Furrow Brow says in voice not unlike Basil Fawlty as he is about to thrash his car. “Right Confused. You asked for this. You are not going to get the thrashing of your life.”
No sorry. Do I come across as belligerent on some of my other posts? Or is that I've just discovered emoticons.
Anyway. Pleased to meet you.
Confused says.
OK, I will take a stab at it, but I doubt it is what you are looking for.
1) Theoretical empiricism, but I have a physics friend who likes an old quote (I forget where he got it from) that goes something like this: you cant get something from nothing unless someone, somewhere, sometime is getting nothing from something.
OK. I’d say empirical. Looks like we agree on that.
To your friend my first response would be: So If someone did get something from nothing then everyone else would get nothing from something. Lucky someone. Unlucky everyone else. However, in a way there is a truth in your friend’s quote that probably finds its roots in Newton’s every action has an equal and opposite reaction. Or the principle of conservation of energy.
So perhaps the originator of the quote should have said: you get something from nothing unless someone else, somewhere, sometime, is losing an equal amount of something.
And I think that kind of proposition expresses more formally why you can’t get owt from nowt. However there is one case in physics where this is apparently so. And I’ll come on to that in a moment.
Confused says:
2) Occams Razor-Parsimony principle says that if T1 postulates fewer entities that T2, then T1 is most likely true since it is simplest. So I would say def. 2 is more likely.
Occam’s Razor says:entities should not be multiplied beyond necessity. So it defines the simplest explanation as the simplest necessary to explain. Not the simplest per se. I have been is a tussle previously with a creationist who thought materialists had hijacked Occam's Razor and were using it to serve their own prejudices. Whilst if used correctly as he suggested then Darwinism would have to be axed. Of course I disagreed.
In a nut shell this creationist's point amounted to: God is the simplest explanation of creation, because all you need is God. Occam’s razor duly applied.
Well no.
That kind of explanation is not really as simple as it might seem. You get questions like how, and by what means, and what about the evidence? When you pick away at those things get messy. Then the premises have to explain the observations. So ad hoc premises are added like he put the fossils there, or the fossils are not really fossils, or the fossils are not as old as they look, and then you get further assertions like the dating methods must be wrong and so on. I don’t mean to beat up creationist in this thread but are an easy to hand example that serve to make a point.
And no to say in the real world science does not go though a similar process of sifting the evidence with the prejudices of their theory, and staves of the cut of the razor for as long as it can, but eventually there is an ill defined threshold where Occam’s Razor kicks in and science moves away from one theory onto a better one because the old theory is just too scarred.
Perhaps we need to sharpen up Occam’s Razor.
How about: entities should not be multiplied beyond necessity to explain the evidence, and the theory that meets with Occam’s Razor best is the theory with the fewest number of ad hoc assertions left over still needed to explain the evidence.
The problem with that defintion is we could simply move all the ad hoc assertions into our set of premises. thus no left over ad hoc assertions. However I'm sure if I commited another 500 words or so something better could be worked out.
Has there been a debate on Occam’s Razor? Has OccamsRazor got a point of view?
Confused says
3) def. 1 is useful to show how one can make the simple complex leading to more entities and false conclusions.
From 3) it seems clear you are rejecting old Occam. Can you clarify why?
I think you are right when you say def. 1 is useful to show how one can make the simple complex by leading to more entities. But does it really lead to false conclusions?
Is your point against the kind of philosophy where one starts to argue about the existence of monads (leibniz) or infinitesimal (Newton) but actually end up talking nonsense? If so I’m not in disagreement.
I don’t want to posit anymore metaphysical entities if I can help it. I’d like to only posit virtual particles. Which are already apart of the lore of quantum mechanics.
Quantum Mechanics says Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle permits the creation of what are dubbed virtual particles, and due to the fact they eventually self annihilate before their permit runs out, and conservation of energy is not flouted, quantum physicists are accepting of this. Put another way: Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle opens up a window of opportunity for virtual particles to pop into existence, say hi gotta dash, and then disappear before the window closes.
This post was partially a reaction to an argument Metacrock has been trying to develop. An argument that goes something like, quantum physics claim that virtual particles pop into existence from nothing is false/illogical.
Virtual particles do not contradict the laws of physics otherwise quantum physicist would not be posting them. But do they contravene any logical law? Well they contradict a law like you can’t get owt from nowt. If Def. 2 is correct then it seems there needs to be something “prior” for virtual particles to pop out of. And if there is something prior, how did that come about, and then how did that come about and so on.
If def. 2 is correct then an infinite causal regress is threatened, or one is forced into metaphysics like that attempted by St Anselm, and Metacrock in these pages. If Def. 1 is correct then it is not, and you don’t need the metaphysics. In this sense simple is more simple.
So I guess I am hoping Def. 1 could be a way of bringing any threat of an infinite regress to an end. We do not then need Anselm’s first self causing cause, or Metacrock’s necessary God. And we would gain a definition of nothing that would suit Quantum mechanics.
All that said, is does Def. 1, really a good idea? Does it solve the problems I hope it solves?
OK, you may now smack me upside the head.
No no! I’m going to thank you.
I thought no one was ever going to reply
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