Related papers: Religious and Scientific Faith in Simplicity
Even when completely and consistently formulated, a fundamental theory of physics and cosmological boundary conditions may not give unambiguous and unique predictions for the universe we observe; indeed inflation, string/M theory, and…
In the past century many fundamental results on unpredictability, undecidability and uncertainty have compelled scientists to grapple with the idea that some questions may never be resolved within our current theories. While this…
Any system based on axioms is incomplete because the axioms cannot be proven from the system, just believed. But one system can be less-incomplete than other. Neutrosophy is less-incomplete than many other systems because it contains them.…
I show that the maximum entropy principle can be replaced by a more natural assumption, that there exists a phenomenological function of entropy consistent with the microscopic model. The requirement of existence provides then a unique…
(shortened version) Religions and languages are social variables, like age, sex, wealth or political opinions, to be studied like any other organizational parameter. In fact, religiosity is one of the most important sociological aspects of…
That an agent's possible evidential states form a Boolean algebra (on which it is natural to define a probability measure) is an assertion that ideally should be proved, rather than assumed, in justifying rational choice as a representation…
Algorithms of inference in a computer system oriented to input and semantic processing of text information are presented. Such inference is necessary for logical questions when the direct comparison of objects from a question and database…
Are symmetries discovered or rather invented by humans ? The stand you may take firmly here reveals a lot of your epistemological position. Conversely, the arguments you may forge for answering to this question, or to one of its numerous…
While philosophy of science is the study of problems of knowledge concerning science in general, there also exists - or should exist - a '' philosophy in science'' directed at finding out in what ways our actual scientific knowledge may…
Why is the universe comprehensible? How is it that we can come to know its regularities well-enough to exploit them for our own gain? In this essay I argue that the nature of our comprehension lies in the mutually agreed upon methodology we…
First, this paper broaches the definition of science and the epistemic yield of tenets and approaches: phenomenological (descriptive only), well-founded (solid first principles, conducive to deep understanding), provisional (falsifiable if…
Prediction is a complex notion, and different predictors (such as people, computer programs, and probabilistic theories) can pursue very different goals. In this paper I will review some popular kinds of prediction and argue that the theory…
Natural revision seems so natural: it changes beliefs as little as possible to incorporate new information. Yet, some counterexamples show it wrong. It is so conservative that it never fully believes. It only believes in the current…
We consider the relation between knowledge and certainty, where a fact is known if it is true at all worlds an agent considers possible and is certain if it holds with probability 1. We identify certainty with probabilistic belief. We show…
Statistics is sometimes described as the science of reasoning under uncertainty. Statistical models provide one view of this uncertainty, but what is frequently neglected is the 'invisible' portion of uncertainty: that assumed not to exist…
The choice of priors may become an insoluble problem if priors and Bayes' rule are not seen and accepted in the framework of subjectivism. Therefore, the meaning and the role of subjectivity in science is considered and defended from the…
General acceptance of a mathematical proposition $P$ as a theorem requires convincing evidence that a proof of $P$ exists. But what constitutes "convincing evidence?" I will argue that, given the types of evidence that are currently…
What science does, what science could do, and how to make science work? If we want to know the answers to these questions, we need to be able to uncover the mechanisms of science, going beyond metrics that are easily collectible and…
In the canonical examples underlying Shafer-Dempster theory, beliefs over the hypotheses of interest are derived from a probability model for a set of auxiliary hypotheses. Beliefs are derived via a compatibility relation connecting the…
The intrinsic difficulties in building realistic climate models and in providing complete, reliable and meaningful observational datasets, and the conceptual impossibility of testing theories against data imply that the usual Galilean…