Related papers: A Farewell to Falsifiability
Some hypotheses in modern theoretical physics that have not any experimental verification are listed. The goal of the paper is not to criticize or be lawyers any of these hypotheses. The purpose is focus physicists attention on that now…
No theory of physics has been collectively scientifically verified in an experiment so far. It is pointed out that probabilistic structure of quantum theory can be collectively scientifically verified in an experiment. It is also argued…
Evaluating theories in physics used to be easy. Our theories provided very distinct predictions. Experimental accuracy was so small that worrying about epistemological problems was not necessary. That is no longer the case. The…
The violation of Bell inequalities by experiment has convinced physicists that we cannot maintain a classical view of the world. When we argue against the possibility of local realist hidden-variable models, however, the ubiquitous…
We review a bit our earlier novel string field theory\cite{self2,self8} stressing the interesting property, that it becomes expressed in terms of particle like objects called by us "objects" which in our formalism do not at all develop in…
Can multiverse hypotheses ever receive empirical support? Critics argue that multiverse scenarios posit unobservable entities, face severe underdetermination, or fall outside the bounds of science. This chapter challenges that view by…
Most scientists would hold that science has not established that the cosmos is physically comprehensible - i.e. such that there is some as-yet undiscovered true physical theory of everything that is unified. This is an empirically…
Criteria for defining errors of a physical theory are formulated. It is shown that the Special Theory of Relativity (STR) has a solid mathematical basis. An enormous amount of experiments carried out in particle physics use beams of…
Promoting a theory with a finite number of terms into an effective field theory with an infinite number of terms worsens simplicity, predictability, falsifiability, and other attributes often favored in theory choice. However, the…
Recent work by Faizal et al. (2025) claims that G\"odelian undecidability of non-algorithmic truths in our universe imply the impossibility of a formal, algorithmic simulation of the universe. This paper clarifies the distinction between…
It is a widespread belief that results like G\"odel's incompleteness theorems or the intrinsic randomness of quantum mechanics represent fundamental limitations to humanity's strive for scientific knowledge. As the argument goes, there are…
Modern fundamental physics poses new questions for philosophy, which, as it seems to us, have not yet received appropriate attention from philosophers of science. This paper formulates a number of such questions in order to present them to…
Scientific theories of consciousness should be falsifiable and non-trivial. Recent research has given us formal tools to analyze these requirements of falsifiability and non-triviality for theories of consciousness. Surprisingly, many…
Simon argued that the semi-classical theory of gravity, unless with some of its solutions excluded, is unacceptable for reasons of both self-consistency and experiment, and that it has to be replaced by a constrained semi-classical theory.…
Perhaps more than any other of the physical sciences, cosmology exemplifies the inevitable contact between science and philosophy, including the problem of the demarcation criteria that distinguish science from non-science. Although modern…
String theorists are certain that they are practicing physicists. Yet, some of their recent critics deny this. This paper argues that this conflict is really about who holds authority in making rational judgment in theoretical physics. At…
The familiar theories of physics have the feature that the application of the theory to make predictions in specific circumstances can be done by means of an algorithm. We propose a more precise formulation of this feature --- one based on…
I review the basis and limitations of plausible inference in cosmology, in particular the limitation that it can only provide fundamentally true inferences when the hypotheses under consideration form a set that is exhaustive. They never…
The transcendental expectation of string theory is that the nature of the fundamental forces, particle spectra and masses, together with coupling constants, is uniquely determined by mathematical and logical consistency, non-empirically,…
The paper demonstrates that falsifiability is fundamental to learning. We prove the following theorem for statistical learning and sequential prediction: If a theory is falsifiable then it is learnable -- i.e. admits a strategy that…