Page "Occam's razor" Paragraph 34

According to Swinburne, since our choice of theory cannot be determined by data ( see Underdetermination and Quine-Duhem thesis ), we must rely on some criterion to determine which theory to use.

Since it is absurd to have no logical method by which to settle on one hypothesis amongst an infinite number of equally data-compliant hypotheses, we should choose the simplest theory: " either science is irrational the way it judges theories and predictions probable or the principle of simplicity is a fundamental synthetic a priori truth " ( Swinburne 1997 ).