🚀 go-pugleaf

The purpose of a theory is to simplify.  Seemingly disparate phenomena
are unified, or integrated, into one.  The purpose of this is similar
to the need for modularity in programming - to hide details.  If I am
basing a theory upon some other theories, I want to use the ones which
have less assumptions to check, preferably none!  Therefore, Occam has
given me good advice.

But what, someone asks, if the simpler theory is not the "right" one?
Perhaps you philosophers avoid this question.  If so, then you need
not consider Occam's Razor as anything more than advice.  If not, then
we are entering the realm of "Truth" (absolute, relative, whatever). 

One argument given recently was that simplicity has an aesthetic
component, which touches our innate ability to directly sense Truth.
I agree with this, but others were not convinced that this sense is
accurate.

Because we are talking about matters of the mind, it might be
appropriate to discuss the origin of the mind.  Basically, minds have
evolved because they have survival value.  The ability to generalize,
to hide detail, and therefore to deduce, to look ahead, to imagine, has
given us the ability to survive.  I submit that if we had generalized,
etc., in the wrong directions, we would have died (probably many did).
Our process of generalization (ie, simplification) gave us survival
value only because it was in the right direction.  For example, it was
absolutely correct to consider the leaves, branches, trunk and root as
one entity, the tree.  That was the *correct* simplification.

As our thought processes encompassed more and more phenomena, and as
we questioned things we previously took for granted, formal theories
evolved, along with formal method(ologie)s.  However, let's remember
that these formalisms are based upon assumptions so innate that they
are practically hard-wired.  

When a theory becomes too complex (at any one particular level), when
it has loose ends, when it has jagged edges, when it is not simple,
our aesthetical sense, derived from millions of years of being right,
tells us it's wrong.  
 
Did you have a picture in your mind of 'loose ends', etc.?  What is
that a loose end of?  What are those lines?  I can't answer that
exactly, but I think they are really *there*.  Where?  Somewhere you
can only see/be with your mind.  Somewhere where conception differs
but little from perception.

Another discussion in this newsgroup concerned Taoists.  I think their
symbol, the Yin-Yang, is relevant here.  Among other things, the
Yin-Yang is a symbol of the process of simplification, or
generalization, of abstraction.  The black and white represent
specific details, the circle into which they combine represents the
general.  As such, it can be mapped into an upside-down letter Y:

                               |              <-  simple
                               |
                              / \
                             /   \            <-  complex 

This is the basic structure of the hierarchy of dependencies and
conclusions which comprise any theory.  Multi-branched nodes can be
represented as sets of binary branches.

The universe, of course, isn't as simple as this.  It's not a simple
hierarchy, except locally.  Note that the duality represented by the
binary branching can ba mapped onto the duality between duality and
oneness.  The tree becomes a graph.  Self-reference is encoded at the
highest level.  Does this have something to do with Godel?

Anyway, I have strayed from my original intentions.  Trust your mind.
It got you this far.

David Brown
{harvard | ll-xn | mirror}!adelie!morgoth!dmb
GZA, 320 Needham St., Newton Upper Falls, MA  02164
(617) 969-0050

 WE CHALLENGE our traditions
      BECAUSE we believe
        TRUTH without questioning
     IS FALSE