guglja.blogg.se - Ockham agent intellect

In the scientific method, Occam's razor is not considered an irrefutable principle of logic, and certainly not a scientific result. In science, Occam’s razor is used as a heuristic (general guiding rule or an observation) to guide scientists in the development of theoretical models rather than as an arbiter between published models. Therefore, to the same natural effects we must, so far as possible, assign the same causes." To quote Isaac Newton, "We are to admit no more causes of natural things than such as are both true and sufficient to explain their appearances. This principle is sometimes phrased as pluralitas non est ponenda sine necessitate ("plurality should not be posited without necessity").

Indeed, Ockham's contribution seems to be to restrict the operation of this principle in matters pertaining to miracles and God's power: so, in the Eucharist, a plurality of miracles is possible, simply because it pleases God. The words attributed to Occam, entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem (entities must not be multiplied beyond necessity), are absent in his extant works. Ptolemy stated "We consider it a good principle to explain the phenomena by the simplest hypothesis possible", while phrases such as "It is vain to do with more what can be done with fewer" and "A plurality is not to be posited without necessity" were commonplace in 13th-century scholastic writing. Occam's razor is attributed to the 14th-century English logician, theologian and Franciscan friar Father William of Ockham (d'Okham), although the principle was known earlier. īertrand Russell offers a particular version of Occam's Razor: "Whenever possible, substitute constructions out of known entities for inferences to unknown entities." Philosophers point out also that the exact meaning of simplest may be nuanced. The simplest available theory need not be most accurate. The razor asserts that one should proceed to simpler theories until simplicity can be traded for greater explanatory power. The principle is often incorrectly summarized as "other things being equal, a simpler explanation is better than a more complex one." In practice, the application of the principle often shifts the burden of proof in a discussion.

3.4 Practical considerations and pragmatism.

The philosophers of the High Middle Ages offered analyses of cognition whose details, meant to flesh out Aristotle's account, were elaborated in their debates over the role of the agent intellect, the need for species in perception and in thought, the reliability of the cognitive apparatus for induction, the nature and function of memory, and so on. Mediaeval philosophers who read Aristotle's text generally followed his lead, to the point where Robert Kilwardby, around the middle of the thirteenth century, begins his explanation of the origin of the sciences by simply giving a close paraphrase of Metaphysics A.1 ( De ortu scientiarum 1.8–11). Aristotle explains this process in terms of cognitive capacities and their objects: sense, memory, and imagination give rise to experience, which is directed to particulars reason gives rise to art and science, each directed to universals, the former being the exercise of practical reason and the latter of speculative reason. The very first remarks in First Philosophy describe how humans, after repeated exposure to the world, come to have art and then science through experience: hominibus autem scientia et ars per experientiam evenit (981a2–3: apobainei d'epistêmê kai technê dia tês empeirias tois anthropois). The canonical text relating experience to knowledge for the philosophers of the High Middle Ages was Aristotle's Metaphysics A.1.