Lange, Marc
(2020)
Against Probabilistic Measures of Explanatory Quality.
[Preprint]
Abstract
Several philosophers propose probabilistic measures of how well a potential scientific explanation would explain. These measures could elaborate “best” in “inference to the best explanation”. This paper argues that none of these measures (and no other measure built exclusively from such probabilities) succeeds. The paper considers the various rival explanations that scientists proposed for the parallelogram of forces. Scientists regarded various features of these proposals as making them more or less “lovely” (in Lipton’s sense). None of these probabilistic measures of loveliness can reflect these features. The paper concludes by considering the kinds of probabilities that could reflect these features.
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