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by rocqua
822 days ago
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Occam's razor does support the mechanistic view. It is certainly necessary to explain the entire world, and it is sufficient to explain intelligence. So by Occam's razor we should accept it is the best explanation of intelligence. That doesn't mean we have to give up on understanding the mechanism. Nor does it mean we shouldn't try to find out if it isn't a sufficient explanation. But calling it an unsupported belief system goes a bit far. It certainly isn't proven scientific theory. And there is room for it to be wrong. But there are good scientific principles behind this belief. |
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I agree it would be going too far to call it an unsupported belief system. I don't think I implied that it's unsupported, but it is a belief system. My point is that even with support, the underlying, unproven or unprovable assumptions should not be glossed over.
I'm skeptical that we have a mechanistic explanation of intelligence. I think we have sensible-but-unproven hypotheses, partially supported by observations, for how intelligence might evolve/arise. There's a lot of hand-waving between mechanistic principles and an outcome of general intelligence. One can imagine Occam's razor applying, if the hand-waving eventually resolves to something coherent. Until then, it's a combination of good science and fantasy.
Intelligence is just one of many human experiences that are believed/assumed to have mechanistic explanations. We should be careful to recognize the assumptions, however sound they may seem, and not turn them into dogma.