Disagreement, Anti-Realism about Reasons, and Inference to the Best Explanation

Inference to the Best Explanation

Our initial survey of the problems of induction and explanation is now complete. We have considered some of the forms these problems take, some of the reasons they are so difficult to solve, and some of the weaknesses in various attempts to solve them. In the last chapter, I also attempted something more constructive, by giving what I hope is an improved version of the causal model of explanati...

The Best Explanation: A Defense Scientific Realism

Inference to the Best Explanation (article)

Science depends on judgments of the bearing of evidence on theory. Scientists must judge whether an observation or the result of an experiment supports, disconfirms, or is simply irrelevant to a given hypothesis. Similarly, scientists may judge that, given all the available evidence, a hypothesis ought to be accepted as correct or nearly so, rejected as false, or neither. Occasionally, these ev...

Inference to the Best Explanation is Coherent

In his van Fraassen argues that Inference to the Best Explanation is incoherent in the sense that adopting it as a rule for belief change will make one susceptible to a dynamic Dutch book The present paper argues against this An epistemic strategy is described that allows us to infer to the best explanation free of charge Advocates of the inference rule commonly referred to as Inference to the ...

The Axiom of Choice and Inference to the Best Explanation

An argument often given for adopting the Axiom of Choice as an axiom is that it has a lot of obviously true consequences. This looks like a legitimate application of the practice of Inference to the Best Explanation. However, the standard examples of obvious-truths-following-from-AC all turn out, on closer inspection, to involve a fallacy of equivocation.