Look at what I've just read on the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy: "There are no laws of nature that hold just for the planet Earth (or the Andromeda Galaxy, for that matter), nor are there any that hold just for the Eighteenth Century or just for the Mesozoic Era." I agree that this looks absolutely true, but why is it so? I suppose science cannot prove that there is no fundamental law of physics that holds only in a small part of the universe or only during some short period. Sure, such a law would be unexplainable, at least scientifically unexplainable, but aren't ALL fundamental laws of physics unexplainable? That's why they are fundamental. If the above quotation is only stipulating some meaning of "laws of natures", isn't it arbitrary? Thank you.

I just wanted to add to Allen's remarks (with which I largely agree). First, the claim that there are no laws of nature that hold just for (e.g.) the planet Earth may require the qualification "no fundamental laws of nature". After all, if it is a law of nature that like electric charges repel, then it is a law of nature that like electric charges on planet Earth repel. The latter is a derivative law, however. So there could easily be non-fundamental laws that hold just for the planet Earth. Second, on Lewis's own version of the Best System view, the laws of nature must all be truths. There is no trade-off between "complete and perfect truth" and "greater generality." Of course, a modified version of Lewis's account might be more liberal. Third, it could be that all fundamental laws of physics have no explanations (that's what makes them fundamental, as you say), and yet there is a reason why all fundamental laws of physics cover all of space-time and (to put it roughly) say the same things...

I have a question about the entities in scientific theories and models. The status of some of these objects seems intuitive. Frictionless planes, for example, though they don't exist, seem helpful enough as an abstraction for understanding how actual planes function. My question is about entities which we (non-scientists) know only through the prism of scientific theory--say, photons or electrons. I know what light and electricity are, on some immediate level, through my everyday experience of these phenomena. But I don't know what to make of the entities that physics tells me compose them. My inclination is to take them as "real", not just convenient notions of the purpose of theorizing and mathematical models. I can't help pictures these tiny, planet-like spheres whizzing around. I know there's something importantly wrong about that image, but I'm not sure what. Furthermore, scientists still talk about particles "spinning" and so forth, I am unable to see in what sense this is an analogy in the way...

The question that you are raising is a venerable and perennial one. In the trade, it is called the dispute between "scientific realism" and "scientific anti-realism." Scientific realism is the view that in science, when a theory is accepted, the unobservable entities that the theory posits are believed to exist and the theory's statements about them are believed to be (approximately) true. Scientific anti-realism is the view that in science, when a theory is accepted, the theory's claims about observable facts are believed to be true, but the theory's claims about unobservables are not believed to be true. Rather, they are believed to make accurate predictions about observables. That is all that science requires of its theories about unobservables. In your question, you alluded to Ptolemy's epicycles. This is a perfect case in point. In the ancient world, the celestial spheres posited by astronomical theories as carrying the planets along in their orbits (around the earth) were widely regarded not...

I consider myself a (metaphysical) materialist or, to use the synonymous term that is more fashionable nowadays, physicalist, and I'm familiar with the academic literature on contemporary materialism/physicalism. But in no paper or book did I find really satisfying, fully adequate definitions of the central concepts of a material/physical object and of a material/physical property. (A material/physical property certainly isn't material/physical in the same sense as a material/physical object.) Does this mean that there actually aren't any such definitions, and that materialism/physicalism is therefore a virtually vacuous doctrine? Material/physical objects (substances) could be defined in terms of material/physical properties: x is a material/physical object =def x has some (intrinsic) material/physical properties. But then the big problem is how to properly define the concept of a material/physical property. I've been trying to devise and formulate a fully adequate definition of it for several years...

This is indeed a difficult question. If we say that a physical object is an object with intrinsic physical properties, then you are right: we have left ourselves with the question of what a physical property is. If we say that a physical object is an object with spatiotemporal properties (such as position and velocity), then someone who believed in irreducible minds or souls that have spatial locations could presumably still count as a physicalist, which seems inappropriate. If we say that a material object is an object that is made of matter, then we need an account of what matter is. Are electric fields made of matter? They have mass, after all. Would Newtonian space be made of matter? It doesn't seem like it would be ... but its existence does not compromise materialism, does it? More generally, materialism and physicalism seem to be motivated by the idea that the entities described by physics are all of the entities that there are -- or, more precisely, are all of the fundamental entities there...

What is the correct resolution to the Fermi Paradox? As I understand it, the Fermi Paradox is physicist Enrico Fermi's acute observation of the discrepancy between the apparent high probability that extraterrestrial civilizations exist elsewhere in the universe, and the lack of empirical evidence of their supposed existence. It seems to me, that the Fermi Paradox is not a genuine paradox, as it neither commits self-reference nor leads to infinite regress. Any attempt to resolve this so-called paradox just needs to give an explanation for this discrepancy, but how does that contribute towards resolving the paradox? It seems that even if we were to make contact with an extraterrestrial civilization, the paradox would still be unresolved, so can there be any wholly satisfactory resolution to this paradox? Perhaps I just have the wrong attitude about it... I'm interested in seeing what other philosophers think about the Fermi Paradox, so that perhaps I may be assisted in developing my own stance on this...

I don't know what the precise definition of a "paradox" is, but roughly speaking, it is an argument that begins from premises that are too obvious to deny and ends by deriving from them a conclusion that is too ridiculous to accept. (Did Bertrand Russell say that somewhere?) By this standard, a paradox need not involve self-reference or lead to an infinite regress. Carl Hempel's famous "Paradox of Confirmation" (a.k.a. "Paradox of the Ravens") fits the above rough definition but involves neither self-reference nor infinite regress. Now the Fermi Paradox, as you say, begins from several considerations that aim to show that it is highly likely that extraterrestrial civilizations exist. Perhaps none of these considerations is really too obvious to deny, but all of them are intended to be well-grounded (e.g., the number of potentially life-supporting planets in the universe). With a few further premises about interstellar communication, the conclusion of the argument is supposed to be that (it is...

Hello there, I have a question about why exactly there's a problem or a paradox with the concept of Bleen and Grue from N. Goodman's writings on the New Riddle of Induction. I understand that at time T, the color is Bleen (or Grue) and that any prediction we make about a color of some object (for example) can be green or blue- and it will be right. Is that the essence of the paradox? Can I claim that it is similar to Schrodinger's cat paradox? If we examine an object after time T, and it's green then its original color should be named Bleen, but I have hard time understanding why it is so?

The paradox concerns the logic by which we are justified in forming our expectations about the future. Suppose we observe a bunch of emeralds and at the time that we observe them, each is green. This evidence is generally thought to support our expectation that on the first occasion on which we observe an emerald after the year 2100, let's say, we will find it to be green. The pattern of reasoning seems to be "If every F [emerald] we have examined has been found to be G at the time we observed it, then we should expect any given F to be G at any future time at which we might observe it." However, this pattern of reasoning (Goodman shows) cannot in fact support our prediction. For suppose that instead of making G = green, we make G = grue, where an object at a given moment is "grue" at that moment if and only if that object is green at that moment and the moment is (let's say) before the year 2100, or the object is blue at that moment and the moment is during or after the year 2100. So every emerald we...

I read recently a comment by a philosopher that Karl Popper's "falsifiability" theory is considered obsolete. Is this so? I always found it to be quite useful. If it's obsolete, what rendered it so, and by what was it replaced?

There are several considerations that count strongly against Popper's "falsifiability" criterion, but I'll mention just two. Remember that Popper's criterion is intended to distinguish science from non-science (or pseudoscience) on the grounds that a theory is scientific if and only if it is 'falsifiable', i.e., there are possible observations that would logically contradict it. Now for two quick arguments against this view: 1) Consider a statistical hypothesis, such as "This coin has a 50% chance of landing heads and a 50% chance of landing tails on any toss." Statistical hypotheses play a very important part in many important scientific theories (such quantum mechanics, evolutionary biology, statistical mechanics). But no possible sequence of coin toss outcomes logically contradicts this '50% chance' hypothesis. Some outcomes support the hypothesis; some disconfirm it. None falsifies it. 2) Many significant scientific hypothesis make no observable predictions all by themselves, but can...

For months I have had an exhaustive debate with various colleagues on the ethics of testing for correlations between race and IQ. I have arrived at the conclusion that while current methodological quagmires surrounding the testing render the results of such a study untrustworthy at best and potentially racist at worst, I still think that in the interests of free inquiry such tests proceed. However, the question remains, can a study on intrinsic group differences which is fraught with methodological uncertainty and whose results have relatively narrow applicability have any ethical basis? Are there other considerations for deciding whether such a study should or shouldn't be conducted?

I am no expert on these matters. (For an expert opinion, you might consult Philip Kitcher's recent work.) But I would like to point out that "the interests of free inquiry" is an ambiguous phrase. It is one thing to say that ethically, such a study should not be conducted. It is quite another thing to say that the government or some collection of private citizens should take action to prevent a scientist from conducting such a study. Just as "free speech" considerations prohibit the government from preventing certain kinds of speech but do not deem all speech to be ethically permissible, so "the interests of free inquiry" may prohibit the government from preventing certain kinds of studies but do not deem all studies to be ethically permissible. An interesting question is whether a private grantmaking organization should fail to fund such a study. Considerations of "free inquiry" do not require it to be blind to the reasons why such a study might be unethical (just as the interests of "free speech...

Will science be able to explain everything? My philosophy teacher said: for in order to explain something, whatever it is, we need to invoke something else. But what explains the second thing? What explains the law of gravity itself? Why do all bodies exert a gravitational force on each other? Since nothing can explain itself it follows that at least some of these laws (in the future) will themselves remain unexplained to infinity..., in other words, unexplained explainers? Is that just the way the cookie crumbles?

Yes. Here is a longer, more nuanced answer: Any explanation of one fact must be by another fact, as your teacher said. So a regress is launched: A is explained by B, which is explained by C, which is explained by D, which... . How is this regress to end? There are only a few options. One apparent possibility is that it goes in a big circle. But that is not possible: if D is explained by A, then A would ultimately be explained by itself! That cannot be, just as you said. Another apparent possibility is that the regress goes on forever, with different facts at every stage: D is explained by E, and E is explained by F, and so forth infinitely. I don't know of any argument showing this to be impossible. On this option, there are no fundamental laws of nature. Rather, for every law, there is an explanation involving a more basic law. This picture is rather disappointing, I guess, but so is the fact that the Yankees are playing lousy baseball this year. Disappointing things...

To whom it may concern; I thank you in advance for your assistance. I had a discussion with some of my colleagues regarding a problem that I identified. Basically, I got two different and contradictory results of the same problem (i.e., a paradox) using different but equally valid methodologies and rationales in our area of research. I propose to resolve this paradox by making some adjustments to the methodologies in order to make them consistent. As you know, when paradoxes are found, solutions have to be advanced in order to resolve the inconsistencies, and this in turn strengthens the whole methodology. The problem is that I identified the aforementioned paradox by means of a simulated, laboratory-type of study, in which ideal conditions are assumed and simulated. Since my area of research is business studies, my colleagues allege that the “paradox” I found is not valid, because it is not based on data from real firms. They added that for the paradox to be valid, real data would have to be used. I...

I don't think that there is or could be a general principle that says that a paradox arising from idealizations will inevitably carry over (much less become worse) when the idealizations are relaxed. In some cases, the paradox will disappear when the idealizations are removed. In other cases, the paradox will persist (or become worse). There is no general rule here. It depends entirely on the details of the case. For example, various paradoxes result in classical electromagnetic theory when pointlike charged particles are used. Point charges are a convenient idealization for many purposes, but the energy in such a field is undefined (the integral blows up). However, if we go to charge densities and extended charged bodies rather than point charges, these problems disappear. Likewise, in cosmology, Newtonian gravitational theory is afflicted with various paradoxes if we assume an infinite universe with a homogeneous, isotopic distribution of matter. Remove these idealizations and the problems go...

Two questions. It seems that no one has figured out good standards for acceptance or rejection of philosophical arguments. In science, observation is king. If evidence contradicts a theory under careful conditions, the theory is false. In math, we justify things formally; we cannot expect more certainty. So would you agree that philosophy, as a field that aims at knowledge and not something else like evoking emotions, suffers from a lack of standards? And since at the moment I suspect it does, I want to ask also, why do philosophers act so certain? To them their arguments are true or correct (or whatever) without empirical evidence or rigorous proof. They should be the most uncertain people of all, even more so than scientists. And they are pretty darn humble. (A better way to ask this might be, aren't proof and evidence the two best ways to knowledge? If so, shouldn't philosophers be much more uncertain than they appear (to me)? I now realize it's dependent on how I see things, so I only hope you can...

The kinds of reasons that are given for favoring one scientific theory over its rivals are a good deal more subtle than "observation is king." To begin with, a theory need not be justly rejected merely because it conflicts with a given observation; sometimes, the observation is appropriately doubted, and sometimes, a given theory is rationally retained despite its failure to fit our observations because blame for the mismatch is placed on other theories ("auxiliary hypotheses") that were used to bring the theory to bear on those observations. (The Copernican model of the solar system, for instance, was retained despite 300 years of failure to observe the stellar parallax it apparently predicts.) By the same token, a theory that fits our observations very well may nevertheless be justly and emphatically rejected on the grounds that it is ad hoc, fails to fit nicely with our other theories, lacks unity or fruitfulness or explanatory power, etc. Once these familiar features of scientific practice...

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