[10] Ockham stated the principle in various ways, but the most popular version, "Entities are not to be multiplied without necessity" (Non sunt multiplicanda entia sine necessitate) was formulated by the Irish Franciscan philosopher John Punch in his 1639 commentary on the works of Duns Scotus. ", "Today, we think of the principle of parsimony as a heuristic device. Lugd., 1495, i, dist. The razor's statement that "other things being equal, simpler explanations are generally better than more complex ones" is amenable to empirical testing. Although there have been a number of philosophers who have formulated similar anti-razors since Chatton's time, no one anti-razor has perpetuated in as much notability as Chatton's anti-razor, although this could be the case of the Late Renaissance Italian motto of unknown attribution Se non è vero, è ben trovato ("Even if it is not true, it is well conceived") when referred to a particularly artful explanation. "[citation needed], "Ockham's razor" redirects here. Likelihood methods for phylogeny use parsimony as they do for all likelihood tests, with hypotheses requiring fewer differing parameters (i.e., numbers or different rates of character change or different frequencies of character state transitions) being treated as null hypotheses relative to hypotheses requiring more differing parameters. "[61], St. Thomas Aquinas, in the Summa Theologica, uses a formulation of Occam's razor to construct an objection to the idea that God exists, which he refutes directly with a counterargument:[62]. Le rasoir d’Ockham ou principe de parcimonie est le modèle mental selon lequel « les hypothèses suffisantes les plus simples sont les plus vraisemblables. (2019). Generally, the exact Occam factor is intractable, but approximations such as Akaike information criterion, Bayesian information criterion, Variational Bayesian methods, false discovery rate, and Laplace's method are used. If we fail to justify simplicity considerations on the basis of the context in which we use them, we may have no non-circular justification: "Just as the question 'why be rational?' Quand il entendit s’enfoncer doucement la longue et large aiguille dans l’arrie`re de son craˆne, Christian Constantin comprit qu’il allait mourir d’une atroce manie`re. APA Fradet, P.-A. It is also concerned with their classification. Le rasoir d’Ockham, ou principe de parcimonie, tel qu’il est appliqué en sciences aujourd’hui, est le suivant : Par exemple, pour justifier l’existence du Père Noël, il faudrait accepter qu’il utilise des technologies inconnues à l’heure actuelle, qu’il ait des capacités inhumaines, etc. "[39] The use of "sharp" here is not only a tongue-in-cheek reference to the idea of a razor, but also indicates that such predictions are more accurate than competing predictions. Marcus Hutter's universal artificial intelligence builds upon Solomonoff's mathematical formalization of the razor to calculate the expected value of an action. Aussi appelé « principe de simplicité », « principe de parcimonie », ou encore « principe d'économie », il exclut la multiplication des raisons et des démonstrations à l'intérieur d'une construction logique. [a] Occam's razor is used to adjudicate between theories that have already passed "theoretical scrutiny" tests and are equally well-supported by evidence. [6][7][8] As a logical principle, Occam's razor would demand that scientists accept the simplest possible theoretical explanation for existing data. [16] Hence, Aquinas acknowledges the principle that today is known as Occam's razor, but prefers causal explanations to other simple explanations (cf. It is thus very rash to use simplicity and elegance as a guide in biological research. [6][7][8], The phrase Occam's razor did not appear until a few centuries after William of Ockham's death in 1347. None of the papers provided a balance of evidence that complexity of method improved forecast accuracy. Given the phylogenetic tree, ancestral population subdivisions are inferred to be those that require the minimum amount of change. He believed in God, and in the authority of Scripture; he writes that "nothing ought to be posited without a reason given, unless it is self-evident (literally, known through itself) or known by experience or proved by the authority of Sacred Scripture. Many artificial intelligence researchers are now employing such techniques, for instance through work on Occam Learning or more generally on the Free energy principle. [8], It has been suggested that Occam's razor is a widely accepted example of extraevidential consideration, even though it is entirely a metaphysical assumption. Occam's razor has gained strong empirical support in helping to converge on better theories (see "Applications" section below for some examples). Similarly, in science, Occam's razor is used as an abductive heuristic in the development of theoretical models rather than as a rigorous arbiter between candidate models. However, this criticism is also potentially true for any type of phylogenetic inference, unless the model used to estimate the tree reflects the way that evolution actually happened. He invoked Occam's razor against materialism, stating that matter was not required by his metaphysic and was thus eliminable. Ockham's Razor is an important method of improving this knowledge acquisition . In the related concept of overfitting, excessively complex models are affected by statistical noise (a problem also known as the bias-variance trade-off), whereas simpler models may capture the underlying structure better and may thus have better predictive performance. Part I. L. Nash, The Nature of the Natural Sciences, Boston: Little, Brown (1963). Occam's razor may also be recognized in the apocryphal story about an exchange between Pierre-Simon Laplace and Napoleon. By definition, all assumptions introduce possibilities for error; if an assumption does not improve the accuracy of a theory, its only effect is to increase the probability that the overall theory is wrong. "[22][23], Bertrand Russell offers a particular version of Occam's razor: "Whenever possible, substitute constructions out of known entities for inferences to unknown entities. Ici, le rasoir d’Ockham incite à "couper" cette hypothèse ad hoc car on peut expliquer la situation tout aussi bien sans : la personne n’a pas de don de voyance. Bentham believed that true parsimony would require punishment to be individualised to take account of the sensibility of the individual—an individual more sensitive to punishment should be given a proportionately lesser one, since otherwise needless pain would be inflicted. Since it is absurd to have no logical method for settling on one hypothesis amongst an infinite number of equally data-compliant hypotheses, we should choose the simplest theory: "Either science is irrational [in the way it judges theories and predictions probable] or the principle of simplicity is a fundamental synthetic a priori truth.".[44]. This ultimate arbiter (selection criterion) rests upon the axioms mentioned above. model selection, test set, minimum description length, Bayesian inference, etc.). Further, it is superfluous to suppose that what can be accounted for by a few principles has been produced by many. This has led to two opposing camps: one that believes Occam's razor is objective, and one that believes it is subjective. Subsequently, Smart has been severely criticized for his use (or misuse) of Occam's razor and ultimately retracted his advocacy of it in this context. "[64] Though some points of this story illustrate Laplace's atheism, more careful consideration suggests that he may instead have intended merely to illustrate the power of methodological naturalism, or even simply that the fewer logical premises one assumes, the stronger is one's conclusion. [42] He has since rejected this account of simplicity, purportedly because it fails to provide an epistemic justification for simplicity. [69] Describing the program for the universal program as the "hypothesis", and the representation of the evidence as program data, it has been formally proven under Zermelo–Fraenkel set theory that "the sum of the log universal probability of the model plus the log of the probability of the data given the model should be minimized. De la même manière, le problème du mal traité par le rasoir d'Hanlon, dont plusieurs auteurs soulignent la connexité avec celui d'Ockham [53], [54], [55], se prête à deux analyses, au plan ontologique ou au plan méthodologique.. Plusieurs auteurs estiment que le rasoir d'Hanlon procède d'un principe d'élégance : il s'agirait simplement de ne pas recourir à des hypothèses … Karl Popper argues that a preference for simple theories need not appeal to practical or aesthetic considerations. Similarly in natural science, in moral science, and in metaphysics the best is that which needs no premises and the better that which needs the fewer, other circumstances being equal."[15]. Guillaume d'Ockham (ou Occam) (1285 - 1349), dit le « docteur invincible » et le « vénérable initiateur », était un franciscain philosophe logicien et théologien scolastique anglais, considéré comme le plus éminent représentant de l'école nominaliste, principale concurrente des écoles thomiste et scotiste. Why Simplicity is no Problem for Bayesians", Sharpening Occam's Razor on a Bayesian Strop, British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, Relationship between religion and science, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Occam%27s_razor&oldid=1008560280, Pages containing links to subscription-only content, Short description is different from Wikidata, Wikipedia articles needing clarification from February 2021, Articles with unsourced statements from September 2017, All articles with specifically marked weasel-worded phrases, Articles with specifically marked weasel-worded phrases from February 2021, Articles with unsourced statements from November 2020, Articles containing Italian-language text, Articles with specifically marked weasel-worded phrases from May 2015, Articles with unsourced statements from May 2020, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License, 3.328 "If a sign is not necessary then it is meaningless. Richard Swinburne argues for simplicity on logical grounds: ... the simplest hypothesis proposed as an explanation of phenomena is more likely to be the true one than is any other available hypothesis, that its predictions are more likely to be true than those of any other available hypothesis, and that it is an ultimate a priori epistemic principle that simplicity is evidence for truth. This notion was deeply rooted in the aesthetic value that simplicity holds for human thought and the justifications presented for it often drew from theology. Pour accéder à toutes les fonctionnalités de ce site, vous devez activer JavaScript. RA Jackson, Mechanism: An Introduction to the Study of Organic Reactions, Clarendon, Oxford, 1972. may have no non-circular answer, the same may be true of the question 'why should simplicity be considered in evaluating the plausibility of hypotheses?'"[43]. It is said that in praising Laplace for one of his recent publications, the emperor asked how it was that the name of God, which featured so frequently in the writings of Lagrange, appeared nowhere in Laplace's. It could also be the case that male musk oxen would be individually less likely to be killed by wolves if they stood in a circle with their horns pointing out, regardless of whether they were protecting the females and offspring. [28] Parsimony means spareness and is also referred to as the Rule of Simplicity. ", In the scientific method, parsimony is an epistemological, metaphysical or heuristic preference, not an irrefutable principle of logic or a scientific result. might say) even more extremist anti-razor is 'Pataphysics, the "science of imaginary solutions" developed by Alfred Jarry (1873–1907). » 1 En d’autres termes, lorsque l’on est face à plusieurs hypothèses, il est préférable de privilégier celle qui … Parsimony is a key consideration of the modern restorative justice, and is a component of utilitarian approaches to punishment, as well as the prison abolition movement. Thus, complex hypotheses must predict data much better than do simple hypotheses before researchers reject the simple hypotheses. Le Rasoir d’Ockham est la première enquête d’Ari Mackenzie, ce vilain petit canard des Renseignements Généraux, spécialisé dans la lutte contre les dérives sectaires. 2, K). Berkeley was an idealist who believed that all of reality could be explained in terms of the mind alone. Un autre exemple : In this case, as it turned out, neither the wave—nor the particle—explanation alone suffices, as light behaves like waves and like particles. [b] Furthermore, it may be used to prioritize empirical testing between two equally plausible but unequally testable hypotheses; thereby minimizing costs and wastes while increasing chances of falsification of the simpler-to-test hypothesis. is that it's possible, given Berkeley's position, to find solipsism itself more in line with the razor than a God-mediated world beyond a single thinker. Zoology provides an example. Physicists have no interest in using Occam's razor to say the other two are wrong. Altruism is defined by some evolutionary biologists (e.g., R. Alexander, 1987; W. D. Hamilton, 1964) as behavior that is beneficial to others (or to the group) at a cost to the individual, and many posit individual selection as the mechanism that explains altruism solely in terms of the behaviors of individual organisms acting in their own self-interest (or in the interest of their genes, via kin selection).
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