Category: Philosophy of Science
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The Ship of Theseus sails in Water (and not H2O)
The difference between natural language and the language of science The problem of reference in philosophy deals with relations of words to the world. Do words correspond to some mind-independent objects in the external world? In the following text, I propose the thesis that “reference” is one area where science and everyday affairs take sharp,…
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William James and Free Will Peril
The problem of free will, as classically defined, is that since each event is caused by a chain of antecedent events, nothing we do is of our own free will; if we do have free will, its hard to see how it could come about. Humankind has been at this problem for millennia. Instead of
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Newton’s ‘Quantum Revolution’ and the Death Knell of Materialism
In an earlier post on Einstein, I discussed Newton’s demolition of the mechanical philosophy. Since the topic of materialism is so widely misunderstood, I think the significance of what Newton did should be discussed at length. Unfortunately, the revolutionary import of what Newton did has still not been absorbed by many people, even after the…
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Popper’s falsification
The Black Swan? Popper’s falsification approach might be a good logical exercise but that’s not how science is done. We often can’t know if a phenomenon falsifies a theory. There are way too many factors. Since I am not a philosopher, I will narrate a personal anecdote that might illuminate matters. This happened during the…
Realm of the SCENSCI 