Inference to the Best Explanation

The motivation behind the collection of papers presented in this THEORIA forum on Abductive reasoning is my book Abductive Reasoning: Logical Investigations into the Processes of Discovery and Explanation. These contributions raise fundamental questions. One of them concerns the conjectural character of abduction. The choice of a logical framework for abduction is also discussed in detail, both its inferential aspect and search strategies. Abduction is also analyzed as inference to the best explanation, as well as a process of epistemic change, (...) both of which chal-lenge the argument-like format of abduction. Finally, the psychological question of whether humans reason abduc-tively according to the models proposed is also addressed. I offer a brief summary of my book and then comment on and respond to several challenges that were posed to my work by the contributors to this issue. (shrink)

Tight correlations between mental states and brain states have been observed time and again within the ethology of biologically ingrained animal behaviors, the comparative psychology of animal minds, the evolutionary psychology of mental adaptations, the behavioral genetics of inherited mental traits, the developmental psychology of the maturing mind, the psychopharmacology of mind-altering substances, and cognitive neuroscience more generally. They imply that our mental lives are only made possible because of brain activity—that having a functioning brain is a necessary condition for (...) having conscious experiences. This mind-brain dependence thesis yields predictions that have been spectacularly confirmed by the evidence, whereas its antithesis has been massively disconfirmed—at least so long as it is not formulated so vaguely as to yield no specific empirical consequences at all. Dualists are thus forced to make a difficult choice: either retain a belief in personal survival at the expense of ignoring or dismissing the implications of our best evidence, or accept those implications at the expense of acknowledging that the prospects for personal survival are extremely dim. -/- 1. Introduction: A Probabilistic Argument -- 2. Scientific Reasoning I: Mill’s Methods and Modern Epidemiological Principles - 2.1 When Correlation Indicates Causation -- 3. Scientific Reasoning II: Inference to the Best Explanation, Testability, and Predictive Success - 3.1 Parsimony: Tempering Explanations to Minimize False Beliefs - 3.2 Plausibility: Harmonizing Explanations with Background Knowledge - 3.3 Testability and Confirmation: Checking Hypotheses Against the Data - 3.3.1 Confirmation of the Dependence Thesis from Failed Attempts to Falsify It - 3.3.2 Confirmation of the Dependence Thesis from the Falsification of its Rival - 3.4 Scope: Bringing Disparate Facts Together - 3.5 Fertility: Generating New Lines of Research - 3.6 Overview -- 4. Scientific Reasoning III: Bayesian and Information-Theoretic Approaches - 4.1 Bayesian Probability - 4.2 Bayesian Confirmation Theory - 4.3 A Bayesian Approach to the Dependence and Independence Theses - 4.4 The Probabilistic Price of Ad Hoc Accommodation: Simplicity vs. Goodness of Fit - 4.4.1 Simplicity Reflected in the Likelihood - 4.4.2 Simplicity Reflected in the Prior Probability - 4.5 Prediction vs. Accommodation - 4.6 Bayesian Analysis of the Dependence and Independence Theses -- 5. The Dualist’s Dilemma: Reject Science, or Reject Personal Survival? - 5.1 What’s Left for a Soul to Do? -- 6. Conclusion. (shrink)

This essay addresses the role which pre-theoretical moral judgments about particular cases play in arguing for fundamental moral principles. I argue that inference to the best explanation of the objects of pre-theoretical moral beliefs is a valid, albeit limited, method of justification in ethics. In contrast to some contemporary accounts of explanation in moral theory, I present moral explanation as an analogue, not an instance, of scientific explanation. Having made this distinction, I specify how this form of moral reasoning--which I (...) call ethical abduction for want of a better name--mirrors scientific explanation, exploiting the strengths of that methodology without confusing descriptive enterprises with normative ones. In addressing objections to the method and providing criteria for "best" explanation, I offer an account of the theoretical structure of morality and moral reasoning. (shrink)

Philosophy and Phenomenological Research (forthcoming).

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 power is an integral component of Bayesian (...) reasoning. Finally, the paper puts the achieved results in perspective with van Fraassen’s famous criticism of IBE. (shrink)

In this paper, I consider an important challenge to the popular theory of scientific inference commonly known as “Inference to the Best Explanation” (IBE), one which has received scant attention. 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 about the rival models of (...) explanation. However, I argue that i) how ranking explanations on this pluralistic account of IBE remains obscure and ii) pluralism leads to contradictory results. In light of these objections, I attempt to dissolve the problem by showing why IBE does not require a “model” of explanation and by giving an account of what explanation consists in within the context of IBE. (shrink)

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)

Abduction is or subsumes a process of inference. It entertains possible hypotheses and it chooses hypotheses for further scrutiny. There is a large literature on various aspects of non-symbolic, subconscious abduction. There is also a very active research community working on the symbolic (logical) characterisation of abduction, which typically treats it as a form of hypothetico-deductive reasoning. In this paper we start to bridge the gap between the symbolic and sub-symbolic approaches to abduction. We are interested in benefiting from developments (...) made by each community. In particular, we are interested in the ability of non-symbolic systems (neural networks) to learn from experience using efficient algorithms and to perform massively parallel computations of alternative abductive explanations. At the same time, we would like to benefit from the rigour and semantic clarity of symbolic logic. We present two approaches to dealing with abduction in neural networks. One of them uses Connectionist Modal Logic and a translation of Horn clauses into modal clauses to come up with a neural network ensemble that computes abductive explanations in a top-down fashion. The other combines neural-symbolic systems and abductive logic programming and proposes a neural architecture which performs a more systematic, bottom-up computation of alternative abductive explanations. Both approaches employ standard neural network architectures which are already known to be highly effective in practical learning applications. Differently from previous work in the area, our aim is to promote the integration of reasoning and learning in a way that the neural network provides the machinery for cognitive computation, inductive learning and hypothetical reasoning, while logic provides the rigour and explanation capability to the systems, facilitating the interaction with the outside world. Although it is left as future work to determine whether the structure of one of the proposed approaches is more amenable to learning than the other, we hope to have contributed to the development of the area by approaching it from the perspective of symbolic and sub-symbolic integration. (shrink)

This remarkably clear and comprehensive account of empirical knowledge will be valuable to all students of epistemology and philosophy. The author begins from an explanationist analysis of knowing—a belief counts as knowledge if, and only if, its truth enters into the best explanation for its being held. Defending common sense and scientific realism within the explanationist framework, Alan Goldman provides a new foundational approach to justification. The view that emerges is broadly empiricist, counteracting the recently dominant trend that rejects that (...) framework entirely. Topics treated include the Gettier problem, the nature of explanation and inductive inference, the justification of foundations for knowledge in terms of inference to the best explanation, the possibility of realist interpretations of contemporary science, reference, and the relations between empirical psychology and epistemology. Professor Goldman defends the need for a foundational theory of justification and presents a version that refutes standard criticisms of that doctrine. His defense of realism takes into account contemporary advances in semantics and philosophy of science. It attempts to clarify the kinds of skeptical argument the philosopher must take seriously, without succumbing to them. While recent epistemology has tended to dismiss the traditional foundational approach, it has not provided a suitable alternative. Goldman breaks new ground by adapting that approach within his explanationist, inductive theory. (shrink)

Several friends of inference to best explanation have claimed in recent work that explanatory virtues, such as consilience, simplicity and increased precision, play an important heuristic role in assigning probabilities to available hypotheses and that it is this role that justifies continued efforts to investigate the scope, nature and epistemic value of the inference rule. In this paper I argue that understanding explanatory virtues as a guide to probability assignments creates a critical dilemma for advocates of IBE that has not (...) previously been made sufficiently explicit and which has significant implications for the prospects of the rule. I conclude that the viability of IBE requires that explanatory virtues be related to a non - probabilistic conception of success. (shrink)

Inference to the best explanation has at times appeared almost indistinguishable from a rule that recommends simply that we should infer the hypothesis which is most plausible given available evidence. In this paper I argue that avoiding this collapse requires the identification of peculiarly explanatory virtues and consider Woodward's concept of invariance as an example of such a virtue. An additional benefit of augmenting IBE with Woodward's model of causal explanation is also suggested.

Evolutionary psychology is a science in the making, working toward the goal of showing how psychological adaptation underlies much human behavior. The knee-jerk reaction that sociobiology is unscientific because it tells just-so stories has become a common charge against evolutionary psychology as well. My main positive thesis is that inference to the best explanation is a proper method for evolutionary analyses, and it supplies a new perspective on the issues raised in Schlinger's (1996) just-so story critique. My main negative thesis (...) is that, like many nonevolutionist critics, Schlinger's objections arise from misunderstandings of the evolutionary approach.Evolutionary psychology has progressed beyond telling just-so stories. It has found a host of ingenious special techniques to test hypotheses about the adaptive significance and proximate mechanisms of behavior. Naturalistic data using the comparative method combined with controlled tests using statistical analyses of data provide good evidence for a variety of hypotheses about behavioral control mechanisms — whether in nonhumans or in humans. For instance, the work of Gangestad and Thornhill on evolved mate preferences and fluctuating asymmetry of body type (FA) is a model of success. As the quantity and quality of evidence increase, we are entitled not just to regard such evolutionary hypotheses as preferable, but also as true. Such studies combine to show that the best explanation of the psychic unity of humankind — common patterns across societies, history, and cultures exposed by evolutionists — is the gendered, adapted, evolved species-typical design of the mind. (shrink)

Important revisions and additions to the contemporary objectives of acceptance rules result from construing a theory of warranted inductive inference to presuppose an account of adequate scientific explanations. We conceive the objects of acceptance rules to be the best of competing scientific explanations. Our primary interest is to show how to construct an analysis of competing explanations. Hence our specific investigation concerns the interrelations between the criteria of adequacy for scientific explanations and the definitions of the modes of competition between (...) explanations. (shrink)

The book answers long-standing questions on scientific modeling and inference across multiple perspectives and disciplines, including logic, mathematics, physics and medicine. The different chapters cover a variety of issues, such as the role models play in scientific practice; the way science shapes our concept of models; ways of modeling the pursuit of scientific knowledge; the relationship between our concept of models and our concept of science. The book also discusses models and scientific explanations; models in the semantic view of theories; (...) the applicability of mathematical models to the real world and their effectiveness; the links between models and inferences; and models as a means for acquiring new knowledge. It analyzes different examples of models in physics, biology, mathematics and engineering. Written for researchers and graduate students, it provides a cross-disciplinary reference guide to the notion and the use of models and inferences in science. (shrink)

Van Fraassen's argument from the "bad lot" challenges realist interpretations of inference to the best explanation. In this paper I begin by discussing the replies suggested by S. Psillos and P. Lipton. I do not find them convincing. However, I think that van Fraassen's argument is flawed. First of all, it is a non sequitur. Secondly, I think that the real target for the scientific realist is the underlying assumption that epistemic justification results from a comparative assessment among rival explanations. (...) I argue that justification for believing an explanation does not depend on comparison, but on the extent that criteria of explanatory goodness are fulfilled. Therefore, in addition to offering more or less intuitive IBE-tailored arguments, realists fond of IBE should have to analyze the implicit standards of explanatory goodness. In the last section I distinguish between contextual and transcontextual criteria concerning explanatory goodness. Concerning the latter, I focus on consilience, simplicity, analogy and conservatism. \\\ Un argumento empleado por van Fraassen contra las interpretaciones realistas de la inferencia a la mejor explicación es el argumento "del mal lote". El articulo comienza discutiendo las réplicas de S. Psillos y P. Lipton. Aunque ninguna me parece convincente, pienso que el argumento de van Fraassen no resiste un examen cuidadoso. En primer lugar, la conclusión antirrealista que él extrae es un non sequitur. Además, el argumento parte de un supuesto muy cuestionable, a saber, que la justificación de una explicacion es resultado de una comparacion con sus rivales. En mi opinion, la justificación no depende de esto, sino del grado en que la explicacion satisface ciertos criterios de bondad explicativa, independientemente de que haya o no comparación. En consecuencia, la socorrida estrategia de defender el realismo cientifico basándose en la IBE pasa necesariamente por un análisis de los criterios implicitos de bondad explicativa. Mi propuesta es distinguir entre criterios contextuales y transcontextuales. En los últimos incluyo: la diversidad de la evidencia explicada, la simplicidad, la analogia y el conservadurismo. (shrink)

This paper describes an abductive process model of anomalous data integration. The model makes use of the entrenchment of the current explanation and the probability of alternative explanations. It is hypothesised that increasing confirmation of the anom-aly itself increases the probability of alternative explanations. In an experimental study we found that both the entrenchment of an existing explanation and confirmation of the anomaly clearly influence how people resolve anomalous data. These results are in agreement with the predic-tions of the model.

This volume gathers together essays from some of Hintikka’s colleagues and former students exploring his influence on their work and pursuing some of the insights that we have found in his work. This book includes a comprehensive overview of Hintikka’s philosophy by Dan Kolak and John Symons and an annotated bibliography of Hintikka’s work. Table of Contents: Foreword; Daniel Kolak and John Symons. Hintikka on Epistemological Axiomatizations; Vincent F. Hendricks. Hintikka on the Problem with the Problem of Transworld Identity; Troy (...) Catterson. What is Epistemic Discourse About? Radu J. Bogdan. Interrogative Logic and the Economic Theory of Information; Raymond Dacey. A Metalogical Critique of Wittgensteinian ‘Phenomenology’; William Boos. Theoretical Commensurability By Correspondence Relations: When Empirical Success Implies Theoretical Reference; Gerhard Schurz. What is Abduction?: An Assessment of Jaakko Hintikka's Conception; James H. Fetzer. The dialogic of just being different: Hintikka's new approach to the notion of episteme and its impact on 'second generation' dialogics; Shahid Rahman. Probabilistic Features in Logic Games; Johan F. A. K. van Benthem. On Some Logical Properties of ‘Is True’; Jan Wolenski. The Results are in: The Scope and Import of Hintikka's Philosophy; Daniel Kolak and John Symons. Annotated Bibliography of Jaakko Hintikka. Index. (shrink)

It is often said that (M) "mind is an emergent property of matter." M is ambiguous, the reason being that, for all x and y, "x is an emergent property of y" has two distinct and mutually opposed meanings, namely: (i) x is a product of y (in the sense in which a chair is the product of the activity of a furniture-maker); and (ii) y is either identical or constitutive of x, but, relative to the information available at a (...) given time t, x-statements are not analytic consequences of y-statements. If M is taken to mean that matter produces mind, then M is false, since biological activity obviously mediates mental activity and is therefore either identical with it or constitutive of it. If M is taken to mean that statements about mind are not analytic consequences of statements about matter, then M, though true with respect to the ontological relationship with between physical objects and the mental objects mediated thereby, says nothing about how statements about the physical bear on statements about the mental. This is a consequence of the fact that it is truths that are explained, not objects. (It is truths about trees, and not the tree per se, that are explained: one explains why the tree is tall, why the tree can't survive if the drought continues, etc.) So supposing that M is taken to mean that, relative to the information available at a given time, psychological truths are not derivable from non-psychological truths, then M is to the effect that, at that time, it isn't known how, or even whether, truths of the first kind bear on those of the second, in which case M is to the effect that it isn't known how to explain the mental in terms of the physical. Thus, depending on how it is disambiguated, M is either false or devoid of content. Further, as Hempel (1965) made clear, if M is taken to mean that, at a given time, statements about the mental cannot be deduced from statements about the physical, then it is ipso facto being left open whether, at some later time, relative to a more comprehensive data-set, statements about the mental are deducible from statements about the physical. A consequence of this, as Hempel stated, is that, if M is disambiguated in the second way, it is not to the effect that statements about the mental are incapable of being deduced from statements about the physical, and is instead to the effect that, at the time M is affirmed, it simply isn't known whether, or therefore how, such a deduction can be carried. And this establishes---what has already been established on independent grounds---that M is devoid of content if interpreted as a thesis concerning the way in which statements about the physical bear on---or, a fortiori, are explanatory of---statements about the mental. Thus, the statement that "mind is an emergent property of matter" is vacuous, so far as it isn't false. (shrink)

Psillos has recently argued that van Fraassen’s arguments against abduction fail. Moreover, he claimed that, if successful, these arguments would equally undermine van Fraassen’s own constructive empiricism, for, Psillos thinks, it is only by appeal to abduction that constructive empiricism can be saved from issuing in a bald scepticism. We show that Psillos’ criticisms are misguided, and that they are mostly based on misinterpretations of van Fraassen’s arguments. Furthermore, we argue that Psillos’ arguments for his claim that constructive empiricism itself (...) needs abduction point up to his failure to recognize the importance of van Fraassen’s broader epistemology for constructive empiricism. Towards the end of our paper we discuss the suspected relationship between constructive empiricism and scepticism in the light of this broader epistemology, and from a somewhat more general perspective. (shrink)

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 (...) second edition has been substantially enlarged and reworked, with a new chapter on the relationship between explanation and Bayesianism, and an extension and defence of the account of contrastive explanation. It also includes an expanded defence of the claims that our inferences really are guided by diverse explanatory considerations, and that this pattern of inference can take us towards the truth. This edition of _Inference to the Best Explanation_ has also been updated throughout and includes a new bibliography. (shrink)

Second, there is a form of ampliative inference that has come to be called ‘inference to the best explanation,’ or more briefly ‘explanatory inference.’ Roughly: From the fact that a certain hypothesis would explain the data at hand better than any other available hypothesis, we infer with some degree of confidence that that leading hypothesis is correct. There is no question but that this inference is often performed. Arguably, every human being performs it many times in a day, perhaps without (...) letup. (shrink)

This article generalizes the explanationist account of inference to the best explanation. It draws a clear distinction between IBE and abduction and presents abduction as the first step of IBE. The second step amounts to the evaluation of explanatory power, which consist in the degree of explanatory virtues that a hypothesis exhibits. Moreover, even though coherence is the most often cited explanatory virtue, on pain of circularity, it should not be treated as one of the explanatory virtues. Rather, coherence should (...) be equated with explanatory power and considered to be derivable from the other explanatory virtues: unification, explanatory depth and simplicity. (shrink)

The article explicates psychological and ontological aspects of Inference to the Best Explanation . IBE is a psychological theory, because cognitive science studies support IBE as descriptively true and psychologically adequate theory, i.e., people perceive best explanations as true and follow the rule of IBE in their reasoning. Moreover, different features of IBE imply that conclusions of IBE can be true only in a world with a very particular ontological constitution. Realism about the external world, the uniformity of nature, the (...) truth of background knowledge and the truth-conduciveness of explanatory virtues are necessary and sufficient for IBE to be truth-conducive. Therefore, IBE is an epistemic theory only because at the same time it is committed to a particular ontology. Keywords: inference to the best explanation, abduction, psychology, ontology, explanatory virtues. (shrink)

Most scientists and philosophers of science recognize that, when it comes to accepting and rejecting theories in science, considerations that have to do with simplicity, unity, symmetry, elegance, beauty or explanatory power have an important role to play, in addition to empirical considerations. Until recently, however, no one has been able to give a satisfactory account of what simplicity (etc.) is, or how giving preference to simple theories is to be justified. But in the last few years, two different but (...) related accounts have appeared, both of which address the above issues. On the one hand, James McAllister has argued that aesthetic criteria in science reflect scientists' judgements about what kind of theory is most likely to be empirically successful, based on the relative empirical success and failure of different kinds of theories in the past. Scientists employ what McAllister dubs "the aesthetic induction". On the other hand, I have argued that we need to see science as making a hierarchy of metaphysical assumptions about the comprehensibility and knowability of the universe, these assumptions asserting less and less as one ascends the hierarchy. One of the more substantial of these assumptions is that the universe is physically comprehensible. The key non-empirical feature a body of fundamental theories in physics must possess to be acceptable is unity. The better such a body of theory exemplifies the metaphysical thesis that the universe is physically comprehensible, in the sense that it has a unified dynamic structure, so the more acceptable such a body of theory is, from this standpoint. This affects not just theoretical physics, but the whole of natural science. In this paper I compare and contrast, and try to assess impartially the relative merits of, these two views. (shrink)

Twenty philosophers offer new essays examining the form of reasoning known as inference to the best explanation - widely used in science and in our everyday lives, yet still controversial. Best Explanations represents the state of the art when it comes to understanding, criticizing, and defending this form of reasoning.