Philosophy Now Forum

Immanuel Can wrote:Melchior:

Ockham's razor...yes.

I presume you're also familiar with his very fine shaving cream?

I'll cut to the chase: theory with fewest assumptions to be preferred. Or "simplest," if you like.

However, some caveats.

Firstly, Ockham's razor is a ceteris paribus principle...meaning that it is intended to apply only when all else is equal. So first you need at least two "equal" theories, whatever that may mean.

Secondly, it's only procedural: he argues that we should choose simplicity procedurally, not because it's guaranteed to be right, but because a simpler theory is more likely to be "elegant" in the scientific sense, meaning parsimonious and easy to work with.

Thirdly, it's only probabilistic...(and even this is an extrapolation, and not quite what W of O said) it suggests the simpler theory is more likely to be preferable, but without any guarantees that it is right. After all, "the world is made out of solids" is an extremely simple theory, with few assumptions: unfortunately, it's also untrue.

So the Razor isn't some sort of scientific "Law", far less a guide to truth; it's a procedural axiom, and one that depends on many external conditions...most especially, the discernment of which of a set of theories is actually the simplest, or which actually contains fewest assumptions. And that is always up for debate.

But we cannot even get started: for we have no competing theory here from you regarding Grand Design, so no way of using the Razor. The Multiverse Hypothesis is mathematically irrational and probabilistically absurd. Fine. The God Hypothesis is plausible, even if you don't like it; and the remaining hypothesis is...?

I never did catch that...what is your hypothesis for how the universe came into existence?

It was created by VW, I believe you said?

I wrote a paper about Okham's razor in college. I wondered what evidence supported it, and what justification there was for calling upon it. It is usually misunderstood, and can be misused by those who do not know what it is intended to accomplish. If the universe came into existence through the action of a god, then something already existed, and that calls for an explanation as well. See Critique of Pure Reason, bubba.

Immanuel Can wrote:Melchior:

Yeah, I already explained that I fully understand "sufficient" and "necessary." I wonder if any explanation is sufficient to make you aware that further repetition is not necessary.

Gasoline and air explodes all the time in your engine. That's what it does! Do you think those pistons move by an act of willpower?

Yes. The will of the engineer who designed the car, the will of the person pushing the gas pedal...gasoline doesn't "just" explode. Even when all the conditions are present for an explosion to happen, it does not...unless someone lights a match. You've forgotten all this in your explanation, and are speaking as if stuff "just happens." It doesn't.

The fact that we don't know all the conditions necessary for the origin of life does not mean that we can't know that there was an origin of life from non-living matter. There was.

The world's scientists will be delighted to know you've personally solved a problem they cannot so far. So show us exactly how it happened. Go ahead...

Every aspect of your body is based on known chemistry (and all the chemicals in our bodies are terrestrial ones), and every aspect of our bodies can be explained as the result of natural selection.

Demonstrably untrue. Thomas Nagel, for example, astutely points out what Locke first noticed -- that mind, unlike chemicals, is indivisible and non-physical, and yet is an essential part of personhood. So how many chemicals are in "mind"? (Note: "brain" is physical and divisible, and hence is not "mind.")

I.C.

A problem with casting pearls indiscriminately is that you tend to exhaust your pearl supply. Wondering where they'd gotten off to, you become confused and unfocused.

Nagel is mistaken, as expected from a philosopher who apparently knows no physics-- a basic requirement for any understanding of how things work. The mind is a composite entity, a combination of brain and beon. Brain is an engineered machine; beon is the non-created potential source of consciousness.

Moreover, declaring "mind" as non-physical is an absurd idea. It immediately removes whatever mind concept you are proposing from reality.

Physics began with the study of the behavior of matter: Galileo's wooden balls moving down inclined planes. Next, Newton's three fundamental principles, which led to the initial concept of energy. But as physics progressed, phenomena were discovered that appeared to be, then were proven to be, entirely non-material. The light by which you are reading this is an example. By the current understanding of physics, anything that interacts with any form of the physical universe is itself physical.

The human brain-body system is as physical as you can get. Claiming that some mind, soul, or whatever interacts with this system but is not physical is simply absurd. Remember: the words physical and material are synonymous only in the minds of the ignorant.

I recommend that you drop Mr. Nagel from your reading program and forget anything you might imagine that you've learned from him, else be forever confused and ineffectual.

You might consider studying Beon Theory before you waste more time with ineffectual concepts devised by philosophers ignorant as to the mechanics of reality.

Immanuel Can wrote: Moreover, natural selection is an extremely poor explanation that fails even its parent-belief, gradualism, at every turn. It does not, for example, explain irreducible complexity, but only serves as a contingent, potential and unconfirmed explanation of a limited set of reducible complexities at most; and it completely fails to produce any rational descriptions of things like multi-species symbiosis or the existence of specific genetic coding and other informational structures with the natural order. It can't even being to describe credible gradualist phases for such things. It's another non-answer, the sort of explanation that satisfies only if you don't ask further questions or think very deeply about it.

Even here you are mistaken. Natural Selection (NS) is not an explanation of anything specific to Darwinism. As I've explained many times elsewhere, it is merely a selection principle. It applies to the choice of cars in an automobile dealership and determines which items appear on a supermarket shelf. It is irrelevant to Darwinism, because it applies to all critters on this planet no matter how they came into existence. If the Edsel had been designed by God Almighty, it would still have failed.

I invite you to pick whatever pearls you can find out of the mud and poop, wash them, and in the future, allow pinheads to wallow without disturbance in the mediocre muck of dumb ideas they've chosen. You can't make them smarter. They do not understand what you are writing.

Melchior:

If the universe came into existence through the action of a god, then something already existed, and that calls for an explanation as well. See Critique of Pure Reason, bubba.

Hey, I have a new nickname...not that it serves any function in the discussion -- rather like your above supposition, as well.

It doesn't matter whether one is a Materialist or a Theist...one is going to have to face the infinite-regress problem. But the Theist has an answer. God is the First Cause in the causal chain, and by definition cannot be explained further. That's what "Supreme Being" means. "Who created God?" is simply a nonsense question, like "where are the corners in a circle?"

But if one is a Materialist, one cannot find any first cause. The Big Bang had to be caused by something, and it had to be a material cause (by definition). So what was that material cause, and what caused it, and so on?

The Materialist then has to posit some idea like that the universe itself is eternal, which we know is empirically false, or else suppose that material laws *have* no cause -- in which case, the existence of order, to say nothing of the rules themselves, becomes utterly incoherent on the basis of the observable nature of chance effects. From whence all the order?

Which is the better explanation of order and life in the universe? I think the winner is clear.

Greylorn wrote:

Moreover, declaring "mind" as non-physical is an absurd idea. It immediately removes whatever mind concept you are proposing from reality.

I disagree completely. It rather denies the Materialist premise that "real" is coextensive with "material." There is more to this world than the merely material...values, morals, aesthetics, reason, concepts, logic, mathematics, and even personality and personal intention...all depend on things for which "material" is an inadequate explanation, but we all know they exist, and live like they do every day.

Nagel's not the originator of this sort of observation...both Descartes and Locke had it before him, among others. And he's not the only one to see the Philosophy of Mind as the primary problem for Materialism. I think they're both right on the money. So we'll just have to disagree there.

Look at a dead body...at least in the immediate, it has every cell the live one has. It has all the parts of the brain, and a complete body. But it is missing the metaphysical stuff...call it "mind," "personality," "consciousness," "soul" or even "emotion": all are non-physical but real properties of human beings...as is "reason," upon which philosophy itself depends.

Far from the concept "mind" being absurd, what would be absurd is to try to prove it didn't exist, and to do so by using your mind.

I invite you to pick whatever pearls you can find out of the mud and poop, wash them, and in the future, allow pinheads to wallow without disturbance in the mediocre muck of dumb ideas they've chosen. You can't make them smarter. They do not understand what you are writing.

Ha! You're such an aristocrat, Greylorn. Still, you always entertain.

Immanuel Can wrote:Melchior:

If the universe came into existence through the action of a god, then something already existed, and that calls for an explanation as well. See Critique of Pure Reason, bubba.

Hey, I have a new nickname...not that it serves any function in the discussion -- rather like your above supposition, as well.

It doesn't matter whether one is a Materialist or a Theist...one is going to have to face the infinite-regress problem. But the Theist has an answer. God is the First Cause in the causal chain, and by definition cannot be explained further. That's what "Supreme Being" means. "Who created God?" is simply a nonsense question, like "where are the corners in a circle?"

But if one is a Materialist, one cannot find any first cause. The Big Bang had to be caused by something, and it had to be a material cause (by definition). So what was that material cause, and what caused it, and so on?

The Materialist then has to posit some idea like that the universe itself is eternal, which we know is empirically false, or else suppose that material laws *have* no cause -- in which case, the existence of order, to say nothing of the rules themselves, becomes utterly incoherent on the basis of the observable nature of chance effects. From whence all the order?

Which is the better explanation of order and life in the universe? I think the winner is clear.

Anything you can posit as a cause must itself have an explanation. This is why we cannot, in principle, explain the existence of existence. Read Kant's Critique of Pure Reason.

Melchior:

Anything you can posit as a cause must itself have an explanation.

This is a Materialist axiom. It does not compel anyone who does not believe that all causes are material. But it creates a huge problem for Materialism, because if true, the Materialist has to admit he has no clue what caused the world or life to exist.

Immanuel Can wrote:Melchior:

Anything you can posit as a cause must itself have an explanation.

This is a Materialist axiom. It does not compel anyone who does not believe that all causes are material. But it creates a huge problem for Materialism, because if true, the Materialist has to admit he has no clue what caused the world or life to exist.

Haven't you ever wondered why the earliest cars were so primitive? Why did it take so long to get from this:

http://media.emercedesbenz.com.s3.amazo ... 95M863.jpg

To this?

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/c ... eldorf.jpg

Why couldn't they make today's cars 100 years ago?

Why couldn't they make today's cars 100 years ago?

Well, it's reasonable to presume it's because they had not yet discovered the technology and methods, and ...Is this going anywhere? I'm confused as to its relationship to the topic....

Immanuel Can wrote:

Why couldn't they make today's cars 100 years ago?

Well, it's reasonable to presume it's because they had not yet discovered the technology and methods, and ...Is this going anywhere? I'm confused as to its relationship to the topic....

You don't see it? Why would 'progress' be seen in living forms unless those forms were not created? Did God learn as he went along? It took time to develop each system in cars: engines, transmissions, tires, suspensions, steering components. Through research, trial and error, etc., the car designers learned how to make better and better cars. Nature behaves is a similar way. The animals we have today are highly evolved descendants of their distant ancestors. Of course, there are still some remnants of earlier more 'primitive' forms, just as there are hold-outs who refuse to partake of modern technology.



Lampreys, a primitive kind of fish:

https://cabinetoffreshwatercuriosities. ... terrae.jpg


https://www.google.com/search?q=lamprey ... B365%3B310

Why are our ears modified gills? Why didn't God make our ears from a completely distinct design?

Strangely, Melchior asked,

You don't see it?

What's "it"?

Why would 'progress' be seen in living forms unless those forms were not created?

I thought you might be going there, but couldn't see what cars have to do with it. After all, cars are the worst possible kind of example for your case -- they are manifestly engineered products, obvious artifacts of the design of a higher intelligence, i.e. the automotive engineers. In which case, any analogy from them would, if anything, unfairly favour the Design hypothesis...but I would never stoop to making so poor an attempt at an analogy, myself. So I could scarcely, in charity, attribute it to you...

But I guess you were going there after all. Okay.

Nature behaves is a similar way.

Really???? Okay. If it does, then you're arguing it's designed, engineered and assembled by intelligence. Wow.

But I'm pretty sure you don't really want to do that...

The animals we have today are highly evolved descendants of their distant ancestors.

Your proof, good sir? Those macro-evolved animals? The fish that became a cat, or the dog that became a bird? Let's see those millions and millions of "trial efforts" evolutionary development must have had to make on the way to producing modern animals by pure, random chance plus natural selection...

I can wait while you look for them.

P.S. -- Seriously, Mel, don't even waste our time with pretending that adaptation is somehow indicative of evolution. That's not even remotely logical. My cat doesn't need to "evolve" to shed hair in the Spring. And moths don't need to evolve for a population of them to favour white, grey or black depending on tree soot. Those are simply non-sequiturs in any case for evolution.

What you need to show is animals crossing the species boundaries, not merely adapting to local conditions. For no Creationist, no matter how basic, needs to be troubled by mere adaptation, since it is wholly the sort of phenomenon that fits neatly inside the concept of created species.

Immanuel Can wrote:...
What you need to show is animals crossing the species boundaries, not merely adapting to local conditions. For no Creationist, no matter how basic, needs to be troubled by mere adaptation, since it is wholly the sort of phenomenon that fits neatly inside the concept of created species.

And you need to show us a 'God'?

And you need to show us a 'God'?

Precisely what Design arguments do, through indicative evidence, if they're shown to be correct. And so far, there are no credible rivals on offer. So go ahead. Let's see your transitional forms, so the Design Hypothesis can at least have a plausible rival.

Immanuel Can wrote:

And you need to show us a 'God'?

Precisely what Design arguments do, through indicative evidence, if they're shown to be correct. And so far, there are no credible rivals on offer. So go ahead. Let's see your transitional forms, so the Design Hypothesis can at least have a plausible rival.

The 'indicative' evidence is it? Well the indicative evidence is that many transitional forms have been found in the fossil record and your argument is pretty much a red herring as the whole point of evolution is that one species is bred out so won't be around in the main. So show me this 'God' you chat about? As the indicative evidence in the past has had quite a few of these abounding.

Arising:

the indicative evidence is that many transitional forms have been found in the fossil record

Excellent. You should be able to show me a few -- really, millions of examples, given the billions of years that have allegedly produced them -- so let's see what you've got. Go ahead.

I'm waiting...

Here's a starter for ten.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tr ... al_fossils

You do understand how fossilisation works don't you and the ramifications for the fossil record. Oh! Don't tell me, you think it was a flood and the worlds only four thousand years old.

So now you show me this 'God' of yours?