Ockraz’s blog

     I believe that the most significant thing that one can learn about others is not where they are from or what their experiences have been, but rather what their world view (or Weltanschauung) is.  In contructing a philosophical system, you need to build on a foundation of ontology or metaphysics.  'Ockraz' is an allusion to an element of my ontology (the branch of metaphysics which deals with the question of what can be said to exist, and what the fundamental nature of reality is) which underlies my overall philosophy.

     Ockham's Razor is generally agreed to be, “Don't multiply entities beyond necessity" ("entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem" in Latin). It is unknown if William of Ockham (sometimes spelled 'Occam') actually used this formulation, but in his advocay of nominalism, he argued for the principle even if it was not in those words.  Many people now use the term "Ockham's Razor" as if it were interchangeable with the 'principle of parsimony'- which states that 'if it has as much explanatory power, then you should adopt the simplest explanation'.  The principle of parsimony is often used in science, but it is used in every discipline which undertakes to investigate the world.  My choice of Ockraz as a psuedonym reflects my interest in the original use rather than the modern use. 

     I think (no pun intended) that today pretty much everyone accepts Descartes argument which is popularly represented as "I think, therefore I am".  Most people don't realize that he originally expressed the idea as, "Je pense donc je suis," in his native French- although he also used the better known Latin version, "Cogito ergo sum" in later writings.  He eplained what he meant by writing that, 'the statement that 'I am'- that I exist-  is necessarily true whenever it is put forward by me or conceived in my mind.' 

     Although the "cogito" actually precedes Ockham's Razor in the development of my philosophy, I thought that it was probably so universally agreed upon that it would be less informative to use the name 'Descog' (which I do use online occassionally), than to use the name 'Ockraz'.  Fundamentally, the name Ockraz expresses my acceptance of Nominalism.  Nominalism is basically the view that argues that while particulars exist, universals do not.   A universal is a quality or characteristic which can be instantiated (in other words can have multiple instances of itself represented) by multiple particulars.  A particular is an object which has a spatio-temporal location- in toher words, at any particular moment in time it has a unique location in space.  People sometimes say that universals are abstract, whereas particulars are concrete.  An example of a universal would be 'red' or 'red-ness'.  An example of a particular would be 'my red crayon'. 

     Many people (and perhaps the reader is among them) think that ontology and metaphysics are a waste of time and energy, and ask, "why should I care" or "how does any of this affect how I live my life".  There is an answer to that question.  I'll talk more about that answer later- but the most interesting part of the answer is that it is an essential component of the argument that tells one interesting things about how we think about what means when we say that we freely choose something an hence what the nature of moral responsibility is.