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An current example: Saleh Al-Fawzan, member of the Saudi Council of Senior Scholars, recently stated in a televised interview that not only the Earth does not rotate around the sun, the opposite is true. Proof of Al-Fawzan for this assertion that the sun revolved around the earth is none other than the Qur’an. The interview was broad cast on Saudi Channel 1 and translated by the Institute of Media Research Middle East (MEMRI). In the interview, the presenter asks Al-Fawzan, “Allah says in one verse of the Qur’an: “And the sun goes toward its stopping point. That is the determination of the All-Mighty, the All-Knowing”. ”So the Sun rotates around the earth?” Saleh Al-Fawzan responds by saying: “There is no doubt about it. The Quran says: “The sun runs ...” However, they say that he sun is in place and the earth moves. This contradicts the Qur’an.” He adds, “To ignore the Qur’an and adopt modern theories is not something a Muslim can do. A Muslim should follow the Qur’an.”
Confirmational holism is a view that is extremely important to the empiricist movement. Confirmational holism states that when a hypothesis is proven by empirical means, then all underlying theories that correspond to that hypothesis are also proven. This is extremely important in regards to furthering our understanding of the world. Philosophy can easily get hung up or hit a stopping block as a result of instances such as mathematical theory being based on previous mathematical theory. It would seem that an almost endless series of proofs must be confirmed in order to even get to any hypothesis that is based on empirical findings. However, confirmational holism allows hypotheses as a whole to be verified by finding them in nature (Bueno 2003). Furthermore, confirmational holism takes naturalism one step further. Naturalism in short is a scientific process of observing nature. From this scientific process, a person can be more certain of asserting statements about the world. However, naturalism on its own does not truly confirm anything. This is where confirmational holism steps up and takes over. If naturalism can formulate a statement that is more probable then not, and there are mathematical hypotheses that coincide with this statement, then everything is confirmed (Colyvan 2003).
In the philosophy of language and metaphysics, an ontological commitment is said to be necessary in order to make a proposition in which the existence of one thing is presupposed or implied by asserting the existence of another. We are “committed” to the existence of the second thing, even though we may not have expected it, and may have intended to assert only the existence of the first. The kind of secondary entities in question are typically abstract objects such as universals, sets, classes, or fictional objects (Audi 1999).
Ostensive definition (Russell 1984) is the process by which an individual receives instruction to understand a lexeme in a different way than through the use of other lexemes. The ostensibility of a sender is in inverse proportion to the quantity of information being provided by a particular language. An ostensive definition conveys meaning using examples. In this case a Sender refers to an absolute being or referent (Ogden and Richard 1989), also known as designatum (Carnap 1942). In this case the information about the referent is in the foreground. The language in this situation is called an ostensive function \((O_{F})\), because the proposition is the translation of an ostension, equivalent to a remark. When the Subject makes a proposition or set of ostensive propositions Subject is operating on Reality. We must remember that for the Subject reality is processed with a system of signs encoded in language. Both signs and language are heterologous systems or related ways of representing reality. We call ostensive those lexemes that function as verbal pointers to references external to the sender that may be real or unreal. These minimal units of significance require an address to a reference that the sender locates outside himself. In our theory we will divide propositions into ostentives and estimatives. An ostensive proposition (O) is one in which the sender specifies connotations that apply to the reference, i.e., the nature of the qualitative and quantitative apprehension of reality that at that moment constitutes a referent.
The universe of discourse (or simply universe), is the set of entities over which certain variables of interest in some formal treatment may range. The universe of discourse is usually identified in the preliminaries, so that there is no need in further treatment to specify each time the range of the relevant variables (Corcoran 1995, 941). For Boole in every discourse, whether of the mind conversing with its own thoughts or of the individual in his intercourse with others, there is an assumed or expressed limit within which the subjects of its operation are confined. The most unfettered discourse is that in which the words we use are understood in the widest possible application, and for them the limits of discourse are co-extensive with those of the universe itself. But more usually we confine ourselves to a less spacious field.
Starting from an axiomatization, we can work with universes of discourse without a single element.
This condition is due to type theory. A type theory is any of a class of formal systems, some of which can serve as alternatives to set theory as a foundation for all mathematics. In type theory, every “term” has a “type” and operations are restricted to terms of a certain type. In a system of type theory, each term has a type and operations are restricted to terms of a certain type. A typing judgment M: A describes that the term M has type A. For example, nat may be a type representing the natural numbers and 0, 1, 2,... may be inhabitants of that type. The judgment that 2 has type nat is written as 2:nat. A function in type theory is denoted with an arrow \(\rightarrow \). The function addOne(commonly called successor), has the judgment addOne: nat \(\rightarrow \) nat. Calling or “applying” a function to an argument is usually written without parentheses, so addOne 2 instead of addOne(2).
For example: Is there really an electromagnetic field and potential energy?
In seeking formal determinations for “exist”, we expect to find them, for example, in formulations like “have their own essence.”
Physicalism is the thesis that everything is physical or as contemporary philosophers sometimes put it, that everything supervenes on, or is necessitated by, the physical. The thesis is usually intended as a metaphysical thesis, parallel to the thesis attributed to the ancient Greek philosopher Thales, that everything is water, or the idealism of the eighteenth century philosopher Berkeley, that everything is mental. The general idea is that the nature of the actual world (i.e. the universe and everything in it) conforms to a certain condition, the condition of being physical. Of course, physicalists don’t deny that the world might contain many items that at first glance don’t seem physical—items of a biological, or psychological, or moral, or social nature. But they insist nevertheless that at the end of the day such items are either physical or supervene on the physical.
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Human ignorance does not stay behind the science grows as fast as this. (Jewish Proverb).
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Usó-Doménech, J.L., Nescolarde-Selva, J. Revealing the Face of Isis. Found Sci 19, 311–318 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10699-014-9361-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10699-014-9361-3