2,500,405 research outputs found

    Pluralism is the Answer! What is the Question?

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    This essay provides a critical assessment of species pluralism, a popular strategy to explain the discordance characterizing contemporary systematics. Specifically, my aim is to present and scrutinize species pluralism, and to discuss whether it provides a fruitful concept in biology. The article begins by distinguishing two independent theses often associated with pluralism: ‘heterogeneity’ and ‘theory dependence.’ Next, it examines how these theses have been developed in the scientific and philosophical literature. I conclude by suggesting that the overarching expression ‘species pluralism’ be dropped in favor of more perspicuous labels

    What Is a Black Hole?

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    Although black holes are objects of central importance across many fields of physics, there is no agreed upon definition for them, a fact that does not seem to be widely recognized. Physicists in different fields conceive of and reason about them in radically different, and often conflicting, ways. All those ways, however, seem sound in the relevant contexts. After examining and comparing many of the definitions used in practice, I consider the problems that the lack of a universally accepted definition leads to, and discuss whether one is in fact needed for progress in the physics of black holes. I conclude that, within reasonable bounds, the profusion of different definitions is in fact a virtue, making the investigation of black holes possible and fruitful in all the many different kinds of problems about them that physicists consider, although one must take care in trying to translate results between fields

    What is Law?

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    You broke the law. There should be a law. Loi du 29 juillet 1881 sur la liberte de la presse. It is the law of God. It is the law of our ancestors. It is a law of nature. It is the second law of thermodynamics. It is the tax code. What is law? What common concept is expressed in the many uses of the word law and its synonyms? What single concept of law is encompassed in its encoding in scientific, judicial, and customary forms? Since understandings of law can be culture specific, what concept of law is common across social systems? This paper will develop a definition of law--and a way to measure the binding power of a law or legal system--that is applicable across forms and civilizations. In developing the definition, the paper will demonstrate that a QBist understanding of quantum mechanics can serve as a Rosetta Stone which allows us to reconcile Western and non-Western scientific systems.Comment: Minor corrections and updates. 16 page

    What is Probability?

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    Probabilities may be subjective or objective; we are concerned with both kinds of probability, and the relationship between them. The fundamental theory of objective probability is quantum mechanics: it is argued that neither Bohr's Copenhagen interpretation, nor the pilot-wave theory, nor stochastic state-reduction theories, give a satisfactory answer to the question of what objective probabilities are in quantum mechanics, or why they should satisfy the Born rule; nor do they give any reason why subjective probabilities should track objective ones. But it is shown that if probability only arises with decoherence, then they must be given by the Born rule. That further, on the Everett interpretation, we have a clear statement of what probabilities are, in terms of purely categorical physical properties; and finally, along lines laid out by Deutsch and Wallace, that there is a clear basis in the axioms of decision theory as to why subjective probabilities should track these objective ones. These results hinge critically on the absence of hidden-variables or any other mechanism (such as state-reduction) from the physical interpretation of the theory. The account of probability has traditionally been considered the principal weakness of the Everett interpretation; on the contrary it emerges as one of its principal strengths

    What is Cost?

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    Two-page paper on the notion of cost of groups and measured equivalence relations to appear in the "What is?" series in the Notices of the AMS.Comment: 2 page

    What Is Possible?

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    This paper argues that there are true synthetic modal claims and that modal questions in philosophy are to be interpreted not in terms of logical necessity but in terms of synthetic necessity. I begin by sketching the debate about modality between logical empiricism and phenome-nology. Logical empiricism taught us to equate analyticity and neces-sity. The now common view is that analytic statements are necessary in the narrow sense but that there is also necessity in a wider sense. I argue against this that we should distinguish analyticity and necessity more strictly
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