MODIFIED OCCAM'S RAZOR

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Thomas D. Bontly (2005). Modified Occam's Razor: Parsimony, Pragmatics, and the Acquisition of Word Meaning. Mind and Language 20 (3):288–312.

Advocates of linguistic pragmatics often appeal to a principle which Paul Grice called Modified Occam's Razor: 'Senses are not to be multiplied beyond necessity'. Superficially, Grice's principle seems a routine application of the principle of parsimony ('Entities are not to be multiplied beyond necessity'). But parsimony arguments, though common in science, are notoriously problematic, and their use by Griceans faces numerous objections. This paper argues that Modified Occam's Razor makes considerably more sense in light of certain assumptions about the processes (...)