Applying Ocam's Razor To BB vs Biblical ID Creationism and EvC

Well, it depends. Insofar as problems can be solved in science (i.e. provisionally) sometimes Occam's razor does in fact solve them.To take an example I often use, suppose I leave my dog alone with a slice of pizza, and when I come back the pizza is gone. I might conjecture that the pizza was stolen by pizza-stealing fairies, but this involves introducing an entity otherwise unevidenced, whereas I already possess evidence for the existence of a pizza-eating dog. There is no need to add a hypothetical entity when I have a real one to hand.Now if I had no evidence of dogs either, then it would be impossible to say which hypothesis was simpler. But since I do, then the one without fairies is simpler in a clear and objective sense --- the universe with dogs but without fairies is a proper subset of the universe with dogs and fairies.What is essential here is the concept of a proper subset, since this makes it epistemologically significant that one hypothesis is simpler than another.Other forms of simplicity are not significant. If I hear a crash when someone throws something through my window, then a perfect sphere is simpler (in the sense: requires less information to describe) than a jagged rock, but this is not a reason to exalt the idea that the object was perfectly spherical to the status of a most likely hypothesis.

Well, that would be a help. But what if the fairy magicked the pizza into the dog's stomach to frame the dog?Insofar as anything is proved it is proved by the (usually tacit) application of Occam's razor to remove extraneous entities.Another example, slightly different in its construction. Consider the theory of gravity. All the observations we can make (and note that their are many that we can't) support the theory, which is therefore (provisionally) taken as confirmed.OK, but now add to that theory the theory that there are aliens in the Alpha Centauri system. Now, again, all the observations we can make (and note that their are many that we can't) support the gravity + aliens theory. Do we take this to be confirmed? Are elliptical orbits proof of aliens in the Centauri system? No, they aren't. And again, the reason is that all the data we have are explicable in terms of a proper subset of gravity + aliens, namely gravity.

But with Mr. Occam, we do not give equal time to the hypothesis with the magic pixies. We do (perhaps tacitly) use the razor to decide which hypothesis is more likely true. I'm not sure what you're getting at. Well, we need the razor to understand what's going on here. Let's repeat: the predictions of the gravity + aliens hypothesis are confirmed every single time we test it. Is that not the acid test of a hypothesis? Is that not when we elevate the hypothesis to the status of theory? Yes, usually it is. So we need an explanation of why we don't do so in this case.It's no good saying "show me the aliens", because after all I can't show you gravity. All I can show you is the complete consistency of all observations with the theory. And this works for both the gravity theory and the gravity + aliens theory. So what makes us regard one confirmed by its complete consistency with all observations but not the other?Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

Sure, we do it on autopilot, but we also do it, and it is not useless. And there is a reason. Yes, but the question is, why not? And it is nice to have an answer. We can test the effects of the gravity + aliens hypothesis, too. And yet you don't stick to the gravity + aliens idea until it's proven wrong. Clearly you don't, because it hasn't been proven wrong. It's been proven right every time we've tested it. It's a perfectly adequate explanation for all the observed phenomena within its scope. In the first place, things that are "common sense" and "bleeding obvious" frequently turn out to be wrong. The Earth, for example, isn't flat.In the second place, I have, of course, chosen examples in which the right solution is intuitively obvious. But this is not always the case, nor is it the case for all people.How many times, for example, have we seen religious people attribute to the cause of the universe properties of which the single property had-the-ability-to-cause-the-universe is a proper subset having the same explanatory power?Here's goldrush, for example: Now, when he says that the simplest explanation is an entity that can do anything, perhaps he thinks that he is applying Occam's razor. But he is using "simple" (I think) in the sense alluded to by Rahvin in post #47.Whereas when I reply: ... then I really am applying the razor, because I'm looking for the smallest subset of properties that would suffice to provide an explanation.

And the razor tells you why, despite the complete consistency of all the evidence with the aliens + gravity theory, we are still justified in saying that there is no evidence for aliens. Anything may be wrong. We decide what is most likely right --- what is supported by evidence, and what isn't. Occam's razor helps us, in this instance, to determine what is and what isn't supported by evidence. It would remove pixies the same way it removes aliens --- because pixies + gravity has a proper subset, namely gravity, which accounts for the observed phenomena.