Steven Carr

Does Occam's Razor mean that we should be wary of positing supernatural entities?

The Christian Cadre have an interesting article at

http://christiancadre.blogspot.com/2...ered-mind.html

It says ' I also think Descartes is wrong because by positing a evil, malignant demon, he is violating Occam's Razor. Now, Occam's Razor, sometimes called "Ockham's Razor" (by Sir William of Occam or Ockham, another Christian with a few interesting variations in this theology), says: "Don't multiply entities beyond necessity." Roughly translated, this means that we shouldn't posit the existence of causes if there is other simpler explanation for the matter being explained. '

Should Christians apply Occam's Razor to supernatural entities like Satan and abandon their belief in his existence?

Bobinius

If they apply it for Satan, then they should apply it for God.

If Descartes is wrong by positing an evil demon, he is wrong too for positing a good God that it's taking care of the truth of his perceptions. Because that's what Descartes did: he doubts the phenomenal world and his solution is that the evil demon can't deceive him, because it is overruled by God's goodness. So what he perceives is reality. God is on the same level of explanatory power with the demon: rejected by the Razor.

Ojuice5001

Surely Descartes could have had an answer to that. His mission was to "esteem as well-nigh false all that went only so far as being probable." And any argument using the Razor can only have a conclusion that only goes that far. (Even if it were possible to demonstrate that the Razor itself is known with certainty to be a valid principle.)

As a polytheist, I find this to be a rather empty dictate (much more so than other formulations of the Razor). How do we really know how many entities are "necessary"? For example, suppose I see a roach in my house. Now, it happens all the time that just one roach gets into your house, so perhaps I should be conservative and assume that this one roach was the only one. So far, so good.

But, suppose I see another roach. (It looks different from the first, so I know it's not the same one.) If I apply Occam's Razor once more, it seems that I'd have to assume that I have only two roaches in my house, and not necessarily any more. After all, some houses have exactly two roaches in them, and it's always possible that my own house is one of them.

And yet, surely this is inadequate as a method for figuring out how many roaches I really do have in my house. At what point am I allowed to assume that I have a roach infestation, instead of being content to merely count the roaches I've seen so far? Occam's Razor doesn't give an answer.

And I maintain that this is true when it comes to undiscovered entities in general. The universe is home to many entitites, not just a few. That does seem to be a point against methodologies that tell us to assume that there are fewer entities rather than many.

Everything I've said applies only to Occam's original formulation of the Razor: "Entities should not be multiplied unnecessarily." If it's formulated in terms of simple vs. complex explanations, or something like that, it becomes more tenable. But with Occam's formulation...well, is it any surprise that it was written by a monotheist and has become a standard debating point among atheists?

Monotheists and atheists have both been known to use the Razor as an argument against polytheism in this way. It fails because the universe is characterized by multiplicity, and if the Razor implies the contrary, so much the worse for the Razor.

I'm not so sure that that principle is saying the same thing as Occam's original formulation. But I realize that most people do think that, and that is why we refer to both principles as "Occam's Razor."

I say, no. Peter Kreeft put it this way: "Evil is not trivial, and therefore its first inventor cannot be trivial." Satan is not an arbitrary or dispensable part of Christian theology. Looking at it from the POV of Occam's Razor:

Christians think that a benevolent Supreme God is the best explanation of the universe (i.e., they argue that the God of the Philosophers doesn't violate Occam's Razor). Supposing these arguments to be correct, what is the role of Satan?

Obviously, Satan's role (as he is conceived in modern times) is to be a powerful force that was the source of evil in the past, and has been working to bring it about ever since. To put it another way, if Christians are going to claim that God's goodness is a vastly powerful force, they need some explanation of why so much evil exists in the world. What could this explanation be? One promising approach is to argue that there is some evil force that counteracts God's goodness. And it's also not a foregone conclusion that puny humanity is a powerful enough force to be responsible for all of the evil that we see. We might well end up needing a nonhuman force of evil, and that's Satan.

I admit that there are other forms of monotheistic theodicy, that don't predict the existence of Satan. My point, though, was that the above paragraph summarizes the logic that led to belief in Satan, and this logic is very much in accordance with the Razor.

Ojuice5001

Well, in Descarte's defense, he did use the Ontological Argument, and his own idea of God in general, to deduce that God exists. Of course, we can then ask why we should accept that the demon isn't deceiving Descartes into thinking the OA is valid, and as far as I know he wouldn't have an answer for that.

One of the criticisms of Descartes is that he uses circular reasoning, and this seems to be an example of such. He's just got to escape from solipsism somehow, and his way of doing it is to say, "Okay, there might be a demon who's making me think my sensations and ideas have anything to do with reality. But I know there's a God, and he wouldn't let the demon deceive me that way." The problem is, of course, that while he does have an idea of God, his arguments that this idea relates to reality could be deceptive. The problem remains.

Of course, anyone who accepts both the Razor and the reality of the external world might have this problem. Many forms of solipsism have at least the appearance of being simpler than normal, non-solipsistic metaphysics, and of giving a passable explanation of our sensations anyway; I'd say that Descarte's evil demon was one of them. Should we therefore allow it to threaten our belief in the external world?

mirage

It doesn't in this very very crude form that gets constantly disputed in discussions like these.

Parsimony has really nothing much to do with "entities" in particular.

It advocates the most parsimonious model for what you see. If you conclude that the entire cockroach population happens to be exactly the number you have encountered by chance so far, this is actually less parsimonious than a model giving an undefined population size with a spread of probabilities based around the sampling probabilities. In fact, not seeing the same one twice is evidence of a likely larger population.

Your model isn't just "cockroaches = n" in total isolation.

It must also incorporate the wealth of knowledge and assumptions you use to model your everyday world, and the specific details of the cockroach observations. It must roughly model the behaviour of the cockroaches and your chance of seeing them. For example, if you see a different one exactly on the stroke of each hour, you might form a different hypothesis than an apparently random pattern of encounters.

mirage

Descartes demon is certainly not more parsimonious than mundane ontologies. It must include all the information that an ordinary description of the world must, plus the additional stuff about the demon causing it all.

Parsimony is the silver bullet to solipsism.

Bobinius

Actually the Ontological Argument is valid, but is circular, and it does not prove anything. Your observation is correct. Descartes rests on faith that God won't deceive him. Of course, this idea could be the work of the demon. He did not obtain any certainty.

I don't think that Descartes was trying to avoid solipsism. He was trying to find some firm epistemological ground. He was not worrying if the world exists, but if he perceives it correctly. He brought the idea of a God that is not deceiving him, in the sense that the empirical truths (what is clear and distinct) are justified by this idea: we can trust our senses because God is not deceving us. Of course, this God - justification is unjustified. And is just unparsimonious.

You mean the Razor threatens our belief in the external world? No, it is quite the opposite.

The cartezian Demon is rejected by the razor as unparsimonious, it was added as I said as something unjustified and over the belief in the external world, as a manipulating agent.

Realism is not more unparsimonious than solipsism. Solipsism multiplies all these mental entities that we call 'sensations' over and over. While realism is simple, it only says "the world and your senses produce all these sensations", for the solipsist they all have an independent, basic existence.

Minnesota Joe

How does God know that an evil demon isn't fooling Him into thinking that He is preventing the Cartesian demon from fooling Descartes?

That is a mouthful, but the point is it doesn't stop at God. It's evil demons all the way down (or it could be) and God doesn't escape this reasoning anymore than we do. He would have to appeal to the best explanation and simplicity, just like we do.

But if we start using the Razor to cut, God isn't any safer from it than are evil demons.

atonal chaotic

Of course, Descartes was not really positing a demon to explain anything. He was arguing that even in the extreme case that all your senses are perfect illusions fed to you by a being intent to decieve you, there still must exist a you to be decieved. Hence, "I think, therefore I am." The demon isn't an explaination of anything, but a counter to a possible objection to the existence of self. Thus Descartes' demon is not against Occam's razor or parsimony or any such thing.

mirage

Hardly. The demon is part of his parabolic doubt, which begins his "meditation". His cogito ergo sum is immune, of course, but the demon doesn't defend against any objection to it.

He is only rescued from the Demon by the unconvincing ontological argument and his "clear and distinct" a priori impression that there is a good God.