#philosophyofscience — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #philosophyofscience, aggregated by home.social.
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“Reality is a very subjective affair”*…
As Nathan Gardels reports, the Berggruen Institute recently gathered religious scholars, philosophers, quantum physicists, AI technologists, neuroscientists and science fiction novelists at Casa dei Tre Oci in Venice to ponder the nature of consciousness. Noting that “it is fascinating to see how their ideas correspond to the long-ago musings of Medieval mystics and even the “pagan masters” of antiquity'” Gardels observes that “the great question then, as now, and probably forever, is whether there is a metaphysical gap between the body and the soul, or if they are made of the same substance, symbiotic aspects of a singular reality that entail each other.” He concludes…
…The quantum physicist Carlo Rovelli argues that the much-discussed metaphysical gap between body and soul, subjective and objective, doesn’t exist.
As he has written in Noema, “We, subjects of knowledge and understanding, are not outside the world. We are part of it. Our theories and knowledge are embodied tools to help us navigate the real world, not disembodied views on reality from the outside. They are themselves aspects of the very world they describe. Our understanding, like our feelings, perceptions and experience, is a natural phenomenon.”
For Rovelli, the notion of a metaphysical gap “contradicts everything we have learned about nature in the last centuries. The mind is the behavior of the brain, properly described in a high-level language. Neither my own experience of myself nor an external experience of me is primary: They are two distinct perspectives on the same events. We do not need to assume that the circle between epistemology (how we get knowledge) and ontology (what exists) requires a starting point. There is nothing wrong with its circularity: The world I access is the information I have about it, and I am part of that world.
“Nor do we need to require that there is any ultimate or fundamental account of reality. Any account is approximate, has blind spots and is realized within reality, so it is embodied in a part of that same reality.
“If we do not fall into the error of dualism upfront, we can safely speak of soul and emotions just as we speak of a kitchen table, even if the table is also a collection of atoms. It is time to give up the pernicious dualism introduced by the debate on consciousness and embrace the reality that our soul, or our spiritual life, is consistent with our fundamental physics.
“Earth is not metaphysically different from the heavens, living beings are not metaphysically different from inanimate matter, humans are not metaphysically different from other animals. The soul is not metaphysically different from the body. We are all parts of nature.”
Rovelli’s scientific case that we humans are not outside the world of reality, but constitutive participants in it and constructors of it, tracks with the intuition of Medieval thinkers like the 14th-century Christian mystic Meister Eckhart.
For Eckhart, consciousness was being aware we are not apart from, but both inhabit and are inhabited by, the mind of God — that is, “objective reality.”
As stated in the New Testament’s Gospel of John, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God.” In biblical terms, the Word, or Logos, is divine reason. Eckhart interpreted this passage as meaning that the incarnation of the divine in man was not a one-time event of Christ’s birth in Bethlehem, but takes place through continuous human participation in the unfolding Logos of the Word, making us part of and conjoining with the mind of God; co-essences, so to speak.” If God is the pure thought of divine reason, then, as Sloterdijk has put it, ‘To think is to give birth to God.’”
That Medieval insight is another way of saying, in Rovelli’s words, that “objectivity without a subject is an abstract construct, of little relevance — it is the illusion of a science now belonging to the past.”
Consciousness, then, can be said to be the perspective of the aware self in a world where there is no outside. The “I” is not detached from some order of objective reality, but in all the diversity of personal experience, part of what makes it “everywhere whole.” Not only is “the universe disclosed by a knowing subject;” the knowing subject is its co-creator from within…
Eminently worth reading in full.
Striving to understand the nature of consciousness: “Subjective Perspective Makes Objective Reality ‘Everywhere Whole’,” from @noemamag.com.
Pair with: “Everything is not itself.”
* Vladimir Nabokov, Pale Fire
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As we muse on our minds, we might spare a thought for a man who wrestled with these same issues, Auguste Comte; he died on this date in 1857. A philosopher (and mathematician), he is remembered as the father of the doctrine of positivism. He developed the Law of Three Stages to describe the historical evolution of human thought and consciousness, arguing that the human mind, in its search for understanding, progresses through three distinct intellectual phases (the theological, the metaphysical, and the positive (or scientific), each with a different method of explaining reality.
Comte is widely regarded as the first “philosopher of science” in the modern sense, and as the forebearer of sociology (the name of which he coined, as he did the word “altruism”). He had a major impact on 19th-century thought, influencing the work of social thinkers like John Stuart Mill and George Eliot. His concepts of “sociology” and social evolutionism set the tone for early social theorists and anthropologists including Harriet Martineau and Herbert Spencer, evolving into modern academic sociology (a la Émile Durkheim) as practical and objective social research.
#AugusteComte #CarloRovelli #consciousness #culture #history #philosophy #philosophyOfScience #Science #sociology -
“Reality is a very subjective affair”*…
As Nathan Gardels reports, the Berggruen Institute recently gathered religious scholars, philosophers, quantum physicists, AI technologists, neuroscientists and science fiction novelists at Casa dei Tre Oci in Venice to ponder the nature of consciousness. Noting that “it is fascinating to see how their ideas correspond to the long-ago musings of Medieval mystics and even the “pagan masters” of antiquity'” Gardels observes that “the great question then, as now, and probably forever, is whether there is a metaphysical gap between the body and the soul, or if they are made of the same substance, symbiotic aspects of a singular reality that entail each other.” He concludes…
…The quantum physicist Carlo Rovelli argues that the much-discussed metaphysical gap between body and soul, subjective and objective, doesn’t exist.
As he has written in Noema, “We, subjects of knowledge and understanding, are not outside the world. We are part of it. Our theories and knowledge are embodied tools to help us navigate the real world, not disembodied views on reality from the outside. They are themselves aspects of the very world they describe. Our understanding, like our feelings, perceptions and experience, is a natural phenomenon.”
For Rovelli, the notion of a metaphysical gap “contradicts everything we have learned about nature in the last centuries. The mind is the behavior of the brain, properly described in a high-level language. Neither my own experience of myself nor an external experience of me is primary: They are two distinct perspectives on the same events. We do not need to assume that the circle between epistemology (how we get knowledge) and ontology (what exists) requires a starting point. There is nothing wrong with its circularity: The world I access is the information I have about it, and I am part of that world.
“Nor do we need to require that there is any ultimate or fundamental account of reality. Any account is approximate, has blind spots and is realized within reality, so it is embodied in a part of that same reality.
“If we do not fall into the error of dualism upfront, we can safely speak of soul and emotions just as we speak of a kitchen table, even if the table is also a collection of atoms. It is time to give up the pernicious dualism introduced by the debate on consciousness and embrace the reality that our soul, or our spiritual life, is consistent with our fundamental physics.
“Earth is not metaphysically different from the heavens, living beings are not metaphysically different from inanimate matter, humans are not metaphysically different from other animals. The soul is not metaphysically different from the body. We are all parts of nature.”
Rovelli’s scientific case that we humans are not outside the world of reality, but constitutive participants in it and constructors of it, tracks with the intuition of Medieval thinkers like the 14th-century Christian mystic Meister Eckhart.
For Eckhart, consciousness was being aware we are not apart from, but both inhabit and are inhabited by, the mind of God — that is, “objective reality.”
As stated in the New Testament’s Gospel of John, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God.” In biblical terms, the Word, or Logos, is divine reason. Eckhart interpreted this passage as meaning that the incarnation of the divine in man was not a one-time event of Christ’s birth in Bethlehem, but takes place through continuous human participation in the unfolding Logos of the Word, making us part of and conjoining with the mind of God; co-essences, so to speak.” If God is the pure thought of divine reason, then, as Sloterdijk has put it, ‘To think is to give birth to God.’”
That Medieval insight is another way of saying, in Rovelli’s words, that “objectivity without a subject is an abstract construct, of little relevance — it is the illusion of a science now belonging to the past.”
Consciousness, then, can be said to be the perspective of the aware self in a world where there is no outside. The “I” is not detached from some order of objective reality, but in all the diversity of personal experience, part of what makes it “everywhere whole.” Not only is “the universe disclosed by a knowing subject;” the knowing subject is its co-creator from within…
Eminently worth reading in full.
Striving to understand the nature of consciousness: “Subjective Perspective Makes Objective Reality ‘Everywhere Whole’,” from @noemamag.com.
Pair with: “Everything is not itself.”
* Vladimir Nabokov, Pale Fire
###
As we muse on our minds, we might spare a thought for a man who wrestled with these same issues, Auguste Comte; he died on this date in 1857. A philosopher (and mathematician), he is remembered as the father of the doctrine of positivism. He developed the Law of Three Stages to describe the historical evolution of human thought and consciousness, arguing that the human mind, in its search for understanding, progresses through three distinct intellectual phases (the theological, the metaphysical, and the positive (or scientific), each with a different method of explaining reality.
Comte is widely regarded as the first “philosopher of science” in the modern sense, and as the forebearer of sociology (the name of which he coined, as he did the word “altruism”). He had a major impact on 19th-century thought, influencing the work of social thinkers like John Stuart Mill and George Eliot. His concepts of “sociology” and social evolutionism set the tone for early social theorists and anthropologists including Harriet Martineau and Herbert Spencer, evolving into modern academic sociology (a la Émile Durkheim) as practical and objective social research.
#AugusteComte #CarloRovelli #consciousness #culture #history #philosophy #philosophyOfScience #Science #sociology -
“Reality is a very subjective affair”*…
As Nathan Gardels reports, the Berggruen Institute recently gathered religious scholars, philosophers, quantum physicists, AI technologists, neuroscientists and science fiction novelists at Casa dei Tre Oci in Venice to ponder the nature of consciousness. Noting that “it is fascinating to see how their ideas correspond to the long-ago musings of Medieval mystics and even the “pagan masters” of antiquity'” Gardels observes that “the great question then, as now, and probably forever, is whether there is a metaphysical gap between the body and the soul, or if they are made of the same substance, symbiotic aspects of a singular reality that entail each other.” He concludes…
…The quantum physicist Carlo Rovelli argues that the much-discussed metaphysical gap between body and soul, subjective and objective, doesn’t exist.
As he has written in Noema, “We, subjects of knowledge and understanding, are not outside the world. We are part of it. Our theories and knowledge are embodied tools to help us navigate the real world, not disembodied views on reality from the outside. They are themselves aspects of the very world they describe. Our understanding, like our feelings, perceptions and experience, is a natural phenomenon.”
For Rovelli, the notion of a metaphysical gap “contradicts everything we have learned about nature in the last centuries. The mind is the behavior of the brain, properly described in a high-level language. Neither my own experience of myself nor an external experience of me is primary: They are two distinct perspectives on the same events. We do not need to assume that the circle between epistemology (how we get knowledge) and ontology (what exists) requires a starting point. There is nothing wrong with its circularity: The world I access is the information I have about it, and I am part of that world.
“Nor do we need to require that there is any ultimate or fundamental account of reality. Any account is approximate, has blind spots and is realized within reality, so it is embodied in a part of that same reality.
“If we do not fall into the error of dualism upfront, we can safely speak of soul and emotions just as we speak of a kitchen table, even if the table is also a collection of atoms. It is time to give up the pernicious dualism introduced by the debate on consciousness and embrace the reality that our soul, or our spiritual life, is consistent with our fundamental physics.
“Earth is not metaphysically different from the heavens, living beings are not metaphysically different from inanimate matter, humans are not metaphysically different from other animals. The soul is not metaphysically different from the body. We are all parts of nature.”
Rovelli’s scientific case that we humans are not outside the world of reality, but constitutive participants in it and constructors of it, tracks with the intuition of Medieval thinkers like the 14th-century Christian mystic Meister Eckhart.
For Eckhart, consciousness was being aware we are not apart from, but both inhabit and are inhabited by, the mind of God — that is, “objective reality.”
As stated in the New Testament’s Gospel of John, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God.” In biblical terms, the Word, or Logos, is divine reason. Eckhart interpreted this passage as meaning that the incarnation of the divine in man was not a one-time event of Christ’s birth in Bethlehem, but takes place through continuous human participation in the unfolding Logos of the Word, making us part of and conjoining with the mind of God; co-essences, so to speak.” If God is the pure thought of divine reason, then, as Sloterdijk has put it, ‘To think is to give birth to God.’”
That Medieval insight is another way of saying, in Rovelli’s words, that “objectivity without a subject is an abstract construct, of little relevance — it is the illusion of a science now belonging to the past.”
Consciousness, then, can be said to be the perspective of the aware self in a world where there is no outside. The “I” is not detached from some order of objective reality, but in all the diversity of personal experience, part of what makes it “everywhere whole.” Not only is “the universe disclosed by a knowing subject;” the knowing subject is its co-creator from within…
Eminently worth reading in full.
Striving to understand the nature of consciousness: “Subjective Perspective Makes Objective Reality ‘Everywhere Whole’,” from @noemamag.com.
Pair with: “Everything is not itself.”
* Vladimir Nabokov, Pale Fire
###
As we muse on our minds, we might spare a thought for a man who wrestled with these same issues, Auguste Comte; he died on this date in 1857. A philosopher (and mathematician), he is remembered as the father of the doctrine of positivism. He developed the Law of Three Stages to describe the historical evolution of human thought and consciousness, arguing that the human mind, in its search for understanding, progresses through three distinct intellectual phases (the theological, the metaphysical, and the positive (or scientific), each with a different method of explaining reality.
Comte is widely regarded as the first “philosopher of science” in the modern sense, and as the forebearer of sociology (the name of which he coined, as he did the word “altruism”). He had a major impact on 19th-century thought, influencing the work of social thinkers like John Stuart Mill and George Eliot. His concepts of “sociology” and social evolutionism set the tone for early social theorists and anthropologists including Harriet Martineau and Herbert Spencer, evolving into modern academic sociology (a la Émile Durkheim) as practical and objective social research.
#AugusteComte #CarloRovelli #consciousness #culture #history #philosophy #philosophyOfScience #Science #sociology -
🌐❓Why #Reality is #Relations Not #Objects – Do We Need a New #Philosophy of the #NaturalSciences?
Modern #metaphysics does not need to hide behind the natural #sciences. Rather, it serves as a compass for a scientific-theoretical framework.
🎧 https://open.spotify.com/episode/665z013tMwIWapuuFHTxnb?si=TtTU5o68SmC25QDH93WTsw
#StructuralRealism #PhilosophyOfScience #Physics #AI #Cybernetics #MindAndMatter #ParadigmShift #Ontology #ScienceEthics #PhilosophyBlog #Podcast #philosophies_de
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⚛️💥 #ParticlePhysics at the Limit: The Explosive #UnansweredQuestions of Our #Future! 🌌🔭
It is only at the boundaries of our #knowledge that the next great adventure in #research begins.
📎https://philosophies.de/index.php/2022/10/26/zoomposium-naumann-bohnet-das-raetselhafte-universum/
📺 https://youtu.be/k22eSYJgPD0
#ParticlePhysics #UnansweredQuestionsInPhysics #StandardModel #Cosmology #StringTheory #PhilosophyOfScience #Research #FutureEnergy #Physics #TheMysteriousUniverse #DarkMatter #ConstantsOfNature #Multiverse #Falsifiability #CriticismOfScience #Zoomposium
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Tommaso Piazza reviews Gabriele Contessa's book Science Denial in SERRC, https://social-epistemology.com/2026/06/12/a-review-of-gabriele-contessas-science-denial-tommaso-piazza/
An eralier review was by Maya Goldenberg, https://social-epistemology.com/2026/04/29/science-denial-post-trust-and-epistemic-blame-a-review-of-contessas-science-denial-maya-goldenberg/
#science #tiede #denial #scienceDenial #epistemology #socialScience #climateDenial #pseudoscience #postTruth #truth #misinformation #trust #motivatedInquiry #evidence #reasoning #motivatedReasoning #harm #egoism #collectiveResponsibility #society #futures #planetEarth #resistance #belief #ideology #epistemicSecurity #psychology #philosophyOfScience #philosophy #filosofia
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🧬⚛️ “Science doesn’t demystify the world—it makes it more mysterious.”
In our new #Zoomposium, we speak with #sciencehistorian and #sciencecommunicator #ErnstPeterFischer.
📎https://philosophies.de/index.php/2026/05/10/romantische-revolution/
🎥 https://youtu.be/PlXoYAQ8xV8
#HistoryOfScience #Philosophy #QuantumPhysics #Romanticism #NaturalScience #QuantumTheory #PhilosophyOfScience #Education #Culture #DescriptionOfNature #Objectivity #ScienceCommunication #Cosmos #Physics #Biology
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🧬⚛️ “Science doesn’t demystify the world—it makes it more mysterious.”
In our new #Zoomposium, we speak with #sciencehistorian and #sciencecommunicator #ErnstPeterFischer.
📎https://philosophies.de/index.php/2026/05/10/romantische-revolution/
🎥 https://youtu.be/PlXoYAQ8xV8
#HistoryOfScience #Philosophy #QuantumPhysics #Romanticism #NaturalScience #QuantumTheory #PhilosophyOfScience #Education #Culture #DescriptionOfNature #Objectivity #ScienceCommunication #Cosmos #Physics #Biology
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👨🏫 #Einstein – The “Absolute Nature” of #LightSpeed🚀
What if one of the greatest #revolutions in #physics were based on a seemingly illogical #observation?
This #Zoomposium with #ThomasNaumann and #IljaBohnet explores precisely these kinds of open-ended and #fundamental questions.
📎https://philosophies.de/index.php/2022/10/26/zoomposium-naumann-bohnet-das-raetselhafte-universum/
#OpenQuestionsInPhysics #NaturalSciences #Cosmology #Philosophy #PhilosophyOfScience #ParticlePhysics #Order #CriticismOfScience #Research #Physics #Cosmos
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🔬 The #BigScience Problem – when will the next #paradigmshift happen? ↩️
The biggest questions in #science are far from being answered.
Perhaps, especially in the age of #BigScience, we need #newwaysofthinking again—not just bigger machines.📎https://philosophies.de/index.php/2022/10/26/zoomposium-naumann-bohnet-das-raetselhafte-universum/
📺 https://youtu.be/1ouxs6P3Enc
#Zoomposium #ThomasNaumann #IljaBohnet #OpenQuestionsInPhysics #NaturalSciences #Philosophy #PhilosophyOfScience #CriticismOfScience #Research #Physics #Cosmos #OpenQuestions
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🔬 #Physics Puzzles – Exciting puzzle questions explained simply! 🤓
📎https://philosophies.de/index.php/2022/10/26/zoomposium-naumann-bohnet-das-raetselhafte-universum/
#ThomasNaumann #IljaBohnet #Zoomposium #OpenQuestionsInPhysics #NaturalSciences #DarkMatter #StringTheory #Cosmology #Philosophy #PhilosophyOfScience #ParticlePhysics #ConstantsOfNature #Multiverse #Falsifiability #FineTuning # Order #Beauty #Truth #Psychology #CriticismOfScience #Research #Physics #Cosmos #Cosmetics #OpenQuestions
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Paaljon onneeaa vaan! 🎵 🤗 🍀
https://fi.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ilkka_Niiniluoto
#juhla #80 #niiniluoto #filosofia #philosophy #philosophyOfScience #philosophyOfTechnology #university #yliopisto #professor #valistus #sivistys #tiede #culture #anniversary #science #mathematics #logic #reasoning #criticalThinking #teaching #learning #oppiminen #opetus #happy #ajattelu #thinking #pseudo_science
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What physicists believe about quantum mechanics
A few years ago David Bourget and David Chalmers did a follow up survey to the 2009 one polling philosophers on what they believe about various questions. One of them was quantum mechanics, particularly the measurement problem and its various interpretations. Over the decades there have been surveys of physicists themselves on this question, but most, if not all, were with a very small sample size, usually only the attendees at a particular conference.
As part of the Quantum Centennial (the celebration of 100 years of quantum mechanics) Nature has done a fairly large survey of the community of quantum researchers with over 1100 respondents. The results are interesting, although not particularly surprising.
Copenhagen still comes out on top with 36%. It’s interesting that it’s stronger with experimentalists than with theorists (half vs a third). I suspect the experimentalists are hewing to a very pragmatic version of the interpretation. Which highlights a concern that the term “Copenhagen interpretation” means different things to different people. The article acknowledges this, noting that 29% of those who selected Copenhagen favored an ontic version of the wave function vs 63% who came down epistemic.
15% are Everettians (or “consistent-history” advocates, who I suspect object to being lumped in with the many-worlders), 7% Pilot-wave, 4% Spontaneous collapse, 4% Relational Quantum Mechanics, and a smattering in other views.
Overall 47% of respondents see the wave function as just a mathematical tool, with 36% taking a partial or complete realist take (my view), and 8% taking it to only represent subjective beliefs about experimental outcomes.
45% see a boundary between classical and quantum objects (5% see it as sharp) while 45% don’t (my view).
Just before the paywall, there is a question about the observer in quantum mechanics, with 9% saying it must be conscious. Another 56% said there had to be an observer, but that “observer” can just be interaction with a macroscopic environment, and 28% arguing that no observer at all is needed. (I think interaction with the macroscopic environment and the resulting decoherence is key, but it seems misleading to call that environment an “observer”.)
All interesting. Of course, how popular or unpopular a view is has no real bearing on whether it’s reality. Prior to Galileo’s telescopic observations in 1609, an Earth-centered universe was the most popular cosmology. Only a miniscule handful of astronomers accepted Copernicus’ view about the Earth orbiting the sun. Until the quantum-measurement equivalent of the telescope comes along, all we can do is reason as best as possible with the current data.
The results here are interesting to compare with what the philosophers thought on the Bourget-Chalmers survey. On quantum mechanics, philosophers were 24% agnostic, 22% hidden variable theories, 19% many-worlds, 17% collapse, and 13% epistemic. Once we take into account all the various forms of “Copenhagen interpretation”, these seem in a similar ballpark, except that philosophers are more open to hidden variable approaches. (It may be easier to favor hidden variables if you’re not the one who has to find them.)
My own view comes down to a preference for structural completeness (or at least more structurally complete models), which to me currently favors a cautious and minimalist take on the Everettian approach (as I described a few months ago). However, my credence in this conclusion is only 75-80%. That the survey indicates most physicists aren’t super confident in their own conclusions here makes me feel better.
This reminds me of a new approach that Jacob Barandes has been promoting on various podcasts (see this recent Sean Carroll episode as an example). Barandes calls it Indivisible Stochastic Quantum Mechanics. I won’t pretend to understand exactly what he’s trying to accomplish with it, but it involves rejecting the wave function completely, and replacing it with something more stochastic from the beginning. Which strikes me as less structurally complete than the wave function, and so a move in the wrong direction. But maybe I’ll turn out to be wrong.
Anyway, now we have a firmer idea of where the physics community currently stands on quantum interpretations, or at least a firmer one than we did before. How would you have answered the survey questions? (There’s actually a small quiz in the article which is worth taking to see the logic leading to particular interpretations.)
#InterpretationsOfQuantumMechanics #Philosophy #PhilosophyOfScience #Physics #QM #QuantumMechanics #Science
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New blogpost/essay: *On the Point of Tipping*
[some thoughts-in-progress (that ended up quite long) on the uses and limitations of climate tipping points as a scientific metaphor & model]
https://gaiaexmachina.wordpress.com/2025/01/28/on-the-point-of-tipping/
#TippingPoints #ClimateChange #EarthSystemScience #PhilosophyOfScience
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#BernardCarr - #Physics of #FineTuning
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zIfVNSHk8Cg
#Philosophy #PhilosophyOfScience #Science #PhilosophyOfCosmology #Cosmology #AnthropicPrinciple #StrongAnthropicPrinciple #WeakAnthropicPrinciple #BrandonCarter #ConstantsOfPhysics #LawsOfPhysics #LawsOfPhysics #Multiverse #Universe #SelectionEffect #CloserToTruth #RobertKuhn
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This week's second post introduces five characteristics of #boundedRationality and contrasts it with a received Standard Picture of #rationality.
"I suggest that we should sometimes blame the #theory." –David Thorstad, author Inquiry Under Bounds (#OUP 2024), an #openAccess book
#epistemology #cognitiveScience #decisionScience #history #economics #behavioralEconomics #psychology #HerbSimon #EdwardStein #science #philosophyOfScience #philosophy #pragmatism #positivism
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Catastrophic Times: Resisting the Coming Barbarism
"There has been an epochal shift: the possibility of a global climate crisis is now upon us. Pollution, the poison of pesticides, the exhaustion of natural resources, falling water tables, growing social inequalities – these are all problems that can no longer be treated separately."
"The effects of global warming have a cumulative impact, and it is not a matter of a crisis that will “pass” before everything goes back to “normal.” Our governments are totally incapable of dealing with the situation. Economic warfare obliges them to stick to the goal of irresponsible, even criminal, economic growth, whatever the cost. It is no surprise that people were so struck by the catastrophe in New Orleans. The response of the authorities – to abandon the poor whilst the rich were able to take shelter – is a symbol of the coming barbarism."
Stengers, Isabelle. In Catastrophic Times. Resisting the Coming Barbarism, Goffey, A. (trans.), Open Humanities Press (2015) >>
http://www.openhumanitiespress.org/books/titles/in-catastrophic-times/Stengers, Isabelle. Another Science is Possible: A Manifesto for Slow Science, Muecke, S. (trans.), Polity Press (2018), PDF >>
https://hcommons.org/?get_group_doc=1003678/1700760973-AnotherScienceIsPossible_A-IsabelleStengers.pdfHow ‘slow science’ can improve the way we do and interpret research
"For example, the slow scientist will stop to listen to an Indigenous person whose expertise is honed through intergenerational practice, before imposing a more abstract, more universal, “modern” solution to a problem." >>
https://theconversation.com/how-slow-science-can-improve-the-way-we-do-and-interpret-research-90168#slow #science #SlowScience #Open #Ecology #ethics #HistoryOfScience #PhilosophyOfScience #IndigenousPeoples #Stengers #Whitehead #EcologicalHumanities #books #Cosmopolitics #PolyCrisis #climate #BiodiversityCrisis
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#JohnSearle - Why #Philosophy of #Science?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hozWAB6EmJ8
#PhilosophyOfScience #Science #Metaphysics #PhilosophyOfMind #Mind #PhilosophyOfConsciousness #Consciousness #PhilosophyOfLanguage #Language #Society #SocialScience #SocialSciences #Causation #Physics #BackwardsCausation #Multiverse #CloserToTruth #RobertKuhn
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#AndrewLoke - Why is There '#Something' Rather Than '#Nothing'?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rDp8hmtr9hc
#Philosophy #PhilosophyOfScience #Science #PhilosophyOfCosmology #Cosmology #Astronomy #Astrophysics #Universe #Metaphysics #Existence #Explanation #Contingence #Causation #Kalam #KalamCosmologicalArgument #InfiniteRegress #FirstCause #PrimumMobile #BruteFact #ModalReality #PossibleWorld #PossibleWorlds #BruteFacts #CloserToTruth #RobertKuhn
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#RichardSwinburne - Why is There '#Something' Rather Than '#Nothing'?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OpBDx2qB7rU
#Philosophy #PhilosophyOfScience #Science #Existence #Cosmology #PhilosophyOfCosmology #Religion #God #Metaphysics #Universe #Causation #Contingency #ThomasAquinas #Aquinas #Being #CloserToTruth #RobertKuhn
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#GregoryBenford - What's Real About #Time?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJ7UzrrJkMg&ab_channel=CloserToTruth
#Philosophy #PhilosophyOfScience #PhilosophyOfTime #NatureOfTime #TimeTravel #Paradox #Paradoxes #Causality #Information #QM #QuantumMechanics #QuantumPhysics #Metaphysics #Multiverse #CloserToTruth #RobertKuhn
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#JosephLeDoux - What Makes #Brains #Conscious?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bp8BSpt3PIM&ab_channel=CloserToTruth
#Philosophy #PhilosophyOfMind #PhilosophyOfScience #Consciousness #Emotion #Emotions #Feelings #MindBodyProblem #TheMindBodyProblem #Neuroscience #Neurophysiology #Brain #TheBrain #Perception #IdentityTheory #Qualia #PreFrontalCortex #Cortex #Language #CloserToTruth #RobertKuhn
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#JosephLeDoux - What Makes #Brains #Conscious?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bp8BSpt3PIM&ab_channel=CloserToTruth
#Philosophy #PhilosophyOfMind #PhilosophyOfScience #Consciousness #Emotion #Emotions #Feelings #MindBodyProblem #TheMindBodyProblem #Neuroscience #Neurophysiology #Brain #TheBrain #Perception #IdentityTheory #Qualia #PreFrontalCortex #Cortex #Language #CloserToTruth #RobertKuhn
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#JosephLeDoux - What Makes #Brains #Conscious?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bp8BSpt3PIM&ab_channel=CloserToTruth
#Philosophy #PhilosophyOfMind #PhilosophyOfScience #Consciousness #Emotion #Emotions #Feelings #MindBodyProblem #TheMindBodyProblem #Neuroscience #Neurophysiology #Brain #TheBrain #Perception #IdentityTheory #Qualia #PreFrontalCortex #Cortex #Language #CloserToTruth #RobertKuhn
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#JosephLeDoux - What Makes #Brains #Conscious?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bp8BSpt3PIM&ab_channel=CloserToTruth
#Philosophy #PhilosophyOfMind #PhilosophyOfScience #Consciousness #Emotion #Emotions #Feelings #MindBodyProblem #TheMindBodyProblem #Neuroscience #Neurophysiology #Brain #TheBrain #Perception #IdentityTheory #Qualia #PreFrontalCortex #Cortex #Language #CloserToTruth #RobertKuhn
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#JosephLeDoux - What Makes #Brains #Conscious?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bp8BSpt3PIM&ab_channel=CloserToTruth
#Philosophy #PhilosophyOfMind #PhilosophyOfScience #Consciousness #Emotion #Emotions #Feelings #MindBodyProblem #TheMindBodyProblem #Neuroscience #Neurophysiology #Brain #TheBrain #Perception #IdentityTheory #Qualia #PreFrontalCortex #Cortex #Language #CloserToTruth #RobertKuhn
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#JuliaMossbridge - Why is #Consciousness so Baffling?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CVlE-zSRdWQ&ab_channel=CloserToTruth
#Science #Neuroscience #Psychology Philosophy #PhilosophyOfScience #PhilosophyOfMind #PhilosophyOfConsciousness #Metaphysics #1stPerson #Qualia #Feeling #Feelings #Searle #JohnSearle #Causation #BackwardCausation #BackwardsCausation #CloserToTruth #RobertKuhn
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Critical Metascience:
2022 has been a bumper year for what I’d call “critical metascience” - work that takes a step back and offers a critical perspective in the field.
My Top 10 papers of 2022 in this area are, in alphabetical order… 🥁 🧵👉
#OpenScience
#MetaScience
#MetaResearch
#PsychMethods
#ReplicationCrisis
#SociologyofScience
#ScienceofScience
#PhilosophyOfScience
#PhilSci
#PhilScidon1/12
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For #FollowFriday, can I recommend some fairly new additions to our Mastodonian family:
@devezer theoretical metascientist
@itaiyanai co-host of the Night Science podcast
@orlamuldoon professor of social psychology
@qjep The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology
#Metascience
#NightScience
#SocialPsychology
#Psychology
@socialpsych
#MetaResearch
#ReplicationCrisis
#PhilosophyOfScience
#PhilSci
#PhilScidon
#AcademicChatter
@academicchatter
#PolPsych
#PoliticalScience -
Can we kill theories?
Social psychology consists of “a vast graveyard of undead theories” (Ferguson & Heene, 2012).
“No experimental result can ever kill a theory" (Lakatos, 1976).
#PhilosophyOfScience
#PhilSci
#PhilScidon
#SocialPsychology
@socialpsych -
How interested are scientists in the truth?
Mizrahi (2021) analysed the text of scientific papers and found that “scientists use the terms ‘knowledge’ and ‘understanding’ significantly more often than the term ‘truth’ when they talk about the aims or goals of scientific research in their published works."
#PhilosophyOfScience
#PhilSci
#PhilScidon
#MetaScience
#MetaResearch
#SociologyofScience
#ScienceofScience -
Replicability and Theory:
“Our results suggest that many of the practices that have been proposed as a means to improve the replicability of psychological research—such as open data and methods…preregistration and Registered Reports…and basing conclusions on Bayesian inference…or p < .005 rather than p < .05…—do indeed improve confidence in replicability among our sample.”
Continued 🙂 🧵👉
#MetaScience
#MetaResearch
#PsychMethods
#ReplicationCrisis
#PhilosophyOfScience
#PhilSci
#PhilScidon -
@MarkRubin This is massively simplistic. Hypotheses include the criteria for delineating phenomena in need of explanation, satisfaction criteria for success, disciplinary standards and practices, and taxonomies of subjects under investigation. IMO.
#MetaScience
#MetaResearch
#PsychMethods
#ReplicationCrisis
#PhilosophyOfScience
#PhilSci
#PhilScidon -
What’s a hypothesis?
“A hypothesis is not simply a guess about the result of an experiment. It is a proposed explanation that can predict the outcome of an experiment. A hypothesis has two components: (1) an explanation and (2) a prediction. A prediction simply isn’t useful on its own.” (Haroz, 2014)
Blog post: http://steveharoz.com/blog/2014/mysterious-origins-of-hypotheses-in-visualization-and-chi/
#MetaScience
#MetaResearch
#PsychMethods
#ReplicationCrisis
#PhilosophyOfScience
#PhilSci
#PhilScidon -
A “quietist” response to the replication crisis:
“The quietist approach proposes that we should just accept that it is in the nature of science that we get things wrong, and that this is particularly true with sciences in early stages of development.”
Bird (2021). Understanding the replication crisis as a base rate fallacy.
🔒 https://doi.org/10.1093/bjps/axy051
🔓 https://kclpure.kcl.ac.uk/portal/files/95454096/Replication_base_rate_fallacy_REV2.pdf
#MetaScience
#MetaResearch
#PsychMethods
#ReplicationCrisis
#PhilosophyOfScience
#PhilSci
#PhilScidon
@philosophy -
Crypto-positivism:
“A central dimension of our argument is that many of the tenets of positivism are so embedded within Western culture, academia, and the world of education in particular that they are often invisible to researchers and those who consume their research.”
Kincheloe and Tobin (2015): https://doi.org/10.1163/9789463000765_003
#PhilosophyOfScience
#PhilSci
#PhilScidon
@philosophy
#Positivism -
Philosophy-free science?
"There is no such thing as philosophy-free science, just science that has been conducted without any consideration of its underlying philosophical assumptions."
(Dennett, 2014, p. 20, https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/Intuition_Pumps_And_Other_Tools_for_Thin/9SduAwAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=0)
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“Do predictions, and what kind of predictions, justify belief in the truth of scientific theories?”
Brilliant new PhD thesis by Pekka Syrjänen considers “the epistemic role of prediction in science,” provides a clear, easy-to-follow discussion of the issues in this area, and develops a new “predictive virtues approach.”
PhD thesis: https://helda.helsinki.fi/bitstream/handle/10138/350314/Syrj%C3%A4nen_Pekka_dissertation_2022.pdf
Six quotes follows 👉 /1
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Hypothesis testing:
“There is no problem with a test having a high or even a maximal probability of passing the hypothesis it tests; there is only a problem if it has a high probability of passing hypotheses erroneously.”
Deborah Mayo (1996, p. 275) “Error and the growth of experimental knowledge”
https://errorstatistics.files.wordpress.com/2020/10/egek-pdf-red.pdf
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A sculpting metaphor of theorizing in experimental psychology.
From Roland Pfister (2022). Operationalization and generalization in experimental psychology: A plea for bold claims. In Gozli & Valsiner (Eds.), Experimental psychology: Ambitions and possibilities.
https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-031-17053-9
#Psychology
#PhilosophyOfScience
#PhilSci
#PhilScidon
#Theory
#Science -
New book on “New Philosophical Perspectives on Scientific Progress”
A collection of original essays by experts in the field considering different types of progress in different disciplines, including #physics, #chemistry, #biology, #seismology, #psychology, #sociology, #economics, and #medicine.
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“We are not only in a replication but an interpretation crisis, a crisis of theory building.”
Benjamin Krämer (@benjkraemer) (2022, November). Why are most published research findings under-theorized? In Questions of Communicative Change and Continuity.
🔓 https://www.nomos-elibrary.de/10.5771/9783748928232-23.pdf
#OpenScience
#MetaScience
#PsychMethods
#ReplicationCrisis
#ScienceofScience
#PhilosophyOfScience
#PhilSci
#PhilScidon
#Communication -
Recent server move means I have no post plugging my main project, so here it is!
Red Enlightenment: On #Socialism #Science and #Spirituality is 1) a book coming out in 2023 and 2) a scripted podcast which was the book's rough first draft https://soundcloud.com/repeater-radio/sets/red-enlightenment
For fans of #cybernetics #theology #LiberationTheology #ProcessThought #complexitytheory #ecology #marxism #acidcommunism #philosophyofscience #metaphysics #EmbodiedCognition #metamodernism @philosophy @theologidons
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“Scientific Progress: By-Whom or For-Whom?”
“Scientific progress occurs when scientific information of the right sort is made available to relevant members of society at large, including scientists themselves but not excluding various groups of non-scientists who rely on that information for different purposes.”
New preprint by Finnur Dellsén (forthcoming in Studies in History and Philosophy of Science): http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/21453/
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Happy #WorldPhilosophyDay!
Here’s a summary of six ways in which philosophy is useful to science...
From De Haro (2020): “Science and Philosophy: A Love–Hate Relationship” https://doi.org/10.1007/s10699-019-09619-2
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Forthcoming book by Nancy Cartwright and colleagues:
“The Tangle of Science: Reliability Beyond Method, Rigour, and Objectivity”
https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-tangle-of-science-9780198866343
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Objectivity in science:
"The objectivity of individuals in this scheme consists in their participation in the collective give-and-take of critical discussion and not in some special relation (of detachment, hardheadedness) they may bear to their observations."
Helen Longino (1990, p. 79): Science as Social Knowledge: https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691020518/science-as-social-knowledge
#socialpsychology
#openscience
#philosophyofscience
#philsci
#philscidon
