Tuesday, November 10, 2015

Marcomony is not Plenitude


From the encyclopedia of philosophy:

6.2 Principles of Plenitude

Ranged against the principles of parsimony discussed in previous sections is an equally firmly rooted (though less well-known) tradition of what might be termed “principles of explanatory sufficiency.”[24] These principles have their origins in the same medieval controversies that spawned Occam's Razor. Ockham's contemporary, Walter of Chatton, proposed the following counter-principle to Occam's Razor:
[I]f three things are not enough to verify an affirmative proposition about things, a fourth must be added, and so on (quoted in Maurer 1984, p. 464).
A related counter-principle was later defended by Kant:
The variety of entities should not be rashly diminished (Kant 1950, p. 541).
Entium varietates non temere esse minuendas.
Marcomony takes these issues about parsimony more seriously, especially Kant, but I would replace it with a statement like this:

"Truth is as complex as it is - No amount of thought is going to make it simpler. Thought can only manage the complexity in a way which has meaning to us in a functional way"

Therefore, this statement is outright incorrect "The simplest answer is usually the correct one"

The following link demonstrates how easy it is to abuse parsimony.
Abuses of parsimony 

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