Answer by TKoL for Is the concept of "supernatural laws" an oxymoron?
It's not necessarily an oxymoron, depending on how loose you want to be with the word "supernatural". But one perspective to keep in mind is, if there were a supernatural realm with supernatural laws,...
View ArticleComment by TKoL on Did God "design" logic?
@RabbiKaii yes it does. If god is beholden to the laws of logic, that means it didn't invent them. You're not being very charitable in your reading if you don't see that.
View ArticleAnswer by TKoL for Who Bears the Burden of Proof Regarding Free Will:...
The Burden of Proof isn't an absolute property. There's no experiment you can perform on a person, a brain, or a position to show that that thing has the burden of proof.The Burden of Proof is a social...
View ArticleComment by TKoL on Why do scientific laws persist?
@JackAidley I don't know what you mean by the difference between "constructed" and "natural". I intuitively feel like you're probably interpreting something I said in my answer in a way that I didn't...
View ArticleAnswer by TKoL for What kind of free will does Harry Potter have while...
Some conceptions of free will, compatibilist ones mainly (though perhaps not all compatibilist ones) see human minds as something like decision making machines. If the machine of your decision making...
View ArticleAnswer by TKoL for Is the notion that queer identities and sexuality are...
It may be that while many aspects of gender are defined socially, gender identity itself may be closer to innate. And sexuality is related to gender but doesn't always cut along the same joint as...
View ArticleAnswer by TKoL for Why should I not believe there are true contradictions?
This got me thinking: How does one really justify the law of non-contradiction without just appealing to intuition?If you accept logic, but specifically deny the law of non contradiction, the problem...
View ArticleAnswer by TKoL for Does any interaction necessarily imply emergence in...
Another way of wording this question is, are there interactions which DON'T produce emergent behaviour? To which I would say, probably not, with the possible exception of very very weak interactions -...
View ArticleAnswer by TKoL for Negation of "I think therefore I am"?
Haxor is right that in classical logic, to negate the implication of "I think implies I am" would be "I think and I am not."However in natural language, negating an implication means something...
View ArticleAnswer by TKoL for The Evolution of Free Will: Is Kevin Mitchell's argument...
"If the 'ability to make decisions' is a valid definition, then Mitchell simply stating that we make choices routinely is assuming that which he is trying to prove."I think it's worse than that - I...
View ArticleAnswer by TKoL for How is it determined which explanation is simpler?
Kolmogrov complexity is one objective-ish measure of simplicity. The downside is, many hypotheses aren't well formulated enough to even have a vague range of their kolmogrov complexity.Basically, any...
View ArticleAnswer by TKoL for What types of observations necessitate postulating more...
Relativity is more complex than Newtonian physics - research the experimental motivations for inventing the theory of relativity for a perfect example. From what I understand, Maxwell's equations were...
View ArticleAnswer by TKoL for Question regarding validity of argument
Consider that not all arguments in the exact same format are valid and with a true conclusion, even if their premises are true.Obama was an american president or Arnold Schwarzenegger was an American...
View ArticleAnswer by TKoL for What principle protects the objective nature of the prior...
So does Bayes’ theorem reduce to ordinary prejudice?In some circumstances, you could say that, you could say that priors are arguably just rooted in personal biases, but not all applications of bayes...
View ArticleComment by TKoL on What are reasonable counter objections to the argument...
@Sismetic the argument proposed in op against materialism is that they're separate - my argument above is that this means they're not separate at all.
View ArticleAnswer by TKoL for Top-down bottom-up
When they're saying top down or bottom up causation, they may be talking about emergence.Bottom up causation is frequently another way to talk about weak emergence - how a high level macroscopic...
View ArticleAnswer by TKoL for Does the universe include everything, or merely everything...
There's two competing definitions of universe.1 is everything that exists, period.Another is, everything that exists in this same space-time as us.The second definition is what many people mean when...
View ArticleAnswer by TKoL for Does this follow from Everett's Many-Worlds?
You asked a lot of different things, so I'll just try to focus on one:My main query is this: If every possible world exists, and quantum probability simply emerges from the abundance or perhaps density...
View ArticleAnswer by TKoL for Does the PSR fail only at the atomic level in quantum...
There are many interpretations of QM, and those different interpretations may answer this question differently.In pilot wave theory, some apparently-random event was in fact not random but determined...
View ArticleComment by TKoL on Does Pascal's Wager refute Apatheism?
@WinstonEwert before you realize that no religions have a lick of evidence for them, sure. Do a bit of investigation, realize they're all talking crap, and then move on with your life. I did include...
View ArticleDoes it matter if certain professions have a lower rate of theism, and if so,...
Many of us are familiar with discussions bringing up the correlation with religion and IQ, or educational achievement, or being a professional in a certain field like physics or biology. These are...
View ArticleAnswer by TKoL for Are statements of the form "I claim that X" always true?
"I claim x" is ALWAYS true, at least at the moment it's uttered, in a self referential way. If we consider saying "I claim x" as a claim of x, then "I claim x" must be true."I believe X" may not be...
View ArticleComment by TKoL on Under physicalism, what is the ontological status of the...
@user80226 I don't belieive it has a separate name - as someone who holds this view, I'm pretty sure most of us just call ourselves 'physicalists', and I kind of want to wager that a sizable fraction...
View ArticleComment by TKoL on Are there notable contemporary scientists and physicists...
@JD should I change it to "explicitly a platonist" then?
View ArticleAnswer by TKoL for Does the universe not being locally real mean anything for...
"I've asked this question to physicists and the answers I got seem to imply that it's NO, this doesn't have the implications people are drawing from it."This is almost certainly the correct take, yes....
View ArticleAnswer by TKoL for Is materialism wrong?
"or does materialism have other complexity beyond humans literally just being material?"Perhaps, instead of "we are the material", one can be a materialist and think "we are the consequence of the...
View ArticleAnswer by TKoL for Are David Chalmers' definitions of strong and weak...
It is in principle falsifiable, I believe, yes. The statement "there is no Strong Emergence" is falsifiable, at least. To falsify it, you could devise an experiment to show that fundamental particles...
View ArticleComment by TKoL on How can I convince myself that a number which is both even...
@JKusin its implied by the definitions of even and odd.
View ArticleAnswer by TKoL for Are religion first and science second, as we currently...
If science were a system of mass control, it would be remarkable, I think, that in general Chinese scientists and Russian scientists seem to agree for the most part with American scientists.I think...
View ArticleAnswer by TKoL for Can an empiricist appeal to mental experience?
To the contrary, how could one be an empiricist without referring to mental experiences? The only data we have with which to make inferences about the world come from mental experiences.So not only can...
View ArticleComment by TKoL on Can a rational decision ever be regretted?
@Codename47 yeah, indeterminism honestly has nothing to do with it. Its more just about the ignorance of the being making the choice - if they are making a decision on incomplete information,...
View ArticleComment by TKoL on The truth and falsehood problem of the explosion principle
@我們這一家 one of the primary arguments for why p and ~p cannot both be true at the same time is precisely this scenario - IF we allow them to be true, then anything else is true as well. Since we know...
View ArticleComment by TKoL on How can science explain the dualistic philosophy of...
If you believe Good and Evil are scientifically investigable concepts, it's up to you to demonstrate that they're scientific.
View ArticleComment by TKoL on How can a fundamentally random process follow a...
@Syed it's not obvious to me that all the coins tossed in a deterministic universe will have any more reliable of a probability distribution than coins that are fundamentally random.
View ArticleComment by TKoL on Name for the logical fallacy of asking for unreasonable...
The fallacy of having a really high standard of evidence for beliefs you don't like, while requiring much less evidence for beliefs you hold, is common, probably common enough that we've all done it at...
View ArticleComment by TKoL on Would mind-reading technology finally solve the problem of...
No, it would leave us exactly the same. Besides, we already can do rudimentary mind reading.
View ArticleComment by TKoL on Can a point particle exist, without any kind of relation...
The word 'point' itself is a reference to space.
View ArticleComment by TKoL on How do you prove (A ∧ C) ∨ (A ∧ (B → C)) , B ⊢ C ∨ D?
@ScottRowe all logical proofs reduce to tautologies.
View ArticleComment by TKoL on If the laws of physics were axioms, would the existence of...
He's saying that potentially a chicken is an inevitable consequence of the laws of physics, and as such has some kind of a priori truthiness to it.
View ArticleComment by TKoL on Evolution and Popperian falsifiability
what did he mean by "not strictly universally true"? did he clarify that? did he provide examples?
View ArticleComment by TKoL on Why is pattern recognition not racism?
I think you're asking some very different questions. Questions about what is racist and why are very different from questions about why ai designers don't understand all of the internals of their ais.
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