A new epistemological tool more powerful than falsifiability and Occam’s razor
This video uses a highly edited audio file taken from this TED Talks source: David Deutsch: A new way to explain explanation www.youtube.com I claim fair use. I want to talk about Deutsch's ideas. I think his concept of "invariability" might turn out to be an epistemological tool more powerful than Occam's razor and Karl Popper's concept of falsifiability combined. Occam's razor states that "entities must not be multiplied beyond necessity" or "plurality should not be posited without necessity," and that the simplest explanation tends to be the best one. That means that when competing hypotheses are equal in all other respects, you should choose the explanation that makes as few assumptions as possible, and eliminate those that make no difference in the observable predictions of the explanatory hypothesis or theory. They used to call it the law of parsimony, or law of economy or or law of succinctness. Karl Popper next argued that the reason for us to prefer simple theories wasn't about appealing to practical or aesthetic considerations, as Occam himself seemed to have assumed. Popper justified simplicity by connecting it to his falsifiability criterion because simple theories had more empirical content and were more testable. And in the end, Occam's razor is just a heuristic, a rule of thumb, and not really a law or an irrefutable principle of logic while falsifiability is a must for any scientific theory. And just as Occam's razor is a side effect of the truth of ...
Video Rating: 4 / 5
December 19th, 2011 - 19:26
If you have a bad explanation/theory you can’t just rewrite it, you’ll have to do more research. if the greeks knew there was the tilted axis MAYBE they’d have rewote it, but after that, they’d have found more evidence of not demether causing the season change -and so on, until they got explanatipon we have.
December 19th, 2011 - 20:22
@zarkoff45 Sorry, I was trying to remember where I saw a concept very similar to invariance, I just can’t remember what it’s called now.
December 19th, 2011 - 20:48
@Psychosmurf547
I’ll look into that eventually, but I have to say it sounds a bit off the wall since Deutsch’s ideas imply more of a Popperian epistemology rather than Bayesian epistemology.
Deutsch’s main point was that good explanations are “hard to vary” and I’ve not seen that idea expressed in a Bayesian epistemology.
December 19th, 2011 - 21:42
Look up Bayes’ Theorem and the Transferable Belief Model, etc. This is nothing new.
December 19th, 2011 - 21:45
I’d ask for instance, what is a force, what is gravity, what is light..many concepts/facts stay without a real physical definition as far as i can remember, a force has always been an arrow on my paper, light is a wave or sometimes a particle, and gravity is something magic or is it a magic graviton??
We only create fragile ‘functional’ definitions that are not the real stuff, and it is very hazardous to try to build a so-called empirical world on such striking inaccuracies and fallacies.
December 19th, 2011 - 21:55
@mm1979dk “…opposite of falsifiability — the more degrees of freedom one allows, the harder it is to falsify.”
But falsifiability applies to predictions, not explanations. Invariability is about explanations and it doesn’t necessarily contribute predictions.
“…the principle itself has been used in science long before him…”
Indeed. It seems most philosophers of science are just describing what scientists have been doing, not really telling them what to do.
December 19th, 2011 - 22:53
I agree with your interpretation of the talk, however I think you are overstretching the importance of “invariability” contribution. Variability is just the opposite of falsifiability — the more degrees of freedom one allows, the harder it is to falsify.
Also falsifiability is attributed to Karl Popper, but the principle itself has been used in science long before him, even Charles Darwin said that one needs to find a single non-conforming species to falsify the theory of evolution.
December 19th, 2011 - 23:36
The writing interferes with the voice.hard to concentrate.should have thought it a little better
December 19th, 2011 - 23:44
@SisyphusRedeemed “Newton’s laws didn’t actually EXPLAIN anything, they simply described.”
And we now have AIs that can do what Newton and Galileo did faster than they could. Google: “Eureqa, Software to Replace Scientists”
Eureqa how to:
watch?v=NhC1Qb-PQ5Q
“Should we just ‘shut up and calculate?’”
That’s going to be a very important question now that we have Eureqa. There is no agreed upon explanation for quantum mechanics and yet it still works.
December 20th, 2011 - 00:44
Interesting talk! I do have to wonder if it might not undermine lots of ‘genuine’ scientific explanations, though. The Cartesian/Newtonian debate about ‘action at a distance’ is an example. Newton’s laws didn’t actually EXPLAIN anything, they simply described. Some philosophers of science suggest that this is all science should do, just describe reality and abandon explanation entirely. This kind of instrumentalism creates havoc for quantum mechanics. Should we just ‘shut up and calculate?’
December 20th, 2011 - 01:11
@vickmackey24 “How does the assertion of “invariability” not beg the question?”
Starting at about 1:51 David Deutsch addresses how it’s not just induction that has really informed our theories. Alas, it is very brief and needs to be fleshed out. Consider his example of how Einstein used induction, or didn’t.
We are not using induction alone, there are other epistemological principles involved that sharpen our focus. Invariability is one of them.
December 20th, 2011 - 01:44
@zarkoff45
How does the assertion of “invariability” not beg the question? The “problem of induction” is the idea that we can’t know for sure whether the patterns we observe will remain that way in the future. It isn’t about whether induction is useful or reliable in a *practical* sense, or whether we should use inductive reasoning (we have no choice, really). It’s a theoretical problem that apologists frequently appeal to for calling certain things into doubt or making others seem possible.
December 20th, 2011 - 01:59
@vickmackey24 “Isn’t that begging the question”
No, it’s not. I can’t imagine how you could think it is begging the question. Induction is reasoning from detailed facts to general principles – those principals can be vague and variable, or they can be precisely calculated and invariable and lead to mathematical models with great predictive power.
December 20th, 2011 - 02:18
Invariability? “Impossible” to vary? Isn’t that begging the question, the one raised by the problem with induction? Not quite seeing how this video solves the “problem” aside from an appeal to pragmatism.
December 20th, 2011 - 02:40
Also, by all “variable” (redundant) information. This is why stories do not make valid scientific theories.
December 20th, 2011 - 03:39
With a truth is claimed, the credibility of the claim is badly compromised by every statement or assumption that any effect that is not yet proven is fact.
December 20th, 2011 - 03:47
Just as the Greek myth only “explains” the seasons happening, genesis only “explains” the fact that we exist, nothing more.
Basically in both cases people simply noticed these two facts and thought of very elaborate but empty explanations for them. It’s easy to get lost in the elaborateness and think that it actually has any value.
Using ‘god did it’ as an explanation is on the same level.
December 20th, 2011 - 04:17
This is something new to me. Bravo, mate. Bravo.
December 20th, 2011 - 04:30
Doesn’t matter how many times we say it or how many arguments we throw at them.
Just our opinion. *facepalm*
December 20th, 2011 - 04:39
Alright, looking forward to that!
Cheers
December 20th, 2011 - 04:58
So the rain dance is a “teleological” cause by your definition because rain was the intended consequence. Well, okay, take any old superstition. The groundhog leaves its cave too early, so it’s gonna rain. I guess this explanation is not “teleological”, in the way you are using that term. Still, I have a hunch that it is quite “variable”, as I understand Deutsch. This shows that being variable and being teleological are not one and the same property, right?
December 20th, 2011 - 05:03
” …and everything else that may come to your mind when you think of the difference between science and mythology.”
Not in a 500 character comment. It will take another video on this subject… if even that is enough.
Thanks for your input. I’ll make use of your questions.
December 20th, 2011 - 05:59
But maybe we shouldn’t quarrel so much about this. Maybe you can explain the concept of invariability. Please note that I tried to do this myself, a month ago, further down in the comments to this video. Giving your explanation of what Deutsch means with invariability, you should explain how invariability implies the appeal to efficient causes, mathematical formalization, and everything else that may come to your mind when you think of the difference between science and mythology.
December 20th, 2011 - 06:26
I never meant to drag in final causes vs. efficient causes by bringing up teleology. I’m going by Hawking’s definition.
December 20th, 2011 - 07:09
“…rain dance is supposed to be an efficient, not a final, cause..”
Efficient or final cause seems to be a category error. That type of cause is not the issue, it’s the purposeful (telic) definition of teleology I was trying to get at.