Unanswered Questions
190 questions with no upvoted or accepted answers
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Sheldrake's Fields as Formal Causes
Why do we not consider fields as formal causes, especially in light of Rupert Sheldrake's analysis of morphogenetic fields? How does Sheldrake's hypothesis of formative causation challenge our ...
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Relations without Relata?
Ladyman’s ontic structural realism posits to the world is comprised of relations without relata. Can somebody please explain what this means conceptually? What are the reasons someone would have for ...
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Relationism, Substantivalism, and Simultaneity?
I've been breaking my head open lately over special relativity and its conception of spacetime's dynamical as well as kinematical features. One thing that has stuck in my head is that of whether the ...
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Some questions on causality and modern science
Note: I'm translating the vocabulary from Spanish so there may be some erroneous terms. If so, please edit them.
In Causality: the place of the causal principle in modern science by Mario Bunge, the ...
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Explanation vs. prediction in statistics and in the philosophy of science?
In the realm of statistics and machine learning, a lot of discussion has arisen recently around the difference between explaining and predicting: That the two are not the same, and that the difference ...
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Name of Principle Giving Precedence to a More General Hypothesis
As far as I know, there is a principle that gives precedence to a theory that is more general than a more specific one, i.e the more general one is more acceptable.
What is the name of that principle?
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Looking for a book to compliment Zammito and Mohanty in understanding the ethos of post positivistic realism
There are two books which I consider to be indispensable to an understanding of
contemporary western culture’s post-truth/alternative facts (scientific and cultural post modernism/structuralism/...
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In which sense does Kuhn acknowledge the importance of metaphors in science?
Kuhn, in Metaphors and Through [1993], claims:
“Metaphors play an essential role in establishing links between
scientific language and the world. Those links are not, however, given
once and ...
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Is 't Hooft cellular automaton compatible with Floridi's Informational (Structural) Realism?
Informational (Structural) Realism (by Luciano Floridi) relates to digital physics ideas (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_physics)
As Floridi himself says in one of his articles (http://philsci-...
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Is There a World That Exactly Mimics Our Own?
If parallel universes do indeed exist and if we are just viewing one tiny part of reality, is it possible that in an alternate universe there would appear an exact replica of our world?
Note: I ...
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Women who have recently contributed to the realism debate?
I'm struggling to find women who have contributed to the debate on scientific realism over, say, the last ten years - do you have any suggestions?
Edit
So we have 1 suggestion so far, and I'll add ...
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How does dialectical causality work in practice?
I'm currently reading Evan Thompson's Mind in Life (2007). He was a collaborator of Fransisco Varela on Autopoiesis so he expands it from biological forms to, ultimately, cognitive science. It's an ...
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Academic research on technical and philosophical possibilities of the world in a computer simulator?
This question is as mainstream as it gets in online publications.
But, does more serious and balanced academic research exist on this subject?
If your PhD student were writing an article on this ...
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What would be a recent follow-up or alternative to Pylyshyn's 1984 book on "Computation and Cognition: Toward a Foundation for Cognitive Science"?
I was exposed to Zenon Pylyshyn's work through my master's thesis work in Cognitive Science. Recently, I picked up his 1984 book on "Computation and Cognition: Toward a Foundation for Cognitive ...
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Does Hume propose that causes might actually just be explained by coincidence?
Does Hume propose that what people interpret as casual connections could instead be explained by coincidence?
I want to know if this is an accurate understanding.
Hume says something to the effect of:
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