Parsimony ? The Fourth Substance :: essays research papers

<a href="http//www.geocities.com/vaksam/">Sam Vaknins Psychology, Philosophy, economics and Foreign Affairs Web SitesOccasionalism is a variation upon Cartesian metaphysics. The last mentioned is the most notorious case of dualism (mind and body, for instance). The mind is a mental nerve. The body a material substance. What permits the complex fundamental moveions which happen between these two disparate substances? The unextended mind and the extended body for certain cannot interact without a mediating agency, matinee idol. The appearance is that of direct interaction but this is an legerdemain maintained by Him. He moves the body when the mind is willing and places ideas in the mind when the body comes across other bodies. Descartes postulated that the mind is an active, unextended, thought plot the body is a passive, unthinking extension. The First nucleus and the Second Substance combine to form the Third Substance, Man. God the Fourth, uncreated Substanc e facilitates the direct interaction among the two within the third. Foucher raised the question how can God a mental substance interact with a material substance, the body. The answer offered was that God created the body (probably so that He will be able to interact with it). Leibnitz carried this further his Monads, the units of reality, do not re in ally react and interact. They just come out to be doing so because God created them with a pre-established harmony. The constant divine intermediation was, thus, reduced to a one-time act of creation. This was considered to be both a crystalline result of occasionalism and its refutation by a reductio ad absurdum argument. But, was the stern substance necessary at all? Could not an explanation to all the known facts be provided without it? The ratio between the outlet of known facts (the outcomes of observations) and the number of theory elements and entities employed in order to explain them is the parsimony ratio. all newl y discovered fact either reinforces the existing worldview or forces the first appearance of a new one, through a crisis or a variety (a paradigm shift in Kuhns abandoned phrase). The new worldview read not necessarily be more parsimonious. It could be that a hit new fact precipitates the introduction of a dozen new theoretical entities, axioms and functions (curves between data points). The very delineation of the field of study serves to nail down the number of facts, which could exercise such an influence upon the existing worldview and still be considered pertinent.