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Author: tgtg Date: Mar 9, 2007 03:14
On Mar 9, 5:06 am, mike bishop yahoo.co.uk> wrote:> From
> < http://www.humanism.org.uk/site/cms/contentViewArticle.asp?article=1475>:
>
> | But just suppose, for the sake of argument, that there was no more evidence
> | for God¢s existence than there was against. What would it then be rational
> | to believe? Many would say: you should be agnostic. The rational thing to
> | do would be to suspend judgment either way. You should remain neutral on
> | the issue of whether or not God exists. But this is a mistake. In the
> | absence of good evidence either way, the rational position to adopt is
> | to believe that there is no God. Why is this?
> |
> | William of Ockham (1285-1349) points out that, where one is presented
> | with two hypotheses that are otherwise equally well-supported by the
> | available evidence, you should always pick the simplest hypothesis.
> | In particular, we shouldn¢t gratuitously introduce any superfluous
> | entities. This principle, known as Ockham¢s razor, is very sensible.
> | Take, for example, these two hypotheses:
> |
> | A: There are invisible, intangible and immaterial fairies at the bottom ...
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Author: Daniel T.Daniel T. Date: Mar 9, 2007 04:46
mike bishop yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
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Author: SextusSextus Date: Mar 9, 2007 04:58
On 9 mar, 11:06, mike bishop yahoo.co.uk> wrote:> I understand the gist of what's being said here, but I always thought that
> Ockham's Razor couldn't be used against unfalsifiable hypotheses, in which
> case we *would* have to withold judgement on the fairy thing, even though
> that's undesirable. Am I wrong?
OR tells us that, given some phenomenon we wish to explain, we should
give preference to theories with a limited number of explanatory
principles. For example, if you have two competing theories to explain
why the tree was struck by a bolt of lightning, the first appealing to
natural causes and the second to Jupiter, OR says you should go with
the first because Jupiter adds something unnecessary to the set of
(sufficiently explanatory) natural causes. So you should rule out
Jupiter *as an explanatory principle* (which is not enough to prove
that there is no Jupiter).
As you say, OR is not by itself a method for deciding which theory is
true ; it just tells you which model works best, given what we
currently (think we) know about nature.
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Author: David SchwartzDavid Schwartz Date: Mar 9, 2007 05:44
On Mar 9, 2:06 am, mike bishop yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
> I understand the gist of what's being said here, but I always thought that
> Ockham's Razor couldn't be used against unfalsifiable hypotheses, in which
> case we *would* have to withold judgement on the fairy thing, even though
> that's undesirable. Am I wrong?
Ockham's Razor is equally applicable both to unfalsifiable theories
and difficult to falsify theories. You can blue the boundary if you
like, consider the following thought experiment:
You want to demonstrate experimentally that gravity is a 1/r^2 force,
so you make many, many measurements. When you finish, you find that
all your measurements support the 1/r^2 hypothesis. However, there
must be some maximum distance at which you tested, regardless of how
many tests you have done.
So, what happens when someone hypothesizes that up to that distance,
it's 1/r^2 but after that, it's 1/r^3. Doesn't your data equally well
support both hypotheses?
Technically, this particular hypothesis is falsifiable, just test with
a larger distance. But a new hypothesis, 1/r^3 after *that* distance
is right on the horizon.
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Author: DougCDougC Date: Mar 9, 2007 21:07
mike bishop wrote:
> I understand the gist of what's being said here, but I always thought that
> Ockham's Razor couldn't be used against unfalsifiable hypotheses,
Ockham's Razor is much simpler than that. Forget about the term
"unfalsifiable."
OR comes into play when we design an experiment or list the facts to
support a theory. If we want to see why ice remains frozen, we can
vary the temperature and note when the ice begins to melt. OR says to
ignore facts like "today is Friday" or "the dog is barking outside" or
"this freezer is white on the exterior." There are many irrelevant
things which may be falsifiable - or not- but the thermometer reading
is the only data we need for this experiment.
Doug Chandler
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Author: mikegordgemikegordge Date: Mar 9, 2007 22:54
On Mar 9, 7:06 pm, mike bishop
> | But just suppose, for the sake of argument, that there was no more evidence
> | for God¢s existence than there was against.
Define *evidence* as you have used in that typically nonsensical
Kantian / mystical piffle.
MG
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Author: Jim RobertsJim Roberts Date: Mar 10, 2007 04:29
mike bishop wrote:
> From
> < http://www.humanism.org.uk/site/cms/contentViewArticle.asp?article=1475>:
>
> | But just suppose, for the sake of argument, that there was no more evidence
> | for God¢s existence than there was against. What would it then be rational
> | to believe? Many would say: you should be agnostic. The rational thing to
> | do would be to suspend judgment either way. You should remain neutral on
> | the issue of whether or not God exists. But this is a mistake. In the
> | absence of good evidence either way, the rational position to adopt is
> | to believe that there is no God. Why is this?
> |
> | William of Ockham (1285-1349) points out that, where one is presented
> | with two hypotheses that are otherwise equally well-supported by the
> | available evidence, you should always pick the simplest hypothesis.
> | In particular, we shouldn¢t gratuitously introduce any superfluous
> | entities. This principle, known as Ockham¢s razor, is very sensible.
> | Take, for example, these two hypotheses:
> |
> | A: There are invisible, intangible and immaterial fairies at the bottom ...
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| no comments |
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Author: Christopher A.LeeChristopher A.Lee Date: Mar 10, 2007 05:53
On Fri, 9 Mar 2007 10:06:00 +0000, mike bishop yahoo.co.uk>
wrote:
>From
>< http://www.humanism.org.uk/site/cms/contentViewArticle.asp?article=1475>:
>
>| But just suppose, for the sake of argument, that there was no more evidence
>| for GodÂ’s existence than there was against. What would it then be rational
>| to believe? Many would say: you should be agnostic. The rational thing to
>| do would be to suspend judgment either way. You should remain neutral on
>| the issue of whether or not God exists. But this is a mistake. In the
>| absence of good evidence either way, the rational position to adopt is
>| to believe that there is no God. Why is this?
If one finds it sufficiently important to believe that.
But there are better words than belief, which carry the exact meaning.
Like "logical conclusion" when believers insist on mutually exclusive
properties. Or "falsifiable default" which is the Popperian approach:
a proposition is phrased in the negative in such a way that it can be
falsified when evidence for the positive is provided. Or the equally
falsifiable "inductive conclusion".
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