Welcome back to The Philosopher’s Lexicon. My primary goal in this series is to explore common philosophical vocabulary, hopefully transforming these words from useless jargon into meaningful terms. My secondary goal is to highlight how contentious some of these terms can be – especially those which seem obvious. These definitions will not be comprehensive by any means, so please feel free to add your own understanding of each term as we go.
The term for this week’s entry into the philosopher’s lexicon is “Occam’s Razor,” also rendered as “Ockham’s Razor”, is the argumentative principle that says that the simplest possible answer is most often the correct one. Named for 14th century philosopher William of Ockham, this principle is taken up by mathematicians, scientists, doctors, woodworkers, teachers, and more as a way to solve dilemmas and save time.
But ironically, as far as principles go, this one isn’t simple. There are, in my estimation, at least three ways to understand Occam’s Razor, and each of these ways come with their own set of complications.
In the first place, Occam’s Razor hinges upon our preference for simplicity itself. Simple things are easy to grasp and understand. Complex ideas are painful to grasp and difficult to keep clear in our minds, so we – simply – like the easier ideas better. All else being equal, if you have two ways to solve a problem, and one is for more complex than the other, the more elegant version is preferable.
In the second place, the problem with a complicated explanation isn’t just that it’s difficult to grasp; when there are more details in an explanation, there are more points where you could admit error, and more chances that parts of your explanations either conflict with each other or lead in different directions. There are more variables to control, more assumptions to validate, and more places where a moment’s thoughtlessness can lead to ruin. The simplest explanation is often more likely to be correct than a complex one because there are fewer places where it is vulnerable to change, error, and uncertainty – frankly, it is more likely to be right because there are fewer places where it can go wrong.
In the third place, we can also view Ockham’s view of simplicity from the perspective of the Scholastic theologian (and here I hope you’ll permit me to paint with an exceedingly broad brush): simplicity itself had inherent value. That which was simple wasn’t just preferable in this world view, it was inherently superior to complexity. God, goodness, and truth were conceived to be utterly simple and thus immaterial and infallible in contrast to the unpredictable decay of material complexity. While there’s definitely some common ground here with the explanation above – that is, to say that a being made of several complex parts has in it more potential for conflict and failure than a being made up of fewer parts – the “simple” truth here is that the more simple an idea was, the closer it was to Truth itself, with a very deliberate capital T, and Goodness itself, abstracted from all of the messy complexities and failures of mortal, material life.
Regardless of the motivation behind the search for simplicity, finding the simplest answer or simplest course of action isn’t always itself a simple task. When it comes to optimization, there are a lot of times when its actually easier and more efficient to do things the complicated, hard way. For example, running errands when all of your stops are pretty close together: you can sit down and look at maps and plot out the best way to hit each store on your list without ever doubling back, and without letting the shrimp sit in a hot car for too long, and so on, or you can just get in your car and get the errands done in the same amount of time, zig-zagging back and forth across town in a complex way. Sometimes there are constraints that make optimization obvious (say, if the post office closes first, and then there’s a long drive out to the fish market, the order of events is pretty easy), but sometimes, optimizing just isn’t optimal.
Something else to watch out for is Occam’s Razor’s evil twin: confirmation bias. Sometimes the simplest answer or explanation is the one that fits in most easily with a person’s existing worldview. Basically, if a proposition makes sense according to what you already believe, you’ll automatically think that it is more correct than the proposition which challenges your worldview and forces you to do some complicated and difficult reconfiguration of your thought-process. In choosing the simplest answer, we may often be just choosing the answer that allows us persist in our own biases, rather than judging possibilities on their own merits.
I think will stick with Albert Einstein’s (alleged) contribution to this principle: “Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.” Or rather, I should stick to the original quote from which this aphorism is thought to derive, taken from Einstein’s Herbert Spencer lecture delivered at Oxford, Jun. 10, 1933:
It can scarcely be denied that the supreme goal of all theory is to make the irreducible basic elements as simple and as few as possible without having to surrender the adequate representation of a single datum of experience.
I do apologize for my overuse of the word “simple” throughout this post. Once I started writing, I found myself unable to avoid it, and after making an attempt to reword and work out the redundancy, I decided that it would be, well, simpler, just to leave it in.
22 thoughts on “The Philosopher’s Lexicon: Occam’s Razor”
whitefrozen
I think its one of the great ironies of philosophy that Occam’s razor, by simply (see what I did there) slicing away what he takes to be superfluous entities, he really denies one any chance of a truly simple explanation for anything. Your reference to Einstein shows how the exact opposite method leads to a truly simple explanation.
Another irony might be that for all his lip-service to simplicity, his political thought is very complicated.
M. Joelle
Great comment – there’s something of a tension in his work between the platonic and Aristotelian influences. I’m saving up my notes for a philosopher Friday’s on Occam – I remembered him being sort of boring, but looking over his work this week has sparked my interest a bit.
whitefrozen
If you can acquire it, Gilsons book The Unity of Philosophical Experience has a very penetrating study of Occam.
M. Joelle
Added to my wish list. This might be my way into a run on scholastics for a while – I might actually get to your Scotus challenge after all!
whitefrozen
Once you enter the world of the Scholastics, there’s no going back. There’s a phenomenal new series of medieval studies out – Medieval Philosophy: Texts and Studies – which is good if you’re looking to go very in-depth on the Scholastics. Thinking about it further, Gilsons study The Spirit of Medieval Philosophy might be worth picking up to – the list of books one could recommend here is endless! Needless to say, this is a subject about which my enthusiasm knows no bounds:)
M. Joelle
I know. My academic focus is mainly on Augustinian themes of neo-Platonism and neo-Platonic mysticism, and yet I spent three graduate seminars on Thomas (as well as a full workshop weekend). And I can never stop drawing from De Veritate.
I’m going to have dive into some Gilson, it seems.
whitefrozen
Well, a background in Platonism certainly would make Aquinas attractive, given his synthesis of Aristotle and Plato and his enormous dependence on Pseudo-Dionysis for his overall methodology. Its been good to see a retrieval of and appreciation for his apophaticism in philosophy and theology in recent years – and I suspect that this may lead to a growing understanding of how dependent he was on dogmatic presuppositions as opposed to simply reappropriation of Aristotelian ideas.
Zachary Guinn
I second his recommendation about “The Spirit of Medieval Philosophy”. While I’m not nearly as versed as he is, I found this book interesting, though I’m not completely done with it yet.
James Pailly
This is one of those terms that I try to avoid using because I always have this nagging sense that I’m using it incorrectly. Thanks for helping clear up some of my confusion!
Michelle Joelle
So glad you found it useful!
SelfAwarePatterns
Occam’s razor can be a tricky beast. I’ve seen long epic arguments over whether a particular explanation bests adheres to it. It pays to remember that it is a heuristic, a guideline, not a law of nature.
That said, it is a powerfully productive guideline. Historically, most assumptions about unobserved phenomena turn out to be wrong, so it makes sense to minimize them. The problem is that assuming that the relationships we do observe continue unmodified into unobservable realms is itself an assumption that is often proven wrong.
Michelle Joelle
I think, for Occam, at least in the Medieval context, it was both guide and law – and the legacy of that is pretty hard to shake. It sticks around in some subtle or subconscious ways. I’d explain more if I could, but I think that would require a long blog series.
SelfAwarePatterns
Hey Michelle. That’s a blog series I wouldn’t mind seeing if you ever feel motivated to write it. Anyway, welcome back!
Michelle Joelle
I’ll pencil that series in for sometime in 2017, which is when I have my next open slot for a big project. Ooof. My return to blogging right now will consist mainly of lexicon entries and pictures of fountain pens, I’m afraid!
bloggingisaresponsibility
Occam’s Razor is interesting, but it’s also a can of worms, especially since it requires defining simplicity. For instance, if I try to explain something, it’s often in reference to an existing framework of thought, so what is this framework? The framework itself may hide a lot of entities and assumptions so that the explanation’s simplicity is simply had by delegating it to the framework. This ties in with your 2nd explanation of why the Razor works.
Have you looked at the “Minimum Description Length” principle? This seems to be a formalization/more mathematical treatment of the razor, and makes the framework to which the explanation refers more explicit.
Michelle Joelle
I actually haven’t heard of that before, but I will definitely look it up. It sounds like a much more specific vision of simplicity, thank you!
rung2diotimasladder
Good points about the difficulties involved in achieving simplicity…I rather liked your “overuse” of the word “simple”. 🙂
Michelle Joelle
It simply could not be avoided! 🙂
Zachary Guinn
I was thinking the other day that Occam’s Razor is a useful tool but it isn’t so much a great offensive tool in the philosopher’s tool kit. It is easy to show something to defy the law of non-contradiction(and thus be false). It is hard to prove that it defy Occams Razor because both sides have to agree upon it.
I was thinking that the simpler explanation for a universe for the Theist is God. It posits only two entities. “God” and “The Universe.” Wheras it occurred to me that the “Multiverse” explanation should be immediately ruled out as it postulates an infinite number of entities.
But a Naturalist I was arguing this point with said that Occams Razor prefers the Multiverse theory because while it posits an infinity of universes it posits only one class of thing, namely: universes. Thus it is simpler.
We did not have an agreed upon notion of simplicity which makes it hard to use. And thus I found your comment here: “Sometimes the simplest answer or explanation is the one that fits in most easily with a person’s existing worldview” very apt.
Michelle Joelle
I just discovered that I never took the time to respond to your excellent comment – I like how you point out that simplicity does nothing to delineate scope. The simplest thing could be the tiniest detail in isolation, or it could be the comprehensive whole!
Orlando Roncesvalles
But the Razor could simply (there we go again) be a rule of thumb: Where you have more than one theory that fits the empirical data, you go with the one with lesser requirements as regards assumptions, priors, first principles, etc.
Michelle Joelle
That is a concise and compelling definition. Elegance trumps all.