2.79
Perhaps you’d wish to use Occam’s Razor to simplify my picture, but it’s not clear what “simplify” means here: maybe the picture of singular being is ‘simpler’ for us, but is it if it drifts from experience which favours a relational, contextual, and multi-layered multiplicity?
‘But—to use a theological example—one God is simpler than many gods.’
Based on what criteria? In a general sense, what makes an option simpler than another? We almost want to say: the simpler path is simpler! But that, of course, doesn’t say anything.
Simplicity needs something further to motivate or clarify it, perhaps a pre-determined, untheorized aesthetic or practical sense we have.
But maybe having multiple perspectives is simpler; maybe multiplicity is simpler than unity, the many simpler than the one. – Simpler how? Maybe it ‘saves’ the phenomena in fewer steps, with fewer corollaries. – But then we also need to ask why simplicity should be our goal, anyway. What evidence do we have that a simpler explanation is more likely to be true or accurate?