In philosophy, a razor is a principle or rule of thumb that allows one to eliminate ("shave off") unlikely explanations for a phenomenon. Razors include: * Occam's razor: When faced with competing hypotheses, select the one that makes the fewest assumptions. Do not multiply entities without necessity. * Grice's razor: As a principle of parsimony, conversational implications are to be preferred over semantic context for linguistic explanations. * Hanlon's razor: Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity. * Hume's razor: "If the cause, assigned for any effect, be not sufficient to produce it, we must either reject that cause, or add to it such qualities as will give it a just proportion to the effect." * Hitchens's razor: "What can be asserted witho