An influential suggestion about the relationship between Bayesianism and inference to the best explanation holds that IBE functions as a heuristic to approximate Bayesian reasoning. While this view promises to unify Bayesianism and IBE in a very attractive manner, important elements of the view have not yet been spelled out in detail. I present and argue for a heuristic conception of IBE on which IBE serves primarily to locate the most probable available explanatory hypothesis to serve as a working hypothesis (...) in an agent’s further investigations. Along the way, I criticize what I consider to be an overly ambitious conception of the heuristic role of IBE, according to which IBE serves as a guide to absolute probability values. My own conception, by contrast, requires only that IBE can function as a guide to the comparative probability values of available hypotheses. This is shown to be a much more realistic role for IBE given the nature and limitations of the explanatory considerations with which IBE operates. (shrink)

Facts about explanation are often taken as a guide to facts about metaphysics. Such inferences from explanation to metaphysics typically rely on two elements: explanatory realism, the view that it is a characteristic and necessary aspect of explanation to give information about metaphysical structure, and a backing model of explanation, according to which explanations are backed by supporting relations, such as causation. Combining explanatory realism with a backing model permits conclusions about metaphysics to follow straightforwardly from facts about explanation, and (...) those who endorse backing models of explanation have typically endorsed explanatory realism. In light of recent critiques of explanatory realism, in this paper I explore the prospects for a backing model without explanatory realism. I articulate a non-realist backing model and argue that this model can satisfy most of the motivations for a realist backing model, and that it can also play a central and illuminating role in the practice of metaphysics. (shrink)

As it is standardly conceived, Inference to the Best Explanation (IBE) is a form of ampliative inference in which one infers a hypothesis because it provides a better potential explanation of one’s evidence than any other available, competing explanatory hypothesis. Bas van Fraassen famously objected to IBE thus formulated that we may have no reason to think that any of the available, competing explanatory hypotheses are true. While revisionary responses to the Bad Lot Objection concede that IBE needs to be (...) reformulated in light of this problem, reactionary responses argue that the Bad Lot Objection is fallacious, incoherent, or misguided. This paper shows that the most influential reactionary responses to the Bad Lot Objection do nothing to undermine the original objection. This strongly suggests that proponents of IBE should focus their efforts on revisionary responses, i.e. on finding a more sophisticated characterization of IBE for which the Bad Lot Objection loses its bite. (shrink)

ABSTRACT The view that science is typically a cumulative, progressive process, as suggested by some historians of science and some scientific realists, is undermined both by history and by evolutionary considerations about the nature of science. The attempts to use evolutionary biology to portray scientific development as continuous are based on unfortunate analogies to the evolu tion of life. A proper application of evolutionary biology, in combination with neuroscience, defeats the case for the realism in question and leads to the (...) realization that science is not only open to radical transformation, as history indicates, but that it should be so. Non-evolutionary approaches for the historical continuity of science, such as Lakatos', do not fare much better. As I will argue, science is a radical form of knowledge. (shrink)