MetaphysicsNow

Entropy is just a measure of the energy of a system that is not available for conversion into work. That at least is the initial basic physical descri...

Aren't you already speaking about them in making that claim (and then going on to talk about them even more later on)? I presume, then, that you eithe...

Says the master of the technique of going silent when proved wrong.

Take the chemical laws of catalysis. Point me to the theoretical work that has reduced those to the laws of physics. If you are tempted to say "the la...

Show a little philosophical sophistication please, this is a philosophy forum after all. The fact that QM is useful and always will be does not entail...

Moving things on to another thread does not make you any more correct. As Uber pointed out to you there are differential equations used in mechanics w...

Irrelevant. The point is that if you tie "laws of physics" to "current laws of physics" you rule out any further development. If you just mean "whatev...

By tying down the physical to motion, don't we tie it down to the spatiotemporal at the same time? I was under the impression that you were trying to ...

What are counted as the laws of physics have changed and continue to undergo development, so you are okay that what counts as physical changes? Also, ...

Not my definition, but in any case, I'm not sure life contradicts entropy. It doesn't contradict the second law of thermodynamics (at least not obviou...

Links to the research on this supposed fifth force would be useful please. Entropy in physics, as I understand it anyway, isn't a thing itself that ca...

1) Reason is a natural phenomenon. 2) Reason is a tool that can be used to investigate all natural phenomena. These two propositions are supposed, by ...

Let me put it this way: exactly what question is being begged if we use the tools of reason to investigate the possibility that reason is a natural ph...

A Spinozistic argument would be: God = substance, no substance then no existence, therefore no God no existence. That's valid, although it may not be ...

@"Nop" Nietzsche and Spinoza had very different conceptions of God. Nietzsche's attacks were (as I understand them) against the Christian notion of a ...

@"Pattern-chaser" Incidently, if you are interested regarding this mechanism v rationalism debate, it resurfaces in other threads. The current exchang...

I'm probably more sympathetic to your position than I am to Uber's - the psychologism that seems to be implied by it gives me pause for one thing - bu...

@"BlueBanana" With this, however, I agree.

@"BlueBanana" Nope, BlueBanana = a banana The banana Belter ate = a banana Therefore I am the banana Belter ate, and therefore I am dead. Invalid argu...

What are you talking about? Bluebanana is a banana. Belter has eaten a banana. Therefore Belter has eaten BlueBanana That's just an invalid argument. ...

Interesting ones are place names - London and Londres for instance: Kripke makes use of that in his A Puzzle About Belief.

Kind of my issue with Frege - the assumption is that syntax and semantics is the whole story for natural language, whereas it is not (although it migh...

I've met quite a few professional philosophers, I wouldn't trust their opinions about anything :wink: I'll take a look at that article, thanks for the...

Who refuted it? I know Anscombe went to town on the first version of the argument Lewis presented, but Lewis revised the argument in light of her crit...

It lives on under other guises - most attempts to refute philosophical arguments end up being refuted themselves.

By "them" do you mean logic and mathematics themselves of their predictive capacties? If the latter, then it seems pretty clear that the predictive us...

Have you read Norman Malcolm's "The Conceivability of Mechanism"? If not, and you have the time/inclination, I'd be interested to hear your thoughts o...

Frege raised his puzzle with the statement 1A) Hesperus is Phosphorus. So, even if that statement could be metalinguistically ambivalent, it is not so...

I think the reason why none of us perhaps make as much sense as we'd like to concerning this subject, myself included, is that in discussing mental co...

I agree on all points. Cynical irrationality should be regarded as a crime against humanity.

Oh, and thanks again to @"Uber" for the technical clarifications.

Having descended from the cloud of cluelessness to which I'd retreated after the withering critique of my scientific credentials by tom, I feel too se...

Thanks for this. Although patient X is not in your category, and my experience of other cases of OCD is limited, I accept absolutely that those with O...

@"tom" Between Newtonian and Hamiltonian mechanics? Depends what you mean by fundamental. But in any case there is a difference in the tools they prov...

Thanks for that Uber. The current bone of contention is the idea of time-reversal symmetry. My claim is that in order to display time-reversal symmetr...

OK, so you are talking about Langrangian-Hamiltonian mechanics, whereas my example was expressed in the context of Newtonian mechanics. The principle ...

Have you ever actually done any physics rather than just talking about it?

What are you talking about, your reply makes no sense whatsoever? In dynamics, if your system involves a particle in motion, part of specifying the in...

Initial conditions by themselves don't tell you how things were prior to those conditions, this is the fundamental error you are making. An initial co...

When you dig down to the philosophical issues in depth, the distinction between fact and belief can seem to blur. However, with the possible exception...

Tom seems to have gone into stealth mode, but I - like you -await with bated breath not only for his explication of time-reversal symmetry but also hi...

OK, you win, I'm an idiot. Now can we please have a clear explanation from you concerning what you take determinism to be and how it is freed from any...

You asked about differential equations for physical systems in general, not laws of motion in specific, so the example I gave concerned thermodynamics...

First, differential equations themselves do not determine anything. Second, if your point is that all physical laws are time-symmetric, you are not ac...

Read Suppes's critique of Russell's position regarding physics not using the notion of causality, before just citing Russell as an authority on the su...

No, I mean simply equations that relate functions to their derivatives (of any order): i.e. the mathematical definition of a differential equation. It...

@"tom" Then let me clarify it for you. When you model what you take to be causal relations using mathematical tools, you end up - if you are successfu...

I don't see the relevance. The fact that in most cases science models causal relations doesn't entail that it always does, nor that it cannot, on the ...

This is right, but also misses the point to some extent. The laws of physics are usually expressed in terms of mathematical equivalences, but those eq...

I think you are right about Harry Hindu, although Berkeley's connection to the act-object view of perception is quite problematic (on the one hand he ...