Results for 'inference to the best explanation'

972 found
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  1. Inference to the Best Explanation Made Incoherent.Nevin Climenhaga - 2017 - Journal of Philosophy 114 (5):251-273.
    Defenders of Inference to the Best Explanation claim that explanatory factors should play an important role in empirical inference. They disagree, however, about how exactly to formulate this role. In particular, they disagree about whether to formulate IBE as an inference rule for full beliefs or for degrees of belief, as well as how a rule for degrees of belief should relate to Bayesianism. In this essay I advance a new argument against non-Bayesian versions of (...)
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  2. Inference to the Best Explanation and Rejecting the Resurrection.David Kyle Johnson - 2021 - Socio-Historical Examination of Religion and Ministry 3 (1):26-51.
    Christian apologists, like Willian Lane Craig and Stephen T. Davis, argue that belief in Jesus’ resurrection is reasonable because it provides the best explanation of the available evidence. In this article, I refute that thesis. To do so, I lay out how the logic of inference to the best explanation (IBE) operates, including what good explanations must be and do by definition, and then apply IBE to the issue at hand. Multiple explanations—including (what I will (...)
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  3. Inferring to the Best Explanation from Uncertain Evidence.Finnur Dellsén - forthcoming - Philosophy of Science.
    This paper presents a new problem for the inference rule commonly known as Inference to the Best Explanation (IBE). The problem is that uncertainty about parts of one’s evidence may undermine the inferrability of a hypothesis that would provide the best explanation of that evidence, especially in cases where there is an alternative hypothesis that would provide a better explanation of only the more certain pieces of evidence. A potential solution to the problem (...)
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  4. Inference to the Best Explanation - An Overview.Frank Cabrera - 2023 - In Lorenzo Magnani (ed.), Handbook of Abductive Cognition. Springer. pp. 1-34.
    In this article, I will provide a critical overview of the form of non-deductive reasoning commonly known as “Inference to the Best Explanation” (IBE). Roughly speaking, according to IBE, we ought to infer the hypothesis that provides the best explanation of our evidence. In section 2, I survey some contemporary formulations of IBE and highlight some of its putative applications. In section 3, I distinguish IBE from C.S. Peirce’s notion of abduction. After underlining some of (...)
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  5. Inference to the Best Explanation and van Fraassen’s Contextual Theory of Explanation: Reply to Park.Yunus Prasetya - 2021 - Axiomathes 32 (2):355-365.
    Seungbae Park argues that Bas van Fraassen’s rejection of inference to the best explanation (IBE) is problematic for his contextual theory of explanation because van Fraassen uses IBE to support the contextual theory. This paper provides a defense of van Fraassen’s views from Park’s objections. I point out three weaknesses of Park’s objection against van Fraassen. First, van Fraassen may be perfectly content to accept the implications that Park claims to follow from his views. Second, even (...)
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  6. The heuristic conception of inference to the best explanation.Finnur Dellsén - 2017 - Philosophical Studies 175 (7):1745-1766.
    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 (...)
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  7. Inference to the Best Explanation, Naturalism, and Theism.Seungbae Park - 2023 - Implicit Religion 24 (3-4):472-485.
    De Ray argues that relying on inference to the best explanation (IBE) requires the metaphysical belief that most phenomena have explanations. I object that instead the metaphysical belief requires the use of IBE. De Ray uses IBE himself to establish theism that God is the cause of the metaphysical belief, and thus he has the burden of establishing the metaphysical belief independently of using IBE. Naturalism that the world is the cause of the metaphysical belief is preferable (...)
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  8. Inference to the Best Explanation and the Screening-Off Challenge.William Roche & Elliott Sober - 2019 - Teorema: International Journal of Philosophy 38:121-142.
    We argue in Roche and Sober (2013) that explanatoriness is evidentially irrelevant in that Pr(H | O&EXPL) = Pr(H | O), where H is a hypothesis, O is an observation, and EXPL is the proposition that if H and O were true, then H would explain O. This is a “screening-off” thesis. Here we clarify that thesis, reply to criticisms advanced by Lange (2017), consider alternative formulations of Inference to the Best Explanation, discuss a strengthened screening-off thesis, (...)
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  9. Conjunctive Explanations and Inference to the Best Explanation.Jonah Schupbach - 2019 - Teorema: International Journal of Philosophy 38 (3):143-162.
    Inference to the Best Explanation (IBE) advises reasoners to infer exactly one explanation. This uniqueness claim apparently binds us when it comes to “conjunctive explanations,” distinct explanations that are nonetheless explanatorily better together than apart. To confront this worry, explanationists qualify their statement of IBE, stipulating that this inference form only adjudicates between competing hypotheses. However, a closer look into the nature of competition reveals problems for this qualified account. Given the most common explication of (...)
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  10. Which Models of Scientific Explanation Are (In)Compatible with Inference to the Best Explanation?Yunus Prasetya - 2024 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 75 (1):209-232.
    In this article, I explore the compatibility of inference to the best explanation (IBE) with several influential models and accounts of scientific explanation. First, I explore the different conceptions of IBE and limit my discussion to two: the heuristic conception and the objective Bayesian conception. Next, I discuss five models of scientific explanation with regard to each model’s compatibility with IBE. I argue that Kitcher’s unificationist account supports IBE; Railton’s deductive–nomological–probabilistic model, Salmon’s statistical-relevance model, and (...)
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  11. Why inference to the best explanation doesn’t secure empirical grounds for mathematical platonism.Kenneth Boyce - 2018 - Synthese 198 (1):1-13.
    Proponents of the explanatory indispensability argument for mathematical platonism maintain that claims about mathematical entities play an essential explanatory role in some of our best scientific explanations. They infer that the existence of mathematical entities is supported by way of inference to the best explanation from empirical phenomena and therefore that there are the same sort of empirical grounds for believing in mathematical entities as there are for believing in concrete unobservables such as quarks. I object (...)
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  12. Causal Inference as Inference to the Best Explanation.Barry Ward - manuscript
    We argue that a modified version of Mill’s method of agreement can strongly confirm causal generalizations. This mode of causal inference implicates the explanatory virtues of mechanism, analogy, consilience, and simplicity, and we identify it as a species of Inference to the Best Explanation (IBE). Since rational causal inference provides normative guidance, IBE is not a heuristic for Bayesian rationality. We give it an objective Bayesian formalization, one that has no need of principles of indifference (...)
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  13. Inference to the best explanation and mathematical realism.Sorin Ioan Bangu - 2008 - Synthese 160 (1):13-20.
    Arguing for mathematical realism on the basis of Field’s explanationist version of the Quine–Putnam Indispensability argument, Alan Baker has recently claimed to have found an instance of a genuine mathematical explanation of a physical phenomenon. While I agree that Baker presents a very interesting example in which mathematics plays an essential explanatory role, I show that this example, and the argument built upon it, begs the question against the mathematical nominalist.
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  14.  23
    Grounding and Inference to the Best Explanation: A Novel Argument for Theism.Joshua Sijuwade - 2024 - Revista Portuguesa de Filosofia 80 (4):925-70.
    This article presents a novel argument for the existence of God based on the metaphysical concept of grounding. Using the methodology of Inference to the Best Explanation, as conceptualised by Peter Lipton, it evaluates six foundationalist theories: Trope-Theoretic Theism, Monistic Substantivalism, Pure Stuff Theory, Mereological Bundle Theory, Extended Simples Theory, and Priority-Based Structural Realism-for their ability to explain the existence of grounding relations in reality. Through rigorous internal and external assessments focusing on coherence, simplicity, unification, and evidential (...)
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  15. Induction and inference to the best explanation.Ruth Weintraub - 2013 - Philosophical Studies 166 (1):203-216.
    In this paper I adduce a new argument in support of the claim that IBE is an autonomous form of inference, based on a familiar, yet surprisingly, under-discussed, problem for Hume’s theory of induction. I then use some insights thereby gleaned to argue for the claim that induction is really IBE, and draw some normative conclusions.
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  16. The Availability Heuristic and Inference to the Best Explanation.Michael J. Shaffer - 2019 - Logos and Episteme 10 (4):409-432.
    This paper shows how the availability heuristic can be used to justify inference to the best explanation in such a way that van Fraassen's infamous "best of a bad lot" objection can be adroitly avoided. With this end in mind, a dynamic and contextual version of the erotetic model of explanation sufficient to ground this response is presented and defended.
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  17.  79
    The relation of Peirce's abduction to inference to the best explanation.Jiang Yi - 2024 - Chinese Semiotic Studies 20 (3):485-496.
    Peirce’s pragmatic maxim is closely related to his conception of abduction. The acquisition of the actual effect required by the method of scientific reasoning expressed by Peirce’s maxim must be accomplished by resorting to abductive logic. Abductive logic starts from a surprising fact, derives a hypothetical explanation about that fact, and finally arrives at the possibility that the hypothesis is true. This is the process of abductive reasoning, as provided by Peirce, which is distinct from induction and deduction and (...)
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  18. On the pragmatic and epistemic virtues of inference to the best explanation.Richard Pettigrew - 2021 - Synthese 199 (5-6):12407-12438.
    In a series of papers over the past twenty years, and in a new book, Igor Douven has argued that Bayesians are too quick to reject versions of inference to the best explanation that cannot be accommodated within their framework. In this paper, I survey their worries and attempt to answer them using a series of pragmatic and purely epistemic arguments that I take to show that Bayes’ Rule really is the only rational way to respond to (...)
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  19. Inference to the best explanation and the new size elitism1.Katrina Elliott - 2021 - Philosophical Perspectives 35 (1):170-188.
    Philosophical Perspectives, Volume 35, Issue 1, Page 170-188, December 2021.
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  20. Integrating Abduction and Inference to the Best Explanation.Michael J. Shaffer - 2022 - European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy 14 (2):1-18.
    Tomis Kapitan’s work on Peirce’s conception of abduction was instrumental for our coming to see how Peircean abduction both relates to and is importantly different from inference to the best explanation (IBE). However, he ultimately concluded that Peirce’s conception of abduction was a muddle. Despite the deeply problematic nature of Peirce’s theory of abduction in these respects, Kapitan’s work on Peircean abduction offers insight into the nature of abductive inquiry that is importantly relevant to the task of (...)
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  21. Skepticism, Externalism, and Inference to the Best Explanation.Jochen Briesen - 2008 - Abstracta 4 (1):5-26.
    This paper focuses on a combination of the antiskeptical strategies offered by semantic externalism and the inference to the best explanation. I argue that the most difficult problems of the two strategies can be solved, if the strategies are combined: The strategy offered by semantic externalism is successful against standard skeptical brain-in-a-vat arguments. But the strategy is ineffective, if the skeptical argument is referring to the recent-envatment scenario. However, by focusing on the scenario of recent envatment the (...)
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  22. Metaphysical Explanation and the Inference to the Best Explanation (BA thesis).Daniel Coimbra - manuscript
    Inference to the Best Explanation, roughly put, appeals to the explanatory power of a theory or hypothesis (relative to some data set) as constituting epistemic justification for it. Inference to the Best Explanation (henceforth IBE) is a tool widely employed among all reasoners alike, from the empirical sciences to ordinary life. Philosophical discussions do not differ in the usualness of explanatory appeals of this kind during serious argument. Often enough, the appeal is dialectically blocked, (...)
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  23. Abduction − the context of discovery + underdetermination = inference to the best explanation.Mousa Mohammadian - 2021 - Synthese 198 (5):4205-4228.
    The relationship between Peircean abduction and the modern notion of Inference to the Best Explanation is a matter of dispute. Some philosophers, such as Harman :88–95, 1965) and Lipton, claim that abduction and IBE are virtually the same. Others, however, hold that they are quite different :503, 1998; Minnameier in Erkenntnis 60:75–105, 2004) and there is no link between them :419–442, 2009). In this paper, I argue that neither of these views is correct. I show that abduction (...)
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  24. (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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  25. How to Analyse Retrodictive Probabilities in Inference to the Best Explanation.Andrew Holster - manuscript
    IBE ('Inference to the best explanation' or abduction) is a popular and highly plausible theory of how we should judge the evidence for claims of past events based on present evidence. It has been notably developed and supported recently by Meyer following Lipton. I believe this theory is essentially correct. This paper supports IBE from a probability perspective, and argues that the retrodictive probabilities involved in such inferences should be analysed in terms of predictive probabilities and a (...)
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  26. The “Positive Argument” for Constructive Empiricism and Inference to the Best Explanation.Moti Mizrahi - 2018 - Journal for General Philosophy of Science / Zeitschrift für Allgemeine Wissenschaftstheorie 49 (3):461–466.
    In this paper, I argue that the “positive argument” for Constructive Empiricism (CE), according to which CE “makes better sense of science, and of scientific activity, than realism does” (van Fraassen 1980, 73), is an Inference to the Best Explanation (IBE). But constructive empiricists are critical of IBE, and thus they have to be critical of their own “positive argument” for CE. If my argument is sound, then constructive empiricists are in the awkward position of having to (...)
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  27. The Contextual Theory of Explanation and Inference to the Best Explanation.Seungbae Park - 2022 - Axiomathes 32 (2):311-326.
    Van Fraassen explains rejections and asymmetries in science in terms of his contextual theory of explanation in the same way that scientists explain observable phenomena in the world in terms of scientific theories. I object that van Fraassen’s skeptical view regarding inference to the best explanation together with the English view of rationality jointly imply that the contextual theory is not rationally compelling, so van Fraassen and his epistemic colleagues can rationally disbelieve it. Prasetya replies that (...)
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  28. Explanatoriness is evidentially irrelevant, or inference to the best explanation meets Bayesian confirmation theory.W. Roche & E. Sober - 2013 - Analysis 73 (4):659-668.
    In the world of philosophy of science, the dominant theory of confirmation is Bayesian. In the wider philosophical world, the idea of inference to the best explanation exerts a considerable influence. Here we place the two worlds in collision, using Bayesian confirmation theory to argue that explanatoriness is evidentially irrelevant.
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  29. Informational Virtues, Causal Inference, and Inference to the Best Explanation.Barry Ward - manuscript
    Frank Cabrera argues that informational explanatory virtues—specifically, mechanism, precision, and explanatory scope—cannot be confirmational virtues, since hypotheses that possess them must have a lower probability than less virtuous, entailed hypotheses. We argue against Cabrera’s characterization of confirmational virtue and for an alternative on which the informational virtues clearly are confirmational virtues. Our illustration of their confirmational virtuousness appeals to aspects of causal inference, suggesting that causal inference has a role for the explanatory virtues. We briefly explore this possibility, (...)
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  30. Belief is not the issue: A defence of inference to the best explanation.Gregory W. Dawes - 2012 - Ratio 26 (1):62-78.
    Defences of inference to the best explanation (IBE) frequently associate IBE with scientific realism, the idea that it is reasonable to believe our best scientific theories. I argue that this linkage is unfortunate. IBE does not warrant belief, since the fact that a theory is the best available explanation does not show it to be (even probably) true. What IBE does warrant is acceptance: taking a proposition as a premise in theoretical and/or practical reasoning. (...)
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  31. Assessing the Resurrection Hypothesis: Problems with Craig's Inference to the Best Explanation.Robert Greg Cavin & Carlos A. Colombetti - 2019 - European Journal for Philosophy of Religion 11 (2):205-228.
    The hypothesis that God supernaturally raised Jesus from the dead is argued by William Lane Craig to be the best explanation for the empty tomb and postmortem appearances of Jesus because it satisfies seven criteria of adequacy better than rival naturalistic hypotheses. We identify problems with Craig’s criteria-based approach and show, most significantly, that the Resurrection hypothesis fails to fulfill any but the first of his criteria—especially explanatory scope and plausibility.
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  32. Theism and inference to the Best Explanation.Wilko van Holten - 2002 - Ars Disputandi: The Online Journal for Philosophy of Religion 2.
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  33. Inference to the Best Explanation, by Peter Lipton. [REVIEW]Timothy D. Lyons - 2006 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 57 (1):255-258.
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  34. When Inferring to a Conspiracy might be the Best Explanation.Matthew R. X. Dentith - 2016 - Social Epistemology 30 (5-6):572-591.
    Conspiracy theories are typically thought to be examples of irrational beliefs, and thus unlikely to be warranted. However, recent work in Philosophy has challenged the claim that belief in conspiracy theories is irrational, showing that in a range of cases, belief in conspiracy theories is warranted. However, it is still often said that conspiracy theories are unlikely relative to non-conspiratorial explanations which account for the same phenomena. However, such arguments turn out to rest upon how we define what gets counted (...)
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  35. Resolving the Raven Paradox: Simple Random Sampling, Stratified Random Sampling, and Inference to Best Explanation.Barry Ward - 2022 - Philosophy of Science 89 (2):360-377.
    Simple random sampling resolutions of the raven paradox relevantly diverge from scientific practice. We develop a stratified random sampling model, yielding a better fit and apparently rehabilitating simple random sampling as a legitimate idealization. However, neither accommodates a second concern, the objection from potential bias. We develop a third model that crucially invokes causal considerations, yielding a novel resolution that handles both concerns. This approach resembles Inference to the Best Explanation (IBE) and relates the generalization’s confirmation to (...)
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  36. The No‐Miracles Argument for Realism: Inference to an Unacceptable Explanation.Greg Frost-Arnold - 2010 - Philosophy of Science 77 (1):35-58.
    I argue that a certain type of naturalist should not accept a prominent version of the no-miracles argument (NMA). First, scientists (usually) do not accept explanations whose explanans-statements neither generate novel predictions nor unify apparently disparate established claims. Second, scientific realism (as it appears in the NMA) is an explanans that makes no new predictions and fails to unify disparate established claims. Third, many proponents of the NMA explicitly adopt a naturalism that forbids philosophy of science from using any methods (...)
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  37. Abductively Robust Inference.Finnur Dellsén - 2017 - Analysis 77 (1):20-29.
    Inference to the Best Explanation (IBE) is widely criticized for being an unreliable form of ampliative inference – partly because the explanatory hypotheses we have considered at a given time may all be false, and partly because there is an asymmetry between the comparative judgment on which an IBE is based and the absolute verdict that IBE is meant to license. In this paper, I present a further reason to doubt the epistemic merits of IBE and (...)
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  38. Reactionary responses to the Bad Lot Objection.Finnur Dellsén - 2017 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 61:32-40.
    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 (...)
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  39. Explanation and explanationism in science and metaphysics.Juha Saatsi - 2017 - In Matthew H. Slater & Zanja Yudell (eds.), Metaphysics and the Philosophy of Science: New Essays. New York, NY, USA: Oxford University Press.
    This chapter examines the status of inference to the best explanation in naturalistic metaphysics. The methodology of inference to the best explanation in metaphysics is studied from the perspective of contemporary views on scientific explanation and explanatory inferences in the history and philosophy of science. This reveals serious shortcomings in prevalent attempts to vindicate metaphysical "explanationism" by reference to similarities between science and naturalistic metaphysics. This critique is brought out by considering a common (...)
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  40. Presume It Not: True Causes in the Search for the Basis of Heredity.Aaron Novick & Raphael Scholl - 2017 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science (1):axy001.
    Kyle Stanford has recently given substance to the problem of unconceived alternatives, which challenges the reliability of inference to the best explanation (IBE) in remote domains of nature. Conjoined with the view that IBE is the central inferential tool at our disposal in investigating these domains, the problem of unconceived alternatives leads to scientific anti-realism. We argue that, at least within the biological community, scientists are now and have long been aware of the dangers of IBE. We (...)
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  41. The Fate of Explanatory Reasoning in the Age of Big Data.Frank Cabrera - 2021 - Philosophy and Technology 34 (4):645-665.
    In this paper, I critically evaluate several related, provocative claims made by proponents of data-intensive science and “Big Data” which bear on scientific methodology, especially the claim that scientists will soon no longer have any use for familiar concepts like causation and explanation. After introducing the issue, in Section 2, I elaborate on the alleged changes to scientific method that feature prominently in discussions of Big Data. In Section 3, I argue that these methodological claims are in tension with (...)
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  42. The Supremacy of IBE over Bayesian Conditionalization.Seungbae Park - 2023 - Problemos 103:66-76.
    Van Fraassen does not merely perform Bayesian conditionalization on his pragmatic theory of scientific explanation; he uses inference to the best explanation (IBE) to justify it, contrary to what Prasetya thinks. Without first using IBE, we cannot carry out Bayesian conditionalization, contrary to what van Fraassen thinks. The argument from a bad lot, which van Fraassen constructs to criticize IBE, backfires on both the pragmatic theory and Bayesian conditionalization, pace van Fraassen and Prasetya.
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  43. Can there be a Bayesian explanationism? On the prospects of a productive partnership.Frank Cabrera - 2017 - Synthese 194 (4):1245–1272.
    In this paper, I consider the relationship between Inference to the Best Explanation and Bayesianism, both of which are well-known accounts of the nature of scientific inference. In Sect. 2, I give a brief overview of Bayesianism and IBE. In Sect. 3, I argue that IBE in its most prominently defended forms is difficult to reconcile with Bayesianism because not all of the items that feature on popular lists of “explanatory virtues”—by means of which IBE ranks (...)
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  44. Explanatory Rivals and the Ultimate Argument.Finnur Dellsén - 2015 - Theoria 82 (3):217-237.
    Although many aspects of Inference to the Best Explanation have been extensively discussed, very little has so far been said about what it takes for a hypothesis to count as a rival explanatory hypothesis in the context of IBE. The primary aim of this article is to rectify this situation by arguing for a specific account of explanatory rivalry. On this account, explanatory rivals are complete explanations of a given explanandum. When explanatory rivals are conceived of in (...)
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  45. Explanatory Consolidation: From ‘Best’ to ‘Good Enough’.Finnur Dellsén - 2020 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 103 (1):157-177.
    In science and everyday life, we often infer that something is true because it would explain some set of facts better than any other hypothesis we can think of. But what if we have reason to believe that there is a better way to explain these facts that we just haven't thought of? Wouldn't that undermine our warrant for believing the best available explanation? Many philosophers have assumed that we can solve such underconsideration problems by stipulating that a (...)
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  46. Van Fraassen’s Best of a Bad Lot Objection, IBE and Rationality.Michael J. Shaffer - 2021 - Logique Et Analyse 255:267-273.
    Van Fraassen’s (1989) infamous best of a bad lot objection is widely taken to be the most serious problem that afflicts theories of inference to the best explanation (IBE), for it alleges to show that we should not accept the conclusion of any case of such reasoning as it actually proceeds. Moreover, this is supposed to be the case irrespective of the details of the particular criteria used to select best explanations. The best of (...)
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  47.  94
    On van Fraassen, IBE and the essence of the controversy between realism and antirealism in the philosophy of science, again.Alessio Gava - 2024 - Problemata - International Journal of Philosophy 15 (1):22-30.
    This paper represents a counterreply to “A rejoinder to Alessio Gava’s ‘Van Fraassen, a inferência da melhor explicação e a Matrix realista’”, by Minikoski and Rodrigues da Silva, released in Problemata (v. 12, n. 2, 2021). The authors originally published an essay in the same journal, “Van Fraassen and inference to the best explanation” (2016), the object of critic - ‘friendly and gentle’ - in a work of mine that also appeared in Problemata, in 2019. In this (...)
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  48. Does IBE Require a ‘Model’ of Explanation?Frank Cabrera - 2017 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 71 (2):727-750.
    In this article, I consider an important challenge to the popular theory of scientific inference commonly known as ‘inference to the best explanation’, one that has received scant attention.1 1 The problem is that there exists a wide array of rival models of explanation, thus leaving IBE objectionably indeterminate. First, I briefly introduce IBE. Then, I motivate the problem and offer three potential solutions, the most plausible of which is to adopt a kind of pluralism (...)
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  49. On the role of explanatory and systematic power in scientific reasoning.Peter Brössel - 2015 - Synthese 192 (12):3877-3913.
    The paper investigates measures of explanatory power and how to define the inference schema “Inference to the Best Explanation”. It argues that these measures can also be used to quantify the systematic power of a hypothesis and the inference schema “Inference to the Best Systematization” is defined. It demonstrates that systematic power is a fruitful criterion for theory choice and IBS is truth-conducive. It also shows that even radical Bayesians must admit that systemic (...)
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  50. Realism and the limits of explanatory reasoning.Juha Saatsi - 2017 - In The Routledge Handbook of Scientific Realism. New York: Routledge. pp. 200-211.
    This chapter examines issues surrounding inference to the best explanation, its justification, and its role in different arguments for scientific realism, as well as more general issues concerning explanations’ ontological commitments. Defending the reliability of inference to the best explanation has been a central plank in various realist arguments, and realists have drawn various ontological conclusions from the premise that a given scientific explanation best explains some phenomenon. This chapter stresses the importance (...)
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