Questions tagged [occams-razor]
Occam's/Ockham's razor is a principle, created by William of Ockham, that can be summarized as "Among competing hypotheses, the one with the fewest assumptions should be selected".
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What is more important: simplicity or induction?
An argument by analogy is an inductive argument for the existence of other minds. An argument by analogy is enough to justify the belief in the existence of other minds.
But Occam's Razor offers a ...
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What types of observations necessitate postulating more complex theories without violating Occam's Razor?
This question is inspired by the related question How could both Occam's Razor and complex theories like Quantum Mechanics be correct at the same time?. The accepted answer reasonably argues:
The ...
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Is simplicity the most important criterion when choosing between theories?
I keep seeing talk here of how simplicity isn’t that important when deciding between theories but after looking at the different kinds of virtues behind theory choice, I fail to see how the rest can ...
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Which simplicity is given greater priority: explanatory simplicity or ontological simplicity? [duplicate]
If solipsism wins in quantitative simplicity, is that a reason to believe in solipsism?
Or does the fact that the existence of other minds wins in explanatory simplicity neutralize the quantitative ...
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Does theism postulate an overly complicated and unnecessary extra step?
One presentation of this argument is put forward by Carl Sagan:
"If the general picture, however, of a Big Bang followed by an expanding universe is correct - what happened before that? Was the ...
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Is Occam’s razor about preferring the simpler theory or the theory with fewer unexplained assertions?
Yes, I know that simplicity and complexity are terms that have different meanings to different folks, but so is basically anything in philosophy. Most people will consider God creating the world as ...
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Is Occam's razor a philosophical application of Occam's razor itself in epistemology? Is it a meta for itself?
I have to apologize for my title but this seems to me the only way I could have articulated this weird intuitive idea I had for the Occam's razor meta-analysis. Usually I tend to analyze things on the ...
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If God is non-physical, does God become unnecessary as a cause? [closed]
If God does physical things, those physical things presumably have preceding physical causes. Eventually, one of those physical causes will have a non physical cause that will be God Themselves or ...
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What are theistic responses to Graham Oppy's argument for atheism from naturalism?
Short version
I'm specifically referring to Graham Oppy's paper An Argument for Atheism from Naturalism:
Abstract This paper outlines an argument for atheism from naturalism that I have developed in ...
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Could Occam's Razor ever favor theism?
In principle, could Occam's Razor ever favor theism over rival hypotheses like naturalism? What conditions would have to be met for this to be the case?
BONUS: for those interested in naturalism vs. ...
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Is brevity the soul of wit?
The principle of parsimony is a fundamental philosophical tool. So, is modern philosophy over-complicated? Simplicity is also elegant. So is modern philosophy inelegant? As well as prolix, irrelevant, ...
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Can Occam's razor be used in favor of scientific arguments against philosophical arguments? [closed]
Occam’s razor is a principle often attributed to 14th–century friar William of Ockham that says that if you have two competing ideas to explain the same phenomenon, you should prefer the simpler one.
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What does Hume think about Occam's razor?
Let's define Occam's razor as this:
That it is not rational to believe something unnecessary or extra about reality without a specific reason to believe it. In other words, the facts that are ...
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Does the possibility of incommensurable degrees of explanatory complexity hypothetically undermine appeals to Occam's razor?
There is an SEP article on the proposed incommensurability of at least some conflicting pairs of scientific theories, which goes over Kuhnian and Feyerabendian proposals regarding this ...
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Can anything that God claims to explain be explained without God?
Suppose we observe an event E in the universe. A theist says that God explains this event E. An atheist then makes the following argument: “whatever you posit God as an explanation for, I can posit an ...
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