相关论文: Why we must heed Wittgenstein's "notorious paragra…

In a piece published in 1981, H. M. Edwards touts the benefits of reading the masters. A quarter-century later, Edwards takes seriously his own advice by publishing an encomium on Euler's Institutiones (1755). While we agree with Edwards…

Defeasible reasoning is a kind of reasoning where some generalisations may not be valid in all circumstances, that is general conclusions may fail in some cases. Various formalisms have been developed to model this kind of reasoning, which…

Science is a crowning glory of the human spirit and its applications remain our best hope for social progress. But there are limitations to current science and perhaps to any science. The general mind-body problem is known to be intractable…

This article explores the following methodological principle for theory construction in physics: if an ontological theory predicts two scenarios that are ontologically distinct but empirically indiscernible, then this theory should be…

Already in the 1970s there where attempts to present a set of ground rules, sometimes referred to as a theory of gravitation theories, which theories of gravity should satisfy in order to be considered viable in principle and, therefore,…

A proof is given, at a greater level of generality than previous 'no-go' theorems, of the impossibility of formulating a modal interpretation that exhibits 'serious' Lorentz invariance at the fundamental level. Particular attention is given…

Justification logics are special kinds of modal logics which provide a framework for reasoning about epistemic justifications. For this, they extend classical boolean propositional logic by a family of necessity-style modal operators "t:",…

In order to design strong paradigms for isolating lexical access and semantics, we need to know what a word is. Surprisingly few linguists and philosophers have a clear model of what a word is, even though words impact basically every…

Why is gauge symmetry so important in modern physics, given that one must eliminate it when interpreting what the theory represents? In this paper we discuss the sense in which gauge symmetry can be fruitfully applied to constrain the space…

We present two lines of reasoning, leading to elementary constituents more fundamental than the ones we know. One such arguments is new, and based on the holographic maximal bound for the number of degrees of freedom of any system. In this…

This paper revisits the foundations of mathematical proof through the lens of Aristotle's threefold conception of truth: sensory evidence, axiomatic definition, and syllogistic deduction. I argue that modern mathematics has too often…

Inconsistency Robustness is performance of information systems with pervasively inconsistent information. Inconsistency Robustness of the community of professional mathematicians is their performance repeatedly repairing contradictions over…

In his Chronology, Newton uses astronomical "evidence" to support its extreme rejuvenation of ancient times. These elements, having a scientific varnish, provide some credibility to the work. They have been fiercely debated for a century,…

Since the diagonal lemma plays a key role in the proof of the main limitative theorems of logic, its proof could shed light on the very essence of these fundamental theorems. Yet the lemma is often characterized as one of those important…

We find that second order quantification is problematic when a quantified concept variable is supposed to function predicatively. This issue is analyzed and it is shown that a constructive interpretation of the falling under relation…

When should a given operational phenomenology be deemed to admit of a classical explanation? When it can be realized in a generalized-noncontextual ontological model. The case for answering the question in this fashion has been made in many…

We find it necessary to advise the interested and active instructor of Physics on the wrongness of some computations in the aforementioned article. Surprisingly, the Journal refuses to even publish an erratum on the paper, which naturally…

In quantum theory, it is widely accepted that all experimental results must agree with theoretical predictions based on the Copenhagen interpretation. However the classical system in the Copenhagen interpretation has not been defined yet.…

This paper provides a critical overview of Georg Kreisel's method of informal rigour, most famously presented in his 1967 paper `Informal rigour and completeness proofs'. After first considering Kreisel's own characterization in historical…

Special relativity is no longer a new revolutionary theory but a firmly established cornerstone of modern physics. The teaching of special relativity, however, still follows its presentation as it unfolded historically, trying to convince…