Ockham's Razor (sharpening it)

clarification?
...permit me to attempt to clarify my position...

Both Mechsmith and Terry seem to think that I am trying to make a "proof" of the supernatural. I am not.

Both Mechsmith and Terry appear to want to goad me into trying to make a "proof" of the supernatural. I will not.

Both Mechsmith and Terry seem to struggle with the distinction between "natural" and "our models of the natural".

Preposterous just-so-stories notwithstanding, "our models of the natural" are inadequate to describe (let alone predict or explain):

- language (tread carefully if you disagree, I know of what I write)
- humor
- art
- philosophy
- morality

Having said that, Nature may very well be sufficient to explain all those things and more. However, in the absence of any scientific model, this becomes a point of religion, either for (the materialistic position) or against (the spiritualistic position).

Occam's Razor (and science, for what it's worth) is all about models, folks. If the model is weak, then the Razor cannot be applied to dismiss additions to that model.

Note that this IN NO WAY constitutes an argument for the existence of God. That the Razor cannot be applied because of the weakness of a model does NOT say ANYTHING about WHAT is necessary to strengthen that model.

What this DOES say, is that the dismissal of God via Occam's Razor is an act of faith (in the model, which in itself is insufficient, or the modeler, to eventually make a sufficient model, or in the modeled [nature] to permit a sufficient model).

To sum up: both the one who believes in God, and the one who dismisses God via Occam's Razor exercise faith. One no less than the other.

FWIW, tipping my hand like that might actually mean that I am less interested in "winning" and more interested in "honest discussion" Very Happy

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Terry, one of your statements jumped out at me because of its obvious importance: In the development of life "There are no steps that are known to be impossible without the interference of a creator." The concept of a creator is simply unnecessary, and one that has been increasingly shaved away by Occom's Razor.

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jnhofzinser,

Yes, I remember Pascals wager. I seriously discount it as a basis for morality.

Frankly I prefer, (not to put to fine a point on it) "laziness", defined as the desire to gain some benefit with the minimum personal effort.

This seems to be a trait universally :wink: accepted by life. (life's like that Exclamation

) Some people even call it efficiency Exclamation

.

I think that we can "show" what probably happened and outline the developement of your five "subjects". Absolute proofs probably can not happen. This is philosophy, not mathematics Surprised

Terry,

Ican and I discussed, at some length,a "Bingo" game as a more apt model of the probabilities of evolution than the linear models he was trying to use. Actually I had some idea of marketing such a game but the sheer logistics of assembling the game precluded selling one profitably to Parker Bros. Sad

(Scrabble-Monopoly etc) But when, as a result of calculating for the game, we jointly concluded that given a portion of spacetime similar to that of Earth that life would appear in less than one hundred hours, I think it became convincing. Smile

The same process could be used on most facets of natural selection. (The more people playing the game the quicker SOMEONE will win). You may note that this also accounts for a lot of "unexpressed" DNA

JL,
I second that and have every reason to "believe" that such a progression of ideas will continue (with luck) forever. No matter how long that is. Confused

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akaMechsmith wrote:

I think that we can "show" what probably happened and outline the development of your five "subjects".

In your dreams. Have at it.

And when you get through with the easy ones, why not try your hand at "showing" "free will" and "consciousness". You will fail. Much much more significant minds than yourself have failed.

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Mechsmith:

Let me even give you a leg up on your quest to "show" the development of these unmodeled bits of human nature.

First off: your best bet will be language. Language has had more careful study than all of the rest of the subjects combined.

The "state-of-the-art" in explaining the evolution of language can reasonably be represented by Calvin and Bickerton's Lingua ex Machina (MIT Press, 2000). The authors agree with your position, but are a bit more honest about it: "At present, we still simply don't know enough about the Magic Moment of the first symbolic utterances to be able to do more than speculate."

That is the best we can do about "first symbolic utterances". The leap from there to true language is every bit as problematic. Take, for example, the remarkable examples of feral children we've encoutered in recent centuries. As no doubt you are aware, children raised with no society never develop language (but have little trouble with "symbolic utterances") -- even after re-integration with society. What's perhaps even more intriguing is that we have encountered two examples of feral pairs of children. Picture what a remarkable experiment this is: two biologically equipped-for-language infants raised together, but with no other society. Do they develop language? Not at all.

How did we develop language in a process where the biological provision needs develop, providing selective advantage, at the same time? We (that is, modern science) haven't the foggiest idea.

Best of luck, nepo

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Terry wrote:

JLN, science has been trimming God's beard for a couple of centuries now. Perhaps someday soon we will have enough shaved off to see his face. What if we find out that there is no one behind the curtain of hair?

What a cool comment!

I think there is "something there" all right but never to be seen by a terrestrial mind...it would spoil the game...

And these questions can only have "faith based" answers...each person believes what he needs to believe, imo...

Some need "freedom" more, for them, the "big bang", and I guess it was "nothing" that "banged"...gives the sense of "anything goes" that their spirit craves, to roam wild and free over the big Reality that presents itself to us, to see what can be seen and understood...the Prodigal Son parable, it was the son who left home and wasted his resources on loose women and spongers that I loved most...he came back home, stripped, but so appreciative of the worth of things and so wise about the nature of weakness...

But others do not have internal structure or that kind of confidence, for whatever reason, they depend on something very strict and straight and tight...rather like swaddling clothes...otherwise there is only chaos, no purpose, no reason to do anything... The Elder Brother in the parable, you don't get the idea that he LIKED staying home and being obedient...but he did so, out of fear...and also shared the inheritance...

What I really believe is that God flung Himself across the "universe"...a bit like the Big Bang...into little bits...so He could Appreciate Himself...I think He is in Us, when we appreciate one another, God Grows Up...

But if I think about it too precisely I feel what little bit of sanity I used to have slipping away...be not overwise, Eccl 7:16.

Another Eccl verse about how likely it is that we will find out all that we want to know, "He hath made every thing beautiful in his time: also he hath set the world in their heart, so that no man can find out the work that God maketh from the beginning to the end. " (3:11)

The word "world" there means something like "vanishing point"...like the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, imo. Not the same word as "world" elsewhere in the bible.

And here is a great artist's take on the origen of things, I just adore Hetfield:

Quote:

Through The Never (Metallica)

All that is, was and will be
universe much too big to see

time and space never ending
disturbing thoughts, questions pending
limitations of human understanding
too quick to criticize
obligation to survive
we hunger to be alive

all that is, ever
ever was
will be ever
twisting
turning
through the never

in the dark, see past our eyes
pursuit of truth no matter where it lies

gazing up to the breeze of the heavens
on a quest, meaning, reason
came to be, how it begun
all alone in the family of the sun
curiosity teasing everyone
on our home, third stone from the sun

all that is, ever
ever was
will be ever
twisting
turning
through the never

on through the never
we must go
on through the never
out of the
edge of forever
we must go
on through the never
then ever comes

all that is, ever
ever was
will be ever
who we are
ask forever
twisting
turning
through the never

never

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Maybe men ought to think twice about despising one another because we differ in opinion about things we cannot possibly "know"...

Our fleeting mortal energy perhaps ought to be spent on practical things...but I do sort of love the people who can't stop looking for that spinning wheel...thinking of Sleeping Beauty...

Another great artistic take on the unknowable...Blue Oyster Cult, but covered so wonderfully by Metallica:

Quote:

ASTRONOMY

Clock strikes twelve and moondrops burst
Out at you from their hiding place
Like acid and oil on a madman's face
His reason tends to fly away
Like lesser birds on the four winds
Like silver scrapes in May
And now the sand's become a crust
Most of you have gone away

Come Susie dear, let's take a walk
Just out there upon the beach
I know you'll soon be married
And you'll want to know where winds come from
Well it's never said at all
On the map that Carrie reads
Behind the clock back there you know
At the Four Winds Bar

Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey!

Four winds at the Four Winds Bar
Two doors locked and windows barred
One door to let to take you in
The other one just mirrors it

Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey!

Hellish glare and inference
The other one's a duplicate
The Queenly flux, eternal light
Or the light that never warms
Yes the light that never, never warms
Or the light that never
Never warms
Never warms
Never warms

The clock strikes twelve and moondrops burst
Out at you from their hiding place
Miss Carrie nurse and Susie dear
Would find themselves at Four Winds Bar

It's the nexus of the crisis
And the origin of storms
Just the place to hopelessly
Encounter time and then came me

Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey!

Call me Desdinova
Eternal light
These gravely digs of mine
Will surely prove a sight
And don't forget my dog
Fixed and consequent

Astronomy...a star

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jnhofzinser,

Free will--no sweat. See Adam Smith (Wealth of Nations) I forget the exact quote but basically he said than only the person involved can determine his preferred course of action and that governments task is to allow him the freedom and fairness to get on with it.

Consciousness (and self awareness) and free will (earned)

The ineventable results of natural selection and genetic variability. Genetic variability can easily be see as a macro scale of the indetermincy of Quantum Mechanics. (Mechanically there can be no such thing as an exact duplicate)

Play "Bingo" with the elements and energies that we observe with enough players and enough time something smart will show up. Some persons think that it already has been expressed in humans but IMO it's a bit doubtful Crying or Very sad

.

Next Post,

Symbolic utterances-- Try raising a dog. Observe porpoises and whales.Count some sheep and listen to the birds. Symbolic (interpretable) utterances are not limited to humans. There are physical constraints upon the other species though. This would include brain developement.
2nd-- feral children--Funny, I had read that they often do develop language. In the case of closely reared children there are records of them even developing "private" languages.
Romulus and Remus were not reputed to be mute, although raised by a wolf. They probably didn't speak Latin though but neither do I. This doesn't mean I couldn't Exclamation

3rd. Play Bingo-- Harmless sequences are not selected out but they will remain in the population (or on the card) although not be expressed until another sequence matches them.

My turn-- Please explain the observed presence of gills and tails in human fetuses. (feti?)

Happy thoughts, Mech Very Happy

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mechsmith,

You have either been drinking or reading the "Weekly World News" too much. Gimme a break.

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Whether or not I have been drinking or reading "scandal sheets" is irrelevant to the question at hand.

As a matter of "fact" I have been known to do both occasionally. Smile

Now as to the relevance of "my turn"

IMO Ockams Razor precludes the existence of any supernatural intelligence that is not required to explain any facet of the Universe as we observe it.

When genetic theory (yes, it's but a theory) can explain gills and tails in human fetuses I kind of wonder why they would occur if divine or superior intelligence designed humans. You seem to think that one did, or am I simply misinterpreting your statements Question

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Mech, your biological authority appears to be out of date. No credible text on Biology has promulgated Haeckel's "biogenetic law" deception since it was officially debunked in early last century. There are no gills or tail on a human embryo. You have been deceived.

If you don't believe me, there are literally hundreds of in-utero photographs of human embryo on the internet. If they have gills or tails, it should take no more than a google or two to find them. Happy hunting.

Incidentally, your authority on feral children is equally suspect. Try the remarkably complete www.feralchildren.com (no affiliation with yours truly) for some real information on the subject.

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(From jnhofzinser's linked site)

"No matter how fascinating, scientifically interesting or even romantic some of these stories seem, it isn't much fun to be a feral child, wolf boy or wild girl.
True dat.

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jnhofzinser

Look up "coccyx in your dictionary. I am using Websters Third International.

I will check your link.

I had seen reputed photographs of fetuses with external gills (salamander like) and a tail which remains vestigial. I will recheck. It'll take a couple of days to hunt it up. Since my kids are nearing forty my human embryology books are buried pretty deeply.

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I think I'm beginning to get the picture: folks use Occam's Razor as a "magic wand" to banish notions of a deity when they inconveniently arise. How else could the fascinating topics of language, art, humor, morality, and free will have been dispensed with so unceremoniously (and, frankly, unconvincingly)?

As I said earlier:

nepo wrote:

Atheists use Occam's Razor like creationists use the Second Law of Thermodynamics. Neither is applicable as they attempt to use them. They are both like children armed with kitchen knives sallying forth to rid the hedge of its dragons -- and then returning oh-so-smug because the hedge is now without dragons altogether!

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Fetuses do not have gills (Haeckel saw them for the same reason so many astronomers saw canals on Mars) but all vertebrate fetuses do indeed go through a stage in which they have exactly the same folds in the neck (branchial clefts and arches) that are the precursors of gills in fish. In humans these structures are refined into the maxillary process, mandibular arch, mouth and other facial structures.

Of course human embryos have "tails" at the early stages of development, that long pointy thing sticking out past the leg buds:
http://www.visembryo.com/baby/stage16.html

And some babies are reportedly born with rudimentary tails. I would not consider these appendages to be true tails unless they contained bones and nerves in a continuation of the spine:
http://www.aetheronline.com/mario/Eye-Openers/tails_in_humans.htm

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Thank you, Terry, for the accurate information. And also thanks for the important distinction between a tail and a "tail" Smile

here is a link to another great Stage16 picture

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jnhofzinser, you keep making up new rules about how this discussion should progress instead of responding to my previous points. OK, here is the one I choose for us to discuss:

Now, I challenge you to prove that any complex organism on earth required a Creator for its existence without:
1) begging the question (it didn't happen without God, so God did it.)
2) dismissing me or scientific researchers as atheists
3) appealing to the "authority" of the Bible (or any other scripture) or IDers and creationists.

What you dismiss as "just-so-stories" are actually scientific hypotheses that are generated so that we can design experiments to validate or invalidate theories of evolution.

Mythology contains similar stories (flood, tower of Babel) but they are accepted as truth without being validated. Just-so-stories about the seven daughters Eves and decent of all humans from a small population a few hundred thousand years ago must be backed up by mitochondrial DNA evidence to be accepted.

Studies of the origins of language are limited by the lack of written documents so all we can do is pick the most plausible of just-so-stories. Art has cave drawings and stone carvings, but we can only guess went on in the minds of our artistic ancestors. What we do know is that brains have not changed much physically in the last hundred thousand years, so our emotions and drives today are not much different than our ancestors and our just-so-stories are probably not that far out of line.

----

You seem to be missing the point of Occam's Razor. It does not say that our theories must be complete to the last detail before we can use it. It merely tells us that based on our previous experience of the universe, a theory that does not require unnecessary complexities is more likely to be correct. Copernicus' heliocentric system is preferred over Ptolemy's epicycles, and did indeed prove to be correct.

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Terry wrote:

prove that any complex organism on earth required a Creator for its existence

I can't do it Terry. I'll admit it.
But neither can you prove that "life just happens" -- will you admit that?

Terry wrote:

What you dismiss as "just-so-stories" are actually scientific hypotheses that are generated so that we can design experiments to validate or invalidate theories of evolution.

Actually, "just-so-stories" is a common term in the scientific literature to describe hypotheses that are a little too speculative to be called "scientific", and often are well beyond our ability to craft experiments around.

Terry wrote:

Studies of the origins of language are limited by the lack of written documents so all we can do is pick the most plausible of just-so-stories.

You can if you like, but please do not expect me to accept them as proof of anything.

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Thanks Terry, You have just saved me from a bunch of researching that I didn't have time to do anyways.

jnhofzinser,

I all I asked was to "show" as proof will be lacking. Now you want proofs not logic Question

I have known personally four persons who were pained by a "pyonital" cyst.
(I am very doubtful of that spelling Embarrassed

) I am one of them. As I understand it it is caused by hairs growing from the tip or the "tailbone" (coccyx) and festering. The preferred cure involves incising the layers of skin and fat, removing the "foreign protein" and encouraging the wound to heal without leaving a cavity. (Making it heal from the inside out).

Sometimes antibiotics are used to curb infection and reduce the swelling and pain associated and sometimes they are merely "expressed" sucked out or "popped" by mechanical means, but a recurrence is possible almost always means surgery.

So IMO this would seem to "show" that tails are buried in our genetic makeup somewhere. Back to the "Bingo" game.

As of yet I don't think that you have acknowledged just how complicated the "superior intelligence" that you are looking for must be.

It must know how to make something out of nothing for instance. It must have a useful life longer than that of the Universe or cosmos. It must cause either gravity or the curvature of space. It must cause opposite electrical charges to attract one another. It must know how to create time and distance. I suspect that this thing must be so much physically larger than the Universe and so much smarter than humans that some sign of it's presence ( a violation of physical laws of some sort) should be observed. Hence postulating such an intelligence unless it can be "shown" would tend to counter any references to Mr.Ockams shaving gear.

The "wild children" esp pertaining to language.

I read several of your links. I noticed that none of the children seemed to develop normally.

Now, was the abnormal rearing the cause of their abnormalities Question

OR were they raised abnormally because they were abnormal in the first place Question

If a person has a level of mentality equal to a dog it would be difficult to raise him as a normal child. You would have to raise it like a dog. This would be most apt to happen if the parent wasn't too bright or moral to begin with. It seems to me that that may be what happened. Sometime I intend to look up the articles on "private languages" and see if they shed some light on the subject.

Good Evening, M Smile

PS. I'll lose 1/2 credit on the gills but I will keep the tails, and the appendix too while we are at it Smile

Suitable everybody Question

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akaMechsmith wrote:

I all I asked was to "show" as proof will be lacking. Now you want...

At this stage, I'd be satisfied with coherent English Razz

akaMechsmith wrote:

Hence postulating such an intelligence unless it can be "shown" would tend to counter any references to Mr.Ockams shaving gear.

I haven't postulated such an intelligence. Have you read anything I've written? Confused

Oh, and btw, Ockham/Occam is the town the man was from, not his surname.

akaMechsmith wrote:

was the abnormal rearing the cause of their abnormalities

Please re-read the assessment of Genie's cerebral faculties.

akaMechsmith wrote:

PS. I'll lose 1/2 credit on the gills

Must be nice to mark yourself...most folk don't have that luxury. Were you an educator, perchance? So far you're failing "development of language" -- you're assigned Peter Jusczyk's The Discovery of Spoken Language (MIT Press, 1997) and Steven Pinker's The Language Instinct (Penguin, 1994) as remedial reading.

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Ockham's Razor (sharpening it)

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