i. on razors
Pluralitas non est ponenda sine necesitate. … Frustra fit per plura quod potest fieri per pauciora.
Pluralities should not be posited unnecessarily. For in vain is made through several things what can be done by fewer.
The Razor is also a weapon.
ii. on simplicity
Physics, medicine, law, engineering are permitted complexity, but when Thought becomes gnarled why endless gestures to Occam’s Razor?
— Mike Rugnetta (@mikerugnetta) January 3, 2016
@mikerugnetta Because everyone thinks they understand thought
— Shawn Miller (@fullphaser) January 3, 2016
but when it comes to stuff we believe we know intimately (cuz we do it: thought)--or think we do--then we feel wronged if we don't get it?
— Jedd Cole (@ElectricDidact) January 3, 2016
@ElectricDidact @fullphaser …of that world is non-comprehensive, complexity and abstraction begin to look like inaccuracy.
— Mike Rugnetta (@mikerugnetta) January 3, 2016
iii. on common sense
But of course this approach will always favor ingrained or conservative judgments, since when encountering something strange, new, or oppositional, our gut reaction tends to reject or shrink away from it. The American idea of common sense tends to value simplicity, reject complexity and nuance, and put a premium on position rather than discourse.
Common sense becomes impregnable. A Razor of its own.
Successful ideologies are often thought to render their beliefs natural and self-evident--to identify them with the 'common sense' of a society so that nobody could imagine how they might ever be different. ... [N]aturalization is part of the dehistoricizing thrust of ideology, its tacit denial that ideas and beliefs are specific to a particular time, place and social group.
iv. reprise: on razors
Otherwise, when we pull the razor on our friend, how can we be sure our objection is founded in the need for sound logic rather than our own lack of understanding?
How can we be sure our standards for the reasoning of others isn't just alignment with our own unexamined assumptions about the world? For,
there is no position free of theory, not even the one called ‘common sense.’
v. on the construction of questions
that questions build other bridges
while razors cut the river
down to size?
Matters of infrastructure
take over.