In covering Pascal this week in my philosophy of religion courses, attention soon turns to the many-gods problem. It's a problem tackled in a variety of ways. One interesting suggestion by Lycan & Schlesinger is that one might apply parismony to the issue and infer that the simplest God is the most likely one. Or, to put it a bit differently, that the simplest conception of God is the most likely one. L&S suggest that Anselm's perfect being (the being none greater than which can be conceived) is a good candidate for this simplest & thuse most likely option, which would then tip the scales away from perfectly even distribution of probability among the many possible gods.
There's a lot going on here, to be sure. But what I've been mulling over, on this most recent go round, is the realist / anti-realist / and dare-I-say-NOA attitudes one might take here. Even if one finds simplicity theoretically attractive -- and I'm pretty sympathetic to the view that it's at most theoretically attractive in limited contexts, while not in others -- one still must decide what sort of position to take toward all of this. Will I believe that the simplest theory / simplest God is thereby the one most likely to really be right, to really exist? That would be a realist approach.
What might the anti-realist move look like here? That the simplest God is the one that functions best for my purposes here (in this case, my purposes in wagering as to which God to endorse)?
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I am thinking here...maybe I missed the mark..do I want the simplest God? Do I want one that I can completely understand, or do I want one that knows more than I, and wants more for me than I can ever imagine? I certainly want a doctor that knows more than I do. I will defer to His knowledge even if I cannot understand the jargon. If I already know God's response, thinking that if He is simple I would know what his response is, then why have a God at all? Why do I need Him?
ReplyDeletegood stuff, Jenny! the curious thing about the idea I was sketching here is that a "simple" God would actually be pretty darn impressive; the whole "simplicity" thing is not supposed to mean "simple" in the sense of "simpleton."
ReplyDeletefor example: which is simpler, a God with unlimited knowledge or a God who knows some things and not others? Well, on the idea being sketching in the original post, these folks will say, "the omniscient God is simpler." Why? Well, because having no limits on one's knowledge is supposedly a simpler notion, whereas it's a messier, more complicated sort of deal if there are some things the creature knows and other things it/she/he doesn't.
odd and fascinating!