How Does Explanatory Virtue Determine Probability Estimation?—Empirical Discussion on Effect of Instruction

It is important to reveal how humans evaluate an explanation of the recent development of explainable artificial intelligence. So, what makes people feel that one explanation is more likely than another? In the present study, we examine how explanatory virtues affect the process of estimating subjective posterior probability. Through systematically manipulating two virtues, Simplicity—the number of causes used to explain effects—and Scope—the number of effects predicted by causes—in three different conditions, we clarified two points in Experiment 1: (i) that Scope's effect is greater than Simplicity's; and (ii) that these virtues affect the outcome independently. In Experiment 2, we found that instruction about the explanatory structure increased the impact of both virtues' effects but especially that of Simplicity. These results suggest that Scope predominantly affects the estimation of subjective posterior probability, but that, if perspective on the explanatory structure is provided, Simplicity can also affect probability estimation.

Essence and Identity

This chapter evaluates six proposals essentialists might put forward in response to Quine’s challenge, viz., to provide necessary and sufficient conditions for the crossworld identity of individuals: (i) an object’s qualitative character; (ii) matter; (iii) origins; (iv) haecceities; (v) “world-indexed properties”; and (iv) individual forms. It is argued that the first three candidates fail to provide necessary and sufficient conditions for the crossworld identity of individuals, while the fourth and fifth criteria arguably do not succeed in meeting Quine’s demand in an explanatorily adequate fashion. On balance, the sixth option, individual forms, therefore deserves to be taken very seriously as a possible response to Quine’s challenge, especially by neo-Aristotelians. Individual forms, moreover, have other explanatory virtues; in particular, they are more likely than their closest competitors to contribute to an explanation of how an object’s de re modal profile follows from facts about its essence.

Property Causation

If one set of properties supervenes upon another, then the former have causal powers if: first, the supervenience base properties minimally metaphysically necessitate the supervening properties; second, part of the minimal supervenience base causes the target effect; third, instances of the supervening properties would all cause certain target effects in the right kind of circumstances, as a result of this. When these conditions are met, the causal relationship holds not only in virtue of the supervenience base properties but also the supervening ones. Two further explanatory virtues that citing property causes may display are: when a property has a distinctive causal profile (when it makes a causal contribution that no other property would) and when an instance of the property supplies the precise contribution required for a certain effect. Pragmatic appeal to the second explanatory virtue explains away our tendency to hear certain explicitly contrastive statements mistakenly as true.

Explanatory Virtues and Belief in Conspiracy Theories

Conspiracy theories are alternative explanations of well-understood events or phenomena. What makes them attractive explanations to so many people? We investigate whether people ascribe characteristics typical of good explanations to conspiracy theories and whether they are perceived as more appealing explanations when they are articulated as a refutation of the official version of events. In two experiments, participants read explanations of four conspiracy theories and rated them along six dimensions of explanatory quality. We find that some explanatory virtues are ascribed to conspiracy theories even by people who do not believe the conspiracy. Contrary to our predictions, we also find that framing a conspiracy as a refutation did not generally elicit higher ascriptions of explanatory virtues. These results suggest that explanatory considerations may play a more central role in conspiracist beliefs than was previously thought.

Intuitions and Coherentism

The method of reflective equilibrium is a special case of explanatory-coherentist epistemology. This chapter defends explanatory coherentism against pertinent objections: Keith Lehrer’s problem regarding the data base; the charge of unacceptable conservatism; Stich’s threat of relativism; Goldman’s problem of wild and crazy beliefs; and Hacking’s doubt that explanatory virtues such as simplicity have anything to do with truth. The epistemological picture defended in this book does not incur the traditional problem of “getting from” one’s own sensory experiences to the external world, and so offers an unusual answer to the skeptic. But if one were to engage that problem, the explanatory coherentist has a viable approach.

A study of explanatory virtues

The inference to the best explanation (IBE) appeals to how hypotheses would explain certain facts. If a hypothesis explains well and better than any other (available) hypotheses, IBE concludes that it is true. Our work examines what makes it the case that some hypotheses would explain facts better than others. We also examine other non-explanatory features which are (thought to be) correlated with the truth of a proposed explanation. We name all these features explanatory virtues, and they are the measure employed by IBE of goodness of explanation. Our research has the purpose of investigating four chief (proposed) explanatory virtues: simplicity, unification, non ad hocness, and coherence. We intend to study the description and justification of these proposed virtues. Our final goal is to improve and appraise the employment of IBE, a valuable tool in philosophy.

Does Skepticism Presuppose Explanationism?

Explanationist (or abductivist) responses to skepticism maintain that our commonsense beliefs about the external world can be rationally preferred to skeptical hypotheses on the grounds that the former provide better explanations of our sensory experiences than the latter. This kind of response to radical skepticism has never enjoyed widespread acceptance in the epistemological community due to concerns about the epistemic merits of inference to the best explanation and appeals to the explanatory virtues. Against this tide of skepticism about explanationism, the chapter argues that traditional skeptical challenges rest upon central explanationist tenets and thus that one cannot harbor doubts about the general class of explanationist responses to skepticism while at the same time granting the force of the skeptical challenges they seek to answer. This chapter also shows how explanationist principles do a better job than epistemic closure and underdetermination principles in articulating the structure and force of skeptical challenges.