lecture 7 (1)

Question 1

Upshots

Answer 1

logical necessity and certainty are unreasonable/unrealistic standards in everyday and scientific reasoning

We should seek not certainty, but evidential support (the strength of a conclusion based on relevant evidence)

Question 2

Abductive reasoning (or inference to the best explanation)

Answer 2

starting observation

Explanatory considerations often guide reasoning in science and everyday life

One general pattern of reasoning

Given an observation O and a set of possiblle explanations H1 … Hn of O, you should infer the truth of that Hi which best explains O

Question 3

Example of abductive reasoning from class

Answer 3

Clever hans the horse who did arithmatics

Question 4

Two issues with IBE

Answer 4

Presupposed the notions of

Candidate explanation
(If abduction (IBE) is to be reliable, then teh set of candidate hypotheses in an IBE should contain the true explanation)

Best explanation
(if abduction (IBE) is to be reliable, then we should be able to evaluate the relative degree of explanatory virtue)

Question 5

Upshot

Answer 5

besides generalisation and prediction, non-deductive (abductive) reasoning can play an evidential role in science and our life