- Title
- Reforging Ockham’s Razor: an enquiry into the ontology of parsimony arguments
- Creator
- Dichmont, Thomas
- ThesisAdvisor
- Williamson, FX
- Subject
- Logic
- Subject
- Metaphysics
- Subject
- Ontology
- Subject
- Knowledge, Theory of
- Subject
- Epistemology
- Subject
- Philosophy and science
- Subject
- Occam's razor
- Date
- 2022-10-14
- Type
- Academic theses
- Type
- Master's theses
- Type
- text
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/10962/406736
- Identifier
- vital:70303
- Description
- Nearly every philosopher in English-speaking world has heard of Ockham’s Razor, which is given in one of two ways, don’t multiply entities beyond necessity and all things being equal choose the simpler explanation. Yet it is unclear from the scholarship whether the use of Ockham’s Razor is justified in science and philosophy. However, if it can be shown to ‘get’ us truth, it would gain an unequivocal justification, as disputes that are continued after the parties to the substantive truth of one or the other are defined as frivolous. Alternative, one may contend that explanation could have other criteria of success. The implication of a direct connection between the razor and truth comes with ontological commitments, namely a commitment to realism (about universals) and philosophical theism. This is contrary to the razor’s use as a tool of nominalism and naturalism. I argue in this thesis there that the only possible non-circular justification for Ockham’s Razor is truth and that therefore certain philosophical positions are excluded from using the razor to animate their positions. There is an additional, second criteria for the success of our inquiry, namely the justification must in some way be consistent with the razor, which means the chosen explanation for the razor, must be simpler than any of its rivals and not have superfluous entities, otherwise our justification would be contrary to the advice of the razor. We are presented with a Scylla and Charybdis type problem, we avoid a circularity on the one hand and on the other we must not contradict the razor itself, these are contrary intellectual impulses. So firstly I will look at disciplines outside philosophy for some initial inspiration. If we could answer this question in a ‘non’ philosophical way, the problem would have solved itself in a way that require little change of practice. If lawyers or scientist can account for the razor properly, there is not really a problem of justification, at least not a philosophical one. Second, I consider the realist and theist positions, namely an argument of Aristotle’s in the Posterior Analytics and part of Aquinas’ On the Divine Simplicity. Further, I consider the work of Ockham as a nominalist. Lastly, I consider modern and contemporary philosophy, in the form of Hume, Quine and Sober (a modern writer on the razor). The aim here is to ‘stress test’ the philosophical resources of the various systems and analyse the results to see if they can produce a non-circular result.
- Description
- Thesis (MA) -- Faculty of Humanities, Philosophy, 2022
- Format
- computer, online resource, application/pdf, 1 online resource (112 pages), pdf
- Publisher
- Rhodes University, Faculty of Humanities, Philosophy
- Language
- English
- Rights
- Dichmont, Thomas
- Rights
- Use of this resource is governed by the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons "Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike" License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/)
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| Thumbnail | File | Description | Size | Format | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| View Details Download | SOURCE1 | DICHMONT-MA-TR22-268.pdf | 1 MB | Adobe Acrobat PDF | View Details Download |