Within the scope of the problem of demarcation there seems to be an implicit distinction between pseudoscience and non-science. Trying to make explicit what such distinction might be, I wonder: Does the difference between pseudoscience and non-science amount simply to the fact that the former "pretends to be scientific" whereas the latter does not? --- What does it really mean for some theory "to pretend to be scientific"?  (And, could it be that theories we might consider pseudoscientific at present time, would turn in future into scientific ones (just as it happens from time to time with non-scientific theories that evolve into scientific ones?))
120761
I've recently come across several statements to the effect "there are questions science can't answer", mostly from proponents of  and , but also from  and  as well.   However it seemed to me that there was an inherent contradiction in statements of the type "Science doesn't have all the answers" or "Science can't answer all questions". This is hinged on what is meant by "answering a question". It seems to me that to answer any significant question is to provide 2 things:    An accurate and objective explanation of the current state of affairs, in terms of relationships, causes and effects.  Based on that explanation, a method for making decisions if one is faced with future scenarios similar to or related to the current state of affairs, and for predicting future states of affairs with a certain amount probability, i.e the explanation is useful for future purposes.   But then if a field of inquiry is able to provide accurate, objective and useful information regarding a question, doesn't that field simply become part of science?   As examples:    If some school of mysticism is demonstrated to truly improve the happiness and well being of it's practitioners, then wouldn't that school's mystical teachings simply be incorporated into mainstream psychology and psychotherapy?  Similarly, if a political ideology is proven to provide better economic conditions and less crime, less pollution, etc...then this ideology's principles would become an accepted part of social sciences?     To put it more simply: Science has all the answers, because science IS anything that can provide objective and useful answers to a question.  Am I not talking about the demarcation problem per-se (at I least I think I am not), because even disciplines which are agreed upon as failing various demarcation criteria (such as astrology or intelligent design) are still trying (and failing) to be scientific in the sense I mentioned above. If they did start to provide answers, science would have to take them into account. Moreover, various philosophical schools of ethics are trying to be scientific in their explanatory framework, they are just not able to provide verifiable and falsifiable statements to prove their precepts (and probably would do so if possible).   My questions then are:    Per those who claim that science can't answer all questions, what type of question are they talking about? Do they have a demarcation criteria for such questions? (I'm not asking for examples, there are already plenty in the links I posted above).  If a field starts providing objective, accurate answers, doesn't it just become a subfield of science?   Is there a second demarcation problem between "carckpot" pseudosciences (such as astrology or numerology) which are providing the wrong answers and legitimate fields of inquiry (such as political theory or ethics) which are trying to provide answers but so far have failed to provide verifiable and falsifiable statements or accurate predictions?
99994
I'm writing an article on  and some people pointed out that this is completely useless.  My idea is to amend my article with some theories that seemed useless when they are created but found use after some time.  I came with some ideas like the Turing machine but I think I'm not grasping the right examples.  Can someone point me some theories that seemed like the Lychrel numbers and then become 'useful'?
82737
I am not questioning whether the simulation topic is outside science. I am asking what evidence there is or could be to resolve whether we are or not.   Living in a simulation has been a topic for philosophy since at least Descartes, with his 'evil demon not less powerful than deceitful'. Zuangzhi's 'Now I do not know whether I was then a man dreaming I was a butterfly, or whether I am now a butterfly, dreaming I am a man' could be argued to be a statement of the same idea. What I am interested in is, is can we get beyond speculation and make headway on this? How does the evidence stand, what tools do we have, and what implications might the different answers have?  Here I quickly summarize some of the main positions:    (2003), Nick Bostrom, makes the case we are in a simulation, on the balance of probabilities   (2017), Ringel &amp; Kovrizhin, makes the case such a simulation is impossible using classical computers.  But that leaves quantum computers.  (2014) gives a more detailed idea of what being in a simulation might mean, as a kind of peer-to-peer reality  demonstrates a serious argument that the simulation hypothesis is the best answer to the Fermi Paradox.  Although as recently discussed on here, the existence of this paradox is open to dispute, and relies on a range of assumptions.   Anyone got anything else evidence based? Any models, or discussions of implications?
48698
Is stats maths or not?   Given that it's all numbers, mostly taught by maths departments and you get maths credits for it, I wonder whether people just mean it half-jokingly when they say it, like saying it's a minor part of maths, or just applied maths.   I wonder if something like statistics, where you can't build everything on basic axioms can be considered maths. For example, the $p$-value, which is a concept that arose to make sense of data, but it's not a logical consequence of more basic principles.
97220
I recently came across several papers in the area of Information Extraction and Data Mining which seem to have passed the review process even if they (1) use some new terminology without describing it, (2) replicate some old and popular technique and just describe it in a new way, (3) use new datasets without releasing them publicly or describing them in detail, (4) confusing language that doesn't seem to describe the methods... and much more.   Why challenge them? Such papers give these people a kind of leverage in situations where number of publications count rather than quality of genuine work. They also encourage, let's say, 'pseudoscience' within the scientific community - or fraud, as those more experienced among you say.  I've faced situations like:-   Someone hired me from a freelance site to implement a previously published paper. The paper doesn't adequately describe the novel methods they claim. I spend a week on it but don't get paid.  Similar situation but the implementation's accuracy doesn't match the claim. In a semi-academic gathering (tea time in a summer school), a discussion turned into a debate. Though I wasn't involved in it, one of the others said something which I pointed out as being logically wrong. It turned personal and one of them claimed that they knew better because of having twice the number of papers than me. Later when I read their papers I found that they didn't contain any ideas that would count as a genuine research.    I guess some of you might have been in similar situations before. Yes it doesn't matter in the longer term; but it is hard to avoid some situations like this and I think it might be hampering the research community as a whole.   Here are the exact points of my question:   Should we confront such publications? Would we get anything out of it?  Is it even feasible?   How can I do so? What actions are possible in such cases? What is the best course of action?   p.s. Yes citations matter more than just throwing papers - but such publications also get citations from other equally content-less papers published in similar conferences.   pps. Most of these papers are from less-than-tier-3 level conferences but still published by top publishers like IEEE and Springer.
73662
"Scientific" theories require proof, and there are certain guidelines and standards for the proofs to be acceptable to the "scientific" community in that domain (Algebra, Computer Science, etc.). Hence I am keen to know: What can suffice as a "scientific" proof for the existence of a monotheistic God? to what domain can such a proof belong to?    And Is "science" mature enough to come up with scientific instruments and methods that can assess such a proof as we are dealing with a thing which is supposedly more complex then the Atom which physicist are still struggling to understand ?
16616
I'm a huge fan of mathematical physics and I know what the formal definitions of those  two areas are, I've seen them. But I still get completely baffled when someone asks me to explain it simply. The difference is obvious to me, but I just can't seem to put it into words in a satisfying enough manner. So I'm asking you to help me...  What is the essential difference between  and ?  or if you prefer the rephrased version...  What was the motivation for introducing the name "mathematical physics" as a separate entity?  (It doesn't matter if you're one of those people who don't like labels, the thing is that we do have these two separated very often in academia.)
109543
I recently read an introduction about ontology. A section was about the debate whether to exist and to have being is the same.  One position says (attributed to Meinong), that some things exist and some things have being. Dragons, for example, have being, but don't exit. According to this position, one can make sense of propositions like "Dragons don't exist".  The other position says (attributed to Quine), that having being and existing is the same thing. To say, dragons don't exist is to say that dragons don't have being.   I expected to see an explanation of the theoretical importance of this debate, but the section just ended.  I don't get, what the point of this debate is. The first position agrees with the second, that dragons are somehow not present and that we can't touch them for example. It seems to me, that this debate is only about linguistic preferences, whether I want to say, that dragons have being or not.   Since I don't believe, that philosophers just talk about linguistic preferences, I must have missed something.  My question: What is the theoretical importance of the debate, whether to exist and to have being is the same?
45727
I've read that it's just as correct to think of A moving toward B (ie. A doesn't move, but B does) as it is to think about B as moving toward A (again, A doesn't move, but B does) or as the two moving toward each other.   If I imagine a universe in which only two objects exists - then that seems like it would be the case. However, in that universe there isn't really a point of reference to say whether one object isn't moving.   Is there a useful and accurate way to think about these kinds of relations?   Thank you -Hal.
7887
My statistic professor says so, all the books that I look at state it:  is unscientific. You must derive a hypothesis from theory first, and then collect data and analyse it.  But I really don't understand what the problem is.  Suppose, I see sales figures for different car colors and form the hypothesis that from numbers of different-colored cars sold the largest group of cars on the street shoud be white. So I sit at some street one day and note all the colors of all the cars that pass me. Then I do some tests and find whatever.  Now, suppose I was bored and sat at some street one day and noted all the colors of all the cars that passed me. Since I love graphs, I plot a pretty histogram and find that white cars form the largest group. So I think that maybe most cars on the street are white and perform some tests.  How and why do the results or the interpretation of the results of the post-hoc test differ from those of the theory-driven* hypothesis test?  *&nbsp;What's the name for the opposite of a post-hoc test, anyway?    I would like to add that most of our knowledge about the universe (the Earth moves around the Sun) is deduced post hoc from observation.  It seems to me that in physics it is perfectly okay to assume that it is not coincidence that the sun has been rising in the East for the last thousand years.
70514
Reopen note:  There is a quite finite and modest amount of evidence in the literature about this issue, which members can record here as they see fit. Less than there is for example about what a noun is or what a verb is, or how to tell what the Subject of a sentence is. It's a simple question, that people need to be able to get answered on a site such as this. It is of continuing interest as more recent questions such as  attest to. The fact that people disagree about the outcome of the evidence does not mean that there is too much evidence to be documented. Quite the reverse. They disagree because there is relatively little evidence altogether. However, it is seriously interesting evidence.   The question   What part of speech is to as in:   I need to know. To err is human, to forgive divine. What am I to do?   This question is not really about the difference in meaning between the examples. It is a question about what grammatical or syntactic reasons we have to classify this item as a particular part of speech. If arguing that it is 'its own part of speech', I'd like to know what grammatical - but not historical - reasons you have for your claim.   Just to clarify, I'm not asking about what assignment any particular authority or publication gives it. I'm interested to know the reasons why. Your own personal insights are also very welcome.  If you're a grammar anorak - like me - then you may want a list of the contenders out there from other grammarians. In no particular order:   preposition subordinator non-finite auxiliary verb modal verb inflectional element   Can you help?
124305
On  in XI Free Models and Logic Programming of Ebbinghaus' Mathematical Logic:  In general, the following statement is false: (*)  If $\Phi \models \exists x \phi$  then there is a term $t$  with $\Phi \models \phi \frac{t}{x}$ We  get  a  counterexample for  $S  = \{R\}$  with unary $R$,  $\Phi = \{\exists x Rx\}$,  and  $\phi  =  Rx$.  In the counterexample, why if $\{\exists x Rx\} \models \exists x R x $, then there is no term $t$   with $\{\exists x Rx\} \models R t $? Thanks.
82643
Back in April, I attended a talk at the UMD Math Department Statistics group seminar series called "To Explain or To Predict?". The talk was given by  who teaches at UMD's Smith Business School. Her talk was based on research she did for a paper titled , and a follow up working paper titled .   Dr. Shmueli's argument is that the terms predictive and explanatory in a statistical modeling context have become conflated, and that statistical literature lacks a a thorough discussion of the differences. In the paper, she contrasts both and talks about their practical implications. I encourage you to read the papers.   The questions I'd like to pose to the practitioner community are:   How do you define a predictive exercise vs an explanatory/descriptive one? It would be useful if you could talk about the specific application. Have you ever fallen into the trap of using one when meaning to use the other? I certainly have. How do you know which one to use?
112450
Based on the problem of induction, nobody can assert with absolute certainty that the laws of science (i.e. physics, chemistry, etc,...) will hold all the time, in every part of the universe. Believing that that is the case is therefore a form of faith, not knowledge.  Current scientific consensus is that the universe doesn't stretch back indefinitely into the past, but came into existence a finite time ago with the big bang. The occurrence of the big bang and the subsequent evolution of the universe are both driven by the laws of physics. The laws of physics, seen this way, are the first cause of the universe and the higher power that governs it's day to day functioning.    So belief in science requires having faith, and belief in a first cause/higher power, two of the main components of theistic belief. And the laws of science then become some sort impersonal deity, akin to the deity of Deism. One could even envision a science based moral code based on neurological and environmental considerations, and we would then have all the constituents of  traditional religion: Faith, first cause, and a set of ethical laws.   Obviously, this theism is very different than the theism of the Abrahamic religions, especially since the god in question is not personal. But the way I see it, isn't it still a form of theism, with the laws of science/physics as its deity?
46782
I am wondering what the difference between a definition and an axiom.  Isn't an axiom something what we define to be true?  For example, one of the axioms of Peano Arithmetic states that $\forall n:0\neq S(n)$, or in English, that zero isn't the successor of any natural number. Why can't we define 0 to be the natural number such that it isn't the successor of any natural number?  In general, why is an axiom not a definition?   Are there cases where we can formulate definitions as axioms or vice versa?
107995
I am currently studying for an exam about academic writing and I have some issues grasping the difference between hedging and tentativeness. I know for a fact that there must be a difference because my professor marked it in a text of mine. What I can say is that tentativeness aims to avoid making false claims, thus texts written tentatively are more restrained. Hedging on the other hand is a politeness tool that also happens to express hesitation. But as of now, I still cannot see a major difference between those attributes, they are fairly similar to me and I tend to use those terms synonymously. I am thankful for everyone who wants to bring light into this darkend room. Troy
123489
Nonphysical entities cannot be observed. Therefore such entities cannot be verified by observation. How could statements like "God exists" be even considered true? Why would anyone appeal to the metaphysical realm at all?  It seems to me that the best method by which we should go about in understanding the world is by initially ruling out the possibility of the metaphysical altogether for the simplest answer (a sort of null hypothesis). Once we can get a hold of a natural cause of some phenomenon, we should be satisfied that that is all there is to it. Formulating some nonphysical cause would be unnecessary, superfluously complicated, or even cluttered. Now if there was some problem that we were certain could not be solved by observation or experimentation or whose solution could not possibly exist in the observable realm, yet must be true, I would consider the possibility of a metaphysical cause.      That said, I don't think that if you can't empirically observe something, it doesn't exist; rather, I would declare total agnosticism and say that it is unknowable.