Strange Bedfellows: Inference to the Best Explanation and the Criminal Standard of Proof
| Author | Larry Laudan |
| Published date | 01 October 2007 |
| Date | 01 October 2007 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1350/ijep.2007.11.4.292 |
| Subject Matter | Article |
292 (2007) 11 E&P 292–306 E & P
INFERENCE TO THE BEST EXPLANATION AND THE CRIMINAL STANDARD OF PROOF
Strange bedfellows:
inference to the best
explanation and the
criminal standard of
proof
By Larry Laudan*
National Autonomous University of Mexico
[O]ne problem with saying that abductive reasoning is inference to
the best explanation is that we may not have any settled criterion for
saying what is the ‘best’ explanation.
David Schum1
or almost half a century2—ever since Gil Harman coined the phrase
‘inference to the best explanation’ (hereafter: IBE)—a number of episte-
mologists and philosophers of science have been exploring his idea that
the decision rule for the acceptance of hypotheses and theories should be pegged
to the explanatory virtues of the various candidates under consideration. In brief,
his suggestion was that, if we can figure out which among the known hypotheses
for explaining the facts in question does the best job of explaining them, then that
is the hypothesis to be accepted, defeasibly, as true.
1 David A. Schum, ‘Species of AbductiveReasoning in Fact Investigation in Law’ (2001) 22 Cardozo Law
Review 1645 at 1659.
2 The locus classicus is G. Harman, ‘The Inference to the Best Explanation’ (1965) 74 Philosophical Review
88. Arguably, Harman’s model is a particular specification of what Peirce had earlier called
abductive inference. Accordingly, inference to the best explanation suffers from all the general
epistemic debilities of abductive inference, apart from those added by Harman’s annexation of a
relation of explanatoriness (as opposed to entailment) between the premises and conclusion of an
inference to the best explanation.
F
* Email: llaudan@larrylaudan.com. I am very grateful to Amalia Amaya, Jordi Ferrer and Ron Allen
for helpful criticisms of an earlier draft of this article.
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