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Inference to the loveliest explanation

Synthese 103 (2):251 - 277 (1995)

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  1. How the laws of physics lie.Nancy Cartwright - 1983 - New York: Oxford University Press.
    In this sequence of philosophical essays about natural science, the author argues that fundamental explanatory laws, the deepest and most admired successes of modern physics, do not in fact describe regularities that exist in nature. Cartwright draws from many real-life examples to propound a novel distinction: that theoretical entities, and the complex and localized laws that describe them, can be interpreted realistically, but the simple unifying laws of basic theory cannot.
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  • A System of Logic.John Stuart Mill - 1829/2002 - Longman.
    Reprint of the original, first published in 1869.
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  • Inference to the Best Explanation.Peter Lipton - 1991 - London and New York: Routledge.
    How do we go about weighing evidence, testing hypotheses, and making inferences? According to the model of _Inference to the Best Explanation_, we work out what to infer from the evidence by thinking about what would actually explain that evidence, and we take the ability of a hypothesis to explain the evidence as a sign that the hypothesis is correct. In _Inference to the Best Explanation_, Peter Lipton gives this important and influential idea the development and assessment it deserves. The (...)
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  • Patterns of discovery.Norwood Russell Hanson - 1958 - Cambridge [Eng.]: University Press.
    In this 1958 book, Professor Hanson turns to an equally important but comparatively neglected subject, the philosophical aspects of research and discovery.
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  • The Scientific Image.William Demopoulos & Bas C. van Fraassen - 1982 - Philosophical Review 91 (4):603.
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  • Philosophy of natural science.Carl Gustav Hempel - 1966 - Englewood Cliffs, N.J.,: Prentice-Hall.
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  • Explanation and scientific understanding.Michael Friedman - 1974 - Journal of Philosophy 71 (1):5-19.
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  • Explanatory unification.Philip Kitcher - 1981 - Philosophy of Science 48 (4):507-531.
    The official model of explanation proposed by the logical empiricists, the covering law model, is subject to familiar objections. The goal of the present paper is to explore an unofficial view of explanation which logical empiricists have sometimes suggested, the view of explanation as unification. I try to show that this view can be developed so as to provide insight into major episodes in the history of science, and that it can overcome some of the most serious difficulties besetting the (...)
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  • The inference to the best explanation.Gilbert H. Harman - 1965 - Philosophical Review 74 (1):88-95.
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  • Explanatory unification and the causal structure of the world.Philip Kitcher - 1962 - In Philip Kitcher & Wesley C. Salmon (eds.), Scientific Explanation. Univ of Minnesota Pr. pp. 410-505.
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  • Patterns of Discovery.Norwood R. Hanson, A. D. Ritchie & Henryk Mehlberg - 1960 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 10 (40):346-349.
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  • (1 other version)Four Decades of Scientific Explanation.Wesley C. Salmon & Anne Fagot-Largeault - 1989 - History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences 16 (2):355.
    As Aristotle stated, scientific explanation is based on deductive argument--yet, Wesley C. Salmon points out, not all deductive arguments are qualified explanations. The validity of the explanation must itself be examined. _Four Decades of Scientific Explanation_ provides a comprehensive account of the developments in scientific explanation that transpired in the last four decades of the twentieth century. It continues to stand as the most comprehensive treatment of the writings on the subject during these years. Building on the historic 1948 essay (...)
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  • Collected Papers.Charles Sanders Peirce - 1931 - Cambridge, MA, USA: Harvard University Press.
    v. 1-2. Principles of philosophy and Elements of logic.--v. 3-4. Exact logic (published papers) and The simplest mathematics.--v. 5-6. Pragmatism and pragmaticism and Scientific metaphysics.--v. 7. Science and philosophy.--v. 8. Reviews, correspondence and bibliography.
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  • (1 other version)Cartesian Skepticism and Inference to the Best Explanation.Jonathan Vogel - 1990 - Journal of Philosophy 87 (11):658-666.
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  • The best explanation: Criteria for theory choice.Paul R. Thagard - 1978 - Journal of Philosophy 75 (2):76-92.
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  • (1 other version)4 decades of scientific explanation.Wesley C. Salmon - 1989 - Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science 13:3-219.
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  • Minnesota studies in the philosophy of science Vol. XIII: Scientific Explanation.Philip Kitcher & Wesley C. Salmon (eds.) - 1989 - MINNEAPOLIS: UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA PRESS.
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  • Explanation, conjunction, and unification.Philip Kitcher - 1976 - Journal of Philosophy 73 (8):207-212.
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  • (1 other version)Cartesian skepticism and the inference to the best explanation.Jonathan Vogel - 1998 - In Linda Alcoff (ed.), Epistemology: the big questions. Malden, Mass.: Blackwell. pp. 352--9.
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  • Putting inference to the best explanation in its place.Timothy Day & Harold Kincaid - 1994 - Synthese 98 (2):271-295.
    This paper discusses the nature and the status of inference to the best explanation. We outline the foundational role given IBE by its defenders and the arguments of critics who deny it any place at all ; argue that, on the two main conceptions of explanation, IBE cannot be a foundational inference rule ; sketch an account of IBE that makes it contextual and dependent on substantive empirical assumptions, much as simplicity seems to be ; show how that account avoids (...)
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  • Explanatory unification and the problem of asymmetry.Eric Barnes - 1992 - Philosophy of Science 59 (4):558-571.
    Philip Kitcher has proposed a theory of explanation based on the notion of unification. Despite the genuine interest and power of the theory, I argue here that the theory suffers from a fatal deficiency: It is intrinsically unable to account for the asymmetric structure of explanation, and thus ultimately falls prey to a problem similar to the one which beset Hempel's D-N model. I conclude that Kitcher is wrong to claim that one can settle the issue of an argument's explanatory (...)
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  • The inference to the best explanation.Yemima Ben-Menahem - 1990 - Erkenntnis 33 (3):319-44.
    In a situation in which several explanations compete, is the one that is better qua explanation also the one we should regard as the more likely to be true? Realists usually answer in the affirmative. They then go on to argue that since realism provides the best explanation for the success of science, realism can be inferred to. Nonrealists, on the other hand, answer the above question in the negative, thereby renouncing the inference to realism. In this paper I separate (...)
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  • Scientific Explanation: Causation and Unification.Wesley C. Salmon - 1990 - Critica 22 (66):3-23.
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  • Readings in the philosophy of science.Baruch A. Brody - 1970 - Englewood Cliffs, N.J.,: Prentice-Hall.
    New edition (previously 1971) of an anthology for an undergraduate course. Comprises four parts: theories, explanation and causality, confirmation of scientific hypotheses, selected problems of particular sciences. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR.
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  • Explanatory Unification and Scientific Understanding.Eric Barnes - 1992 - PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association 1992:3 - 12.
    The theory of explanatory unification was first proposed by Friedman (1974) and developed by Kitcher (1981, 1989). The primary motivation for this theory, it seems to me, is the argument that this account of explanation is the only account that correctly describes the genesis of scientific understanding. Despite the apparent plausibility of Friedman's argument to this effect, however, I argue here that the unificationist thesis of understanding is false. The theory of explanatory unification as articulated by Friedman and Kitcher thus (...)
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  • (1 other version)Inference to the best explanation: Or, who won the Mill-Whewell debate?Peter Achinstein - 1992 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 23 (2):349-364.
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  • Why P rather than q? The curiosities of fact and foil.Eric Barnes - 1994 - Philosophical Studies 73 (1):35 - 53.
    In this paper I develop a theory of contrastive why questions that establishes under what conditions it is sensible to ask "why p rather than q?". p and q must be outcomes of a single type of causal process.
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  • Explaining Brute Facts.Eric Barnes - 1994 - PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association 1994:61-68.
    I aim to show that one way of testing the mettle of a theory of scientific explanation is to inquire what that theory entails about the status of brute facts. Here I consider the nature of brute facts, and survey several contemporary accounts of explanation vis a vis this subject. One problem with these accounts is that they seem to entail that brute facts represent a gap in scientific understanding. I argue that brute facts are non-mysterious and indeed are even (...)
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  • Science and philosophy: past and present.Derek Gjertsen - 1989 - New York, N.Y., USA: Viking Penguin.
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  • In What Way Is Abductive Inference Creative?Tomis Kapitan - 1990 - Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 26 (4):499 - 512.
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  • Confirmation and explanation.B. A. Brody - 1968 - Journal of Philosophy 65 (10):282-299.
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  • Forms of Explanations: Rethinking the Questions in Social Theory. [REVIEW]Richard Hudelson - 1981 - Philosophical Review 93 (1):116-118.
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  • A Real Contrast.Peter Lipton - 1987 - Analysis 47 (4):207 - 208.
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  • Morality as the Best Explanation.Lowell Kleiman - 1989 - American Philosophical Quarterly 26 (2):161 - 167.
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  • Inference to the best explanation: Van Fraassen and the case of the 'fifth force'.Marin Marinov - 1988 - International Studies in the Philosophy of Science 3 (1):35 – 50.
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  • Abductive inferences.Domenico Costantini - 1987 - Erkenntnis 26 (3):409 - 422.
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  • (1 other version)Inference to the best explanation: Or, who won the Mill-Whewell debate?: Peter Lipton (London: Routledge, 1991), x+ 194 pp. ISBN 0-415-05886-4 Cloth£ 35.00. [REVIEW]Peter Achinstein - 1991 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 23 (2):349-364.
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  • Inference to the Best Explanation. Peter Lipton. [REVIEW]Jesse Hobbs - 1993 - Philosophy of Science 60 (4):679-680.
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