I am not historian enough to pronounce upon the relation of what is standardly called Occam's Razor to the writings of the 14th century William of Ockham. The differential spellings will serve as a reminder to be careful about reading contemporary concerns into the works of philosophers long dead. Setting aside historical concerns, Occam's Razor is a principle of ontological parsimony that states:
OR. Do not multiply entities beyond necessity.
It is sometimes quoted in Latin: Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem. The principle is presumably to be interpreted qualitatively rather than quantitaively, thus:
OR*. Do not multiply TYPES of entity beyond necessity.
It goes without saying that securing agreement on just what the data are, and whether a given theory accounts for them adequately, is a messy business. It is especially messy when, as is the case here, what one is seeking are philosophical rather than scientific explanations.
How does Occam's Razor bear upon the question of metaphysical naturalism (which is to be distinguished from ethical, epistemological, and methodological naturalism)? As follows. If naturalism accounts for all the data adequately, then I say we should be naturalists. Thus there is arguably a presumption in favor of naturalism, a presumption that rests on the Razor.
Metaphysical naturalism (MN) may be defined as the doctrine that the world, the totality of entities, is identical to the space-time system. This is essentially D. M. Armstrong's definition. (A World of States of Affairs, p. 5.) If MN is true, then there is no God as classically conceived, no unembodied or disembodied finite minds, no abstracta or Platonica such as Fregean propositions, and no unexemplified universals. (MN as defined does allow for immanent physical universals: see Armstrong.)
Some identify MN with atheism, the denial that God as classically conceived exists. That is a mistake in my book: MN entails atheism, no doubt, but is not logically equivalent to it, since atheism does not entail metaphysical naturalism. McTaggart was an atheist but not a metaphysical naturalist.
Suppose there are three candidate entity-types, basic and mutually irreducible: bodies, minds, abstracta. The naturalist can be understood to be saying that the second two categories are empty and that their members are not needed to explain the data.
It follows that there are several ways to be an anti-naturalist. One way is to say that we need minds and bodies but not abstracta. Another is to say that we need bodies, minds, and abstracta. A third is to say that we need bodies and abstracta but no minds. A fourth is to say that we can get by just with minds. (Berkeley, McTaggart) A fifth is to say that we need only minds and abstracta. A sixth is to say that we can scrape by on abstracta alone. (I seem to recall a logician named Fitch who thought everything is at bottom a proposition or a construction out of propositions -- but I could easily be wrong about that.)
From the foregoing it should be clear that Occam's Razor does not support MN by itself, but only together with an antecedent acceptance of bodies as irreducibly real. But given the latter acceptance, then OR* enjoins us to try to explain the data without invoking irreducible minds or mental contents (qualia, e.g.) or abstracta.
So this is what I am interested in discussing: Can naturalism explain everything that needs to be explained? If it can, then we ought to be naturalists, or at least the pressure is on to accept naturalism. God might still exist even if everything apart from God could be explained without reference to God. But then what reason would one have to posit God? Mystical experience of God? God's self-revelation through his prophets as recorded in scripture? Perhaps, but then the question of the veridicality of these sources of putative knowledge becomes very pressing indeed. Metaphysical naturalism will most like bring epistemological naturalism and scientism in its train and thus a foreclosing on all sources of knowledge apart from science.
So I say that the pressure is on to accept naturalism if it can explain what needs to be explained. Of course, I don't think it can explain what needs to be explained, which is why I am an anti-naturalist. I am not an anti-naturalist because I am a theist, I am an anti-naturalist because naturalism fails to explain what needs to be explained. I have been building my case slowly, but it is far from complete.
But note well: to argue against naturalism is to not argue for substance dualism. For there are other options such as absolute idealism. If everything is a mind or a content in a mind, then that is as parsimonious an explanation as an explanation that states that everything is either a body or a construction from bodies.
What needs to be explained? This requires a separate post.
Since there is a presumption in favor of naturalism, it is appropriate to proceed as I have been proceeding, namely, challenging naturalists to show how their theories work and account for the data. Pollack et al. may feel this to be unfair because I have them on the defensive; but it seems to me that the presumption in favor of naturalism makes to reasonable to see if we can be satisfied by it. If we can, then there is no need to posit anything beyond the natural.
Note also -- and this may apply to Kevin Kim -- the untenability of substance dualism, say, does not show the tenability of naturalism. After all, they could both be false and/or untenable.
Well, that does seem fair - I do agree that "presumption in favor of naturalism makes it reasonable to see if we can be satisfied by it." And developing a satisfactory naturalistic account of the phenomena is exactly what the scientific enterprise is trying to do. It remains to be seen, of course, how well it will turn out, but there is certainly encouraging incremental progress.
Given all of that, doesn't it seem premature to insist that the effort must fail, especially without a clear and defensible model to offer as a substitute?
It is an interesting question why your intuition and mine pull in different directions. We are both curious about the matter, have both read much of the literature on the subject, and are both aware, more or less, of the state of scientific research. What gives?
Malcolm
You wroteTo borrow an answer from Phillip Johnson, the reason that you and Dr. V have intuitions which "pull in different directions" is because your brain contains certain chemicals (and their reactions) which result in one type of belief, while Dr. V's brain has other chemicals that have yielded his. I hope this helps. If not, look to your brain chemistry.
Isn't this the naturalist account of the situation?
Cheers,
Steve
Very helpful.
Malcolm
Take care,
Steve
Great blog. I've been a regular reader for some time now.
Anyway, I have a brief comment on Ockham's Razor (OR). You interpret (OR) qualitatively rather than quantitatively. Thus, you offer (OR*) "Do not multiply TYPES of entity beyond necessity" rather than (OR^) "Do not posit more entities than necessary". It seems to me, however, that both readings are legitimate and important. Ceteris paribus, we prefer explanations that are simpler in both the qualitative and quantitative senses. Sometimes, though, we have to make a trade-off and it's not always clear whether positing fewer entities or fewer types of entity is on balance more parsimonious.
For example, there's an impressive amount of data regarding the 'fine-tuning' of the universe for complex life. The two most common explanations are (1) posit a cosmic designer, and (2) posit a vast ensemble of universes with randomly varying properties. Explanation (1) seems defensible on a quantitive version of Ockham's razor. After all, why posit a vast ensemble of empirically undetectable universes when you can just posit one (presumably undesigned) cosmic designer and be done with it? On the other hand, (2) seems defensible on a qualitative version of Ockham's razor because positing extra universes involves positing entities of the same type as our own universe, which undoubtedly exists; whereas the design hypothesis seems to require positing a rather different sort of entity--a transcendent and undesigned designer--than we normally encounter.
My point is simply that explanatory parsimony or simplicity has more than one dimension to it, and the relative weighting of those dimensions is a complex matter. A hypothesis that scores high on one dimension (say the quantitive one) might score low on another (say the qualitative one), or vice-versa. Which is to be preferred? It's not always easy to say. Perhaps a theory that scores moderately well on both dimensions is best.
Regards,
Alan
Actually, I was asking Bill a serious question, kind of a one-thoughtful-adult-to-another sort of thing. I just happened to wonder why our intuition on these matters diverges so sharply. It's not really on topic, I admit, and of course a zingy, fatuous, flippant answer is always hard to bottle up, I know. After all, we're only human.
I was just wondering, that's all.
Malcolm
I was not responding to your thoughtful and interesting post, of course, which appeared before I had refreshed the page.
Malcolm
Welcome to the discussion! You are certainly quick on the cyber-trigger as I just discovered your application to comment and approved you. Thanks for applying and I look forward to your comments. Having put the Google bot on your case I see that you are teaching at UNLV. Do you know Dennis Monokroussos? He was a student of John Greco at Fordham. I believe he (DM) grew up in Las Vegas. How do you like the desert? I love it myself.
Your comment is excellent and forces me to think harder about the Razor and what it shaves. Your example is a good one and shows that my discussion in the main post was a bit premature. You are right that the decision between qualitative and quantitative parsimony is not an easy one.
My problem with the multiple universes scheme is that their existence is left unexplained. But this is a big separate topic.
I see you are interested in presentism and truth-makers. I have given a lot of thought to truth-makers (they figure prominently in a book on existence I published in 2002), and somewhat less thought to presentism. I find both attractive. Perhaps we can discuss these topics later on.
Your question is a very serious one and I take it seriously, interested as I am in the nature of disagreement as such. It requires a separate post.
I think Streve was just being playful, and I don't think you took it in the wrong way. These topics, and especially the Darwinian ones, taper off into ideology and polemic, and we need to be careful about that. I want to keep these discussions as strictly philosophical and non-polemical as possible.
In my political posts I allow myself a bit of rant and polemic, but it is out of place here, where I am just trying to get to the sober truth and follow the arguments where they lead to the extent that that is possible for a finite mortal, or, as you put it, a hairless ape.
I certainly don't mean to raise my voice in here.
M
Thanks for the welcome. Yes, I do know Dennis. We both grew up in Las Vegas and have our undergrad degrees from UNLV. We were both active in the Las Vegas chess scene, though I haven't played serious chess for some time now (my lifetime high USCF rating is 1993 - almost an expert). Dennis and I also shared an apartment together while we were both going to Fordham. We haven't been in direct contact for some time now. I know he and his wife are living in South Bend where he does a weekly chess show. I'll have to drop him a line and catch up.
Anyway, I do like the desert, though I imagine Arizona would suit my tastes better. Vegas is a bit too surreal. It is home, though. My wife and I were both born and raised here.
I'm glad you appreciated my comments. The whole issue of explanatory parsimony is a difficult one in the philosophy of science. Charles Peirce, one of my favorite philosophers, held a multi-faceted view of parsimony. The most important factor in his view was neither the quantity of posits nor the quantity of types of posits but rather the 'naturalness' of a hypothesis, i.e., how well it coheres with our commonsense intuitions. This is admittedly a somewhat murky notion, but, then again, the very concept of parsimony might just have a degree of ineliminable murkiness about it. Peirce would be quick to insist, however, that the inherent murkiness of an idea is no excuse for not trying to make that idea more clear.
Regards,
Alan
Is it a rule of investigation? But then when you criticize someone for not following Occam's Razor are you just saying that you would have investigated the problem differently? That doesn't seem to be what people are saying.
Is it just an esthetic rule? But then it's really subjective, isn't it? People act like they think it is objective.
So what is it? I've always been curious about this.
A key issue in the debate between naturalism and theism and their relation to Occam's Razor is whether the theist is positing entities needlessly. Occam's Razor is not a justification of accepting the simplest theory, but of accepting the simplest theory capable of doing justice to all the data.
The situation Johnson applied it to was a speech that Arthur Kornberg delivered to the AAAS in 1987; Kornberg was similarly astonished "that otherwise intelligent and informed people, including physicians, are reluctant to believe that mind, as a part of life, is matter and only matter." As Johnson said, "his astonishment was unjustified." I shared the story with William Hasker a few years ago and he thought there was something to it as well.
I think it would take some time to unpack the difficulty I allude to, so for now I'll have to leave it more as a joke than an argument.
Malcolm, I appreciate your willingness to dialogue. In my experience, I've learned the most by debating others on difficult topics, and your participation here is no exception. Your remarks and criticisms are an aid to my own thinking.
Take care,
Steve
More directly related to your joke: if reasoning really is just the actions of an accidentally-existing computational device, Malcolm has no reason to trust his own reasoning more than Dr. Vallicella's. Instead, he needs to find an instrument that measures how effective a brain is and then just trust the brain with the highest measurement.
And by the way, modern physics denies the principle of sufficient reason. Quantum effect are supposed to be irreducibly random, meaning that there is no reason why the outome is one thing rather than another.
I think both Kantian transcendental idealism and theism could justify the presupposition in question. But what reason would a naturalist have to trust Occam's Razor as a guide to reality?
PSR: No event without sufficient reason.
OR: No posit without sufficient reason.
One unclarity derives from the ambiguity of 'reason' as between cause and reason. Maybe quantum indeterminacy doesn't 'percolate up' to the macro-level so that we can say: Macroscopically, no event without a cause or causes. But the connection between PSR in this form and OR is not clear to me. (Granted, PSR can be formulated in different ways.)
One also has to explain 'sufficient.' A sufficient cause is presumably a necessitating cause: if x is causally sufficient for y, then the occurrence of x necessitates the occurrence of y. But a sufficient reason to posit an entity or type of entity would not be a necessitating cause of such a positing.
These are not objections so much as requests for clarification.
Interesting that you play chess. Surprising how many chess playing philosophers there are. I see from your rating that you will 'clean my clock' if ever we should play. My highest USCF rating was 1720. But the scholastic players have contrived to reduce me to my rating floor, where I now languish.
Have you seen DM's outstanding chess blog? You will find a link thereto on my sidebar along with other chess links.
Yes there is something surreal about Las Vegas. It is a great tournament venue, though. I've played in a number of events there. It's a short cheap hop from PHX. I think I'll play in next year's Nat'l Open held at the 'fabulous' Riviera.
You got a job and in your hometown to boot. Congratulations, what a coup!
You wroteI was thinking the same thing. There is an essay by Dr. Robert Koons that might apply: "The Incompatibility of Naturalism and Scientific Realism".
Enjoy!
Steve
You wroteShould we follow modern physics on this point? (I'm no expert on quantum mechanics, but I've always understood such randomness to be epistemic, not ontological.) If we do adopt that viewpoint, do we also, then, dispense with Occam's Razor?
Take care,
Steve
Quite right - our brains, as selected by evolution for certain historical contexts, are foolable in many ways, and we must be careful about our reasoning. Also, certain types of reasoning (how to calculate the trajectory of a thrown ball) come naturally, while others (differential calculus) must be trained with great effort. I'd say that it is our good fortune that our brains have reached a certain flexiblity that allows them to be reprogrammed for the less-natural tasks, but yes, there are bound to be blind spots, and we must be careful. There may indeed be limits to what we can comprehend. The question has been asked: since we do not expect a dog to have any hope of understanding calculus, how do we know that we have any hope of understanding the mysteries that baffle us? One imprtant difference of course is that the dog isn't even baffled; it has no way even to frame the questions.
Actually the prevailing view in quantum mechanics is that the randomness is indeed ontological, not epistemic. This was the subject of the great Einstein-Bohr dispute, and Bohr is generally considered to have been right.
As for Occam's Razor, Nature often does seem to implement principles of parsimony, of "least action", and so forth, but quite right - there are no guarantees.
Malcolm
Take care all,
Steve
Point taken. Which makes me wonder at:
Does the untenability of naturalism show the tenability of any of the anti-naturalistic positions?
I haven't seen any unflawed theories so far-- idealistic, substance dualistic, or naturalistic. We gravitate to the theories that best match our fundamental commitments, I suspect. Do we choose those fundamental commitments? Interesting question.
Someone once said that we're feeling beings who happen to think. There may be something to that idea. Our stubborn commitment to our own points of view is an indicator of how loose a grip rationality has on us.
Kevin
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