Ockham’s guiding principles

According to Boehner:

General Principle:

1.) We are not allowed to affirm a statement to be true or maintain that a thing exists unless we are forced to do so either by self-evidence, revelation, experience, or a logical deduction therefrom.

This is, according to Boehner, the real sense of “Ockham’s Razor”

Theological/ Philosophical maxims: 

2.) All things not involving contradiction are possible to God. 

3.) Whatever God produces by secondary causes he can produce and conserve immediately without their aid. 

Or more generally:

3b) God can produce every reality apart from every other reality. 

Notice that, from (1) There can be no inference from one thing to another without its being necessary, but from (3) there is no necessity that any created effect follow from a created cause. The axioms thus combine to form an argument against having to posit any causal order in nature – perhaps even in logic itself, though Ockham would certainly want to deny this.