Personally, I prefer electric
A conversation with the intrepid Pete led to this line of thought:
Occam's Razor says that (paraphrased and in a nutshell), the simplest explanation of some phenomenon is preferable to some more complex explanation.
Now, what we should note about this is that it should be taken as a procedural rule of thumb, not as any sort of logical proof. Between that and the weasel words that exist in whatever version of Occam's Razor we're using, people sometimes abuse the concept.
For instance. I once had a person argue to me that "god did it" is a simpler explanation than "this happened according to natural forces," and therefore according to Occam we should prefer the former explanation over the latter.
This isn't an argument unique to my acquaintance, and there have been attempts to address and refute the argument. One is to say, "any god who created the universe must be more complex than the universe he/she/it created. Therefore, any hypothesis involving this super-universally-complex god is disfavored by Occam's Razor compared to any hypothesis not involving such a god."
On further reflection, I think that goes too far. Presupposing I am a being of finite complexity, given enough time and effort, I could certainly design a system more complicated than I am. Further, without too much effort at all, I could design very simple *rules* for a system that, when implemented, would lead to theoretically infinite complexity. (I used to do fractals as art, so in fact I have done this.)
However, I'd certainly note that in the above two examples I wouldn't claim to be aware of or directly in control of every piece of the system that I designed, and it would seem to more directly follow that if I could be, that would require me to have more complexity than the system I am observing/controlling. So, if the theist in this discussion insists that his/her god is capable of that, then the earlier argument might still be vaild.
Otherwise, the theist trying to use Occam's razor would still have to show (rather than assuming) that the less-then-universally-complex god acting thus-and-so was still a simpler explanation than natural causes, which I think is the actual crux of the matter here. Seems to me we have to presuppose natural forces no matter what we do (since we can, you know, observe them to exist), so, "natural forces" pretty much has to be a simpler explanation than "natural forces plus god."
Only then we start talking about, does our natural forces hypothesis completely explain whatever (hint: no, never), so then doesn't the god hypothesis that does (it is claimed) explain everything escape Occam's Razor thusly, except "god did it" doesn't tell us why it's this way and not some other and so is empty as an explanation, and it gets quite silly, which is why I don't much talk about this stuff these days.
Occam's Razor says that (paraphrased and in a nutshell), the simplest explanation of some phenomenon is preferable to some more complex explanation.
Now, what we should note about this is that it should be taken as a procedural rule of thumb, not as any sort of logical proof. Between that and the weasel words that exist in whatever version of Occam's Razor we're using, people sometimes abuse the concept.
For instance. I once had a person argue to me that "god did it" is a simpler explanation than "this happened according to natural forces," and therefore according to Occam we should prefer the former explanation over the latter.
This isn't an argument unique to my acquaintance, and there have been attempts to address and refute the argument. One is to say, "any god who created the universe must be more complex than the universe he/she/it created. Therefore, any hypothesis involving this super-universally-complex god is disfavored by Occam's Razor compared to any hypothesis not involving such a god."
On further reflection, I think that goes too far. Presupposing I am a being of finite complexity, given enough time and effort, I could certainly design a system more complicated than I am. Further, without too much effort at all, I could design very simple *rules* for a system that, when implemented, would lead to theoretically infinite complexity. (I used to do fractals as art, so in fact I have done this.)
However, I'd certainly note that in the above two examples I wouldn't claim to be aware of or directly in control of every piece of the system that I designed, and it would seem to more directly follow that if I could be, that would require me to have more complexity than the system I am observing/controlling. So, if the theist in this discussion insists that his/her god is capable of that, then the earlier argument might still be vaild.
Otherwise, the theist trying to use Occam's razor would still have to show (rather than assuming) that the less-then-universally-complex god acting thus-and-so was still a simpler explanation than natural causes, which I think is the actual crux of the matter here. Seems to me we have to presuppose natural forces no matter what we do (since we can, you know, observe them to exist), so, "natural forces" pretty much has to be a simpler explanation than "natural forces plus god."
Only then we start talking about, does our natural forces hypothesis completely explain whatever (hint: no, never), so then doesn't the god hypothesis that does (it is claimed) explain everything escape Occam's Razor thusly, except "god did it" doesn't tell us why it's this way and not some other and so is empty as an explanation, and it gets quite silly, which is why I don't much talk about this stuff these days.
posted by Craig at 10:25 AM
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