Philosophical razor

Imagine you have a big bag of toys, but your room is small and you can't keep all the toys in there. You need to choose which toys to keep and which to throw away. In philosophy, there is a tool called the philosophical razor that helps us choose which ideas to keep and which to throw away.

The philosophical razor says that when we are trying to explain something, we should use the simplest explanation possible. We don't want to add any extra ideas or assumptions that we don't need to. It's like cleaning out your toy bag and only keeping the toys that are really necessary.

For example, let's say we want to explain why leaves fall off trees in the fall. Instead of saying something like "When the sun gets lower in the sky, it affects the gravitational pull on the trees, which causes the leaves to detach and fall," we can use the philosophical razor and say "In the fall, the trees lose their leaves because it gets colder." This explanation is shorter and easier to understand, and it doesn't add any extra ideas that we don't need.

The philosophical razor helps us avoid complicated explanations that might not really be necessary. It helps us keep our ideas simple and easy to understand.