What is Grebnesi's Razor?

Occam's Razor

“Do not multiply entities beyond necessity.”

The purpose of Occam's Razor is the rejection of metaphysical theories that contain more entities than are needed to explain the observable universe. In particular, philosophers use Occam’s Razor to refute Plato’s Theory of Forms. Plato’s metaphysics concerned the attributes of the things around us, for example the “tableness” that makes a table a table or the “grapefruitness” that makes a grapefruit a grapefruit. Plato believed that these “Ideals” or “Forms” were real things. In addition to the individual grapefruits piled up at Kroger’s supermarket, there is an ideal grapefruit, which exists in a heavenly zone called “The Absolute Mind”¹. Thinkers who gravitate closer to the earth disagree. They argue that the forms are merely abstractions from individual objects. They are creatures of our minds and do not exist on their own. In other words, there is no necessity to believe they are entities.

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¹When I learned about the Theory of Forms in High School, one of my classmates asked the teacher whether Plato thought he was the Absolute Mind. “No,” the teacher replied. “Then he’d be insane.”