Philosophy

Albert Camus, "The Stranger", concept of absurdity, meaning and purpose of life. Connection to religion.

Is the world deterministic or not? Quantum mechanics, classical mechanics, Heisenberg and Bell inequalities, falsified local realism, chaos theory, superdeterminism. Science invading philosophy.

What is the idea of scientific reductionism and how does it work? A definition of epistemological reductionism. Examples of situations where it works, and where it fails to work. Stringent criteria one needs to meet in order to establish reductionism: theories must be quantitative, and the proof of reductionism must be mathematically rigorous.

Discussion of ontological reductionism. Axiomatic structure of theories. Gödel's first incompleteness theorem: a theory of everything cannot exist. Burden of proof is on the claim that reductionism holds. Criticism of parsimony. Impossibility of reductionism as an a priori metaphysical principle. Reductionists must "walk the walk".

...in philosophy...