Talk:Russell's teapot

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Occam's Razor is used incorrectly

Occam's Razor only applies if two theories are indistinguishable in their predictions. For example, if someone says gravity causes plans to orbit and another person says an undectable god causes gravity to cause planets orbit. They both make the same prediction, but the latter adds an unnecessary element.

If the competing theories make different predictions, then Occam's razor doesn't apply. Instead you just determine which prediction is correct. 72.220.142.234 (talk) 18:59, 8 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The article is paraphrasing Peter Atin use of Occam's razor. See https://archive.org/details/oxfordhandbookof0000clay/page/129/mode/1up?q=occam . Richard-of-Earth (talk) 08:35, 9 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Analysis

Could an editor please remove the extra "that", in the sentence: "Occam's razor has been interpreted to mean that that the simpler theory with fewer assertions (i.e., a universe with no supernatural beings) should be the starting point in the discussion rather than the more complex theory." 2A02:8388:293E:3400:15C3:4E96:5D1:D982 (talk) 09:01, 6 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Done. Richard-of-Earth (talk) 17:44, 6 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

On removing Gary Gutting

I removed a reference to an opinion piece by philosopher Gary Gutting because our text misrepresented the original, and I didn't see how to make an honest representation fit in context. Contrary to what we wrote, Gutting only argues against what he sees as Richard Dawkins' mishandling of the teapot analogy; contra Dawkins, Gutting argues, the teapot does not support strong atheism, but only agnosticism. I'm enthusiastic about discussing improving and restoring this text, if anyone has suggestions. --causa sui (talk) 22:01, 17 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I think it's good to remove that. It's just another opinion about what Dawkins wrote and is not WP:DUE here. Johnuniq (talk) 22:46, 17 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I agree. (I feel like making a joke about gutting the content from Gutting.) --Tryptofish (talk) 22:49, 17 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Question about opening sentence

It's been a long time since I read Russell's essay but the opening sentence: "Russell's teapot is an analogy, formulated by the philosopher Bertrand Russell (1872–1970), to illustrate that the philosophic burden of proof lies upon a person making empirically unfalsifiable claims, as opposed to shifting the burden of disproof to others." seems wrong to me. I thought the argument applied to ANY claim, not just unfalsifiable claims. In fact if a claim is unfalsifiable then by definition it isn't scientific and what I recall is that the essay was talking about the scientific worldview applied to all beliefs not just natural science. For example, the teapot hypothesis is not unfalsifiable. With powerful enough telescopes or a robot launched to explore the region it would be possible to examine the region in question and determine whether there was a teapot there or not. The point of the essay as I recall was that for ANY hypothesis (for someone with a scientific worldview), the burden of proof is on the person making the hypothesis. In fact, now that I think of it, I think it has to be that way or the argument is incoherent because if something is really unfalsifiable then by definition you can't provide evidence for or against it. I'm going to leave it as is for now but if I have a chance to dig up the essay and double check I may change it, but I would be interested in what others think. MadScientistX11 (talk) 13:52, 30 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

A ref in the article leads to a pdf of the essay: [1]https://web.archive.org/web/20160120125330/http://russell.mcmaster.ca/cpbr11p69.pdf

Right before the part that's quoted in our article, Russell writes (about a specific theistic view): "I do not think this view can be proved to be false. I think all that can be said is that there is no positive reason in its favour."

And within our quote, right after the teapot analogy, he states: "But if I were to go on to say that, since my assertion cannot be disproved, it is intolerable presumption on the part of human reason to doubt it, I should rightly be thought to be talking nonsense."

Since the essay adresses theological opinions (and only a few other views that are regarded "absurd beliefs" outside the regions where they prevail), I see no reason to believe the analogy to be about more general claims, let alone any that can be considered scientific. Joortje1 (talk) 14:58, 30 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]