Maverick Philosopher

Footnotes to Plato from the foothills of the Superstition Mountains

Category: Science

  • Why Physics Needs Philosophy

    A short piece by Tim Maudlin. Good as far as it goes, but it doesn't go deep enough.  Maudlin rightly opposes the "reigning attitude": The reigning attitude in physics has been “shut up and calculate”: solve the equations, and do not ask questions about what they mean.  But putting computation ahead of conceptual clarity can…

  • Global Warming: Questions That Need Distinguishing

    My posting of the graphic to the left indicates that I am a skeptic about global warming (GW).  To be precise, I am skeptical about some, not all, of the claims made by the GW activists.  See below for some necessary distinctions. Skepticism is good.  Doubt is the engine of inquiry and a key partner…

  • Bad Philosophy in Scientific American: Why Life Does Not Really Exist!

    We humans naturally philosophize.  But we don't naturally philosophize well.  So when science journalists and scientists try their hands at it they often make a mess of it.  (See my Scientism category for plenty of examples.) This is why there is need of the institutionalized discipline of philosophy one of whose chief offices is the…

  • Steven Pinker on Scientism, Part One

    Herewith, some commentary  on a very poor article by Steven Pinker, Science is not Your Enemy.  I will first state in general why I consider the article of low quality, and then quote a large chunk of it and intersperse some comments (bolded).  This is Part One.  Part Two to follow if I have the time…

  • Another Example of Awful Science Journalism

    My first example is here.  Read it for context and for some necessary distinctions.  Now for a second example.  Adam Frank writes, For Smolin there is no timeless world and there are no timeless laws. Time, he says, is real and nothing can escape it. Time, of course, seems real to us. We live in…

  • Why Do We Need Philosophy?

    Why do we need philosophy?  There are several reasons, but one is to expose the confusions and absurdities of scientists and science journalists when they encroach ineptly upon philosophical territory.  This from science writer Clara Moskowitz in Controversially, Physicist Argues Time is Real: NEW YORK — Is time real, or the ultimate illusion? Most physicists…

  • The Higgs Boson

    The discovery of it, or rather of evidence of its existence, required the torturing of nature with huge super-colliders.  But can we rely on information obtained by torture? 

  • Is Political Science Science?

    The answer depends on what counts as science.  The so-called 'hard' sciences set the standard.  This useful article lists the following five characteristics of science in the strict and eminent sense: 1. Clearly defined terminology.2. Quantifiability.3. Highly controlled conditions. "A scientifically rigorous study maintains direct control over as many of the factors that influence the…

  • Some Inaccurate Negative Stereotypes About Stereotypes

    • People ascribe a stereotype to everybody in the subject group. "All Germans are efficient." "All English people have bad teeth." In fact, these researchers were not able to locate anybody who believes that a stereotype is true of all members of the stereotyped group. Stereotypes are probabilistic tools, and even the most dull-witted human…

  • Tim Maudlin: Hawking “Just Doesn’t Know What He’s Talking About”

    In this Atlantic article on the philosophy of cosmology, Tim Maudlin states: Hawking is a brilliant man, but he's not an expert in what's going on in philosophy, evidently. Over the past thirty years the philosophy of physics has become seamlessly integrated with the foundations of physics work done by actual physicists, so the situation…

  • Where the Conflict Really Lies: Science, Religion, and Naturalism: Notes on the Preface

    I now have Alvin Plantinga's new book in my hands.  Here are some notes on the preface.  Since I agree with almost everything in the preface, the following batch of notes will be interpretive but not critical.  Words and phrases  enclosed in double quotation marks are Plantinga's ipsissima verba.  1. Plantinga is concerned with the…

  • The ‘Brain’ Brain and the ‘Gut’ Brain

    Connie Francis's  heart had a mind of its own, but apparently our guts have minds of their own.  Literally! 

  • Plantinga on Where the Conflict Lies

    The publication of Alvin Plantinga's latest book has been noted in the NYT (HT: Dave Lull): In “Where the Conflict Really Lies: Science, Religion and Naturalism,” published last week by Oxford University Press, he unleashes a blitz of densely reasoned argument against “the touchdown twins of current academic atheism,” the zoologist Richard Dawkins and the…

  • Why Science Will Never Put Religion Out of Business

    If science can eventually provide what religion promises, then science will eventually put religion out of business.  But can science provide what religion promises?  I will argue that it cannot.  My argument will  not assume that any religion, or any combination of religions, is true, wholly or in part.  Perhaps no actual or possible religion…

  • Will Science Put Religion out of Business? A Preliminary Tilt at Transhumanism

    A correspondent writes: Here's how I think science will eventually put religion out of business. Soon medical science is going to be able to offer serious life extension, not pie-in-the-sky soul survival or re-incarnation, but real life extension with possible rejuvenation. When science can offer and DELIVER what religion can only promise, religion is done.…