Tag Archives: Philosophy of science

Is the ultimate nature of reality mental?

Posted on August 15, 2019 by

Philosopher Wilfrid Sellars had a term for the world as it appears, the “manifest image.”  This is the world as we perceive it.  In it, an apple is an apple, something red or green with a certain shape, a range … Continue reading →

Posted in Philosophy | Tagged , , , , , | 84 Comments

Empirical vs Fundamental IIT and the benefits of instrumentalism

Posted on June 24, 2019 by

The other day, when discussing a paper that criticized IIT (the Integrated Information Theory of consciousness) as unscientific, I noted that IIT, while questionable as the ultimate answer for consciousness, could be useful in the more limited capacity of distinguishing … Continue reading →

Posted in Zeitgeist | Tagged , , , , | 10 Comments

The relationship between usefulness and falsifiability

Posted on April 25, 2019 by

There’s an article by Matthew R. Francis in Symmetry magazine garnering a lot of attention asking whether falsifiability is a useful criteria for scientific theories. Popper wrote in his classic book The Logic of Scientific Discovery that a theory that cannot be … Continue reading →

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Is cosmic inflation settled science?

Posted on March 17, 2019 by

Ethan Siegel at Starts With a Bang has a post up arguing that the multiverse must exist.  His reasoning has to do with cosmic inflation.  Inflation is the theory that the universe expanded at an exponential rate in the first … Continue reading →

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Probability is relative

Posted on March 2, 2019 by

At Aeon, Nevin Climenhaga makes some interesting points about probability.  After describing different interpretations of probability, one involving the frequency with which an event will occur, another involving its propensity to occur, and a third involving our confidence it will … Continue reading →

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Being committed to truth means admitting the limitations of what we can know

Posted on January 30, 2019 by

Michela Massimi has a long article at Aeon defending scientific realism. The time for a defence of truth in science has come. It begins with a commitment to get things right, which is at the heart of the realist programme, despite mounting Kuhnian … Continue reading →

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Are the social sciences “real” science?

Posted on March 18, 2017 by

YouTube channel Crash Course is starting a new series on what is perhaps the most social of social sciences: Sociology. The social sciences, such as sociology, but also psychology, economics, anthropology, and other similar fields get a lot of grief … Continue reading →

Posted in Science | Tagged , , , , | 43 Comments

What do scientific theories actually tell us about the world?

Posted on February 9, 2017 by

One of the things that’s exciting about learning new things, is that often a new understanding in one area sheds light on what might seem like a completely separate topic.  For me, information about how the brain works appears to have shed … Continue reading →

Posted in Philosophy, Science | Tagged , , , , , , , | 76 Comments

What would evidence for the non-physical look like? A possible answer.

Posted on June 9, 2016 by

In the last post, I pondered what distinction between the physical and non-physical, noting that I’ve historically resisted the label of “physicalist” or “materialist” maintaining that, if any evidence for the non-physical ever did become available, I’d accept its existence. … Continue reading →

Posted in Philosophy | Tagged , , , , , | 83 Comments

What is physicalism?

Posted on June 6, 2016 by

One label that often gets applied to me is “materialist”, or sometimes “physicalist.”  It’s a label that, while it probably gives an accurate idea of my conception of reality, I’ve generally resisted.  Why?  Because if there were ever any evidence for … Continue reading →

Posted in Philosophy | Tagged , , , , | 78 Comments