Law of Parsimony / Ockham's Razor

There is something that I want to point out here!

It's known as Ockham's Razor, aka the Law of Parsimony.

This goes out to all people who believe that a god created itself, just came to exist, or just, did exist, for all time, and that a god created the universe. If a god created the universe, that would presume that god is the "first cause."

Ockham's Razor states, "do not multiply entities unnecessarily." To see how this would be applied, consider these two statements:

Planets and other celestial bodies attract eachother due to an unknown force.
Planets and other celestial bodies attract eachother due to an unknown force which is generated by aliens.

Ockham's Razor immediately refutes the second statement, because it supposes an entity which is unnecessary for the conclusion to be true.

In the same manner, Ockham's Razor would refute the possibilty of a god creating itself, or just coming to exist.

For you see, it would require less entities to say that the UNIVERSE just created itself, or just came to exist, and is the "first cause," rather than coming up with a being which we have no proof of knowledge about, to explain the phenomenon of the universe.

Thus, it is irrational to believe in a god's existance, at least as on a "higher" level than the universe.

 

Hikaru

Well what a suprise. The 1st reply comes fom occam .

As stated before..Occam believes the PoP [Principle of Parsimony]
to be a human truth within the methodology of science,
philosophy.and just plain old rational thought.

An example of how occam uses the PoP can be taken from your
letter above.
Occam [or science itself] sees no evidence anywhere that the
'totality of reality'
That is. WHAT we observe AND ALL that we do not.
[for it is the height of arrogance to imagine we observe more than a small
part of ALL THERE IS]

WAS EVER CREATED.

To suggest it was is an 'assumption/preconception' without verification.
An 'unnecessary element'
The logical position is that the 'totallity of reality' has always existed.
And always will.
To require a start/creation/creator..is a function of the preconception of human thought that everything has a beginning.
[science suggests that our observable universe had a beginning in the
primal singularity..that the singularity contained all that would become
the observable universe. But DOES NOT SAY anything 'created'
the singularity..in fact, science has no idea where it came from]

Now take a typical religion and add up the 'unnecessary elements'
piled on top of the absolute subjective/objective knowing that is,
'a reality exists'

The number is HUGE..

Occam

Ps..As a clarification..'Unnecessary element'. Idea/belief not based in or on existant phenomena.

 

Good post. Who would have thought Occam would be the first reply he he he

I don't really have much to add, other than that I agree.

 

And yet Occam himself (William of Occam, not hipforums Occam!) did believe in God.
But he argued that there can be no 'natural' religion, no religion based purely on reason or logical thought. He believed that revelation is the basis for religion.
He himself would have been appalled at the idea of atheists using the principle bearing his name to 'disprove' God's existence.

 

Well excuse me, Blake, but I am NOT an atheist (take a look at my signature quote, for goodness' sake), I DO essentially believe in a deity of sorts, and Ockham's Razor was NOT used here to disprove the existance of a god, it was used to show how irrational believing in a god on a level higher than the universe is, when there is no evidence to support it. Just because it's proven as irrational doesn't mean it disproves anything, let alone is an argument against it, and that doesn't even cover belief in a god AS the universe or on a level equal to the universe (such as pantheism). It's more of an argument against mass idiocy than anything. And certainly few people would argue that organized religion is not mass idiocy, considering that if it wasn't mass idiocy, every single person in the world would go to Hell because we are all non-believers of one religion or another. You can't subscribe to them all.

Oh, and who are you to speak in the place of William of Ockham? =P

 

No need to get upset about this. I never said you were an atheist, and certainly my only motive in making my post was to stimulate discussion.
I simply state the position. I am not 'speaking for' Occam or anyone else. It is pretty obvious though that as a christian scholastic philosopher, Occam believed in God. It is also true that some have sought to use the principle of parsimony to disprove God's existence.
Actually though, I'm not sure it's really that true to say that belief in God is irrational. According to St. Thomas Aquinas, another of the scholastics, it is possible to arrive at an intellectual conviction of God's existence on purely rational grounds. Although not knowledge of the christian religion.
On purely philosophical grounds, I'm not at all convinced that parsimony is the right approach. The problem is what is 'neccesary' and what is not.
In the end, it seems to me to break down into another linguistic game.

 

What is the intellectual rational used by Aquinas?

 

Hrm. I think I was just in a bad mood, so my apologies. I don't like being called an atheist though; I really don't like that. At the very least, I'm agnostic.

Either way, again, I didn't say that all belief in God is irrational. Just belief in God on a higher plane of sorts, since there is no physical proof. If you arrive to that conclusion metaphysically, I can't say that it's irrational, but if you try to justify your belief in a god with insufficient physical proof (as Christians, Islams, etc. do), Ockham's Razor is a good way of showing how misguided that manner of thinking is.

Also, necessity is relatively defined here. Ockham's Razor is used when creating theories. If we are talking about a theory about, say, the creation of the universe, and there is no evidence to hint anything more than the universe just being created without stimulus, then I'd think it's a sound judgment to say the universe was just created, and let that be that. On the other hand, if we are talking about why birds can fly, there is a lot of physical evidence that shows that birds can fly because they have wings. Thus, that's a sound judgment as well. =)

 

We couldn't touch God if God didn't get physical, and that would truly suck.

 

I just want to make clear before I say any more that I don't necessarily think Aquinas was correct.
As I understand it, the main argument is from order in the universe to an intelligent designing principle behind it. That is reasonable enough, at least, at first glance. So it's purely by inference that we could come to an idea of God.
I think that's as far as Aquinas is prepared to go - that one might think from the evident order of nature that there is a God who planned it like that.

Also, I think, if I recall correctly, and it's some time since I read this, that Aquinas also uses the 'first cause' argument. Seeing all events as a chain of cause and effect, we might infer a first cause - God.

But Aquinas main mission is to 'justify' the truths (supposed truths) of christian revelation by philosophical methods, mainly relying on Aristotle for a structural basis for his thought. The whole thing is very medieval, as you would expect.

 

Myself I can see no possible empirical evidence for God's existence, at least, in the scientific sense. Without that, it seems to me that belief in God cannot be wholly rational. It can't be constructed on a purely rational basis.
The medieval schoolmen tried to create a philosophy that was 'self-consistent'. A kind of attempt at a 'philosophy of everything'. In their own terms, they were successful up to a point, and their legacy is important in the development of western philosophy. But it is not enough, in purely rationalist terms to have a kind of complete world philosophy, a 'grand narrative' to quote a phrase, which is based on a book (the Bible) we to-day regard largely as mythology.

No doubt rationality, the discursive intellect etc plays it's part in belief in God, but I don't know if it is a sufficient basis for such belief. It sems to me that some other element is neccessary - intuition, perhaps. A higher than rational mode of knowledge.

Our freind Aquinas says that reason can only go so far, and there arrives a point at which what he calls faith must intervene. I'm not sure though that faith is enough either. Some scientific basis being absent, there is only direct mystical experience left, so it seems to me, as a basis for belief. But even this can be criticized as purely subjective.
I doubt that the existence or in-existence of God will ever be proven by philosophy.

Just one more thing Hikaru Zero - please don't take offence if you disagree with something in my posts. I assure you that I respect your intelligence, and I certainly don't mean to be insulting. If we all agree on everything, it makes for dull discussions, and sometimes, I have been known to play 'devil's advocate'

 

Aye, don't worry, if I disagree, I don't feel like I'm offensive. Sometimes, though, I have a tendency to get into a little bit of a ticked off mood, and I say things harsher than is necessary. :&

Either way, I agree, to a point. I don't think that just reasoning and rationality is enough, nor is emotion and faith. I think that in order to come to the best (or most accurate) conclusion about God is to see the world with both intellect and feeling.

Then again, it could easily be argued that none of us are "alive," since there is "no such thing as true free will," though I don't believe that myself. But, since that would make just as much sense, if not more, as having free will (and considering that there is no empirical evidence to support free will over none), I like to think that it doesn't matter what any of us thinks about deities.

Even if we aren't truly alive, in that sense, I don't think it really matters what we believe and what we don't; our existances are defined as human, and it is conceited to think that we can comprehend things that are above our scope of existance. I'm mostly interested in just making the best out of my current existance, and not trying to solve universal truths. I think that, despite what I think is possible or probable about the numinous out there, that the best judgment is to realize that it probably doesn't matter, and that we have our own existances to live out. =)

 

I have heard this concept referred to as 'artificialism' before.
It is interesting to note that ancient Eastern philosophy has (metaphorically) described the 'creation event' as the division from unity into duality, oneness into opposites- as if 'god' merely created male/female, light/dark, positive/negative, from 'his' own being; thus explaining the philosophy of 'everything is god'.

"Spirituality is at heart an experiential present-moment intuitive process based on direct encounter with the divine, not a cognitive process based on more and more advanced belief developents." - John Selby

blessings and light.

 

Thats exactly the type of statement that a pure rationalist finds difficult to accept, as it refers wholly to subjective experience that can't be 'verified'.

And actually, I wonder about the second part of it. Where, in this would 'more advanced belief developments ' come from?

Two possibilities suggest themself to me. It could be that the more advanced beliefs would be based on speculation, which might, in a religion, be translated into dogma.

Or, changed beliefs could actually develop out of the 'present moment intuitive' awareness. Eg. a person might believe in the existence of angels. They might then have an 'intuitive' or mystical experience of an angelic presence, and afterwards report that angels are dressed in gold. In time, that might become a 'more advanced belief'. Next a golden angel, holding a staff of hazel - and so on..

 

I certainly wouldn't expect one who identifies themselves as a 'pure rationalist' to give high regard to such a statement. My thought is that the 'objective' realm has hardly any value without an expansive 'subjective' realm for it to resonate within. Anyone who thinks they are truly objective rational beings are kidding themselves.

My interpretation is that he is simply referring to the analytical mind. Using conceptual categories to suppress spirit and feeling.

 

I should really have said a 'scientific rationalist'. I think many scientists would claim objectivity for science, although not all.

On the second point, I agree with you, but I wonder where the conceptual categories come from.

 

I would say that the conceptual categories come from our domestication as human beings into the modern world. The conceptual categories come from science. Alan Watts, I feel, fully explains this point in The Book. The universe is one continuous whole, one space; which we humans place a 'grid' upon, meaning that we 'make sense' of things through separation and categorization. This categorizing is crucial for survival. But it is also crucial, for our emotional and spiritual well being, that we take periodic breaks from analyzing and allow our feeling to have precedence. There is an entire field of research called 'neurocardiology' which has discovered that 60-65% of all the cells in the human heart are actually neurons exactly like those in the brain, and that there exist intensive unmediated neural connections between the heart and the emotional limbic region of the brain.

Overactive analyzation not controlled or evened out by feeling can make relationships and functioning in everyday life quite difficult and stressful. There is a loss of touch with a certain aspect of reality, a dispondence, driven by a sort of self-isolation. Overactive feeling may have a similar but opposite effect, an immersion in relationships and a distance from the self. Either extreme produces a 'longing' for that which they seem to be missing. A balance between both realms is best; for a human who is fully integrated as an individual and as a member of society.

 

I'm going to refer you back to Occam's quote here ...

The mind's eye is really two. One is the eye of reason, the other, of emotion. What happens when you gouge one out? Loss of depth perception.

Morality is the line that divides the eyes. It's important to live your life with reason, structure, rationality, and intelligence. But it's also important to feel things emotionally, to go with the "gut instinct," and such.

Peace and harmony comes from a balance of both eyes. =)

 

That's true as far as it goes.
But also, mystics of diverse cultural and religious backgrounds have claimed that above both feeling/emotion and reason exists a higher form or mode of knowledge. This has been given different names by different traditions, such as Jnana (hindu), Prajnaparamita (Buddhist), Gnosis (esoteric christian/western). Muslim Sufi's too have a term. What they all seem to indicate is a kind of higher intuitive capacity. A different way of knowing.
The Hindu and Buddhist, for example, are not content with either a 'rationalistic' or philosophical knowledge of God or the Divine, or with a kind of faith based upon emotional feelings, or gut reactions. Both aim at enlightenment, direct realization of knowledge, or the object of knowledge, free of the mediating influence of either emotion or reason.

 

Not all conceptual categories come from science. In the case of christianity for instance, they come from a supposedly revealed scripture. And even in the case of philosophy, it invents it's own categories; it doesn't take them from science necessarily.

It is a kind of disease of the modern (or post-modern) age that we are too dominated by the intellect. It's a kind of hangover from the 'enlightenment' philosophies with their too optimistic faith in reason, and in scientific progress etc. But it's certainly very true that one should be able to let go -

The thing is really to aim for balance and equilibrium.