Razors, laws and principles

2024-08-0914:05 Tags: Argumentation & Rhetoric Empiricism

Razors

A razor is a general principle or rule of thumb that allows one to eliminate unlikely explanations of some phenomenon/avoid unnecessary actions. These were made into subpages so they could be referenced in other pages.

Adler’s razor = If it isn’t observable, it’s not worth talking about.
Einstein’s razor = Make things as simple as possible but no simpler = perspective on Occam’s razor. Grice’s razor= Be brief in semantic explanations = variation on Occam’s razor + contextual meaning > definition. Halon’s razor = Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity. Hitchens’ Razor = If something can be asserted without evidence, it can be dismissed without evidence. Hume’s guillotine = The ought/is problem: just because something is, does not necessarily mean that it should be. (investigate further) Occam’s Razor = The fewer assumptions the better: less edge cases/contradictory ad hoc information, the better Popper’s falsifiability principle = For a theory to be considered scientific it must be falsifiable. Sagan standard = Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

Einstein’s razor vs. Occam’s razor

Finagle’s law Murphy’s Law

Source(s)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_razor = List of razors https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_eponymous_laws = List of laws