Even if the argument “Occam’s Razor says that since reality having only one level is simpler than reality having multiple levels, then the first option is more likely to be true.” was valid, there is a problem.
Contrarily to other contexts where Occam’s Razor is actually useful, none of these options lead us to anticipate differently under any circumstance, so the rational thing to do here is not to apply Occam’s Razor, but to reject the question “Does physical reality have one level or multiple levels?”
Edit: Note that I did not mean to say that you should not apply Occam’s Razor at all in this scenario. Perhaps, given the hypothesis that reality has multiple levels, Occam’s Razor makes certain phenomena more likely, and observations regarding these phenomena could be used to argue for or against the reductionist thesis. The point is that I cannot find examples of such phenomena, specially if the kind of multiple levels that we are talking about are purely physical.
Wait. Perhaps one of such predictions would be that we should find universal laws involving higher-level entities, while it seems that at that level, we only find ceteris paribus laws. By contrast, at the lower level, we do find universal laws. This should be evidence in favour of the reductionist thesis.
Which would indicate that I was wrong in my initial claim.
Actually when I first responded to you I was thinking about biology, psychology and such as the higher level. In this case the claim seems to make sense. However, if I understood EHeller correctly, this doesn’t hold water inside the realm of modern physics. Besides, we can in principle never know if we’re at the lowest level.
Even if the argument “Occam’s Razor says that since reality having only one level is simpler than reality having multiple levels, then the first option is more likely to be true.” was valid, there is a problem.
Contrarily to other contexts where Occam’s Razor is actually useful, none of these options lead us to anticipate differently under any circumstance, so the rational thing to do here is not to apply Occam’s Razor, but to reject the question “Does physical reality have one level or multiple levels?”
Edit: Note that I did not mean to say that you should not apply Occam’s Razor at all in this scenario. Perhaps, given the hypothesis that reality has multiple levels, Occam’s Razor makes certain phenomena more likely, and observations regarding these phenomena could be used to argue for or against the reductionist thesis. The point is that I cannot find examples of such phenomena, specially if the kind of multiple levels that we are talking about are purely physical.
Wait. Perhaps one of such predictions would be that we should find universal laws involving higher-level entities, while it seems that at that level, we only find ceteris paribus laws. By contrast, at the lower level, we do find universal laws. This should be evidence in favour of the reductionist thesis.
Which would indicate that I was wrong in my initial claim.
Actually when I first responded to you I was thinking about biology, psychology and such as the higher level. In this case the claim seems to make sense. However, if I understood EHeller correctly, this doesn’t hold water inside the realm of modern physics. Besides, we can in principle never know if we’re at the lowest level.