tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2472139466585018053.post2759652319075341734..comments2024-03-11T04:11:06.487-04:00Comments on The Smithy: The Anti-RazorLee Faberhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00476833516234522602noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2472139466585018053.post-54317911497543905432011-03-24T22:26:47.049-04:002011-03-24T22:26:47.049-04:00Eric, many thanks for the reference and comment.Eric, many thanks for the reference and comment.Michael Sullivanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11191322302191384384noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2472139466585018053.post-30494641906647607562011-03-24T11:36:08.206-04:002011-03-24T11:36:08.206-04:00Rondo Keele has a nice discussion of Chatton's...Rondo Keele has a nice discussion of Chatton's version of the Anti-Razor in his <a href="http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/walter-chatton/#AntRaz" rel="nofollow"> Stanford Encyclopedia article</a> on Chatton.<br /><br />Also, though I would be the first to agree that Ockham's ontological elimination goes too far, I think a number of his critics (and perhaps his interpreters as well) misunderstand the purpose of the razor. At least when it comes to his reduction of the categories -- which almost always depends upon the razor -- I take it that Ockham's project isn't to provide a full listing of reality, but instead to make clear <i>what can be established demonstratively by philosophy alone</i>.<br /><br />As Ockham sees it, since God isn't under any compulsion to follow the principle of parsimony, He could create a world in which there are entities corresponding to each of the categories. But such a world would be indistinguishable -- for us -- from the world we actually inhabit. The razor is meant to demonstrate the bare minimum that God needs to create the world as we see it, but it doesn't entail that God did it just that way.<br /> <br />This is why, for instance, Ockham makes explicit that, though the razor implies that there need be no such things as relations in the world, we should believe that there are at least some relational entities: for revelation teaches that there are such things (in particular, in the Trinity and the Incarnation).<br /><br />Were we angels, we could just look at the world and intuitively see its metaphysical structure; since we're not, the best we can do, Ockham thinks, is use philosophy to find the bare minimum structure and trust God to reveal to us any other important bits that He thinks we should know about.<br /><br />His arguments against universals, on the other hand, typically don't depend on the razor, but instead upon the principle of non-contradiction; here Ockham does think that philosophy can make progress in determining the structure of the world, since God is not capable of performing the logically impossible.Erichttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15177742566251873537noreply@blogger.com