Occams Hatchet and Is Materialism "Special"

[robvalue]

Okay, enough of this I say! Enough.

From now on, everything is separated into the testable (things that literally exist), the abstract (things that don't literally exist but represent something), rules (the way reality works such as forces, etc.) and the untestable (everything else I haven't accounted for).

Happy now? Good. Any further attempts to conflate the testable with the abstract will be highlighted in red ink and underlined.

For example, I have an opinion about some bullshit painting. This is represented in the testable by the physical configuration of my brain, and in the untestable by [I don't know what. Neither do you. Stop making things up.] It's also represented in the abstract, as "my opinion of this stupid painting".

Gravity is a force, and as such doesn't literally exist, so is a rule; but it can affect the testable/untestable. My opinion of the painting not so much, at least not directly. Gravity also exists in the abstract as a concept: our attempts to model it. It may work through the testable/untestable, via "gravitrons" or whatever. Do some more research.