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    LoyalLoyalJusticeJustice
    Made withinDC&Austin
    Inference to the Best Explanation (IBE) either contradict... — Carmelics
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    Home/Philosophy of Language
    HistoryEditSee Inverse

    Inference to the Best Explanation (IBE) either contradicts itself or equivocates, and therefore cannot coherently describe inductive or evidential support.

    Truth & Knowledge
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    2 reasons for
    1 reason against

    Reasons For

    2 perspectives
    Reason for 1 of 2
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    • 1.Lipton's 'loveliness vs. likeliness' distinction, meant to rescue IBE, tacitly concedes that explanatory virtue and truth-conduciveness are conceptually independent.
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    • 2.If loveliness (explanatory power) must be converted into likeliness via a separate bridging principle, IBE becomes an enthymeme whose suppressed premise does all the justificatory work.
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    • 3.A rule of inference that requires an unjustified auxiliary premise to function is not a self-standing inferential principle but a disguised appeal to the very probabilistic reasoning it purports to ground.
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    Reason for 2 of 2
    ?
    • 1.van Fraassen's argument in 'Laws and Symmetry' demonstrates that any probabilistic model of IBE must privilege certain hypotheses prior to evidence, importing undisclosed priors under explanatory language.
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    • 2.Equivocation on 'best' between 'most empirically adequate' and 'most ontologically parsimonious' means IBE selects different conclusions depending on which reading is operative at any given inferential step.
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    Reasons Against

    1 perspective
    Reason against
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    • 1.It is part of the meaning of 'explanation' that if one theory is more explanatory than another, the more explanatory theory must be more informative than the less explanatory theory.
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    • 2.A more informative theory cannot be more likely to be true than a less informative theory (elementary logical point).
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    • 3.IBE claims that more explanatory theories receive greater inductive or evidential support (i.e., are more likely to be true).
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    Topics

    Philosophy of LanguageTruth & Knowledge

    Notable Defenders

    van Fraassencontemporaryvan Fraassen 1983, Sect. 2

    Connections

    2 topics

    Causation1 linkedModality & Possibility1 linked

    Related

    A more informative theory cannot be more likely to be true than a less informati...A rule of inference that requires an unjustified auxiliary premise to function i...Any account of evidential support that requires greater informativeness to groun...Equivocation on 'best' between 'most empirically adequate' and 'most ontological...
    +5 moreShow less
    IBE claims that more explanatory theories receive greater inductive or evidentia...If loveliness (explanatory power) must be converted into likeliness via a separa...

    Similar

    Any account of evidential support that requires greater informativenes...81%The second conjunct ('my overall evidence does not support F') undermi...81%Like a standard inductive argument, the strength of the inference from...80%Hume's argument for the Copy Principle is inductive in form80%

    Source

    AI-extracted1/3 agreementValid
    SEP: abduction
    View source passageHide passage
    The first objection has as a premise that it is part of the meaning of “explanation” that if one theory is more explanatory than another, the former must be more informative than the latter (see, e.g., van Fraassen 1983, Sect. 2). The alleged problem then is that it is “an elementary logical point that a more informative theory cannot be more likely to be true [and thus] attempts to describe inductive or evidential support through features that require information (such as ‘Inference to the Best
    Extraction notes

    Validity: Extracted via Max plan + API grounding/validity checks

    Details

    It is part of the meaning of 'explanation' that if one theory is more explanator...
    Lipton's 'loveliness vs. likeliness' distinction, meant to rescue IBE, tacitly c...
    van Fraassen's argument in 'Laws and Symmetry' demonstrates that any probabilist...
    Type
    claim
    Perspectives
    3 (2 for, 1 against)
    Edits
    1 edit