The First Hero of our Story
The first and most potent argument against conspiracy theories comes us by way of a medieval monk named William. He is famous for a dictum that many people do not even realize is an eponym, "Ockham's Razor." With this razor (as we will now be referring to it as though it were a thing which actually exists...this will be ironic later) many conspiracy theories can be rendered absurd.
First off we need some background information: William was born in the town of Ockham in 1287(-ish). Studying theology at Oxford, he earned today's equivalent of a PhD writing a commentary on Lombard's Sentences. Philosophically he was a Nominalist--a metaphysical position regarding the status of universals. The conflict, briefly, is that if two things both share a quality--that quality possesses an abstract but real existence which is primary to the things in which the quality is inhered. This is the Platonic doctrine of the forms, and even when Plato was teaching it, it was a controversial position to take. Nominalism, is the opposite position with adjustment. A nominalist would deny the independent existence of abstract forms of predicates such as "green" or "cat," claiming that particulars exist for which general predicates can only be determined through observation. Like Plato's great student, Aristotle, Ockham claimed that such universal qualities were merely words or names hence "nominalism."
This would be consistent with Ockham's epistemological focus, another side of a persistent philosophical debate. Epistemology states that knowledge is derived from observation and reasoning based on those observations. Rationalism, takes the opposite approach, that knowledge is only derived through reason. Both sides have their advantages and disadvantages, and given that this is not a Philosophical lecture we can leave that conflict there. Nevertheless Ockham had an intense focus on limiting the ontology of a worldview, by discarding principles that were unnecessary.
His career was controversial. He opposed the Pope's attack on the doctrine of Apostolic poverty (stating that the apostles of Jesus were poor and thus should be emulated), the rule of St. Francis (that the priestly caste should have no possessions), and poor William was ultimately excommunicated for fleeing the Papal Court at Avignon for the refuge of the Holy Roman Emperor in Bavaria. There he wrote a number of works arguing for the separation of Earthly and Religious rule, the formation of property rights, and a social contract theory which predates English Philosopher Thomas Hobbes. However, most of that is trivia, he is famous for the razor and his principle of efficient reasoning.
"Entia non sunt multiplicanda sine necessitate."
"Do not multiply entities beyond necessity."
The razor is most often translated as "the simplest explanation is most often true." However, this summary is incorrect. The simplest explanation is not always true, in fact complicated answers often explain most things. The reason for this misunderstanding is in how we define "simple." William, meant that we must formulate our explanations without attribution to causes which are not necessary for explanation. In other words, our explanations must be free of unnecessary explanation.
First off we must shed a popular misconception: the latin phrase or anything close to it does not appear in the writings of William of Ockham. While his work does laud an economy of explanation, a concentration of the real world, he never says this phrase. The phrase does not appear in his corpus. The principle itself does not originate with him either. That can be traced all the way back to Aristotle in what I assume is a dig at Plato, from Aristotle's Posterior Analytics: "We may assume the superiority of, that other things being equal, of the demonstration of the phenomenon which derives from fewer postulates or hypothesis." William, we assume, learned this from his teacher John Duns Scotus (from where we get the word "dunce"). It is applied to the school of Nominalism by Leibniz in 1670 and given the moniker "Ockham's Razor" in 1852 by William Hamilton. (see Thorburn 1918)
Nevertheless, it's now William's blade, and he did teach the general principle. We can explain this best by analogy: imagine you show your phone to a small child who then inquires as to how it works. You have two options: the first is to explain the various principles that allow it to function, electricity, computing, radio waves, etc. The second is to just shrug and tell the child that a magic elf lives inside the phone and creates everything that appears on the screen, while another elf speedily transmits the messages from one phone to another. Which explanation is more complicated?
At first glance, and my classes will anecdotally bear this out, the second explanation seems simpler. The first is complicated, it requires you to know a great many things, but if we generalize the explanations to the world, the first explanation is the simpler one. In the first we have rules regarding the world and how they apply. In the second explanation, it's shorter, but now I have to explain elves, how they live in the phone, where they sleep, how they transmit the information, and why the elves live in the phone in the first place. The world itself is now very much more complicated with the elven explanation than it is with the complex scientific explanation for how the phone actually does work. Also, I can break the phone apart and show the child the little parts, but I cannot show them the elves, so I can say they are invisible, but then that adds to the complexity of the elven world that I have already made up.
The application to conspiracy theory is an easy one. Conspiracy theories make the world more complex than is necessary. They postulate absolutely competent world controllers, who are so adept at manipulating events that there's never been an error, they are absolutely perfect at maintaining silence, but they are also notoriously bad for leaving clues. Also they are able to direct the actions of hundreds and thousands of people (depending on the conspiracy, it would literally take thousands to have faked the moon landing and covered it up) with a precision that has never been seen before or since. Anti-vaccination theories would need not only every pediatrician but every doctor, the AMA, every hospital, pharmaceutical company, researcher, nurse, etc. to be on board; or it could just be that autism has genetic factors.
The important thing to remember is that the explanation that doesn't require fantastical elements is often the better candidate for truth. This is not a law, sometimes the strange explanation is the right one, but the evidence needs to be there. An incredible assertion needs incredible evidence to back it up, otherwise the razor can be unsheathed to cut those postulations away.
Reference: Thorburn, William; "The Myth of Ockham's Razor;" Mind 27 1918 pp. 345-353
First off we need some background information: William was born in the town of Ockham in 1287(-ish). Studying theology at Oxford, he earned today's equivalent of a PhD writing a commentary on Lombard's Sentences. Philosophically he was a Nominalist--a metaphysical position regarding the status of universals. The conflict, briefly, is that if two things both share a quality--that quality possesses an abstract but real existence which is primary to the things in which the quality is inhered. This is the Platonic doctrine of the forms, and even when Plato was teaching it, it was a controversial position to take. Nominalism, is the opposite position with adjustment. A nominalist would deny the independent existence of abstract forms of predicates such as "green" or "cat," claiming that particulars exist for which general predicates can only be determined through observation. Like Plato's great student, Aristotle, Ockham claimed that such universal qualities were merely words or names hence "nominalism."
This would be consistent with Ockham's epistemological focus, another side of a persistent philosophical debate. Epistemology states that knowledge is derived from observation and reasoning based on those observations. Rationalism, takes the opposite approach, that knowledge is only derived through reason. Both sides have their advantages and disadvantages, and given that this is not a Philosophical lecture we can leave that conflict there. Nevertheless Ockham had an intense focus on limiting the ontology of a worldview, by discarding principles that were unnecessary.
His career was controversial. He opposed the Pope's attack on the doctrine of Apostolic poverty (stating that the apostles of Jesus were poor and thus should be emulated), the rule of St. Francis (that the priestly caste should have no possessions), and poor William was ultimately excommunicated for fleeing the Papal Court at Avignon for the refuge of the Holy Roman Emperor in Bavaria. There he wrote a number of works arguing for the separation of Earthly and Religious rule, the formation of property rights, and a social contract theory which predates English Philosopher Thomas Hobbes. However, most of that is trivia, he is famous for the razor and his principle of efficient reasoning.
"Entia non sunt multiplicanda sine necessitate."
"Do not multiply entities beyond necessity."
The razor is most often translated as "the simplest explanation is most often true." However, this summary is incorrect. The simplest explanation is not always true, in fact complicated answers often explain most things. The reason for this misunderstanding is in how we define "simple." William, meant that we must formulate our explanations without attribution to causes which are not necessary for explanation. In other words, our explanations must be free of unnecessary explanation.
First off we must shed a popular misconception: the latin phrase or anything close to it does not appear in the writings of William of Ockham. While his work does laud an economy of explanation, a concentration of the real world, he never says this phrase. The phrase does not appear in his corpus. The principle itself does not originate with him either. That can be traced all the way back to Aristotle in what I assume is a dig at Plato, from Aristotle's Posterior Analytics: "We may assume the superiority of, that other things being equal, of the demonstration of the phenomenon which derives from fewer postulates or hypothesis." William, we assume, learned this from his teacher John Duns Scotus (from where we get the word "dunce"). It is applied to the school of Nominalism by Leibniz in 1670 and given the moniker "Ockham's Razor" in 1852 by William Hamilton. (see Thorburn 1918)
Nevertheless, it's now William's blade, and he did teach the general principle. We can explain this best by analogy: imagine you show your phone to a small child who then inquires as to how it works. You have two options: the first is to explain the various principles that allow it to function, electricity, computing, radio waves, etc. The second is to just shrug and tell the child that a magic elf lives inside the phone and creates everything that appears on the screen, while another elf speedily transmits the messages from one phone to another. Which explanation is more complicated?
At first glance, and my classes will anecdotally bear this out, the second explanation seems simpler. The first is complicated, it requires you to know a great many things, but if we generalize the explanations to the world, the first explanation is the simpler one. In the first we have rules regarding the world and how they apply. In the second explanation, it's shorter, but now I have to explain elves, how they live in the phone, where they sleep, how they transmit the information, and why the elves live in the phone in the first place. The world itself is now very much more complicated with the elven explanation than it is with the complex scientific explanation for how the phone actually does work. Also, I can break the phone apart and show the child the little parts, but I cannot show them the elves, so I can say they are invisible, but then that adds to the complexity of the elven world that I have already made up.
The application to conspiracy theory is an easy one. Conspiracy theories make the world more complex than is necessary. They postulate absolutely competent world controllers, who are so adept at manipulating events that there's never been an error, they are absolutely perfect at maintaining silence, but they are also notoriously bad for leaving clues. Also they are able to direct the actions of hundreds and thousands of people (depending on the conspiracy, it would literally take thousands to have faked the moon landing and covered it up) with a precision that has never been seen before or since. Anti-vaccination theories would need not only every pediatrician but every doctor, the AMA, every hospital, pharmaceutical company, researcher, nurse, etc. to be on board; or it could just be that autism has genetic factors.
The important thing to remember is that the explanation that doesn't require fantastical elements is often the better candidate for truth. This is not a law, sometimes the strange explanation is the right one, but the evidence needs to be there. An incredible assertion needs incredible evidence to back it up, otherwise the razor can be unsheathed to cut those postulations away.
Reference: Thorburn, William; "The Myth of Ockham's Razor;" Mind 27 1918 pp. 345-353
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