Related papers: We Have Never Been Sophisticated

Symmetry is often treated in philosophy of physics as an interpretive problem. A particularly lively dispute concerns local symmetries: do they indicate surplus structure that ought to be expunged, or are they merely a harmless redundancy?…

In the philosophical literature, symmetries of physical theories are most often interpreted within the general doctrine called 'Sophistication'. Roughly speaking, it says that models related by symmetries can peacefully co-exist while…

This is the introductive paper to the volume "Symmetries in Physics: Philosophical Reflections", Cambridge University Press, 2003. We begin with a brief description of the historical roots and emergence of the concept of symmetry that is at…

The main aim of this paper is to make a remark about the relation between (i) dualities between theories, as `duality' is understood in physics and (ii) equivalence of theories, as `equivalence' is understood in logic and philosophy. The…

Symmetries and isomorphisms play similar conceptual roles when we consider how models represent physical situations, but they are formally distinct, as two models related by symmetries are not typically isomorphic. I offer a rigorous…

A system's apparent simplicity depends on whether it is represented classically or quantally. This is not so surprising, as classical and quantum physics are descriptive frameworks built on different assumptions that capture, emphasize, and…

Logical depth and sophistication are two quantitative measures of the non-trivial organization of an object. Although apparently different, these measures have been proven equivalent, when the logical depth is renormalized by the busy…

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…

In this paper, we reject commonly accepted views on fundamentality in science, either based on bottom-up construction or top-down reduction to isolate the alleged fundamental entities. We do not introduce any new scientific methodology, but…

This is a companion to another paper. Together they rebut two widespread philosophical doctrines about emergence. The first, and main, doctrine is that emergence is incompatible with reduction. The second is that emergence is supervenience;…

Sophistication and logical depth are two measures that express how complicated the structure in a string is. Sophistication is defined as the minimal complexity of a computable function that defines a two-part description for the string…

Einstein's distinction between principle theories and constructive theories is methodological rather than metaphysical. Principle theories such as thermodynamics and relativity articulate empirically distilled constraints that delimit…

This is one of two papers about emergence, reduction and supervenience. It expounds these notions and analyses the general relations between them. The companion paper analyses the situation in physics, especially limiting relations between…

Wilhelm (2021) has recently defended a criterion for comparing structure of mathematical objects, which he calls Subgroup. He argues that Subgroup is better than SYM * , another widely adopted criterion. We argue that this is mistaken;…

There is a question of whether de-idealization is needed for justified use of -- for 'checking' -- idealizations. We argue that the standard philosophical account of de-idealization has become too idealized, but that this does not preclude…

Finetuning and Naturalness are extra-empirical theory assessments that reflect our expectation how scientific theories should provide an intuitive understanding about the foundations underlying the observed phenomena. Recently, the absence…

The relationship according to which one physical theory encompasses the domain of empirical validity of another is widely known as "reduction." Here it is argued that one popular methodology for showing that one theory reduces to another,…

This is a brief reminder, with extensions, from a different angle and for a less specialized audience, of my presentation at WGMP32 in July 2013, to which I refer for more details on the topics hinted at in the title, mainly deformation…

In 2011, I published a popular-level book, The Fallacy of Fine-Tuning: Why the Universe is Not Designed for Us. It investigated a common claim found in contemporary religious literature that the parameters of physics and cosmology are so…

Contrary to claims about the irrelevance of philosophy for science, I argue that philosophy has had, and still has, far more influence on physics than is commonly assumed. I maintain that the current anti-philosophical ideology has had…