It’s not surprising that one particular parsimony principle can be used to overturn one particular form of theism.
After all, most theists disagree with most theisms...and most believres in a Weird Science hypothesis (MUH, Matrix, etcv ) don’t believe in the others.
The question is: where is the slam dunk against theism..the one that works against all forms of theism, that works only against theism , and not against similar scientific ideas like Matrix Lords, and works against the strongest arguments for theism, not just biblically literalist creationist protestant Christianity, and doesn’t rest on cherry-picking particular parisimony principles?
There are multiple principles of parsimony, multiple Occam’s razors.
Some focus on ontology, on the multiplication of entities, as in the original razor others on epistemology the multiplication of assumptions. The Kolmogorov complexity measure is more alligned to the latter.
Smaller universes are favoured by the ontological razor,but disfavoured by the Epistemological razor, because they are more arbitrary. Maximally large universes can have low epistemic complexity (because you have to add information specifying hwat has been left out to arrive at smaller universs), and low K. complexity (because short programmes can generate infinite bitstrings, eg an expansion of pi).
we basically already know how to write a program that implements physics-so-far-as-we-understand-it, but we seem to be some way from writing one that implements anything much like morality-as-we-understand-it.
Morality as we know it evolved from physics plus starting conditions. When you say that physics is soluble but morality isn’t, I suppose you mean that the starting conditions are absent.
Morality as we know it evolved from physics plus starting conditions. When you say that physics is soluble but morality isn’t, I suppose you mean that the starting conditions are absent.
You need to know not just the starting conditions, but also the position where morality evolves. That position can theoretically have huge complexity.
Well, obviously we should pick the simplest one :-).
Seriously: I wouldn’t particularly expect there to be a single all-purpose slam dunk against all varieties of theism. Different varieties of theism are, well, very different. (Even within, say, protestant Christianity, one has the fundamentalists and the super-fuzzy liberals, and since they agree on scarcely any point of fact I wouldn’t expect any single argument to be effective against both positions.)
ontology [...] epistemology
I’m pretty sure that around these parts the “epistemological” sort (minimize description / program rather than size of what it describes / produces) is much, much more widely held than then “ontological” sort.
I suppose you mean that the starting conditions are absent.
That’s one reasonable way of looking at it, but if the best way we can find to compute morality-as-we-understand-it is to run a complete physical simulation of our universe then the outlook doesn’t look good for the project of finding a simpler-than-naturalism explanation of our universe based on the idea that it’s the creation of a supremely good being.
I’m pretty sure that around these parts the “epistemological” sort (minimize description / program rather than size of what it describes / produces) is much, much more widely held than then “ontological” sort.
It’s not surprising that one particular parsimony principle can be used to overturn one particular form of theism. After all, most theists disagree with most theisms...and most believres in a Weird Science hypothesis (MUH, Matrix, etcv ) don’t believe in the others.
The question is: where is the slam dunk against theism..the one that works against all forms of theism, that works only against theism , and not against similar scientific ideas like Matrix Lords, and works against the strongest arguments for theism, not just biblically literalist creationist protestant Christianity, and doesn’t rest on cherry-picking particular parisimony principles?
There are multiple principles of parsimony, multiple Occam’s razors.
Some focus on ontology, on the multiplication of entities, as in the original razor others on epistemology the multiplication of assumptions. The Kolmogorov complexity measure is more alligned to the latter.
Smaller universes are favoured by the ontological razor,but disfavoured by the Epistemological razor, because they are more arbitrary. Maximally large universes can have low epistemic complexity (because you have to add information specifying hwat has been left out to arrive at smaller universs), and low K. complexity (because short programmes can generate infinite bitstrings, eg an expansion of pi).
Morality as we know it evolved from physics plus starting conditions. When you say that physics is soluble but morality isn’t, I suppose you mean that the starting conditions are absent.
You need to know not just the starting conditions, but also the position where morality evolves. That position can theoretically have huge complexity.
Well, obviously we should pick the simplest one :-).
Seriously: I wouldn’t particularly expect there to be a single all-purpose slam dunk against all varieties of theism. Different varieties of theism are, well, very different. (Even within, say, protestant Christianity, one has the fundamentalists and the super-fuzzy liberals, and since they agree on scarcely any point of fact I wouldn’t expect any single argument to be effective against both positions.)
I’m pretty sure that around these parts the “epistemological” sort (minimize description / program rather than size of what it describes / produces) is much, much more widely held than then “ontological” sort.
That’s one reasonable way of looking at it, but if the best way we can find to compute morality-as-we-understand-it is to run a complete physical simulation of our universe then the outlook doesn’t look good for the project of finding a simpler-than-naturalism explanation of our universe based on the idea that it’s the creation of a supremely good being.
So you don’t think we’re mostly solipsists? :)