Re: Ockham's Razor against unfalsifiable hypotheses
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Re: Ockham's Razor against unfalsifiable hypotheses         

Group: alt.atheism · Group Profile
Author: DougC
Date: Mar 9, 2007 21:07

mike bishop wrote:
> I understand the gist of what's being said here, but I always thought that
> Ockham's Razor couldn't be used against unfalsifiable hypotheses,

Ockham's Razor is much simpler than that. Forget about the term
"unfalsifiable."

OR comes into play when we design an experiment or list the facts to
support a theory. If we want to see why ice remains frozen, we can
vary the temperature and note when the ice begins to melt. OR says to
ignore facts like "today is Friday" or "the dog is barking outside" or
"this freezer is white on the exterior." There are many irrelevant
things which may be falsifiable - or not- but the thermometer reading
is the only data we need for this experiment.

Doug Chandler
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