Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!bloom-beacon!oberon!cit-vax!tybalt.caltech.edu!myers From: myers@tybalt.caltech.edu (Bob Myers) Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.tech Subject: Re: Layman's argument for Occam's razor Message-ID: <3733@cit-vax.Caltech.Edu> Date: Mon, 24-Aug-87 04:50:42 EDT Article-I.D.: cit-vax.3733 Posted: Mon Aug 24 04:50:42 1987 Date-Received: Tue, 25-Aug-87 01:36:15 EDT References: <433@morgoth.UUCP> Sender: news@cit-vax.Caltech.Edu Reply-To: myers@tybalt.caltech.edu.UUCP (Bob Myers) Organization: California Institute of Technology Lines: 83 In article <433@morgoth.UUCP> dmb@morgoth.UUCP (David M. Brown) writes: >The purpose of a theory is to simplify. Seemingly disparate phenomena >are unified, or integrated, into one. The purpose of this is similar >to the need for modularity in programming - to hide details. Yes. But why do you hide the details? So it's easier to think about, I would say. >But what, someone asks, if the simpler theory is not the "right" one? >Perhaps you philosophers avoid this question. If so, then you need >not consider Occam's Razor as anything more than advice. If not, then >we are entering the realm of "Truth" (absolute, relative, whatever). I really don't think that science deals with "Truth" or "right"ness. It does deal with accuracy and explanatory power. Explanatory power has two halves: simplicity, so we can understand it, and generality, so it covers more than a narrow range of phenomena. >One argument given recently was that simplicity has an aesthetic >component, which touches our innate ability to directly sense Truth. >I agree with this, but others were not convinced that this sense is >accurate. I'm not sure what Truth you're talking about here. Do you mean scientific truth, as in the likelyhood of some scientific theory being accurate to such and such a degree, or are we back to some sort of innate philosophical truth? I don't think we can sense directly the accuracy of a scientific theory. >Because we are talking about matters of the mind, it might be >appropriate to discuss the origin of the mind. Basically, minds have >evolved because they have survival value. The ability to generalize, >to hide detail, and therefore to deduce, to look ahead, to imagine, has >given us the ability to survive. I submit that if we had generalized, >etc., in the wrong directions, we would have died (probably many did). >Our process of generalization (ie, simplification) gave us survival >value only because it was in the right direction. For example, it was >absolutely correct to consider the leaves, branches, trunk and root as >one entity, the tree. That was the *correct* simplification. Nonsense. That was the *useful* simplification. *Useful* in that it increased survivability. There is nothing to make any simplification any more "correct" than any other, other than degree of accuracy. And the usefulness of such simplifications varies *greatly*, depending on your purposes. >When a theory becomes too complex (at any one particular level), when >it has loose ends, when it has jagged edges, when it is not simple, >our aesthetical sense, derived from millions of years of being right, >tells us it's wrong. Hmm. For whatever it's worth, I don't think this is right. I think there is a failure to comprehend a theory that gets too complex -- comprehend on an intuitive level -- which is of course yet another simplification. I feel that the isomorphism between my mind and physical reality is not very good. I don't think we're told it's wrong, but that we don't understand it well. A theory is only "wrong" insofar as it is inaccurate. But it is only useful insofar as it is accurate AND understood. >Did you have a picture in your mind of 'loose ends', etc.? What is >that a loose end of? What are those lines? I can't answer that >exactly, but I think they are really *there*. Where? Somewhere you >can only see/be with your mind. Somewhere where conception differs >but little from perception. I think this is more of a psychological problem. Some people (including me) think in pictures. Images come to mind when I think about things. I think it's just another way of representing within your mind what goes on around you. Another way of making the isomorphism between reality and your mind. Many people have a good understanding of what they can picture. It's just a simple step beyond that to represent concepts within your mind as pictures, too. If the brain is hard-wired for anything, it`s hard-wired for dealing with perception. Hundreds of millions of years in the making. Why not make use of that hardware? ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Bob Myers myers@tybalt.caltech.edu {rutgers,amdahl}!cit-vax!tybalt.caltech.edu!myers