Philosophical razor explained

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.

Examples

Razors include:

• Alder's razor (also known as Newton's flaming laser sword): If something cannot be settled by experiment or observation, then it is not worthy of debate.^[1]
• Grice's razor (also known as Guillaume's razor): As a principle of parsimony, conversational implicatures 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.^[2]
• Hitchens' razor: That which can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.^[3]
• Hume's guillotine: What ought to be cannot be deduced from what is; prescriptive claims cannot be derived solely from descriptive claims, and must depend on other prescriptions. "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."
• Occam's razor: Explanations which require fewer unjustified assumptions are more likely to be correct; avoid unnecessary or improbable assumptions.
• Popper's falsifiability criterion: For a theory to be considered scientific, it must be falsifiable.^[4]
• Sagan standard: Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.^[5]

See also

• • • • • • • Russell's teapotAnalogy formulated by Bertrand Russell to illustrate that the burden of proof lies upon a person making empirically unfalsifiable claims

Notes and References

1. Mike . Alder . Mike Alder . 2004 . Newton's Flaming Laser Sword . . 46 . 29–33 . 26 January 2018 . https://web.archive.org/web/20171204031512/https://philosophynow.org/issues/46/Newtons_Flaming_Laser_Sword . 4 December 2017 . live. Also available in PDF format: Web site: Mike . Alder . Mike Alder . 2004 . Newton's Flaming Laser Sword . . Mike Alder's Home Page . https://web.archive.org/web/20111114041242/http://school.maths.uwa.edu.au/~mike/Newtons%20Flaming%20Laser%20Sword.pdf . 14 November 2011.
2. Web site: Hanlon's Razor . The Jargon File 4.4.7 . live . https://web.archive.org/web/20110430025318/http://catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/H/Hanlons-Razor.html . 30 April 2011 . 25 February 2014.
3. Book: Oxford Essential Quotations: Facts . 2016 . . 9780191826719 . Ratcliffe . Susan . 4th . What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence. . 4 November 2020.
4. Book: Popper . Karl . Karl Popper . The Logic of Scientific Discovery . 1972 . Hutchinson . 9780091117207.
5. Book: Sagan, Carl . Carl Sagan . Broca's Brain: Reflections on the Romance of Science . 2021 . Ballantine Books . 978-0-345-33689-7 . New York.