From: posting-system@google.com Sent: Wednesday, January 23, 2002 11:17 AM To: brian@holtz.org Subject: Re: Death Follow Up Flag: Follow up Flag Status: Flagged From: brian@holtz.org (Brian Holtz) Newsgroups: alt.atheism.moderated Subject: Re: Death References: <200201121021.CAA27856@lsil.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: 12.236.1.8 Message-ID: <29c16047.0201231117.17290820@posting.google.com> "Paul Filseth" wrote in > the Last Tuesday problem is just a > special case of the general problem of extrapolating from our immediate > surroundings to the whole universe -- how do we know the rules don't > change discontinuously some ways away in space or time? We don't -- but positing such a discontinuity is, in the absence of any motivating evidence, less parsimonious than not doing so. > if we want to confirm our inductive conclusions about the > future we can wait and see. But how do you know that you will correctly remember the conclusions you're trying to test? The same problem applies to the past as well as the future. > But the past is gone. One should always question the metaphysical assumption that The Present is something special that makes The Future be a different sort of thing than The Past. The "past" and "future" are just sets of events defined relative to some particular moment or event, and no moment or event is special. > If Sagan says there are billions and billions of stars, > that's evidence that there are, but only by a chain of reasoning that > includes the non-faked status of our memories as an axiom. Parsimony is the axiom; authenticity of memory is just a conclusion built on that axiom. > how is parsimony measured? It seems to > me it's basically an aesthetic criterion. It would be fallacious to claim that there can be no middle ground between measuring parsimony with a mechanical Parsimoniometer and measuring it with totally subjective personal taste. A good first approximation of parsimony is the size of the smallest description consistent with the evidence in question. > The old-earth hypothesis > demands a Mozart, a Beethoven, a Brahms, a Presley, a Lennon, and a > Hendrix. The faked-recently hypothesis requires only one composer, > who categorized his pieces by style. The old-earth hypothesis is consistent with some relatively simple laws of physics. The faked-recently hypothesis assumes an intelligent composer and an elaborate composition. -- brian@holtz.org http://humanknowledge.net