80 ideas
| 16841 | Good inference has mechanism, precision, scope, simplicity, fertility and background fit [Lipton] |
| Full Idea: Among the inferential virtues commonly cited are mechanism, precision, scope, simplicity, fertility or fruitfulness, and fit with background beliefs. | |
| From: Peter Lipton (Inference to the Best Explanation (2nd) [2004], 08 'the guiding') | |
| A reaction: [He cites Hempel, Kuhn, Quine, and Newton-Smith] I take the over-arching term 'coherence' to cover much of this, though a bolder hypothesis offers more than mere coherence. |
| 16854 | Contrary pairs entail contradictions; one member entails negation of the other [Lipton] |
| Full Idea: All pairs of contraries entail a pair of contradictories, since one member of such a pair always entails the negation of the other. P&Q and not-P are contraries, but the first entails P, which is contradictory of not-P. | |
| From: Peter Lipton (Inference to the Best Explanation (2nd) [2004], 09 'Is the best') |
| 12223 | It is a fallacy to explain the obscure with the even more obscure [Hale/Wright] |
| Full Idea: The fallacy of 'ad obscurum per obscurius' is to explain the obscure by appeal to what is more obscure. | |
| From: B Hale / C Wright (The Metaontology of Abstraction [2009], §3) | |
| A reaction: Not strictly a fallacy, so much as an example of inadequate explanation, along with circularity and infinite regresses. |
| 12230 | Singular terms refer if they make certain atomic statements true [Hale/Wright] |
| Full Idea: Anyone should agree that a justification for regarding a singular term as having objectual reference is provided just as soon as one has justification for regarding as true certain atomic statements in which it functions as a singular term. | |
| From: B Hale / C Wright (The Metaontology of Abstraction [2009], §9) | |
| A reaction: The meat of this idea is hidden in the word 'certain'. See Idea 10314 for Hale's explanation. Without that, the proposal strikes me as absurd. |
| 10631 | If 'x is heterological' iff it does not apply to itself, then 'heterological' is heterological if it isn't heterological [Hale/Wright] |
| Full Idea: If we stipulate that 'x is heterological' iff it does not apply to itself, we speedily arrive at the contradiction that 'heterological' is itself heterological just in case it is not. | |
| From: B Hale / C Wright (Intro to 'The Reason's Proper Study' [2001], 3.2) |
| 10624 | The incompletability of formal arithmetic reveals that logic also cannot be completely characterized [Hale/Wright] |
| Full Idea: The incompletability of formal arithmetic reveals, not arithmetical truths which are not truths of logic, but that logical truth likewise defies complete deductive characterization. ...Gödel's result has no specific bearing on the logicist project. | |
| From: B Hale / C Wright (Intro to 'The Reason's Proper Study' [2001], §2 n5) | |
| A reaction: This is the key defence against the claim that Gödel's First Theorem demolished logicism. |
| 8784 | Neo-logicism founds arithmetic on Hume's Principle along with second-order logic [Hale/Wright] |
| Full Idea: The result of joining Hume's Principle to second-order logic is a consistent system which is a foundation for arithmetic, in the sense that all the fundamental laws of arithmetic are derivable within it as theorems. This seems a vindication of logicism. | |
| From: B Hale / C Wright (Logicism in the 21st Century [2007], 1) | |
| A reaction: The controversial part seems to be second-order logic, which Quine (for example) vigorously challenged. The contention against most attempts to improve Frege's logicism is that they thereby cease to be properly logical. |
| 8787 | The Julius Caesar problem asks for a criterion for the concept of a 'number' [Hale/Wright] |
| Full Idea: The Julius Caesar problem is the problem of supplying a criterion of application for 'number', and thereby setting it up as the concept of a genuine sort of object. (Why is Julius Caesar not a number?) | |
| From: B Hale / C Wright (Logicism in the 21st Century [2007], 3) | |
| A reaction: One response would be to deny that numbers are objects. Another would be to derive numbers from their application in counting objects, rather than the other way round. I suspect that the problem only real bothers platonists. Serves them right. |
| 10629 | If structures are relative, this undermines truth-value and objectivity [Hale/Wright] |
| Full Idea: The relativization of ontology to theory in structuralism can't avoid carrying with it a relativization of truth-value, which would compromise the objectivity which structuralists wish to claim for mathematics. | |
| From: B Hale / C Wright (Intro to 'The Reason's Proper Study' [2001], 3.2 n26) | |
| A reaction: This is the attraction of structures which grow out of the physical world, where truth-value is presumably not in dispute. |
| 10628 | The structural view of numbers doesn't fit their usage outside arithmetical contexts [Hale/Wright] |
| Full Idea: It is not clear how the view that natural numbers are purely intra-structural 'objects' can be squared with the widespread use of numerals outside purely arithmetical contexts. | |
| From: B Hale / C Wright (Intro to 'The Reason's Proper Study' [2001], 3.2 n26) | |
| A reaction: I don't understand this objection. If they refer to quantity, they are implicitly cardinal. If they name things in a sequence they are implicitly ordinal. All users of numbers have a grasp of the basic structure. |
| 8788 | Logicism is only noteworthy if logic has a privileged position in our ontology and epistemology [Hale/Wright] |
| Full Idea: It is only if logic is metaphysically and epistemologically privileged that a reduction of mathematical theories to logical ones can be philosophically any more noteworthy than a reduction of any mathematical theory to any other. | |
| From: B Hale / C Wright (Logicism in the 21st Century [2007], 8) | |
| A reaction: It would be hard to demonstrate this privileged position, though intuitively there is nothing more basic in human rationality. That may be a fact about us, but it doesn't make logic basic to nature, which is where proper reduction should be heading. |
| 10622 | The neo-Fregean is more optimistic than Frege about contextual definitions of numbers [Hale/Wright] |
| Full Idea: The neo-Fregean takes a more optimistic view than Frege of the prospects for the kind of contextual explanation of the fundamental concepts of arithmetic and analysis (cardinals and reals), which he rejected in 'Grundlagen' 60-68. | |
| From: B Hale / C Wright (Intro to 'The Reason's Proper Study' [2001], §1) |
| 8783 | Logicism might also be revived with a quantificational approach, or an abstraction-free approach [Hale/Wright] |
| Full Idea: Two modern approaches to logicism are the quantificational approach of David Bostock, and the abstraction-free approach of Neil Tennant. | |
| From: B Hale / C Wright (Logicism in the 21st Century [2007], 1 n2) | |
| A reaction: Hale and Wright mention these as alternatives to their own view. I merely catalogue them for further examination. My immediate reaction is that Bostock sounds hopeless and Tennant sounds interesting. |
| 12225 | Neo-Fregeanism might be better with truth-makers, rather than quantifier commitment [Hale/Wright] |
| Full Idea: A third way has been offered to 'make sense' of neo-Fregeanism: we should reject Quine's well-known criterion of ontological commitment in favour of one based on 'truth-maker theory'. | |
| From: B Hale / C Wright (The Metaontology of Abstraction [2009], §4 n19) | |
| A reaction: [The cite Ross Cameron for this] They reject this proposal, on the grounds that truth-maker theory is not sufficient to fix the grounding truth-conditions of statements. |
| 12224 | Are neo-Fregeans 'maximalists' - that everything which can exist does exist? [Hale/Wright] |
| Full Idea: It is claimed that neo-Fregeans are committed to 'maximalism' - that whatever can exist does. | |
| From: B Hale / C Wright (The Metaontology of Abstraction [2009], §4) | |
| A reaction: [The cite Eklund] They observe that maximalism denies contingent non-existence (of the £20 note I haven't got). There seems to be the related problem of 'hyperinflation', that if abstract objects are generated logically, the process is unstoppable. |
| 12226 | The identity of Pegasus with Pegasus may be true, despite the non-existence [Hale/Wright] |
| Full Idea: Identity is sometimes read so that 'Pegasus is Pegasus' expresses a truth, the non-existence of any winged horse notwithstanding. | |
| From: B Hale / C Wright (The Metaontology of Abstraction [2009], §5) | |
| A reaction: This would give you ontological commitment to truth, without commitment to existence. It undercuts the use of identity statements as the basis of existence claims, which was Frege's strategy. |
| 12229 | Maybe we have abundant properties for semantics, and sparse properties for ontology [Hale/Wright] |
| Full Idea: There is a compatibilist view which says that it is for the abundant properties to play the role of 'bedeutungen' in semantic theory, and the sparse ones to address certain metaphysical concerns. | |
| From: B Hale / C Wright (The Metaontology of Abstraction [2009], §9) | |
| A reaction: Only a philosopher could live with the word 'property' having utterly different extensions in different areas of discourse. They similarly bifurcate words like 'object' and 'exist'. Call properties 'quasi-properties' and I might join in. |
| 18443 | A successful predicate guarantees the existence of a property - the way of being it expresses [Hale/Wright] |
| Full Idea: The good standing of a predicate is already trivially sufficient to ensure the existence of an associated property, a (perhaps complex) way of being which the predicate serves to express. | |
| From: B Hale / C Wright (The Metaontology of Abstraction [2009], §9) | |
| A reaction: 'Way of being' is interesting. Is 'being near Trafalgar Sq' a way of being? I take properties to be 'features', which seems to give a clearer way of demarcating them. They say they are talking about 'abundant' (rather than 'sparse') properties. |
| 10626 | Objects just are what singular terms refer to [Hale/Wright] |
| Full Idea: Objects, as distinct from entities of other types (properties, relations or, more generally, functions of different types and levels), just are what (actual or possible) singular terms refer to. | |
| From: B Hale / C Wright (Intro to 'The Reason's Proper Study' [2001], 3.1) | |
| A reaction: I find this view very bizarre and hard to cope with. It seems either to preposterously accept the implications of the way we speak into our ontology ('sakes'?), or preposterously bend the word 'object' away from its normal meaning. |
| 16814 | Understanding is not mysterious - it is just more knowledge, of causes [Lipton] |
| Full Idea: On the causal model of explanation, understanding is unmysterious and objective; it is not some sort of super-knowledge, but simply more knowledge; knowledge of causes. | |
| From: Peter Lipton (Inference to the Best Explanation (2nd) [2004], 03 'Fact') | |
| A reaction: There seems to be some distinction between revealing some causes, and revealing a cause which 'makes the light dawn'. |
| 16825 | How do we distinguish negative from irrelevant evidence, if both match the hypothesis? [Lipton] |
| Full Idea: How can Best Explanation distinguish negative evidence from irrelevant evidence, when the evidence is logically consistent with the hypothesis? | |
| From: Peter Lipton (Inference to the Best Explanation (2nd) [2004], 05 'A case') | |
| A reaction: There seems no answer to this other than to assess batches of evidence by their coherence, rather than one at a time. Anomalies can be conclusive, or pure chance. |
| 16851 | The inference to observables and unobservables is almost the same, so why distinguish them? [Lipton] |
| Full Idea: The inferential path to unobservables is often the same as to unobserved observables. In these two sorts of case, the reason for belief can be equally strong, so the suggestion that we infer truth in one case but not the other seems perverse. | |
| From: Peter Lipton (Inference to the Best Explanation (2nd) [2004], 09 'Voltaire's') | |
| A reaction: [Van Fraassen 1980 is the target of this] Van F seems to be in the grip of some sort of verificationism, which I always disliked on the grounds that speculation can be highly meaningful. Why embrace something because it 'could' be observed? |
| 16799 | Inductive inference is not proof, but weighing evidence and probability [Lipton] |
| Full Idea: Inductive inference is a matter of weighing evidence and judging probability, not of proof. | |
| From: Peter Lipton (Inference to the Best Explanation (2nd) [2004], 01 'Underd') | |
| A reaction: This sounds like a plausible fallibilist response to the optimistic view of Aristotle. |
| 16798 | We infer from evidence by working out what would explain that evidence [Lipton] |
| Full Idea: Explanatory considerations are an important guide to inference, …we work out what to infer from our evidence by thinking about what would explain that evidence. | |
| From: Peter Lipton (Inference to the Best Explanation (2nd) [2004], Pref 2nd ed) | |
| A reaction: I take this to be inferences about the physical world, rather than of pure logic. The thesis sounds a bit thin, since there is no logical sense of 'infer' here, so all it could mean is 'what caused that?'. |
| 16856 | It is more impressive that relativity predicted Mercury's orbit than if it had accommodated it [Lipton] |
| Full Idea: We are more impressed by the fact that the special theory of relativity was used to predict the shift in the perihelion of Mercury than we would have been if we knew that the theory was constructed in order to account for that effect. | |
| From: Peter Lipton (Inference to the Best Explanation (2nd) [2004], 10 'The fudging') | |
| A reaction: Lipton has a nice discussion of the relative merits of predicting data and accommodating it. He invites astrologers to predict events, rather than accommodate past ones. |
| 16857 | Predictions are best for finding explanations, because mere accommodations can be fudged [Lipton] |
| Full Idea: Accommodations are often worth less than predictions, because only they have to face the possibility that the best explanation of the fit between the theory and data is that the theoretical system was fudged. | |
| From: Peter Lipton (Inference to the Best Explanation (2nd) [2004], 11 'Circularity') | |
| A reaction: Lipton illuminatingly explores the discovery by Semmelweiss of the cause of childbed fever. He predicted various explanations, and tested them out in a hospital. It clicks when the prediction occurs. |
| 16827 | If we make a hypothesis about data, then a deduction, where does the hypothesis come from? [Lipton] |
| Full Idea: The cost of the hypothetico-deductive method …is that we are left in the dark about the source of the hypotheses themselves. | |
| From: Peter Lipton (Inference to the Best Explanation (2nd) [2004], 05 'Explanation') | |
| A reaction: How do we distinguish a wild hypothesis from a plausible one? It can only be from patterns in the data, rather than mere accumulations of data. If water causes cholera, or smoking causes cancer, the hypothesis guides the data search. |
| 16804 | Induction is repetition, instances, deduction, probability or causation [Lipton] |
| Full Idea: Five attempts to describe induction are 'more of the same', the instantial model, the hypothetico-deductive model, the Bayesian approach …and causal inference. | |
| From: Peter Lipton (Inference to the Best Explanation (2nd) [2004], 01 'Descr') | |
| A reaction: This interesting list totally fails to mention the best answer, which is essentialism! If you observe some instances, you only begin to think that there will be more of the same if you think you have discerned the essence. Ravens are black things! |
| 16823 | Standard induction does not allow for vertical inferences, to some unobservable lower level [Lipton] |
| Full Idea: One of the problems of the extrapolation and instantial models of confirmation is that they do not cover vertical inferences, where we infer from what we observe to something at a different level that is often unobservable. | |
| From: Peter Lipton (Inference to the Best Explanation (2nd) [2004], 04 'Attractions') | |
| A reaction: This is my preferred essentialist view of induction, that we don't just infer that future swans will be white, but also that whiteness is built into the biology of swans. There seems to be predictive induction and explanatory induction. |
| 16800 | An inductive inference is underdetermined, by definition [Lipton] |
| Full Idea: If an inference is inductive, then by definition it is underdetermined by the evidence and the rules of deduction. | |
| From: Peter Lipton (Inference to the Best Explanation (2nd) [2004], 01 'Underd') |
| 16858 | We can argue to support our beliefs, so induction will support induction, for believers in induction [Lipton] |
| Full Idea: There is nothing illegitimate about giving arguments for beliefs one already holds. …So inductive justification of induction, while impotent against the skeptic, is legitimate for those who already rely on induction. | |
| From: Peter Lipton (Inference to the Best Explanation (2nd) [2004], 11 'Circularity') | |
| A reaction: Not so fast! The first sentence is generally right, but if the 'beliefs one already holds' are beliefs about methods of argument, that is a different case. Compare 'this book is the word of God, because it says so in the book'. Can logic prove logic? |
| 16832 | If something in ravens makes them black, it may be essential (definitive of ravens) [Lipton] |
| Full Idea: We are considering that there is something in ravens, a gene perhaps, that makes them black, and this cause is part of the essence of ravens. Birds lacking this cause could not interbreed with ravens. | |
| From: Peter Lipton (Inference to the Best Explanation (2nd) [2004], 05 'Unsuitable') | |
| A reaction: At last, the essentialist approach to induction! Of course, it is tricky to decide a priori whether there could be albino ravens. It only takes one white (interbreeding) raven to ruin a nice essentialist story. Individuals matter. |
| 16836 | My shoes are not white because they lack some black essence of ravens [Lipton] |
| Full Idea: The reason my shoe is white is not that it lacks some feature essential to ravens that makes them black. | |
| From: Peter Lipton (Inference to the Best Explanation (2nd) [2004], 06 'The Method') | |
| A reaction: Good, but not totally true. If my shoes were made to grow from genes, and then had some raven spliced into them, we might manage it. That is an explanation, but a long way from the best one. Enquiry is explanations, not deductions. |
| 16831 | A theory may explain the blackness of a raven, but say nothing about the whiteness of shoes [Lipton] |
| Full Idea: Explanatory considerations help with the raven paradox since, while the raven hypothesis may provide an explanation for the blackness of a particular raven, neither the original hypothesis nor its contrastive explanation explain why the shoe is white. | |
| From: Peter Lipton (Inference to the Best Explanation (2nd) [2004], 06 'Unsuitable') | |
| A reaction: For me, the examination of ravens is a search for the essence of ravenhood, which is why non-ravens don't help. Of course, if you eliminate all culprits except one, you have your culprit, but will your evidence stand up in court? |
| 16833 | We can't turn non-black non-ravens into ravens, to test the theory [Lipton] |
| Full Idea: We cannot transform a non-black non-raven into a raven to see whether we get a simultaneous transformation from non-black to black, in the way we can transform a flame without sodium into a flame with sodium. | |
| From: Peter Lipton (Inference to the Best Explanation (2nd) [2004], 06 'Unsuitable') | |
| A reaction: A white shoe would be an example of a non-black non-raven. People mesmerised by the raven paradox are too concerned with investigation being a 'logical' process. Lipton makes a nice point. We need to know the nature of ravens. |
| 16834 | To pick a suitable contrast to ravens, we need a hypothesis about their genes [Lipton] |
| Full Idea: Without something like a hypothesis about the genes of ravens, we simply do not know what would count as a relevantly similar bird for comparison. | |
| From: Peter Lipton (Inference to the Best Explanation (2nd) [2004], 06 'Unsuitable') | |
| A reaction: Lipton is endorsing the view that explanation should be 'contrastive', as well as aiming to discover the inner nature of ravens. He makes a good case for the contrastive approach. |
| 16801 | A hypothesis is confirmed if an unlikely prediction comes true [Lipton] |
| Full Idea: In English, Bayes's Theorem says that there is a high confirmation when your hypothesis entails an unlikely prediction that turns out to be correct - a very plausible claim. | |
| From: Peter Lipton (Inference to the Best Explanation (2nd) [2004], 01 'Descr') | |
| A reaction: Presumably the simple point is that a likely prediction could have been caused by many things, but an unlikely prediction will probably only be caused by that thing. |
| 16839 | Explanation may be an important part of implementing Bayes's Theorem [Lipton] |
| Full Idea: Explanatory considerations may play an important role in the actual mechanisms by which inquirers 'realize' Bayesian reasoning. | |
| From: Peter Lipton (Inference to the Best Explanation (2nd) [2004], 07 'The Bayesian') | |
| A reaction: Lipton's strategy for making peace between IBE and Bayesians. Explanations give likeliness. The background question for Bayesians always seems to be how the initial probabilities are assigned. Pure logic won't do that job. |
| 16837 | Bayes involves 'prior' probabilities, 'likelihood', 'posterior' probability, and 'conditionalising' [Lipton] |
| Full Idea: In p(H|E) = p(E|H)p(H)/p(E), the left side is the 'posterior' probability of H given E, p(E|H) is the 'likelihood' of E given H, and the others are the 'priors' of H and E. Moving from right to left is known as 'conditionalization'. | |
| From: Peter Lipton (Inference to the Best Explanation (2nd) [2004], 07 'The Bayesian') |
| 16802 | Bayes seems to rule out prior evidence, since that has a probability of one [Lipton] |
| Full Idea: Old evidence seems to provide some confirmation, but Bayesianism does not allow for this, since old evidence will have a prior probability of one, and so have no effect on the posterior probability of the hypothesis. | |
| From: Peter Lipton (Inference to the Best Explanation (2nd) [2004], 01 'Descr') |
| 16803 | Bayes is too liberal, since any logical consequence of a hypothesis confirms it [Lipton] |
| Full Idea: Since the Bayesian account says a hypothesis is confirmed by any of its logical consequences …it seems to inherit the over-permissiveness of the hypothetico-deductive model. | |
| From: Peter Lipton (Inference to the Best Explanation (2nd) [2004], 01 'Descr') | |
| A reaction: This sounds like Hempel's Raven Paradox, where the probability of some logical consequences seems impossible to assess. |
| 16850 | Explanation may describe induction, but may not show how it justifies, or leads to truth [Lipton] |
| Full Idea: Explanation is a partial answer to the descriptive problem of induction, …but the justificatory problem is recalcitrant, since it may seem particularly implausible that explanatory considerations should be a reliable guide to truth. | |
| From: Peter Lipton (Inference to the Best Explanation (2nd) [2004], 09 'Voltaire's') | |
| A reaction: His claim that explanation is a guide to inference is intended to bridge the gap. One might say that a good explanation has to be true, so just make sure your explanation is 'good', according to a few criteria. |
| 16807 | An explanation gives the reason the phenomenon occurred [Lipton] |
| Full Idea: According to the reason model of explanation, to explain a phenomenon is to give a reason to believe that the phenomenon occurs. | |
| From: Peter Lipton (Inference to the Best Explanation (2nd) [2004], 02 'Reason') | |
| A reaction: [He cites Hempel 1965] Put like that, it doesn't sound very promising. Personally I believe things occur if my wife tells me they do, because I trust her. Lipton says knowing that it occurs is not understanding why it occurs. |
| 16808 | An explanation is what makes the unfamiliar familiar to us [Lipton] |
| Full Idea: On the 'familiarity' model of explanation, unfamiliar phenomena call for explanation, and good explanations somehow make them familiar. | |
| From: Peter Lipton (Inference to the Best Explanation (2nd) [2004], 02 'Reason') | |
| A reaction: Lipton notes that his encourages explanation by analogy, but that may not add to understanding. A better version is that an explanation makes a phenomenon less surprising (but that sounds rather relative and subjective). |
| 16806 | An explanation is what is added to knowledge to yield understanding [Lipton] |
| Full Idea: The question about explanation can be put this way: What has to be added to knowledge to yield understanding? | |
| From: Peter Lipton (Inference to the Best Explanation (2nd) [2004], 02 'Underst') | |
| A reaction: In the spirit of Aristotle, I take 'understanding' to be the end of all enquiry, even if it's rather open-ended, relative and vague. Presumably there are lots of true explanations which don't deliver understanding, because baffling ingredients are cited. |
| 16822 | Seaching for explanations is a good way to discover the structure of the world [Lipton] |
| Full Idea: One of the points of our obsessive search for explanations is that this is a peculiarly effective way of discovering the structure of the world. | |
| From: Peter Lipton (Inference to the Best Explanation (2nd) [2004], 04 'Attractions') | |
| A reaction: This remark is a nice corrective to the sceptical view that explanations are entirely subjective, pragmatic, and even conventional. Whether this means that there are 'real' and 'objective' explanations is another matter. |
| 16816 | In 'contrastive' explanation there is a fact and a foil - why that fact, rather than this foil? [Lipton] |
| Full Idea: In a 'contrastive' explanation what gets explained is not 'Why this?', but 'Why this rather than that?'. There is a fact and a foil, and one fact may have several foils. Why do leaves turn yellow in November rather than in January? | |
| From: Peter Lipton (Inference to the Best Explanation (2nd) [2004], 03 'Fact') | |
| A reaction: Lipton really likes this, and builds his story around it. Maybe, but it looks to me like an easier step towards a proper explanation. The foils are infinite. Why turn yellow rather than radioactive, insincere, divisible by three, or expensive? |
| 16826 | With too many causes, find a suitable 'foil' for contrast, and the field narrows right down [Lipton] |
| Full Idea: The class of possible causes is often too big, …but if we are lucky or clever enough to find or produce a contrast where fact and foil have similar histories, most potential explanations are immediately 'cancelled out', and we have a research programme. | |
| From: Peter Lipton (Inference to the Best Explanation (2nd) [2004], 05 'A case') | |
| A reaction: He has a nice example of a triumph in 19th century German epidemiology. Once you get a good hypothesis, you can set up comparisons, based on a possible fact and a good foil. Genius is spotting hypothesis and foil. Nice. |
| 16811 | An explanation unifies a phenomenon with our account of other phenomena [Lipton] |
| Full Idea: According to the 'unification' model of explanation, we come to understand a phenomenon when we see how it fit together with other phenomena into unified whole. | |
| From: Peter Lipton (Inference to the Best Explanation (2nd) [2004], 02 'Reason') | |
| A reaction: [He cites Kitcher 1989] This works quite well for a lot of explanation, but a revolutionary explanation might involve a completely new theory. Lipton says it is rather linguistic, and has no room for a regress of causes, or for singular explanations. |
| 16810 | Deduction explanation is too easy; any law at all will imply the facts - together with the facts! [Lipton] |
| Full Idea: Deduction models of explanation make it far too easy to explain. You can explain that planets move in an ellipse from the conjunction of the fact that they do, together with any law you please, say a law in economics. | |
| From: Peter Lipton (Inference to the Best Explanation (2nd) [2004], 02 'Reason') |
| 16809 | Good explanations may involve no laws and no deductions [Lipton] |
| Full Idea: Many ordinary explanations include no laws and allow no deduction, yet are not incomplete or mere sketches. | |
| From: Peter Lipton (Inference to the Best Explanation (2nd) [2004], 02 'Reason') | |
| A reaction: The simplest sort of explanation simply shows the underlying cause. |
| 16829 | We reject deductive explanations if they don't explain, not if the deduction is bad [Lipton] |
| Full Idea: The hypothetico-deductive model does not account for the negative impact of explanatory failure. We reject hypotheses because they fail to explain contrasts, not because they are logically incompatible with them. | |
| From: Peter Lipton (Inference to the Best Explanation (2nd) [2004], 05 'Explanation') | |
| A reaction: The general move in modern accounts of investigation is away from an excessive emphasis on logic that used to be favoured. The underpinning of this is that science concerns mechanisms more than equations. |
| 16812 | An explanation shows why it was necessary that the effect occurred [Lipton] |
| Full Idea: According to the 'necessity' model of explanation, an explanation shows that the phenomenon in question had to occur. | |
| From: Peter Lipton (Inference to the Best Explanation (2nd) [2004], 02 'Reason') | |
| A reaction: [He cites Glymour 1980] Lipton objects that the sort of necessity involved is too uncertain, can't account for the 'why-regress', and doesn't fit everyday explanation, like why we abandoned the football match. |
| 16813 | To explain is to give either the causal history, or the causal mechanism [Lipton] |
| Full Idea: According to the causal model of explanation, to explain a phenomenon is simply to give information about its causal history, or, where the phenomenon is itself a causal regularity, to give information about the mechanism linking cause and effect. | |
| From: Peter Lipton (Inference to the Best Explanation (2nd) [2004], 03 'Fact') | |
| A reaction: [He cites Lewis's 1986 paper] Simply citing causal regularity seems to me to explain nothing. It happened because it always happens. Mechanism, on the other hand, is just what we are after. |
| 16815 | Mathematical and philosophical explanations are not causal [Lipton] |
| Full Idea: Mathematical explanations are never causal, and philosophical explanations seldom are. | |
| From: Peter Lipton (Inference to the Best Explanation (2nd) [2004], 03 'Fact') | |
| A reaction: There may still be a 'direction' of explanation in mathematics, as when the nature of the triangle explains the Pythagoras Theorem, but the theorem may not give you the basic nature of triangles. Lipton suggests 'determination' for 'causation'. |
| 16846 | A cause may not be an explanation [Lipton] |
| Full Idea: I take it that we may think about causes without thinking especially about explanations, and so we might judge likeliest cause without considering loveliest explanation. | |
| From: Peter Lipton (Inference to the Best Explanation (2nd) [2004], 08 'From cause') |
| 16848 | Causal inferences are clearest when we can manipulate things [Lipton] |
| Full Idea: Our most secure basis for causal inference is manipulation, as when flicking the switch causes the light to go on. | |
| From: Peter Lipton (Inference to the Best Explanation (2nd) [2004], 08 'From cause') | |
| A reaction: Correct, but Woodward elevates this into an entire theory of causation, which does not convince me. |
| 16849 | Explanations may be easier to find than causes [Lipton] |
| Full Idea: It is often easier to say what a factor would explain than it is to say what it would cause. | |
| From: Peter Lipton (Inference to the Best Explanation (2nd) [2004], 08 'From cause') | |
| A reaction: Presumably the presence of some factor might explain something, but the factor itself might have mysterious causal powers. A catalyst, for example. We don't need to understand the factor that explains. |
| 16842 | We want to know not just the cause, but how the cause operated [Lipton] |
| Full Idea: We understand a phenomenon better when we know not just what caused it, but how the cause operated. | |
| From: Peter Lipton (Inference to the Best Explanation (2nd) [2004], 08 'the guiding') | |
| A reaction: This is the key point behind the desire for 'mechanism' in explanation. It strikes me as undeniable. |
| 16840 | To maximise probability, don't go beyond your data [Lipton] |
| Full Idea: If all we wanted was to maximise probability, we would never venture beyond our data. | |
| From: Peter Lipton (Inference to the Best Explanation (2nd) [2004], 07 'friends') |
| 16824 | Is Inference to the Best Explanation nothing more than inferring the likeliest cause? [Lipton] |
| Full Idea: A suspicion is that Inference to the Best Explanation is nothing more than Inference to the Likeliest Cause in fancy dress, and so fails to account for the symptoms of likeliness. | |
| From: Peter Lipton (Inference to the Best Explanation (2nd) [2004], 04 'Attractions') | |
| A reaction: In a lot of cases the cause is the explanation. An explanation might be the absence of a cause (as in 'you forgot to switch it on'). Lipton's 'lovely' explanations go further, and reveal a network of causes. |
| 16817 | Best Explanation as a guide to inference is preferable to best standard explanations [Lipton] |
| Full Idea: The core idea of Inference to the Best Explanation (IBE) is that explanatory considerations are a guide to inference. …Inserting one of the standard models of explanation yields disappointing results, because of their backward state. | |
| From: Peter Lipton (Inference to the Best Explanation (2nd) [2004], 04 'Spelling') | |
| A reaction: Inferences tend to come one at a time, but I see best explanations as the formation of coherent pictures. The tricky bit is when to decide the coherence makes it acceptable. Lipton has that problem too, with his inferences. 'Working explanations'. |
| 16818 | The 'likeliest' explanation is the best supported; the 'loveliest' gives the most understanding [Lipton] |
| Full Idea: There is a distinction between the explanation best supported by the evidence, and the explanation that would provide the most understanding: in short, between the 'likeliest' and the 'loveliest' explanation. | |
| From: Peter Lipton (Inference to the Best Explanation (2nd) [2004], 04 'Spelling') | |
| A reaction: A very nice, very real and very illuminating distinction. Presumably truth must play an important role in both likelihood and loveliness. |
| 16820 | Finding the 'loveliest' potential explanation links truth to understanding [Lipton] |
| Full Idea: We should considere Inference to the Loveliest Potential Explanation, …which links the search for truth and the search for understanding in a fundamental way. | |
| From: Peter Lipton (Inference to the Best Explanation (2nd) [2004], 04 'Spelling') |
| 16819 | IBE is inferring that the best potential explanation is the actual explanation [Lipton] |
| Full Idea: According to Inference to the Best Explanation we do not infer the best actual explanation; rather we infer that the best of the available potential explanations is an actual explanation. | |
| From: Peter Lipton (Inference to the Best Explanation (2nd) [2004], 04 'Spelling') | |
| A reaction: Clearly to say that you should just accept the best available explanation is asking for trouble, if all the available explanations are absurd. But what are the criteria for saying the best one is the actual one? |
| 16828 | IBE is not passive treatment of data, but involves feedback between theory and data search [Lipton] |
| Full Idea: The slogan 'Inference to the Best Explanation' may bring to mind an excessively passive picture of scientific enquiry, …but there is the feedback between hypothesis formation and data acquisition that characterises actual enquiry. | |
| From: Peter Lipton (Inference to the Best Explanation (2nd) [2004], 05 'Explanation') | |
| A reaction: Perhaps it should be renamed 'Search for the Best Explanation'. |
| 16844 | A contrasting difference is the cause if it offers the best explanation [Lipton] |
| Full Idea: We are to infer that a difference marks a cause just in case the difference would provide the best explanation of the contrast. | |
| From: Peter Lipton (Inference to the Best Explanation (2nd) [2004], 08 'Improved') | |
| A reaction: Lipton's offers this as his distinctive contribution to Mill's methods of enquiry. His point is that we draw inferences for explanatory reasons. He rests on Mill, and on contrastive explanation. It sounds rightish, but a bit optimistic. |
| 16853 | We select possible explanations for explanatory reasons, as well as choosing among them [Lipton] |
| Full Idea: Explanatory considerations can play a role in the generation of potential explanations as well as in the subsequent selection from among them. | |
| From: Peter Lipton (Inference to the Best Explanation (2nd) [2004], 09 'The two-stage') | |
| A reaction: Lipton offers this to meet an obvious objection to Inference to the Best Explanation - that compiling the possible explanations seems to need guidance. Seems a good reply. |
| 16821 | Must we only have one explanation, and must all the data be made relevant? [Lipton] |
| Full Idea: Two problems for IBE are that only one explanation can be inferred from any set of data, and that the only data that are relevant to a hypothesis are data the hypothesis explains. | |
| From: Peter Lipton (Inference to the Best Explanation (2nd) [2004], 04 'Spelling') | |
| A reaction: I don't see why the theory prohibits a tie for what is 'best', given that you don't have to commit. The second one is partly to do with what observers should do about anomalies, and it is sometimes right to ignore them. |
| 16838 | Bayesians say best explanations build up an incoherent overall position [Lipton] |
| Full Idea: Bayesians object to inference to the best explanation, because someone who favoured powerful ('lovely') explanations would end up with an incoherent distribution of states of belief. They would be persuaded by loss-making wagers (a 'dutch book'). | |
| From: Peter Lipton (Inference to the Best Explanation (2nd) [2004], 07 'The Bayesian') | |
| A reaction: [compressed; he cites Van Fraassen 1989 Ch.7] Lipton's Ch. 7 tries to address this issue. |
| 16855 | The best theory is boring: compare 'all planets move elliptically' with 'most of them do' [Lipton] |
| Full Idea: The best theory is almost always boring. …The claim that all planets move in ellipses is interesting, and the claim that some do not is not interesting. | |
| From: Peter Lipton (Inference to the Best Explanation (2nd) [2004], 09 'Is the best') | |
| A reaction: This applies to any extraction of a universal 'law' by induction. The best theory just affirms what has been observed. How could generalising about what you haven't observed be 'better'? Answer: because it goes via the essence. |
| 16852 | Best explanation can't be a guide to truth, because the truth must precede explanation [Lipton] |
| Full Idea: Inference to the best explanation cannot be epistemically effective, since an actual explanation must be true, so one would have to know the truth before one could infer an explanation. | |
| From: Peter Lipton (Inference to the Best Explanation (2nd) [2004], 09 'Voltaire's') | |
| A reaction: Lipton rests on 'contrastive' explanation, so that the one that explains more is more likely to be true. If true, it explains. That seems to me correct, even though it could occasionally go horribly wrong. Approach explanation cautiously. |
| 10630 | Abstracted objects are not mental creations, but depend on equivalence between given entities [Hale/Wright] |
| Full Idea: The new kind of abstract objects are not creations of the human mind. ...The existence of such objects depends upon whether or not the relevant equivalence relation holds among the entities of the presupposed kind. | |
| From: B Hale / C Wright (Intro to 'The Reason's Proper Study' [2001], 3.2) | |
| A reaction: It seems odd that we no longer have any choice about what abstract objects we use, and that we can't evade them if the objects exist, and can't have them if the objects don't exist - and presumably destruction of the objects kills the concept? |
| 8786 | One first-order abstraction principle is Frege's definition of 'direction' in terms of parallel lines [Hale/Wright] |
| Full Idea: An example of a first-order abstraction principle is Frege's definition of 'direction' in terms of parallel lines; a higher-order example (which refers to first-order predicates) defines 'equinumeral' in terms of one-to-one correlation (Hume's Principle). | |
| From: B Hale / C Wright (Logicism in the 21st Century [2007], 1) | |
| A reaction: [compressed] This is the way modern logicians now treat abstraction, but abstraction principles include the elusive concept of 'equivalence' of entities, which may be no more than that the same adjective ('parallel') can be applied to them. |
| 12227 | Abstractionism needs existential commitment and uniform truth-conditions [Hale/Wright] |
| Full Idea: Abstractionism needs a face-value, existentially committed reading of the terms occurring on the left-hand sides together with sameness of truth-conditions across the biconditional. | |
| From: B Hale / C Wright (The Metaontology of Abstraction [2009], §5) | |
| A reaction: They employ 'abstractionism' to mean their logical Fregean strategy for defining abstractions, not to mean the older psychological account. Thus the truth-conditions for being 'parallel' and for having the 'same direction' must be consistent. |
| 12228 | Equivalence abstraction refers to objects otherwise beyond our grasp [Hale/Wright] |
| Full Idea: Abstraction principles purport to introduce fundamental means of reference to a range of objects, to which there is accordingly no presumption that we have any prior or independent means of reference. | |
| From: B Hale / C Wright (The Metaontology of Abstraction [2009], §8) | |
| A reaction: There's the rub! They make it sound like a virtue, that we open up yet another heaven of abstract toys to play with. As fictions, they are indeed exciting new fun. As platonic discoveries they strike me as Cloud-Cuckoo Land. |
| 12231 | Reference needs truth as well as sense [Hale/Wright] |
| Full Idea: It takes, over and above the possession of sense, the truth of relevant contexts to ensure reference. | |
| From: B Hale / C Wright (The Metaontology of Abstraction [2009], §9) | |
| A reaction: Reference purely through sense was discredited by Kripke. The present idea challenges Kripke's baptismal realist approach. How do you 'baptise' an abstract object? But isn't reference needed prior to the establishment of truth? |
| 10627 | Many conceptual truths ('yellow is extended') are not analytic, as derived from logic and definitions [Hale/Wright] |
| Full Idea: There are many statements which are plausibly viewed as conceptual truths (such as 'what is yellow is extended') which do not qualify as analytic under Frege's definition (as provable using only logical laws and definitions). | |
| From: B Hale / C Wright (Intro to 'The Reason's Proper Study' [2001], 3.2) | |
| A reaction: Presumably this is because the early assumptions of Frege were mathematical and logical, and he was trying to get away from Kant. That yellow is extended is a truth for non-linguistic beings. |
| 7825 | The politics of Leibniz was the reunification of Christianity [Stewart,M] |
| Full Idea: The politics of Leibniz may be summed up in one word: theocracy. The specific agenda motivating much of his work was to reunite the Protestant and Catholic churches | |
| From: Matthew Stewart (The Courtier and the Heretic [2007], Ch. 5) | |
| A reaction: This would be a typical project for a rationalist philosopher, who thinks that good reasoning will gradually converge on the one truth. |
| 16847 | Counterfactual causation makes causes necessary but not sufficient [Lipton] |
| Full Idea: The counterfactual conception of causation makes causes necessary but not sufficient conditions for their effects. | |
| From: Peter Lipton (Inference to the Best Explanation (2nd) [2004], 08 'From cause') | |
| A reaction: Interesting. Then causes would be necessary, but would not necessitate. So what makes a cause sufficient? |