We saw at the end of the first entry of this series that, in spite of the adjective ‘true’ seeming to be semantically redundant in the sense of its role being equivalent to just assert exactly the same assertion to which it is applied, it is nevertheless grammatically non-redundant, in the sense that there are […]
Quantum mechanics and relativity constitute the two main revolutions in physics on the twentieth century. Furthermore, the counterintuitive character of quantum mechanics yields to a rich branch of different possible interpretations, and there are still many open questions. Not solving, but just defining these questions, was the main purpose of a conference entitled “Quantum physics […]
There is a strong tendency to consider that every scientific or technical solution to a particular problem is irrefutable. Nowadays, scientific and technological knowledge usually eludes public criticism and even we have seen how important government decision making were made by the so-called technocrats . We often forget the contingency of this knowledge, the fact […]
Truth has been, and still is, one of the most important topics in the history of philosophical thought. How to get truth from falsity, how to approach the truth, or the connection between truth, wisdom and the sense of life, all that has been the object of never-ending debates which anyone familiar with philosophy will […]
Strange as it may sound to many people, the fact is that some of the most interesting work on epistemology that is being currently done in Spain is carried out at the headquarters of the Spanish gendarmerie (the well known force called Guardia Civil), in particular, at the Area of Statistics within the corps’ Service […]
The notion of ‘cause’ has a bipolar personality within the sciences. On the one hand, it is difficult to resist to the old Aristotelian dictum that real scientific knowledge (episteme) is knowledge of the causes; after all, one of the goals of scientific theories is to give explanations, and most people assume that to have […]
Imagine the following situation: about 100 people have to choose one of them for an important position; they have different preferences about who must be chosen, some may have a stronger or lighter interest in being elected, but, and this is essential, it is very likely that most of them will have to cast their […]
Imagine yourself listening to someone who is talking in a language very different from any one you know. Most probably, for you it will be just a series of meaningless noises. If, instead, you are listening to someone speaking in your own native language, usually the meaning of his or her utterances would be as […]
One traditional and difficult question in philosophy and metaphysics has been the knowledge we have of other minds. It is well known that for the founder of contemporary philosophy, the Frenchman René Descartes, non-human animals were probably what we would call today ‘robots’ or ‘zombies’: mere complex machines with no consciousness (in the sense of […]