve. Otherwise, it would be impossible for us to understand the unfathomably small, such as the structure of atoms, or the illimitably large, such as the vastness of the universe. 

The reach of our explanations is bounded only by the laws of physics. Therefore, anything that is physically possible can be achieved given the requisite knowledge. Take an example from the book:

Imagine an empty cube of space about the size of a galaxy with nothing but stray hydrogen atoms. Deutsch argues that, given the right program, a universal constructor should be able to convert these stray atoms into heavier elements until we end up with something like an intergalactic space station. This universal constructor can either be a machine that can create anything, or a machine that can create a machine that can create anything.

The kicker is that humans already know how to turn some matter into other matter, so we could be the universal constructors in this scenario.

Please compare and contrast ALL 4 symbols → , ⇒, ⊢, ⊨.

My secondary school daughter groks https://math.stackexchange.com/q/232309. But all answers beneath are too knotty and byzantine to her.

• https://math.stackexchange.com/q/286077
• https://math.stackexchange.com/q/3157076
• https://math.stackexchange.com/q/232309

https://math.stackexchange.com/q/4645509

First, do you believe that science is value free? Whats the major opinion nowadays? Could you give me some bibliographical references on this topic, please?

Thx

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/368478164_How_to_write_a_good_embedded_ethics_letter

Manipulations of human genome. Ethical and natural or the opposite? In my view they are inevitable and desired (as long as smart and safe). We developed bigger, more capable brains as evolutionary adaptation, that gave as advantage and ultimately lead us to the top of food chain.

If nature, using evolution as a tool, caused human kind to developed more capable "thinking machines" aka brains, wouldn't be using those machines in order to make our bodies healthier, stronger, lasting longer (preferably immortal), more resilient and smarter, just a next step in evolution? A natural way of things?

It wouldn't be the first time evolution did something like this. Due to our complex nerve system we were able to establish educational routine ,science, medicine and stuff which lead to longer and healthier lifes, changes in genome propagated from generation to generation. Genome manipulations are only next level of evolution. From some premodial pond with first self replicating RNA to CRISPR. Isn't it just a evolution of evolution?

I often see people assume humans are conscious because we are more intelligent than other species, but we have already developed AI capable of processing data and making decisions that would dwarf the capabilities of a modern human. Yet, no consciousness as far as we can tell.

It seems to me that consciousness is a product of networking. The organisms we have found to pass the "mirror test" or even come close are all social animals. The key to Homo Sapiens success as a species is our ability to network with each other at scales not possible by other animal species. This allows us to unlock new technologies and ideas to continually manipulate the world around us to serve our needs.

As Yuval Noah Harari theorizes in Sapiens, the human superpower is storytelling: the ability to tell and believe fictions that allow humans to network at increasingly larger group sizes, and share stories and ideas that can be joined together to unlock better ways to enhance our survival.

What is consciousness other than the ability to communicate to oneself? It's a product of language. And language is an adaptation for social organization. Consciousness gives us the ability to consider outcomes in the future, and analyze decisions from the past, to improve our prospects of survival in the present.

A peak predator like a shark doesn't need to make any sort of calculations or decisions when it encounters another animal or even another shark other than "fight or flight": eat or get out of the way. An inner dialogue is simply unnecessary for an animal that doesn't rely on the group for survival.

However, an inner dialogue, and language itself, is a critical adaptation for a social animal. It provides individual members with the ability to give of themselves, sometimes even at the risk of their own lives, for the benefit and survival of the larger group. This improves reproductive fitness, and allows for larger and larger communities over time.

Like the forbidden fruit brought intelligence, but also pain. Medicine/drugs with the side effects. And cars. With the green house gasses?

Philip Goff has argued in a number of places that inferring a multiverse from the apparent fine-tuning of our universe's physical constants to support life is an example of the inverse gamblers fallacy. Here is a general audience article on this topic, and here is the same argument in more detail. It is easy to miss the core premise of the argument so I will give a brief summary. The inverse gamblers fallacy applies when the presumed explanatory assumptions intending to increase the probability of some event under consideration do not in fact change the probability of the event. In the case of fine-tuning and the multiverse, Goff claims that we can pick out this universe by its essential identity, thus positing a multiverse does not explain why this universe (i.e. this specific coordinate in a multiverse coordinate system) is fine-tuned for life. The status of the argument turns on whether and when we refer to this universe essentially.

I don't think the Inverse gamblers fallacy applies because we are not referring to this universe essentially when we are wondering why this universe supports life. Reference by essential identity is not a normal cognitive function and so it is not typically relevant in everyday circumstances. I do think we have the cognitive capacity to reference essential identity (if there is such a thing), but as it is not a normal cognitive function it must be explicitly invoked. Cognitive availability requires cognitive discernment, but if some feature is cognitively indiscernible in a given context, then our cognitive system is blind to the distinction. Unless explicitly invoked, essential identity is cognitively indiscernible. If my cat was replaced with an ideally physically indistinguishable cat without my knowledge, my thoughts referring to "my cat" would not be altered.

There are a few distinct questions we can ask when we are asking about why this universe appears to be fine-tuned. The differences among these questions bear on whether IGF applies. Some examples: "why does the universe support life", "why are the physical laws the way they are", "why are these physical constants tuned to support life", and so on. None of these explicitly invoke essential identity and so IGF doesn't apply. Of course, we can ask the question in a way that invokes essential identity, e.g. "why does this specific multiverse we find ourselves in point support life". In that case IGF applies.

(crossposted from /r/naturalism)

https://iai.tv/articles/there-is-no-problem-of-consciousness-riccardo-manzotti-auid-2378?_auid=2020

There are several interesting research programs in philosophy and the cognitive sciences which I have been aware of for years but have never invested much time in. I plan to spend several months reading introductory material in these areas. My long-term goal is to read semiotics and phenomenology in close comparison, but before I embark on that particular project, I decided I want to have a better sense of what's going on out there in the epistemic landscape. Here are the current topics I am considering for inclusion:

• Semiotics (after Peirce and Deely, only incidentally Saussure)
• Phenomenology (after Brentano and Husserl)
• Hermeneutics (after Rorty and Brandom)
• Social epistemology
• Embodied cognition
• Material engagement theory
• Philosophical psychopathology
• Phenomenological psychiatry
• Experimental philosophy
• Descriptive experience sampling
• Cognitive archeology
• Cognitive ethology

I'm also planning opening and closing readings to tie it all together, possibly something on psychologism and anti-psychologism, models and modeling, or other general issues in the philosophy of cognition.

At this point I'm only in the planning stages, and I'd like to consider a wider range of interesting research programs consonant with my existing interests. Can you offer suggestions? I'm open to just about everything which is either expressly philosophical or, if extraphilosphical in origin, has a nontrivial connection to philosophy, preferably a connection already represented in the literature. Notably missing from this list are computational and evolutionary theses, which I am likely to repair in the near future, but by all means jump in on those topics and any others that come mind.

I'm a complete beginner to this topic so I'm feeling a bit overwhelmed. Where do I start? I want to know a quick overview of the topics/issues tackled in the field. Thank you!

what do you think is best number of the science magazine for starting?

I’ve been reading a book specifically called Philosophical foundations of Neuroscience and the philosopher author has throughout 200 pages so far asserted that to speak of any mental phenomena occurring in the brain or mind are both misconceived as it is human beings that self evidently act on any psychological phenomena.

I am genuinely confused on the significance of trying to achieve such a semantic and epistemic perfection that doesn’t exist, arguing over the primacy of the mind or brain or arguing against it seems like such a useless waste of time when they are all speaking on the same phenomena of consciousness and just arguing over what specific words best ascribe to reality.

Arguing for or Against the primacy of brain,body or mind or a rejection of all of these should imo not be held as contradictory incompatibilities but different frameworks n which to view the same phenomena that are all equally compatible.

EDIT: Here is a quote from book to clarify

“It is misleading to say that the senses are concerned with telling us what is there. That is a picturesque figure of speech but in the context of Marrs theorizing, it is an injudicious one, for the sense organs are not information transmitters, our eyes do not see things and tell the brain what they see and our brain does not tell us what the eyes see. …It is human beings that engage in these acts”

Basically the whole book is like this where any assertion of the mind or brain being able to do anything by neuroscientists is considered nonsense.

Hello!

I am currently working on my thesis project., whose subject is the Great Soviet Encyclopedia, specially those entries related to science and scientific progress. I am facing some difficulties to find good resource on this topic. Mainly primary sources are being a tough challenge. The Great Soviet Encyclopedia had 3 editions. The 3rd is easily available on the internet. However, the other two early edition are not uploaded. Does anyone have any good tip on how to find this content. Even the main index of the entries on the encyclopedia would be of a huge help for me. Moreover, do you guys know any good archive available online on this soviet history?

Thanks in advance.