Bruce Kellett wrote:
Russell Standish wrote:
Let me put it another way - Bruce do you accept Laplace's "je n'ai
besoin de cet hypothese" when talking about God?
I understand what Laplace means, but I also think that not even Laplace
would claim that this entails the non-existence of God. In other words,
he might not need to hypothesize a god in order to explain the operation
of his mechanistic universe. But God might not be an explanatory
hypothesis, it might play a different role.
Talking about hypotheses, it is interesting to compare Newton's
"hypotheses non fingo." This is normally taken out of context, but the
original context in the Principia is interesting. Newton is summarizing
his account of cometary orbits, and he says: "I have not as yet been
able to deduce from the phenomena the reason for these properties of
gravity, and I do not feign hypotheses. For, whatever is not deduced
from the phenomena must be called a hypothesis; and hypotheses, whether
metaphysical or physical, or based on occult qualities, or mechanical,
have no place in experimental philosophy. In this experimental
philosophy, propositions are deduced from the phenomena and are made
general by induction."
Newton's philosophy of science is very interesting, and quite different
from modern accounts of the scientific method. He sees it as a purely
deductive process, not hypothetico-deductive as in modern accounts. I
doubt that Newton would have much sympathy with Bruno's a prioristic
methods.
Bruce
The real point is that Occam's razor, in any form, is not a
truth-preserving inferential rule. Consequently, if the razzor is used
in an argument, you cannot claim that the premises entail the
conclusion. It is just an arbitrary choice on your part to read things
one way rather than another.
In the context of the present discussion, I would say that UDA+MGA does
not entail immaterialism. It is quite possible to accept primary
physicality and interpret the universe in a pancomputationalist
framework. The universe is then understood in terms of computations, but
these are a consequence, secondary and not primary.
Bruce
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