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[–]Alienhunter 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

I could use the rocks brought back from the moon as evidence that it is not made of cheese. As well as various other scientific methodology such as spectrography which can indicate the moon's structure is not analogous with dairy. Could also postulate that as far as we know, there are no cows on the moon, and no foreseeable way that you could produce enough cheese to make a moon without cows, but I digress, none of these arguments are absolute "proof" the moon isn't made of cheese and of course I am unable to personally go and confirm myself since your god forsaken mechanics can't fix my warp engine, so if someone wants to wave their PHD around and claim the moon missions were faked to hide the fact that the moon is cheese, I can't argue against that point, though I can sit back and smugly laugh at the comedic scene unfolding before me. I'm not sure I would feel offended, I'd just hind it humorous and assume you are an idiot.

Occam's razor is somewhat relevant when discussing theories. It certainly isn't "scientific" as even complex theories can prove true over simpler ones once evidence has been gathered. But deciding where to look and what theories to explore does often require some use of Occam's razor. Like in the Geocentric vs Heliocentric discussion. Both models are perfectly serviceable to describe the motions of the planets and stars as we perceive them. After all you can simply go outside and confirm for yourself that the sun moon and stars appear to travel around the earth.

However when you make more precise measures of their movements a number of irregularities persist such a retrograde motion. The ancients simply accepted this as what it is and added epicycles to the geocentric model which once again perfectly describes the motion of the planets as we understand it, until another irregularity is noticed and another epicycle is added.

By the time of Copernicus there were hundreds of these epicycles, and the heliocentric model proposed did away with most of these complications by simply moving the perspective. Using Occam's razor here we can ask, is the theory that requires a great number of complicated cycles more reasonable to believe than the theory that follows a simpler premise? Keep in mind both models are reasonable and scientifically derived from the knowledge at the time and their universe was much simpler since they didn't know about objects that were invisible to the naked eye until the development of the telescope.

[–][deleted] 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

Again, you seem to be convinced that philosophical thinking is empirical. Occam’s razor is a rule of thumb to choose between scientific models. Philosophy involves ontology, science can’t. You can laugh at people who don’t believe what the sages of society say, but a philosopher doesn’t accept things just because authority or consensus say so. And this is why I’m enraged with this book, that does not even bother to explain why conspiracy theories are a waste of time, yet pretends to teach philosophy.

Edit: We can say that X behaves according to a particle or wave model. But a scientist cannot say what X actually is. That is what I mean by ontology. Whether earth best fits a geocentric or heliocentric model is a matter of science. Whether we live in a geocentric or heliocentric universe is a question of ontology.

[–]BISH 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

that does not even bother to explain why conspiracy theories are a waste of time,

How do you know you weren't schooled?