Well, take the statement that there are green-skinned, blue-eyed, humanoid aliens living on a planet orbiting Betelgeuse. Since this is a very specific statement, it’s a priori very unlikely to be true, so that the belief that there are no such aliens is rational despite the lack of evidence for it; it’s not a faith-based belief.
Perhaps a better definition of faith would be, “intentionally self-deceiving belief”.
It’s certainly a more condescending definition, at least.
Has Occam’s Razor been semantically cleaved from the notion of “faith” in a convincing way here or elsewhere? How does your a priori reasoning differ from “faith in simpler explanations”?
The greater the specificity of a concept is, the less plausible it must be. For example, if I make two guesses, first that you have a sibling, and second that this hypothetical sibling is female, the second, more specific guess is necessarily less likely to be true than the first one.
Eliezer has written some stuff about this, but if you’re interested in a really rigorous argument, I recommend Paul Almond’s Occam’s Razor series (nine articles in total):
Thanks for the link. Some of Almond’s other stuff was already on my “to read” list, it looks like I’ll be sinking a weekend on his site some time soon.
I think I see the distinction you’re making… the things inherent in the structure and relationships of a set of concepts (like specificity) effectively function as a priori truths, even though the concepts may be “about” empirical matters. This is clearly different from “faith”, which has a more speculative nature. My vague intuition that Occam’s Razor is somehow “like faith” still isn’t discharged, but perhaps Almond will bludgeon that out of me with his series.
Well, take the statement that there are green-skinned, blue-eyed, humanoid aliens living on a planet orbiting Betelgeuse. Since this is a very specific statement, it’s a priori very unlikely to be true, so that the belief that there are no such aliens is rational despite the lack of evidence for it; it’s not a faith-based belief.
Perhaps a better definition of faith would be, “intentionally self-deceiving belief”.
It’s certainly a more condescending definition, at least.
Has Occam’s Razor been semantically cleaved from the notion of “faith” in a convincing way here or elsewhere? How does your a priori reasoning differ from “faith in simpler explanations”?
The greater the specificity of a concept is, the less plausible it must be. For example, if I make two guesses, first that you have a sibling, and second that this hypothetical sibling is female, the second, more specific guess is necessarily less likely to be true than the first one.
Eliezer has written some stuff about this, but if you’re interested in a really rigorous argument, I recommend Paul Almond’s Occam’s Razor series (nine articles in total):
http://www.paul-almond.com/
Thanks for the link. Some of Almond’s other stuff was already on my “to read” list, it looks like I’ll be sinking a weekend on his site some time soon.
I think I see the distinction you’re making… the things inherent in the structure and relationships of a set of concepts (like specificity) effectively function as a priori truths, even though the concepts may be “about” empirical matters. This is clearly different from “faith”, which has a more speculative nature. My vague intuition that Occam’s Razor is somehow “like faith” still isn’t discharged, but perhaps Almond will bludgeon that out of me with his series.