Keep Calm and Use These Epistemological Principles
[By staff reporters]
According to Wikipedia, in philosophy, a razor is a principle or rule of thumb that allows one to eliminate (“shave off”) unlikely explanations for a phenomenon, or avoid unnecessary actions.
Razors include:
- Occam’s razor: Simpler explanations are more likely to be correct. Avoid unnecessary assumptions.
- Grice‘s razor: As a principle of parsimony, conversational implications are to be preferred over semantic context for linguistic explanations.
- Hanlon’s razor: Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.
- Hume‘s razor: “If the cause, assigned for any effect, be not sufficient to produce it, we must either reject that cause, or add to it such qualities as will give it a just proportion to the effect.”
- Hitchens’s razor: “What can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.”
- Newton’s flaming laser sword: If something cannot be settled by experiment or observation, then it is not worthy of debate.
- Popper’s falsifiability principle: For a theory to be considered scientific, it must be falsifiable.
- Sagan standard: Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
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Assessment
So, what is your favorite razor?
Conclusion
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Filed under: Ethics | Tagged: Philosophical Razors |
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