Clearly people who don’t know about Occam’s Razor, and people who explicitly reject it, still believe in the future. Just as clearly, we can use Occam’s Razor or other principles in evaluating theories about what happened in the past. Your claim appears wholly unjustified. Was it just a vague hifalutin’ metaphysical claim, or are there some underlying points that you’re not bringing out?
People who don’t know about Newtonian mechanics still believe that rocks fall downwards, but people who reject it explicitly will have a harder time reconciling their beliefs with the continued falling of rocks. It would be a mistake to reject Newtonian mechanics, then say “people who reject Newtonian mechanics clearly still believe that rocks fall”, then to conclude that there is no problem in rejecting Newtonian mechanics. Similarly, if you reject Occam’s razor then you need to replace it with something that actually fills the explanatory gap—it’s not good enough to say “well people who reject Occam’s razor clearly still believe Occam’s razor”, and then just carry right on.
Clearly people who don’t know about Occam’s Razor, and people who explicitly reject it, still believe in the future. Just as clearly, we can use Occam’s Razor or other principles in evaluating theories about what happened in the past. Your claim appears wholly unjustified. Was it just a vague hifalutin’ metaphysical claim, or are there some underlying points that you’re not bringing out?
People who don’t know about Newtonian mechanics still believe that rocks fall downwards, but people who reject it explicitly will have a harder time reconciling their beliefs with the continued falling of rocks. It would be a mistake to reject Newtonian mechanics, then say “people who reject Newtonian mechanics clearly still believe that rocks fall”, then to conclude that there is no problem in rejecting Newtonian mechanics. Similarly, if you reject Occam’s razor then you need to replace it with something that actually fills the explanatory gap—it’s not good enough to say “well people who reject Occam’s razor clearly still believe Occam’s razor”, and then just carry right on.