Some philosophical razors
Get better at winning internet arguments, with the help of William of Ockham and pals.
Some months ago now, the American libertarian commentator Dave Rubin did what libertarians have been doing for decades: publicly demonstrated he hadn’t thought about something very much until everyone pointed and laughed at him.
The thing he hadn’t thought about on this occasion was Occam’s Razor, the philosophical axiom generally, if mildly inaccurately, phrased as “the simplest explanation is usually correct”. The place he chose to demonstrate this was the ultra conservative American news channel Newsmax, where he paraphrased it, completely inaccurately, as “if something can go wrong it will”. That isn’t Occam’s Razor at all: that’s Murphy’s Law (to Americans) or Sod’s Law (to Brits) which, accurate and helpful as it undoubtedly is, does not quite rise to the level of a philosophical razor.
But who was Occam? Why did they need a razor? Here’s a handy cut out and keep guide.
First things first: a philosophical razor is a rule of thumb with which you can eliminate – “shave off”, as it were – unlikely explanations, unnecessary actions and so forth. These don’t work like laws of physics – theoretically they can steer you wrong – but they’re helpful heuristics for understanding and discussing the world.
Occam’s Razor is named for William of Ockham, a 14th century English monk and philosopher who didn’t invent it – Aristotle was making similar arguments, a millennium and a half before – but did like to bang on about it a lot. It states that “entities should not be multiplied without necessity” – that is, those theories that make the fewest assumptions and involve the fewest actors are more likely to be correct.
Why philosophers are suffering from a shared delusion about the best way to spell the name of a village in Surrey is not entirely clear.
Occam and/or Ockham isn’t the only person who has come up with a razor. Some of the others you might spot in the wild include:
Hanlon’s Razor: “Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.” Its name might be a corruption of Heinlein, as in the sci-fi author Robert A, whose 1941 novella Logic of Empire contains a similar statement. Probably, it’s named for Robert J. Hanlon, who submitted it to a joke book. Either way, it’s a name for another very old idea: you can find a version of it in Goethe.
Grice’s Razor: “Conversational implications are to be preferred over semantic context for linguistic explanations” – a migraine-inducing sentiment which basically means you should address what people meant to say rather than the precise words they used. (English degree’s crying, nice one.) For once, we both know who it’s named after, and can actually spell his name: he’s Paul Grice, a philosopher of language who was born in Birmingham in 1913.
Hume’s Razor: Named for the Scottish enlightenment philosopher David Hume, this one basically states that causes must be proportional to effects, but takes a lot more words to do it (“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”), because philosophy. Similarly:
Hitchens’ Razor: “What can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.” Saves a lot of time in Twitter arguments. Named for Christopher, not Peter, who, ironically seems rather a fan of asserting without evidence.
Alder’s Razor: “If something cannot be settled by experiment or observation, then it is not worthy of debate.” Named for the Australian mathematician Mike Alder, who invented it in 2004, and who actually wanted to call it “Newton’s Flaming Laser Sword”, on the grounds that a) it was inspired by Isaac Newton and b) he thought it was a lot better than Occam’s Razor.
Alder isn’t alone in preferring other words to “razor”. Some other rules which use different words for essentially the same thing.
The Sagan Standard: “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.” If someone says they’re from Brighton, you can take them at their word. If someone says they’ve been living there for 300 years, well, you might just want a bit more to back that up. This one’s named after Carl Sagan, the American astronomer with the amazing voice.
Popper’s Falsifiability Principle: For a theory to be considered scientific, it must be falsifiable. Named for the Austrian-British philosopher Karl Popper.
Morgan’s Canon: A rule for interpreting animal behaviour, courtesy of the 19th century psychologist C. Lloyd Morgan, which states, roughly, that you shouldn’t assume intelligence if simpler explanations like instinct are enough. Basically this is there as a bulwark against the risk scientists start assuming real animals are like the cast of Peppa Pig. Much criticised; quite possibly wrong.
(I wrote about some of these issues in a recent edition of this newsletter, which concerned Bunny the sheepadoodle, Alex the African Grey and other animals which scientists have taught how to talk.)
Because David Hume was a show off, he didn’t just have a razor. He also had a guillotine (“What ought to be cannot be deduced from what is”); and a fork, an argument that rationalism and empiricism are two different realms of knowledge which I don’t, if I’m honest, understand in the slightest.
To conclude I will note three other points. Firstly, there are anti-razors – philosophical precepts which try to put the complexity back into the world, in a direct response to William of Ockham being a big fat killjoy. Secondly, the duck test is the rule that begins, “if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck-”.
And finally, American doctors call unlikely diagnoses zebras. Why? Because, despite what House, M.D. taught us, when you hear hoofbeats, you should think of horses not zebras.
My head hurts, does your head hurt too? Let’s leave philosophy and all go have a nice cup of tea.
Self-promotion corner
That’s actually a lie, I can’t stand tea, but “a nice cup of coffee” felt like a cheat, even though coffee, from some perspectives, is a much better fit with philosophy and winning pointless, circular arguments alike.
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