Related papers: Religious and Scientific Faith in Simplicity
Our approach is basically a coherence approach, but we avoid the well-known pitfalls of coherence theories of truth. Consistency is replaced by reliability, which expresses support and attack, and, in principle, every theory (or agent,…
Agents' judgment depends on perception and previous knowledge. Assuming that previous knowledge depends on perception, we can say that judgment depends on perception. So, if judgment depends on perception, can agents judge that they have…
As scientists we like to think that modern societies and their members base their views, opinions and behaviour on scientific facts. This is not necessarily the case, even though we are all (over-) exposed to information flow through…
Modern physics is founded on two mainstays: mathematical modelling and empirical verification. These two assumptions are prerequisite for the objectivity of scientific discourse. Here we show, however, that they are contradictory, leading…
The development of science and technology has progressively demonstrated the ability of humankind to understand and manipulate the physical world, and it has also shown some fundamental limitations to predictability of physical events. This…
In view of the sobering findings of science, theology and to a lesser degree metaphysics is confronted with a humiliating loss, and a need for reinterpretation, of allegories and narratives which have served as guidance to the perplexed for…
Belief functions are a powerful and popular framework for the mathematical characterisation of uncertainty, in particular in situations in which lack of data renders learning a probability distribution for the problem impractical. The first…
We give a popular account of the Banach-Tarski paradox and its connections with the axiom of choice.
Adopting the scientific method a theoretical model is proposed as foundation for information science and technology, extending the existing theory of signaling: a fact f becomes known in a physical system only following the success of a…
The logic of abduction involves a collision between deduction and induction, where empirical surprises violate expectations and scientists innovate to resolve them. Here we reformulate abduction as a social process, occurring not only…
Data science is not a science. It is a research paradigm with an unfathomed scope, scale, complexity, and power for knowledge discovery that is not otherwise possible and can be beyond human reasoning. It is changing our world practically…
Testing hypotheses is an issue of primary importance in the scientific research, as well as in many other human activities. Much clarification about it can be achieved if the process of learning from data is framed in a stochastic model of…
Recently, much work has been carried out to study simplicial interpretations of modal logic. While notions of (distributed) knowledge have been well investigated in this context, it has been open how to model belief in simplicial models. We…
The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) makes certain assumptions which guide all current search programs. To illustrate some, this includes (1) that interstellar flight is not possible (2) that the motivations of interstellar…
The Price equation describes the change in populations. Change concerns some value, such as biological fitness, information or physical work. The Price equation reveals universal aspects for the nature of change, independently of the…
As new classes of transients and variable stars are discovered, and theoretical models are established to work or not to work for a few members of the class, it is often the case that some researchers will make arguments on the basis of…
In Dempster-Shafer belief theory, general beliefs are expressed as belief mass distribution functions over frames of discernment. In Subjective Logic beliefs are expressed as belief mass distribution functions over binary frames of…
This article supports the epistemological claim that sound human reasoning about ultimate knowledge is either foundational or circularly justified. In particular, questions which naturally arise in theology, philosophy, and related…
We discuss views about whether the universe can be rationally comprehended, starting with Plato, then Leibniz, and then the views of some distinguished scientists of the previous century. Based on this, we defend the thesis that…
Statistical science (as opposed to mathematical statistics) involves far more than probability theory, for it requires realistic causal models of data generators - even for purely descriptive goals. Statistical decision theory requires more…