Bayesianism and Inference to the Best Explanation

Two of the most influential theories about scientific inference are inference to the best explanation (IBE) and Bayesianism. How are they related? Bas van Fraassen has claimed that IBE and Bayesianism are incompatible rival theories, as any probabilistic version of IBE would violate Bayesian conditionalization. In response, several authors have defended the view that IBE is compatible with Bayesian updating. They claim that the explanatory considerations in IBE are taken into account by the Bayesian because the Bayesian either does or should make use of them in assigning probabilities (priors and/or likelihoods) to hypotheses. I argue that van Fraassen has not succeeded in establishing that IBE and Bayesianism are incompatible, but that the existing compatibilist response is also not satisfactory. I suggest that a more promising approach to the problem is to investigate whether explanatory considerations are taken into account by a Bayesian who assigns priors and likelihoods on his or her own terms. In this case, IBE would emerge from the Bayesian account, rather than being used to constrain priors and likelihoods. I provide a detailed discussion of the case of how the Copernican and Ptolemaic theories explain retrograde motion, and suggest that one of the key explanatory considerations is the extent to which the explanation a theory provides depends on its core elements rather than on auxiliary hypotheses. I then suggest that this type of consideration is reflected in the Bayesian likelihood, given priors that a Bayesian might be inclined to adopt even without explicit guidance by IBE. The aim is to show that IBE and Bayesianism may be compatible, not because they can be amalgamated, but rather because they capture substantially similar epistemic considerations. 1 Introduction 2 Preliminaries 3 Inference to the Best Explanation 4 Bayesianism 5 The Incompatibilist View: Inference to the Best Explanation Contradicts Bayesianism 5.1 Criticism of the incompatibilist view 6 Constraint-Based Compatibilism 6.1 Criticism of constraint-based compatibilism 7 Emergent Compatibilism 7.1 Analysis of inference to the best explanation 7.1.1 Inference to the best explanation on specific hypotheses 7.1.2 Inference to the best explanation on general theories 7.1.3 Copernicus versus Ptolemy 7.1.4 Explanatory virtues 7.1.5 Summary 7.2 Bayesian account 8 Conclusion