Philosophy of Science

In this paper, I would like to outline and defend Noam Chomsky’s dismissal of the mind-body problem in its Cartesian formulations, while clarifying the implications of some of Chomsky’s methodological remarks. The structure of the paper will be as follows: I begin by outlining Descartes’ concept of body and its relation to other aspects of the Cartesian system. I then present Chomsky’s dismissal of the mind-body problem based on a rejection of Cartesian mechanics and their replacement with Newtonian notions. My overall discussion adds very little to Chomsky’s, though I attempt to further clarify some rather more technical points of the Cartesian natural philosophy given the latter’s immense importance for any coherent formulation of the mind-body problem. Lastly, I entertain possible objections and examine alternative formulations of the mind-body problem. I conclude that, in light of Chomsky’s remarks, these objections either a) are misguided, b) should simply be understood as plausible hypotheses, or c) have little relevance to scientific inquiry and the problem of unification.

U tekstu autor će pokušati da objasni značaj Rajhenbahove logičke teorije verovatnoće i koje su implikacije te teorije u nauci, a naročito u filozofiji. Na prvom mestu se postavlja pitanje o poreklu teorije i podstaknut kojim filozofima/naučnicima Rajhenbah gradi ovu teoriju kao i to šta sa njom želi da postigne. Rad se bazira na analizi pojma verovatnoće ali u skladu sa istorijskom podlogom naučne scene Rajhenbahovog doba. Počevši od teorije verovatnoće nastoji se doći do argumenta kojim Rajhenbah brani naučni realizam. Sa naglaskom na teoriju verovatnoće pokušava se dokazati mogućom odbrana fizički neopžljivih stavova koji su bili odbacivani u logičkom pozitivizmu sa stanovišta logičkog pozitiviste.



Ključne reči
Rajhenbah, nauka, filozofija, teorija verovatnoće, logika iskaza, Poenkare, konvencionalizam, Kant, apriorizam, Ajnštajn, determinizam, Hajzenberg, Bor, indeterminizam

Roots of Bhāratam Janam from 7th millennium BCE and evidences from Indus Script corpora. Refuting Parpola's Dravidian basis for decipherment



https://friendsofasi.wordpress.com/writings/the-8th-millennium-bc-in-the-lost-river-valley/

Roots of Bhāratam Janam have to be traced from the banks of Rivers Sarasvati and Sindhu identifying their life-activity as metalworkers, metalcasters who made भरत (p. 603) [ bharata ] n A factitious metal compounded of copper, pewter, tin &c. भरताचें भांडें (p. 603) [ bharatācē mbhāṇḍēṃ ] n A vessel made of the metal भरत. 2 See भरिताचें भांडें.भरती (p. 603) [ bharatī ] a Composed of the metal भरत. (Marathi. Moleworth).
भारतम् जनम् Bhāratam janam is the self-designation in Rigveda RV 3.53.12.  viśvā́mitrasya rakṣati bráhmedáṃ bhā́rataṃ jánam. (Trans. This mantra of Visvamitra protects Bharatam people).
Roots of Bhāratam Janam and Hindu civilization have to be understood from Gautama Buddha's Dhammapada Verse 5 Kalayakkhini Vatthu on the gestalt of the people, Indus civilization thought about dharma, derived from the Vedic pramANa:

न हि वेरेण वेराणि
सम्मन्तिद कदाचनं
अवेरेण च संमन्ति
एष धम्मो सनन्तणो

Na hi verena verani
sammantidha kudacanam
averena ca sammanti
esa dhammo sanantano.

Verse 5: Hatred is, indeed, never appeased by hatred in this world. It is appeased only by loving-kindness. This is an ancient law सनातन धर्म Sanātana dharma, dharma eternal.

Asko Parpola's two critical observations about non-falsifiable, faith-based Indus civilization studies apply equally to Asko Parpola and Iravatham Mahadevan. I refute the erroneous interpretations of Parpola using the evidence marshalled by him in his magnum opus. I find that he has NOT found the roots of Hinduism. Blinded by Aryan invasion/migration linguistic doctrine, the civilizational chronology and directios of movements of Bharatam Janam are at variance from the evidence of Baudhayana Srautasutra.

Asko Parpola makes two observations: 1. "...example of a published decipherment, the archaeologist SR Rao tried to assert that the Indus Script is the basis of not only of the Brahmi characters but also of the Semitic alphabet...It requires a lot of trust to believe that Rao's proposed readings make sense in an Aryan language close to Vedi Sanskrit, as he claims." (p.29) 2. '...antiquities from Mohenjo-Daro and Harappa...have been made the subject of much nonsensical writing, which can be nothing but a hindrance in the way of useful research.' (Marshall 1931: I, ix). I believe Marshall would have extended the same advice to all those involved in the Aryan debate, if this had raged in his time as it does today." (Parpola, Asko, 2015, The roots of Hinduism -- the early Aryans and the Indus Civilizatio, OUP, p.31)

Parpola goes on to posit the thought of Indus civilization in religious-Dravidian terms 1, claiming to have identified deities including VaruNa and DurgA worshipped by the civilization and 2. claiming to have located archaeological attestations for Aryan migrations into India. These are tall claims and require a lot of trust to believe in the context of the work of archaeologists claiming trade links as the raison d'etre for the script and works of many scholars including Nicholas Kazanas, Shrikant Talageri, Vishal Agarwal, BB Lal and Shivaji Singh who refute any Aryan invasion/migration/trickle-in into ancient India.

I will echo these observations of Parpola in reference to both Iravatham Mahadevan's and Asko Parpola's Dravidian proofs of Indus Script. It takes a lot of trust to believe that Mahadevan and Parpola have deciphered the Indus Script Corpora.

One example of faith-based proofs is seen from the identification of River Sarasvati. "The repeated references to (great) mountains as Sambara's habitat are a significant pointer to the geographical location of the Dasa forts, ruling out of the Indus valley. A second important ointer appears in RV 6.61,1-3. Here the mighty River Sarasvati is said to have given the powerful Divodasa as a son to Vadhryasva, who worshipped Sarasvati with offerings...The description of Sarasvati in RV 6.61.2 does not at all fit the sacred stream Sarasvati in India (both the Sarsuti and the Ghaggar, with which it is identified, descend from the low Siwalik Mountains): 'By means of her gushing and powerful waves, this (Sarasvati) has crushed the edge of the mountains, (breaking river banks) like a man who digs for lotus roots; with praises and prayers, we solicit Sarasvati for her help. (Sarasvati) who slays the foreigners.' It is widely accepted that the Sarasvati mentioned here is the river that gave the name Harax'vaiti- (in Avestan) or Harahuvati- (in Old Persian) or Arachosia (in Greek) to the province of the Persian empire in southeastern Afghanistan that is chiefly watered by this river. It is generally identified with the Arghandab that descends from a height of nearly four kilometers down to about 700 meters, when it joins the Helmand river, which eventually forms shallow lakes; and the name Sarasvati means: "(river) having ponds or lakes.' The Helmand's present Pashto name comes from Avestan Haetumant- 'having dams'. In the dry season, the Arghandab too may become a series of lakes."(Parpola, 2015, opcit., p.97). It is surprising that Asko Parpola ignores the evidence of tributary Sutlej taking a 90-degree turn at Ropar around a cancyhon in Ropar; prior to this migration caused by plate tectonics, ca. 1900 BCE, Sutlej joined Sarasvati at Shatrana (50 kms. south of Patiala) and the satellite image shows a 20 km wide channel at this confluence. Why shouldn't the description in RV 6.61.2 be seen as a description of this Sarasvati at Ropar (an archaeological site with an ASI museum)? Well, I suppose faith moves mountains from Ropar to Helmand.

One good way to deflate the trust, that is to refute such trust-based pseudo-decipherments is to provide true readings of the Indus Script hieroglyphs cited by Mahadevan and Parpola in their claims based on faith.

Mahadevan's citations have been used to refute his claim at
http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2015/08/iravatham-mahadevan-claims-to-have.html
http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2014/11/dravida-maayaa-of-mahadevan-rejoinder.html

Intimations of religious practices of Bharatam Janam

There are markers from which hypotheses can be formulated as regards the religious practices of the people of Sarasvati-Sindhu civilization. The most emphatic artefacts are the architectural features unearthed in Dholavira showing a pair of polished pillars and an 8-shaped stone structure with stone-altars. These finds have to be seen in the context of five s'iva-linga stones found in Harappa and a terracotta s'iva-linga found in Kalibangan. These evidences have to be re-evaluated in the context of the continuing religious and cultural practices in adoration of Agni as the flaming pillar, S'iva and forms of cosmic dancer all over Bharatam or ಕೊಂಡ ಹಬ್ಬ fire-walking celebrations of lingayata-s ಲಿಂಗಾಯತ.

We do not know if the the pair of polished stone pillars were part of such celebrations or the representation of cosmic metaphors of Skambha Sukta स्कम्भ सूक्तम् (Atharva veda Book 10 Hymn 7).

Profound evidences of religious/cultural continuum continuum is provided by the following:

1. the practice of wearing sindhur by married women. Two terracotta toys found in Nausharo (Mehergarh) showed two women wearing red vermilion (sindhur) at the parting of the black hair, a practice which continues even today in Bharatam.

2. the veneration of s'ankha (turbinella pyrum) as a pancajanya of Sri Krishna to call Bharatam Janam to arms. A burial of a woman in Nausharo showed her wearing s'ankha bangles and jewellery; the burial was dated to ca. 6500 BCE. Turbinella Pyrum shells used as trumpets were are discovered as archaeological artifacts.

It will be an error to reconstruct the ancient cultural mores of Bharatam Janam based on pre-judged categories such as Aryan or Dravidian or Munda (Austro-Asiatic) given the overwhelming evidence of an Indian sprachbund, a language union which united the three main language streams and the overwhelming legacy of Prakrit words, many with Samskritam/Chandas (Vedic) cognates, in all present-day languages of Bharatam. For example, 90% of the glosses in Tamil Lexicon (Madras University) contain Samskritam tatsama (cognate) or tadbhava (etyma). Over 11% Sanskrit glosses trace their links to Munda. (pace FBJ Kuipter). There is now sufficient evidence to prove the reality of the Indian sprachbundin an Indian Lexicon with over 8000 semantic clusters including Aryan-Dravidian-Munda glosses, thus questioning the rationale for separating the trio into separate etymological dictionaries.

A hypothesis is that the ethical duo of Dharma-Dhamma is the narrative of the Itihaasa of Bharatam Janam over five millennia. The narrative has yet to be told as more researches and more archaeological explorations will continue to provide evidence to test this hypothesis..

This note takes up Parpola's claim based on faith using his evidences from Indus Script Corpora.

The gulf between the humanities and the sciences, named "The Two Cultures" by C.P. Snow in his now-famous lecture and essay of the same name, grows increasingly wide, even as trends in the digital humanities claim to offer hope. A complete diagnosis of the problem may be found in a reading of a work of science produced by an acclaimed practitioner of literature: Goethe, in his book, The Metamorphoses of Plants. Via a reading of this work, the divide between the humanities and the sciences is traced back to a more fundamental divide which is essentially bio-philosophical in nature: the divide between the epistemological phenomena of idealism and materialism, which arise in human cognition via the dysfunctions of embodiment, an account which follows the the transcendental materialist ontology laid out by Adrian Johnston in his work on Slavoj Žižek. Armed with this ontology, recent movements within the humanities, notably the evolutionary and cognitive literary theory called for by Jonathan Gottschall and others, can help us begin to approach the perspectives of the sciences while they will perhaps, in good faith, meet us halfway.

Recognizing that there are many outstanding questions concerning the fundamental nature of time a hypothesis is presented herein which outlines a new and radical perspective which is intended to provide the primary answers. The hypothesis identifies parallels between our common experience of time and the known laws of physics which govern the universe. The core argument asserts that the present is the only time that exists and the future and past are physically represented in the present.  The future is represented by potential energy and the past by entropy. This assertion relies on the belief that time can only be measured by change in the universe and change is effected by motion in the present. Internal kinetic energy is the energy of motion, and time is a measurement of the rate of transformation from potential energy (the future), to entropy (the past) via kinetic activity. In this way the physical nature of the future and the past are revealed as integral parts of what is observed as the present. Each object is its own clock. Time is therefore relative to an object dependent in part on all measurable expenditure of energies.  The result is an understanding of time without the need to invoke any concepts which lie outside our observations.

Econophysics is a new and exciting cross-disciplinary research field that applies models and modelling techniques from statistical physics to economic systems. It is not, however, without its critics: prominent figures in more mainstream economic theory have criticised some elements of the methodology of econophysics. One of the main lines of criticism concerns the nature of the modelling assumptions and idealisations involved, and a particular target are `kinetic exchange' approaches used to model the emergence of inequality within the distribution of individual monetary income. This paper will consider such models in detail, and assess the warrant of the criticisms drawing upon the philosophical literature on modelling and idealisation. Our aim is to provide the first steps towards informed mediation of this important and interesting interdisciplinary debate, and our hope is to offer guidance with regard to both the practice of modelling inequality, and the inequality of modelling practice.

PhD diss., Bar Ilan University, Interdisciplinary Studies Unit. Science, Technology and Society., 2013

This study offers an intellectual biography of Nicolas Rashevsky (1899-1972), a Ukrainian émigré theoretical physicist, who established a discipline of mathematical biology at the University of Chicago. Rashevsky immigrated to the United States in 1924 in pursuit of a career as a theoretical physicist. Taking a sharp turn in 1926, while still employed as a theoretical physicist at Westinghouse Research Laboratories, he decided to turn his attention to the life sciences and as such became an "outsider" in biology. Inspired by a dream of establishing mathematical biology similar in structure and aim to mathematical physics, Rashevsky fought indefatigably to transform his aspiration into reality. Throughout his career as mathematical biologist Rashevsky was in pursuit of fundamental laws in biology and began his quest convinced that only a persistent search for such laws employing physico-mathematical reasoning could eventually unravel the mysteries of life. His method was abstraction and approximation of the biological phenomena, which he believed would lead to insights into the processes governing the phenomena. Rashevsky's program reflected two intersecting vocations: (1) to establish a novel field of research in biology that would unveil its mystery; and, (2) to demonstrate that mathematical biology can efficiently approach and engage biological problems in all their complexity.
Approaching Rashevsky as an "outsider" in biology, I pose three interconnected questions.  First, what is the place of science in the realization of his dream?  Second, what role did his personality play in promoting his scientific agenda? Third, what is the impact of the type of institution, be it the University of Chicago where he developed his agenda or government agencies that financially supported his program, on an "outsider’s" research program? Rashevsky's scientific biography positions him as an important figure in the history of the 20th century life sciences. Exploring Rashevsky's scientific biography enables us to examine a scientist's ability to transgress from his comfort zone into an unknown domain and construct a new hybrid within, laboring to keep his dream alive.
This work aimed at more than chronicling Rashevsky's scientific work. Rashevsky's biography is in fact the biography of the development of mathematical biology as a discipline. As this study shows, the two aims are inevitably interwoven. The definition and conception of mathematical biology as a discipline within biology resulted largely from Rashevsky's identity as an "outsider" and his efforts to secure resources to institutionalize his enterprise and legitimize its work. Rashevsky's biography shows how a separate niche is carved within an existing intellectual ecosystem via the differentiation of goals, methods, and an evolution of expertise in the newly carved scientific niche. It illustrates the strategies and motives of a particular outsider as well as those of professional associations that sponsored or critiqued his activities.
Examination of Rashevsky's intellectual biography helps to understand how an outsider's standpoint was developed and deployed in biology with the 'insiders'- the biologists - rarely sharing the outsider's perspectives and methodology. Facing rejection from journals dominated by "insiders", Rashevsky established the Bulletin of Mathematical Biology (1939). Faced with the rejection of his general approach to biology, he was unable to secure a comfortable position at the biological departments at the University of Chicago. In the quest to institutionalize his enterprise, he fought for intellectual, academic, and financial independence which led to establishment of the Committee on Mathematical Biology (1948) at the University of Chicago. This study illustrates, that by consistently demarcating mathematical biology from biology, Rashevsky's mathematical biology became completely external to the general practice of biology.
This study illustrates how the interplay between personal, academic and institutional factors comes into play, affecting the intellectual genesis of a new discipline. This study also illustrates the role of academic politics when it comes to institutionalizing a new discipline. Rashevsky entered the Division of Biological Sciences at the University of Chicago when it was undergoing reorganization---and was then forced to resign under similar conditions. Social and political factors coupled with institutional ones played a major role. But above all, it was his strong personality coupled with the financial support and patronage that allowed him to prevail and continue his struggle towards establishing the new discipline. 
Mathematical biology is now a firmly institutionalized field of learning in the United States and elsewhere. When examined closely, mathematical biologists today use Rashevsky methodology to study various biological phenomena. Rashevsky created and assembled the necessary building materials, and he was the first deliberate architect of mathematical biology as an independent and organized discipline. In that way his dream heralded the way into the future.

In this paper, I argue that, other things being equal, simpler arguments are better. In other words, I argue that, other things being equal, it is rational to prefer simpler arguments over less simple ones. I sketch three arguments in support of this claim: an argument from mathematical proofs, an argument from scientific theories, and an argument from the conjunction rule.

According to the received view, reduction is a deductive relation between two formal theories. In this paper, I develop an alternative approach, according to which reduction is a representational relation between models, rather than a deductive relation between theories; more specifically, I maintain that this representational relation is the one of emulation. To support this thesis, I focus attention on mathematical dynamical systems and I argue that, as far as these systems are concerned, the emulation relation is sufficient for reduction. I then extend this representational model-based view of reduction to the case of empirically interpreted dynamical systems, as well as to a treatment of partial, approximate, and asymptotic reduction.