A false dichotomy in denying explanatoriness any role in confirmation

Datos Bibliográficos

ID21364065
AutoresMarc Lange (0000-0002-0704-7376, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, autor de correspondencia)
Año2024
Volumen58
Número2
Páginas520-535
Fecha de publicación2024-06-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaNoûs (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0029-4624 • E-ISSN: 1468-0068
EditorialWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/nous.12469
OpenAlexW4378672940
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas1
Referencias citadas28

Roche and Sober (2013; 2014; 2017; 2019) have offered an important new argument that explanatoriness lacks confirmatory significance. My aim in this paper is not only to contend that their argument fails to show that in confirmation ‘there is nothing special about explanatoriness’ (Roche & Sober, 2017: 589), but also to reveal what is special confirmationwise about explanatoriness. I will argue that much of the heavy work in Roche and Sober's argument is done by the dichotomy into which they carve up the philosophical options: either explanatory considerations per se are confirmatorily relevant or they acquire whatever confirmatory significance they may possess only by way of background beliefs and so no differently from non‐explanatory considerations. I will argue that this is a false dichotomy: Explanatoriness per se can have confirmatory relevance even while explanatory considerations acquire their confirmatory relevance only through background opinions. Furthermore, there is ‘something special’ about the background opinions concerning explanations that allow explanatoriness in itself to have confirmatory impact. Unlike other sorts of background, having some background opinions expressly about explanations is indispensable to being an observer at all

Argument (complex analysis) · Confirmation bias · Confirmatory factor analysis · Epistemology · Explanatory model · Nothing · Political science · Relevance (law) · Structural equation modeling · Computer Science · Epistemology, Ethics, and Metaphysics · Explainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI · Law · Medicine · Philosophy · Philosophy and History of Science · Psychology · Social Psychology