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Newcomb's Paradox
In philosophy and mathematics, Newcomb's paradox, also known as Newcomb's problem, is a thought experiment involving a game between two players, one of whom is able to predict the future. Newcomb's paradox was created by William Newcomb of the University of California's Lawrence Livermore Laboratory. However, it was first analyzed in a philosophy paper by Robert Nozick in 1969 and appeared in the March 1973 issue of ''Scientific American'', in Martin Gardner's "Mathematical Games". Reprinted with an addendum and annotated bibliography in his book ''The Colossal Book of Mathematics'' (). Today it is a much debated problem in the philosophical branch of decision theory. The problem There is a reliable predictor, another player, and two boxes designated A and B. The player is given a choice between taking only box B or taking both boxes A and B. The player knows the following: * Box A is transparent and always contains a visible $1,000. * Box B is opaque, and its content has already b ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Philosophy
Philosophy (from , ) is the systematized study of general and fundamental questions, such as those about existence, reason, knowledge, values, mind, and language. Such questions are often posed as problems to be studied or resolved. Some sources claim the term was coined by Pythagoras ( BCE), although this theory is disputed by some. Philosophical methods include questioning, critical discussion, rational argument, and systematic presentation. in . Historically, ''philosophy'' encompassed all bodies of knowledge and a practitioner was known as a ''philosopher''."The English word "philosophy" is first attested to , meaning "knowledge, body of knowledge." "natural philosophy," which began as a discipline in ancient India and Ancient Greece, encompasses astronomy, medicine, and physics. For example, Newton's 1687 ''Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy'' later became classified as a book of physics. In the 19th century, the growth of modern research universiti ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Causality
Causality (also referred to as causation, or cause and effect) is influence by which one event, process, state, or object (''a'' ''cause'') contributes to the production of another event, process, state, or object (an ''effect'') where the cause is partly responsible for the effect, and the effect is partly dependent on the cause. In general, a process has many causes, which are also said to be ''causal factors'' for it, and all lie in its past. An effect can in turn be a cause of, or causal factor for, many other effects, which all lie in its future. Some writers have held that causality is metaphysically prior to notions of time and space. Causality is an abstraction that indicates how the world progresses. As such a basic concept, it is more apt as an explanation of other concepts of progression than as something to be explained by others more basic. The concept is like those of agency and efficacy. For this reason, a leap of intuition may be needed to grasp it. Accordin ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kavka's Toxin Puzzle
Kavka's toxin puzzle is a thought experiment about the possibility of forming an intention to perform an act which, following from reason, is an action one would not actually perform. It was presented by moral and political philosopher Gregory S. Kavka in "The Toxin Puzzle" (1983), and grew out of his work in deterrence theory and mutual assured destruction. The puzzle Kavka's original version of the puzzle is the following: An eccentric billionaire places before you a vial of toxin that, if you drink it, will make you painfully ill for a day, but will not threaten your life or have any lasting effects. The billionaire will pay you one million dollars tomorrow morning if, at midnight tonight, you ''intend'' to drink the toxin tomorrow afternoon. He emphasizes that you need not drink the toxin to receive the money; in fact, the money will already be in your bank account hours before the time for drinking it arrives, if you succeed. All you have to do is ... intend at midnight t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Braess's Paradox
Braess's paradox is the observation that adding one or more roads to a road network can slow down overall traffic flow through it. The paradox was discovered by the German mathematician Dietrich Braess in 1968. The paradox may have analogies in electrical power grids and biological systems. It has been suggested that, in theory, the improvement of a malfunctioning network could be accomplished by removing certain parts of it. The paradox has been used to explain instances of improved traffic flow when existing major roads are closed. Discovery and definition Dietrich Braess, a mathematician at Ruhr University, Germany, noticed the flow in a road network could be impeded by adding a new road, when he was working on traffic modelling. His idea was that if each driver is making the optimal self-interested decision as to which route is quickest, a shortcut could be chosen too often for drivers to have the shortest travel times possible. More formally, the idea behind Braess's di ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Andrew David Irvine
Andrew David Irvine, FSCC (born July 14, 1958) is a Canadian academic who teaches at the University of British Columbia. He holds a PhD in philosophy from Sydney University and is a professor of philosophy and mathematics at UBC Okanagan. He has served as vice-chair of theUBC Board of Governors as head of the UBCO Department of Economics, Philosophy and Political Science, as president of the British Columbia Civil Liberties Association, and as a member of the board of directors of the Society for Academic Freedom and Scholarship. An advocate of traditional democratic civil liberties, Irvine has written about the importance of the rule of law for both modern and ancient democracies. He has held visiting positions at several Canadian and American universities and has been recognized as one of British Columbia's most influential public intellectuals. Academic work Often cited for his work on the twentieth-century philosopher Bertrand Russell, Irvine has argued in favour of phy ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gary Drescher
Gary L. Drescher is a scientist in the field of artificial intelligence (AI), and author of multiple books on AI, including ''Made-Up Minds: A Constructivist Approach to Artificial Intelligence''. His book describes a theory of how a computer program might be implemented to learn and use new concepts that have not been programmed into it. It introduces the Schema Mechanism, a general learning and concept-building mechanism inspired by Jean Piaget's account of human cognitive development. The Schema Mechanism is intended to replicate key aspects of cognitive development during infancy. It takes Piaget's theory of human development as source of inspiration for an artificial learning mechanism; and it extends and tests Piaget's theory by seeing whether a specific mechanism that works according to Piagetian themes actually exhibits Piagetian abilities. In 2001 and 2002, Drescher was a visiting fellow at the Center for Cognitive Studies at Tufts University, which is directed by the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Journal Of Philosophy
''The Journal of Philosophy'' is a monthly peer-reviewed academic journal on philosophy, founded in 1904 at Columbia University. Its stated purpose is "To publish philosophical articles of current interest and encourage the interchange of ideas, especially the exploration of the borderline between philosophy and other disciplines." Subscriptions and online access are managed by the Philosophy Documentation Center. The Journal was ranked the second highest-quality philosophy journal in a poll conducted on the popular philosophy blog Leiter Reports, and is widely regarded as one of the most prestigious journals in the field. The journal also publishes the Dewey, Woodbridge, and Nagel Lectures series held at Columbia University. History The journal was founded at Columbia University in 1904 as ''The Journal of Philosophy, Psychology and Scientific Methods'', under the editorship of Professor J. E. Woodbridge and Professor James McKeen Cattell.Iris Bean, "Brief History of the Journa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Grandfather Paradox
A temporal paradox, time paradox, or time travel paradox is a paradox, an apparent contradiction, or logical contradiction associated with the idea of time and time travel. The notion of time travel to the future complies with current understanding of physics via relativistic time dilation, temporal paradoxes arise from circumstances involving hypothetical time travel to the past and are often used to demonstrate its impossibility. In physics, temporal paradoxes fall into two broad groups: consistency paradoxes exemplified by the grandfather paradox; and causal loops. Other paradoxes associated with time travel are a variation of the Fermi paradox and paradoxes of free will that stem from causal loops such as Newcomb's paradox. Causal loop A causal loop is a paradox of time travel that occurs when a future event is the cause of a past event, which in turn is the cause of the future event. Both events then exist in spacetime, but their origin cannot be determined. A causal loop may ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Determinism
Determinism is a philosophical view, where all events are determined completely by previously existing causes. Deterministic theories throughout the history of philosophy have developed from diverse and sometimes overlapping motives and considerations. The opposite of determinism is some kind of indeterminism (otherwise called nondeterminism) or randomness. Determinism is often contrasted with free will, although some philosophers claim that the two are compatible.For example, see Determinism is often used to mean ''causal determinism'', which in physics is known as cause-and-effect. This is the concept that events within a given paradigm are bound by causality in such a way that any state of an object or event is completely determined by its prior states. This meaning can be distinguished from other varieties of determinism mentioned below. Debates about determinism often concern the scope of determined systems; some maintain that the entire universe is a single determina ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Retrocausality
Retrocausality, or backwards causation, is a concept of cause and effect in which an effect precedes its cause in time and so a later event affects an earlier one. In quantum physics, the distinction between cause and effect is not made at the most fundamental level and so time-symmetric systems can be viewed as causal or retrocausal. Philosophical considerations of time travel often address the same issues as retrocausality, as do treatments of the subject in fiction, but the two phenomena are distinct. Philosophy Philosophical efforts to understand causality extend back at least to Aristotle's discussions of the four causes. It was long considered that an effect preceding its cause is an inherent self-contradiction because, as 18th century philosopher David Hume discussed, when examining two related events, the cause, by definition, is the one that precedes the effect. In the 1950s, Michael Dummett wrote in opposition to such definitions, stating that there was no philosophica ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Time Travel
Time travel is the concept of movement between certain points in time, analogous to movement between different points in space by an object or a person, typically with the use of a hypothetical device known as a time machine. Time travel is a widely recognized concept in philosophy and fiction, particularly science fiction. The idea of a time machine was popularized by H. G. Wells' 1895 novel ''The Time Machine''. It is uncertain if time travel to the past is physically possible, and such travel, if at all feasible, may give rise to questions of causality. Forward time travel, outside the usual sense of the perception of time, is an extensively observed phenomenon and well-understood within the framework of special relativity and general relativity. However, making one body advance or delay more than a few milliseconds compared to another body is not feasible with current technology. As for backward time travel, it is possible to find solutions in general relativity that allow ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
William Lane Craig
William Lane Craig (born August 23, 1949) is an American analytic philosopher, Christian apologist, author and Wesleyan theologian who upholds the view of Molinism and neo-Apollinarianism. He is Professor of Philosophy at Houston Baptist University and research professor of philosophy at Biola University's Talbot School of Theology. Craig has updated and defended the Kalam cosmological argument for the existence of God. He has also published work where he argues in favor of the historical plausibility of the resurrection of Jesus. His study of divine aseity and Platonism culminated with his book ''God Over All''. Early life and education Craig was born August 23, 1949, in Peoria, Illinois, to Mallory and Doris Craig. While a student at East Peoria Community High School (1963–1967), Craig competed in debate and won the state championship in oratory. In September 1965, his junior year, he became a Christian, and after graduating from high school, attended Wheaton College, m ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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