I develop a probabilistic account of coherence, and argue that at least in certain respects it is preferable to (at least some of) the main extant probabilistic accounts of coherence: (i) Igor Douven and Wouter Meijs’s account, (ii) Branden Fitelson’s account, (iii) Erik Olsson’s account, and (iv) Tomoji Shogenji’s account. Further, I relate the account to an important, but little discussed, problem for standard varieties of coherentism, viz., the “Problem of Justified Inconsistent Beliefs.”.

This paper argues that there is an important connection between Inference to the Best Explanation and Bayesianism, in the medical context of the interplay between mechanisms and population studies. It is argued that the criteria for evaluating mechanistic evidence can be used in Inference to the Best Explanation and such use thereby increases the resilience of probabilities in a Bayesian framework. This point grows out of the emerging literature on evidence-based medicine and naturally strengthens McCain and Poston's proposal that explanatory (...) information is evidentially relevant. (shrink)