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How do we find the best explanation?

4th video in a series of lectures on Big Questions of Philosophy. thumbnail artist: Pandora Young link: https://pandorayoung.artstation.com/ How Do We Find the Best Explanation? Many philosophers consider abduction, or “inference to the best explanation,” our most reliable guide to truth. Although Sir Arthur Conan Doyle called it deduction, abduction was actually Sherlock Holmes’s method of choice when it came to solving crimes. Abduction is also common in the medical field; every medical diagnosis is an inference to the best explanation. Most notably, however, it is through abduction that major advances in scientific knowledge are made. In this lecture, we explore the scientific process and define the five criteria of abduction: testability, fruitfulness, scope, simplicity, and conservatism. Abductive Reasoning The Scientific Process Five Criteria of Abduction • Scientific knowledge has consistently improved over time and continues to progress toward an accurate understanding of the world. It does so by using abduction to find better explanations. The most straightforward articulation of abduction comes from the textbook How to Think about Weird Things, by Theodore Schick and Lewis Vaughn. Testability Fruitfulness Scope Simplicity • The criterion of simplicity is perhaps the most poorly named; it is also known as parsimony. A simple explanation, in the scientific sense, does not mean that it is easy to understand. It means that the hypothesis does not invoke more assumptions, entities, or forces than necessary. • Consider Occam’s razor—named after the 14th-century philosopher and Franciscan friar William of Ockham. Ockham expressed the process in Summa totius logicae: “It is futile to do with more things that which can be done with fewer.” The classic articulation “entities must not be multiplied beyond necessity” never appeared in Ockham’s work, but it expresses the same basic idea: The explanation that makes the fewest assumptions should be preferred. Conservatism Suggested Sources Buchen, “May 29, 1919: A Major Eclipse, Relatively Speaking.” Irwin and Jacoby, House and Philosophy. Schick and Vaughn, How to Think about Weird Things. Questions to Consider 1. Think of a recent conspiracy theory you’ve heard—perhaps “9/11 was an inside job,” “JFK was assassinated by the FBI,” or “The moon landing was a hoax.” How could you use the five criteria of abduction to argue for a more reasonable explanation? 2. Television is filled with shows claiming remarkable things: Ghost Hunters, Ancient Aliens, Finding Bigfoot, Dr. Oz (who often promotes “alternative medicine”). How might abduction clear up the muddy waters of confusion and shed light on whether ghosts and Bigfoot are real, whether aliens have visited our planet, and whether alternative medicine works?