by From Lars Syll For realists, the name of the scientific game is explaining phenomena, not just saving them. Realists typically invoke ‘inference to the best explanation’ [IBE] … What exactly is the inference in IBE, what are the premises, and what the conclusion? The intellectual ancestor of IBE is Peirce’s abduction: The surprising fact, C, is observed. But if A were true, C would be a matter of course. Hence, … A is true. Here the second premise is a fancy way of saying “A explains C”. Notice that the explanatory hypothesis A figures in this second premise as well as in the conclusion. The argument as a whole does not generate the explanans out of the explanandum. Rather, it seeks to justify the explanatory hypothesis … Abduction is deductively invalid … [but] there is a way to
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from Lars Syll
For realists, the name of the scientific game is explaining phenomena, not just saving them. Realists typically invoke ‘inference to the best explanation’ [IBE] …
What exactly is the inference in IBE, what are the premises, and what the conclusion?
The intellectual ancestor of IBE is Peirce’s abduction:
The surprising fact, C, is observed.
But if A were true, C would be a matter of course.
Hence, … A is true.Here the second premise is a fancy way of saying “A explains C”. Notice that the explanatory hypothesis A figures in this second premise as well as in the conclusion. The argument as a whole does not generate the explanans out of the explanandum. Rather, it seeks to justify the explanatory hypothesis …
Abduction is deductively invalid … [but] there is a way to rescue abduction and IBE … What results, with the missing premise spelled out, is:
It is reasonable to believe that the best available explanation of any fact is true.
F is a fact.
Hypothesis H explains F.
No available competing hypothesis explains F as well as H does.
Therefore, it is reasonable to believe that H is true.This scheme is valid and instances of it might well be sound. Inferences of this kind are employed in the common affairs of life, in detective stories, and in the sciences …
People object that the best available explanation might be false. Quite so – and so what? It goes without saying that any explanation might be false, in the sense that it is not necessarily true. It is absurd to suppose that the only things we can reasonably believe are necessary truths …
People object that being the best available explanation of a fact does not prove something to be true or even probable. Quite so – and again, so what? The explanationist principle – “It is reasonable to believe that the best available explanation of any fact is true” – means that it is reasonable to believe or think true things that have not been shown to be true or probable, more likely true than not.