This article generalizes the explanationist account of inference to the best explanation. It draws a clear distinction between IBE and abduction and presents abduction as the first step of IBE. The second step amounts to the evaluation of explanatory power, which consist in the degree of explanatory virtues that a hypothesis exhibits. Moreover, even though coherence is the most often cited explanatory virtue, on pain of circularity, it should not be treated as one of the explanatory virtues. Rather, coherence should (...) be equated with explanatory power and considered to be derivable from the other explanatory virtues: unification, explanatory depth and simplicity. (shrink)

Inference to the best explanation (IBE) is considered to be the main means of discovery and justification of scientific hypotheses and theories. The article investigates this inference and its relationship to the main kinds of inference: deduction, induction and abduction. IBE has an abductive inference mechanism, but, contrary to abduction, infers not a possible, but a true conclusion. IBE is an inductive inference, because it is underdetermined by the rules of deduction and by evidence. The article claims that despite its (...) abductive and inductive features which demonstrate that it is not and cannot be deductive inference, IBE nevertheless makes pretense to an absolute truth of its inference, i.e. claims for an almost deductive validity. (shrink)

The article explicates psychological and ontological aspects of Inference to the Best Explanation . IBE is a psychological theory, because cognitive science studies support IBE as descriptively true and psychologically adequate theory, i.e., people perceive best explanations as true and follow the rule of IBE in their reasoning. Moreover, different features of IBE imply that conclusions of IBE can be true only in a world with a very particular ontological constitution. Realism about the external world, the uniformity of nature, the (...) truth of background knowledge and the truth-conduciveness of explanatory virtues are necessary and sufficient for IBE to be truth-conducive. Therefore, IBE is an epistemic theory only because at the same time it is committed to a particular ontology. Keywords: inference to the best explanation, abduction, psychology, ontology, explanatory virtues. (shrink)