Ockham's razor and memory

Philosophy Forums Philosophy
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Ockham’s razor - In your attempt to explain phenomena, don’t multiply entities beyond necessity.

I have memories of what I did yesterday.

I remember getting up, taking a crap, reading national geographic, and writing some shit on iLP. I feel like all these things happened to me… but is that really necessary?

it could be that I’m just receiving a bundle of sensuous information, or a summary of sensuous information.

There’s no need to believe this information represents anything, like a past, it could just be crap, relatively organized/sequential crap, to be sure, but crap nonetheless.

It seems simpler to say it isn’t anything more than what it is, memories aren’t anything more than what they are, bits and pieces of mental sense data, they don’t necessarily signify anything.

What justifies our belief in them, that they’re indicative of past experiences, and that we can use them to make inferences about not only the future, but things we didn’t experience in the past? Is it intuition, it just feels/seems like they do, and, or, is there any logical justification?

Is it because it’s all we have to go on?

When I see a hot burner, I’m reminded of, or phenomena springs to mind, I’m confronted with an image of me placing my hand on a burner when I was a child, and a stinging sensation on my hand, I’d hardly call it a vivid “recollection”.

I’m also confronted with a summation of all the information I’ve accumaled regarding stoves over the years, it seems obvious to me what will happen if I place my hand on the burner again, so I don’t.

It could be that all my memories are meaningless, that they aren’t anything more or less than themselves.

That being said, if I’m presented with images of me burning my hands on the elements, and no images of anything good coming of it, then the summary information I’m receiving about the burner is negative for my hands, not positive.

I can’t be certain this information corresponds with the kinetic past nor a potential future, it could be just garbage, but it’s all I have to go on, it’s the only information I’m given regarding the burner.

It’s possible the information could be true, meaningful (I will burn my hand), or deceptive (not only will I not burn my hand, but the experience will be pleasant), or false, meaningless (nothing with happen) or anything in between.

What proof do I have my memories are meaningful, I can’t say, well, I have memories of my memories serving me in the past, that’s circular (well how do you know those memories are meaningful?).

In the end, perhaps all we have to go on is intuition (of course our intuition could be wrong, but this possibility doesn’t seem to phase intution, intution, in the sense I’m using the word here, is non-cognitive)… a prospect that as a pseudophilosopher, profoundly disturbs me.

Not only could our senses be deceiving us… but our memories as well.

Spaces added as requested

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Hey, would it kill ya ta throw a space or two in there? Break that son-of-a-bitch up.

This is the internet for Christ’s sake![/size]

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I think occam’s razor is best considered in an example like this.

So a couple of metaphysicists wanna boil down what all things have to have some existential status in order for what we know about the world to make sense.

One guy says we just need one thing.

Another guy says we only need 2 things.

A third guy says we need infinite things.

Of course each one is gonna tell the next one he’s violating occam’s razor.

But the 2 guy, and the infinite guy are gonna say…“hey your 1 thing theory is cool and all self referential and logical and all that, but we got this shit left over that I know about the world that still doesn’t make sense.”

The one guy will try and reduce those things to just one thing by some analogy and say “see you just need one thing”.

The other two will continue to contest that more things are needed for the world to make sense and assert that it’s necessary to have these extra entities and therefore it’s not a violation of occam’s razor.

Like all things in philosophy it’s a debate. People have it all kinds of ways and change up the terms, but when you sort out the bullshit this is what they are saying.

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… and don’t link events together to make up a story of your life. All events are independent events. Why does thought work the way it does? From where comes the demand for logical cause and effect thinking? What is this thing, this identity that we are maintaining by picking and choosing certain events and linking them up?

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It’s subjective. The sufficient degree of explanation depends on what you’re trying to achieve.

Different people are trying to achieve different things, so they disagree on different degrees of explanation, labeling the opposition as impractical.

Likewise, memories are valuable because you keep them.

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Oh jeeze…thank you.

Nice post.

I appreciate this thread.

All the best to you.
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A certain amount of memory has functional value: the memories that we all utilize commonly to live sanely and predictably in the world together. Chaos is avoided that way. We use memory to achieve goals and get results especially in a society where you have to give something in order to get something out of it. You have to give to society what it wants not what you have to give. Is there anything that you have to give anyway?

When we do get results we want again and again, it reinforces the thinking mechanism that extracts from memory. When thinking and memory envelops itself and all the aspects of you, you go to it to solve living problems due to its success in giving results in mechanical areas in this material world. But thought doesn’t always seem to work in the area of life and living. That area is not so mechanical in its nature and quality.

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Ref: chaos and repetition (just the way my mind works) any relation to keirkegaard’s repetition?