What is a scientific theory? In an abstract sense, a scientific theory is a group of statements about the world. For instance the Special Theory of Relativity has, “The speed of light in a vacuum is invariant,” as a core statement, among others, about the world. This statement is scientific because, in part, it is meant to hold in a ‘law-like’ fashion: it holds across time, space and observer. The Popperian view is that we […]
Tag: philosophy
Risky Kakanomics
Gloria Origgi writes: This is an application of the theory of kakonomics, that is, the study of the rational preferences for lower-quality or mediocre outcomes, to the apparently weird results of Italian elections. The apparent irrationality of 30% of the electorate who decided to vote for Berlusconi again is explained as a perfectly rational strategy of maintaining a system of mediocre exchanges in which politicians don’t do what they have promised to do and citizens […]
On Matthen’s Intelligibility Argument
Mohan Matthen’s post Teleology in Big Systems brought up two options explaining how someone — Tom Nagel in Mind and Cosmos — would choose a teleological explanation over a naturalistic one. The first, below, got me thinking: First, he might be saying that though it is physically possible (by a fluke series of mutations, for example) for mentality to have come about, it would be better explained by teleology. (Let’s call this the “intelligibility” argument.) […]
The Paradox of Unreasonability
“You’re being unreasonable!” One or more of you may have had this directed at you. But what does the speaker mean by it? Presumably the speaker believes that the listener is not acting according to some given standard. However, if the speaker had an argument to that effect, the speaker should’ve presented it. Hence, all the above statement means is that the speaker has run out of arguments and has resorted to name-calling: being unreasonable […]
Carnival 141 Here
I’ll be hosting the next philosophy carnival, so please submit some fun links over at http://philosophycarnival.blogspot.com/.
Holy crap, it’s The Matrix for chickens
No, really: http://io9.com/5885510/holy-crap-its-the-matrix-for-chickens [Sent to me by my brother. Thanks bro!]
Book Review: The Genial Gene
The Genial Gene: Deconstructing Darwinian Selfishness by Joan Roughgarden In The Genial Gene Joan Roughgarden seeks to replace the competitive understanding of evolution, known as sexual selection, with a cooperative one. The first sentence of her book reads, “This book is about whether selfishness and individuality, rather than kindness and cooperation, are basic to biological nature” (p. 1). So what is the argument? Taking this first line, she wants to conclude something about basic biological […]
Philosophy Carnival 8 August
I’m hosting the next philosophy carnival, on August 8th. If anyone is thinking about submitting to the next philosophy carnival, I have a preference for philosophy of science, though feel free to submit on any topic. Also, I like to be entertained by my academic philosophy, so the more off the wall the better.
The SEP on the Kindle
Reading on a computer screen is often not pleasant, especially when a lot of reading has to be done. This is a general problem for philosophy since nearly everything is in PDF format and if you don’t want to print out a tree’s worth of paper you are stuck. I got a Kindle. Kindles can handle PDFs, but what I just found out is that Kindles can do the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy quite well. […]
Special Relativistic Fitness, Preliminary Thought Experiment
Imagine two different tribes of biologists. The first tribe is comprised of very fast people. They survived for thousands of years by studying biology and being faster than their competitors. The second tribe is comprised of very strong people. They survived for thousands of years by studying biology and being stronger than their competitors. After all this time, the first tribe is filled with very fast biologists and the second tribe is filled with very […]