Doesn't Occam's Razor lead us to dump the assumption of determinism, since it yields no new results?
My humble blog
It's easy to refute an argument if you first misrepresent it. William Keizer
Are you using Occam's Razor as a guideline or are you using it in drawing a conclusion?
Did you read the link provided?
I am compatibalist. Join us.
(english is not my native language, sorry for grammar.)
I think Occam's Razor takes a swipe at you guys, too, MaikU.
How does determinism not yield new results?
The keyboard is mightier than the gun.
Non parit potestas ipsius auctoritatem.
Voluntaryism Forum
From everything that I've gleaned Occam's razor is about choosing the simplest choice so long as there is equal evidence supporting both choices. As far as I can tell it has nothing to do with yielding new results. Indeed Occam's razor would favor determinism.
Which is a simpler explanation?
The laws of causality effect everything except for the human brain which has the special ability to go against causality itself and originate its own destiny/thought/fate.
The implication then being that humans had free will and thier thoughts and actions were not determined, strictly speaking, by the physical makeup of the universe.
Or
The laws of causality effect everything.
The extention of this principle meaning that human action and though processes are determined by the physical makeup of the universe.
Ouch ;)
My argument for Free Will as opposed to compatibilism.
The atoms tell the atoms so, for I never was or will but atoms forevermore be.
Yours sincerely,
Physiocrat
It is necessarily true since otherwise one couldn't evaluate the truth value of the question "Is LFW true?" because you could only conclude what you were determined to do which gives no foundation for truth
Evolution likely takes care of that. If you can't answer simple truth questions, then you die and don't have offspring. Logic may be a spontaneous phenomenon.
Call me dumb, but I fail to see how determinism is effected by Occam's Razor. I'm with Neodoxy; determinism seems more parsimonious (which doesn't necessarily make it true).
my argument is as follows
1. If we assume determinism alone, but not free will, then all the results of Austrian economics are not derivable. Because the brain is a black box and we have no way of knowing what will happen if, say , a minimum wage law is introduced. It's all up to the chemicals in the brain, which for all we know from determinsim in our present state of knowledge, could be any result whatsoever.
2. If we assume free will alone and not determinism, then all the results of Austrian Economics are derivable. And reality shows them to be true results, which is the same reason we give credence to the assumptions of physics.
3. Thus, all we know is derivable from assuming free will. Assuming detrminism adds nothing to our knowledge, and on the contrary, negates all the knowledge we have from assuming free will. [Note that this is a compound sentence, with two ideas. The first that determinsim adds nothing. The second that it detracts]. Occam's Razor therefor tells us [based on either or both of the two ideas] to dump determinism.
but free will DOESN'T exist, dude. That's the problem. People make choices, but they are not "free", but infact, a result of chain of events, also known as "cause and effect".
1. And your proof of that assertion is?
2. "a chain of cause and effect" and "choice" seem are opposites.
3. and your refutation of occam's razor applied here is?
Just make sure we are all on the same page. Prior to the revelation of the uncertainty principle, everyone thought it "self evident" that a thing has a particular velocity and a particular place at any given instant. The uncertainty principle was accepted, and it was assumed that the exact place and exact velocity are unknowable. Apllying Occam's Razor, physicists just said "There is no such such thing as an exact palce and an exact velocity of an object. It introduces an unneccasary complication, that adds nothing to our knowledge, to say those things are "there' but unknowable. So we'll just shave them away and say they don't exist."
My line of reasoning above is doing the same thing, shaving away the uneecasary assumption, asssumed only because it makes some people feel comfortable, but adds nothing to our knowledge, that human actions are results of "Cause and effect' the same way the motion of a billaird ball is.
Smiling Dave:my argument is as follows 1. If we assume determinism alone, but not free will, then all the results of Austrian economics are not derivable. Because the brain is a black box and we have no way of knowing what will happen if, say , a minimum wage law is introduced. It's all up to the chemicals in the brain, which for all we know from determinsim in our present state of knowledge, could be any result whatsoever.
I fail to see how assuming determinism means assuming that the brain is a black box. Can you explain?
Smiling Dave:2. If we assume free will alone and not determinism, then all the results of Austrian Economics are derivable. And reality shows them to be true results, which is the same reason we give credence to the assumptions of physics.
At the risk of sounding obtuse, could you provide your own definitions for "free will" and "determinism"? I ask this because it seems to me that the results of Austrian Economics are underivable if we don't assume determinism.
Smiling Dave:3. Thus, all we know is derivable from assuming free will. Assuming detrminism adds nothing to our knowledge, and on the contrary, negates all the knowledge we have from assuming free will. [Note that this is a compound sentence, with two ideas. The first that determinsim adds nothing. The second that it detracts]. Occam's Razor therefor tells us [based on either or both of the two ideas] to dump determinism.
The results of Austrian Economics are all we know? Can you please substantiate this?
Logic by it's ver nature is deterministic, so anything that is an actual logical proposition trying to define the nature of logic can not support free will. Free Will is a grammatical error at best .
Occom's Razor is not a "guidline",it states that anything uneccassary for the symbolism at hand is meaningless. This is full on determinism....as is Misean economics. "Choice" just functions as a convienet symbol word to speak of inter subjective relations.
Everything acts as it does because it is some specific force, and all things that are or ever will be are necessary by the nature of their force and their relationship to one another.
Z is not 'caused' by X, Rather if Z and if X, both must be so. Z and X being is determined in relationship to all prior and future A's and B's.
In other words: If something can not be clearly said - it can not be said at all. It disproves itself by it's own murky phrasing.
"As in a kaleidoscope, the constellation of forces operating in the system as a whole is ever changing." - Ludwig Lachmann
"When A Man Dies A World Goes Out of Existence" - GLS Shackle
I'm sorry dave but I believe that you have really some gross misconceptions here.
"1. If we assume determinism alone, but not free will, then all the results of Austrian economics are not derivable. Because the brain is a black box and we have no way of knowing what will happen if, say , a minimum wage law is introduced. It's all up to the chemicals in the brain, which for all we know from determinsim in our present state of knowledge, could be any result whatsoever."
False, determinism simply states that it's a case of cause and effect, it does not say what this cause and effect entails. The brain functions differently than the billiard ball, the lever does not act in the same way as the pulley. Just because something is cause and effect does not mean that AE is negated. It could be in the nature of cause and effect that the praxeological assumption was true, that men have value and use that which they know to satisfy it, they are not incompatable in the slightest. Indeed the praxeological assumption states that "men aim at certain things", simply because this is determined by chemical interactions and the formation of the brain itself does not mean anything, indeed as long as we know that the brain functions in such a way as to bring available knowledge to attempt to satisfy the wants praxeology applies so long as its further assumptions are met.
Also, the thing is that even under praxeological assumptions the result of any action could be "any result whatsoever". Praxeology, as its unstated assumptions go, has to assume some sort of constancy of values. For instance if a minimum wage is imposed but at the same time there is a sudden jump in the value of labor at that moment that puts all laborers in question above that minimum wage and no unemployment would result. Or everyone could at that moment disassociate and the market system could collapse. These assumptions must be held, and they can be with determinism employed.
"2. If we assume free will alone and not determinism, then all the results of Austrian Economics are derivable. And reality shows them to be true results, which is the same reason we give credence to the assumptions of physics."
You have committed a methodological fallacy here, historical events cannot prove or disprove the teachings of Austrian Economics. Furthermore history also favors other economic schools in most other cases
"3. Thus, all we know is derivable from assuming free will. Assuming detrminism adds nothing to our knowledge, and on the contrary, negates all the knowledge we have from assuming free will. [Note that this is a compound sentence, with two ideas. The first that determinsim adds nothing. The second that it detracts]. Occam's Razor therefor tells us [based on either or both of the two ideas] to dump determinism."
Occam's razor has nothing to do with this, if you were correct then it would not involve Occam's razor, it's a case of the scientific method, it has nothing to do with how simple an explanation is, the deterministic belief is more simple. Occam's razor is not a factor here.
At any rate, in the long run determinism is more or less impossible to disprove unless one takes the "argument from ignorance" way out. There is a reason why Mises favored the determinist side of the debate and stated explicitly that determinism V. free will has no implication on praxeology because the ultimate cause for human values is not adressed by praxeology, it could be free will or deterministic actions which determine values, it makes no difference, from then on we know how the human brain will act.
Smiling Dave: 1. And your proof of that assertion is? 2. "a chain of cause and effect" and "choice" seem are opposites.
they are not. It is all obvious and supported by real world. That's why I don't buy neither hard determinism nor free will-ism. Thing is, people confuse free will with ability to make a choice. Now, whether it is influenced by external reality or inner psychology of human being is questionable, but it is an empirical fact, that humans - as rational animals - make decisions. And to argue, that they are not influenced by world (in general) is to fall into pseudo-religious free will camp.
And again, I think many people who believe in free will (and hard determinism) are just confused about these concepts and they would be compatibalists if they understood, that there is nothing free about the universe and that that is not a bad thing. And it has little to do with libertarian free will which is, according to me, just a useful metaphor. I use "free will" all the time, just like I use word "soul" when I speak about peoples' minds and/or psichological state etc. Just like I accept conceptual dualism (it has to do with proving self-ownership, mind and a body). Well, better be if I called it "libertarian conceptual dualism", because only libertarians assert (and truthfully) that people own their bodies.
Sure. My use of the term determinism is the billiard ball kind. To quote Wikipedia:
Determinism in the West is often associated with Newtonian physics, which depicts the physical matter of the universe as operating according to a set of fixed, knowable laws. The "billiard ball" hypothesis, a product of Newtonian physics, argues that once the initial conditions of the universe have been established, the rest of the history of the universe follows inevitably. If it were actually possible to have complete knowledge of physical matter and all of the laws governing that matter at any one time, then it would be theoretically possible to compute the time and place of every event that will ever occur (Laplace's demon). In this sense, the basic particles of the universe operate in the same fashion as the rolling balls on a billiard table, moving and striking each other in predictable ways to produce predictable results.
But of course we don't know the initial conditions of the universe, nor do we know the initial conditions, or the conditions at any time, of what is happening in the brain. So in practice the brain is a black box, meaning we know something is in there, but not what.
Could you provide your own definitions for "free will" and "determinism"? I ask this because it seems to me that the results of Austrian Economics are underivable if we don't assume determinism.
"Free will" means that there sometimes exist conditions such that, no matter what happened in the past, or is happening right now, there exists a human being who is not bound by the past and present to act in a certain way, but is free to choose for himself how to behave to some extent. In other words, no matter what the information an outside observer has about the human, external or internal, he will not be able to predict with certainty what the human will do.
Determinism is the opposite assumption, that under all circs there exists a certain database of info which can inform us with certainty the behavior of an individual in the future. This is the billiard ball hypothesis above.
AE doesn't assume determinism, quite the contrary. AE's results are derivable because they assume that a man's free will lead him in most cases to choose what he sees as best for himself. But it doesn't assume he has no choice but to choose that.
Smile. I didn't say that. I am saying the following:
1. There exists a body of true knowledge [AE] which is deducible from the assumption of free will, independent of the assumption of determinism.
2. No body of knowledge exists deducible from the assumption of determinsim. Everyone admits this, all they say is that some day, in the sci-fi future, maybe we will find something somewhere.
1. and 2. are exactly the situation where Occams razor shaves away 2.
vive,
We are not talking about the same meaning of determinism. See my response to Autolykos about billiard balls.
Neodoxy,
In 1. I think you are saying that determinism [abbreviated to D from now] and praxeology [abbreviated from P from now] will yield results.
But P yields those results independent of D. D adds nothing to our reservoir of knowledge. Enter Occam.
In 2. I am following Mises. All I am adding to what he says is that Occam's Razor, seeing what Mises wrote, will slice D into shreds.
Here's the relevant argument from HA, with bracketed phrases added by me:
Materialist monism [=D] contends that human thoughts and volitions are the product of the operation of bodily organs, the cells of the brain and the nerves. Human thought, will, and action are solely brought about by material processes which one day will be completely explained by the methods of physical and chemical inquiry. This too is a metaphysical hypothesis, although its supporters consider it as an unshakable and undeniable scientific truth. [Adds Smiling Dave and Occam: since this metaphysical hypothesis adds nothing to our store of knowledge, it can be safely ignored].
Various doctrines have been advanced to explain the relation between mind and body. They are mere surmises without any reference to observed facts. All that can be said with certainty is that there are relations between mental and physiological processes. With regard to the nature and operation of this connection we know little if anything.
When I wrote that reality shows them to be true results, I was trying to summarize in a few words what Mises wrote in HA in chapter 1, section 6. Too long to quote in full here, but the interested reader can look it up and absorb it in ten minutes or so.
...it has nothing to do with how simple an explanation is, the deterministic belief is more simple.
Simle is not the criteria. Too quote our man wikipedia;
the one that makes the fewest new assumptions
To which I add, the assumption of determinism is barren. It will produce nothing new. It will not add a whit to our pile of knowledge. everything in the universe can be explained without it. Thus, out it goes.
To which I add further, assuming it destroys a body of knowledge that assumes free will. So not only does it not add to our knowledge, it detracts from it if we listen to it. Again, off with it's head, says Occam.
At any rate, in the long run determinism is more or less impossible to disprove
O's Razor is not meant to be a disproof.
There is a reason why Mises favored the determinist side of the debate and stated explicitly that determinism V. free will has no implication on praxeology because the ultimate cause for human values is not adressed by praxeology, it could be free will or deterministic actions which determine values, it makes no difference, from then on we know how the human brain will act.
Chapter and verse where Mises says that? I pointed to where he says the opposite, IMHO. Chapter 1, section 6 of HA.
Not necessarily. Free will. Take the axiom "people act." It doesn't require free will. It only requires that people do indeed act, which they do. Why do people act? Because it is evolutionarily more favorable to reproduction if we act to replace less-favorable states with more-favorable states. The things which didn't do this simply didn't multiply.
Smiling Dave:Sure. My use of the term determinism is the billiard ball kind. To quote Wikipedia: Determinism in the West is often associated with Newtonian physics, which depicts the physical matter of the universe as operating according to a set of fixed, knowable laws. The "billiard ball" hypothesis, a product of Newtonian physics, argues that once the initial conditions of the universe have been established, the rest of the history of the universe follows inevitably. If it were actually possible to have complete knowledge of physical matter and all of the laws governing that matter at any one time, then it would be theoretically possible to compute the time and place of every event that will ever occur (Laplace's demon). In this sense, the basic particles of the universe operate in the same fashion as the rolling balls on a billiard table, moving and striking each other in predictable ways to produce predictable results.
Okay, thanks. This is actually the same thing that I mean by "determinism". I'm glad we're on the same page here, at least.
Smiling Dave:But of course we don't know the initial conditions of the universe, nor do we know the initial conditions, or the conditions at any time, of what is happening in the brain. So in practice the brain is a black box, meaning we know something is in there, but not what.
We certainly don't know the conditions of the universe as a whole or even the conditions of a given person's brain, initially or at any other time - with complete precision. I think that last part is the most important. Assuming determinism (if only arguendo for the moment), "[knowing] the conditions of the universe as a whole" would literally mean knowing everything about the universe, down to every fundamental particle. Indeed, with this assumption, in order to know the conditions of any part of the universe one would still have to know the conditions of the entire universe.
As I allude to above, however, just because we don't know literally everything there is to know about the universe doesn't mean we therefore must have no idea whatsoever about the universe. Likewise, it doesn't mean we have no idea whatsoever about the human brain. Despite what you say above, we certainly do have some idea about what's in there. It seems to me that your argument embodies a false dilemma.
Smiling Dave:"Free will" means that there sometimes exist conditions such that, no matter what happened in the past, or is happening right now, there exists a human being who is not bound by the past and present to act in a certain way, but is free to choose for himself how to behave to some extent. In other words, no matter what the information an outside observer has about the human, external or internal, he will not be able to predict with certainty what the human will do.
Given our innate abilities, it's de facto impossible for anyone to predict with certainty what anyone else will do at a future point in time. Indeed, that impossibility even applies to oneself! But why is this impossible? I say it's because of the incredible complexity of the human mind. We're motivated by much more complex phenomena than the simple forces of gravity and electromagnetism - even though they're ultimately dependent on those forces. Regardless, it's this impossibility of (certain) prediction that I call "free will".
Smiling Dave:Determinism is the opposite assumption, that under all circs there exists a certain database of info which can inform us with certainty the behavior of an individual in the future. This is the billiard ball hypothesis above.
Yes, and I agree that such a database could exist theoretically. But it would be so massive - and massively complicated - that one would essentially have to be God to be able to make sense of it. I fail to see how this diminishes the concept of "free will", at least as I define it.
Smiling Dave:AE doesn't assume determinism, quite the contrary. AE's results are derivable because they assume that a man's free will lead him in most cases to choose what he sees as best for himself. But it doesn't assume he has no choice but to choose that.
If you start talking in terms of "choosing whether to choose (period)" and so forth, you'll end up with an infinite regress.
Smiling Dave: Autolykos:The results of Austrian Economics are all we know? Can you please substantiate this? Smile. I didn't say that. I am saying the following: 1. There exists a body of true knowledge [AE] which is deducible from the assumption of free will, independent of the assumption of determinism. 2. No body of knowledge exists deducible from the assumption of determinsim. Everyone admits this, all they say is that some day, in the sci-fi future, maybe we will find something somewhere. 1. and 2. are exactly the situation where Occams razor shaves away 2.
Autolykos:The results of Austrian Economics are all we know? Can you please substantiate this?
It certainly did seem to me like you said that. First you said that assuming free will alone (i.e. without determinism) leads to the derivation of all the results of Austrian Economics. Then you said - and I quote - "Thus, all we know is derivable from assuming free will [emphasis added]." If you didn't mean to imply that the results of Austrian Economics are all that we know, then I suggest you re-word your earlier post.
What you're saying now certainly seems different from what you said before. Can you please support these points?
Despite what you say above, we certainly do have some idea about what's in there. It seems to me that your argument embodies a false dilemma.
We are ignorant enough that we cannot get results that we would not have anyway from assuming free will. thus determinism is an uneccesassry assumption.
In fact, think about it for a second. What field of scientific inquiry actually uses the assumption of determinism to get anywhere? Has anyone ever written the following line, "Since we know man's actions are predetermined, we can conclude that such and such will happen in situation X?" Of course not. just as no scientist has ever written "Since we know the Angel Gabriel was watching, we can deduce event X will happen.' The Angel Gabriel and the theory of determinism occcupy the same place in scientific inquiry.
"choosing whether to choose (period)" and so forth, you'll end up with an infinite regress.
Replace the use of the phrase 'no choice' with "it is scientifically impossible"
"Thus, all we know is derivable from assuming free will [emphasis added]." If you didn't mean to imply that the results of Austrian Economics are all that we know, then I suggest you re-word your earlier post.
OK, here it is "Thus there exists a body of knowledge derivable in toto from assuming free will"
Smiling Dave:We are ignorant enough that we cannot get results that we would not have anyway from assuming free will. thus determinism is an uneccesassry assumption.
I'm not quite sure what this means, sorry. Can you please clarify it?
Smiling Dave:In fact, think about it for a second. What field of scientific inquiry actually uses the assumption of determinism to get anywhere?
Physics.
Smiling Dave:Has anyone ever written the following line, "Since we know man's actions are predetermined, we can conclude that such and such will happen in situation X?" Of course not. just as no scientist has ever written "Since we know the Angel Gabriel was watching, we can deduce event X will happen.' The Angel Gabriel and the theory of determinism occcupy the same place in scientific inquiry.
So apparently your real issue with determinism is that it means man's actions are predetermined. But so what if they are? That doesn't mean they can be predetermined by people themselves.
Smiling Dave:Replace the use of the phrase 'no choice' with "it is scientifically impossible"
Can you show me how to do the replacement? Because I'm not quite sure. Are you saying it's scientifically impossible for someone to only choose what he sees as best for himself? Or what?
Smiling Dave:OK, here it is "Thus there exists a body of knowledge derivable in toto from assuming free will"
Okay, but you also claimed that assuming determinism derives no knowledge whatsoever. So what else besides the results of Austrian Economics would you say is part of the "body of knowledge derivable in toto from assuming free will"?
Did you have any thoughts on the rest of my last post? Or are you implicitly letting my points stand?
I forgot about this post.
Smiling Dave:Just make sure we are all on the same page. Prior to the revelation of the uncertainty principle, everyone thought it "self evident" that a thing has a particular velocity and a particular place at any given instant. The uncertainty principle was accepted, and it was assumed that the exact place and exact velocity are unknowable. Apllying Occam's Razor, physicists just said "There is no such such thing as an exact palce and an exact velocity of an object. It introduces an unneccasary complication, that adds nothing to our knowledge, to say those things are "there' but unknowable. So we'll just shave them away and say they don't exist."
With all due respect, this seems to be a straw man of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. Even before the advent of modern quantum physics, measurements were understood to be imprecise to some degree. The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle apparently embodies an inherent physical limitation on quantum-level measurements.
To assume that fundamental particles don't have particular velocities and positions at any given instant causes far more unnecessary complications, from what I see.
Smiling Dave:My line of reasoning above is doing the same thing, shaving away the uneecasary assumption, asssumed only because it makes some people feel comfortable, but adds nothing to our knowledge, that human actions are results of "Cause and effect' the same way the motion of a billaird ball is.
Humans are vastly more complex than billiard balls. Surely you see that. Do you think that people are made of more than just (ultimately) fundamental particles?
"But P yields those results independent of D. D adds nothing to our reservoir of knowledge. Enter Occam."
Except that D is more complicated than P. I can construct a truly elaborate theory which states why X occurs, but Z has just as much evidence and is simpler, therefore Z should win out according to the razor, it has nothing to do with adding to knowledge, it's simply stating that what is simpler, if equal in explanatory power and in evidence, is most likely to be correct.
Now in our case free will and determinism don't even have equal explanatory power, free will has more explanatory power, however this does not in this instance matter, a belief in god has more explanatory power than a belief in science. Free will can explain things precisely because it supposes the impossible, that the human mind is independent from causality itself. It is as if I didn't want to explain the paths of planets and instead stated that the reason that the planets moved as they did was because they had been convinced long ago to do so, it's not to do with forces of action, but instead forces of will, the foolish idea that planets can think. THE HUMAN MIND AND THAT WHICH IT DOES IS THE RESULT OF CAUSAL FORCES, ANYTHING ELSE GOES AGAINST THE LAWS OF SCIENCE AND MOTION AS WE KNOW THEM.
This once again gets into why I say that Occam's razor doesn't really play a role in this. If you said that both have equal explanatory power (which technically speaking they do) then the burden of proof is shifted to the free will side of the table. In this instance free will has more explanatory capabilities, but determinism actually has evidence.
As to Mises' quote, none of that implies that he didn't believe that determinism was correct, merely that it was a hypothesis and that it held no importance to praxeology. Later he states:
-Theory and History 78
"everything in the universe can be explained without it. Thus, out it goes."
.... What??? Nothing in the universe can be explained without the deterministic assumption, name me one thing that can be explained without the law of cause and effect??
Wheylous,
You are essentially arguing that evolution, presumably of the naturalistic type, solves the probelm but it doesn't on two counts: if it is true then it only allows fallible determinsim, clearly not infallible for obvious reasons, which can provide no foundation for truth since we can never know whether we are determined to be correct or incorrect- we cannot step out of the system and independently verify the truth value of a particular proposition; secondly, evolution only produces survivors not philosophers which is essentially Plantinga's Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism.
If you are interested in these arguments I have an extensive debate on the matter which can be found here.