How Explanatory Reasoning Justifies Pursuit: A Peircean View of IBE

Abstract

This article develops and defends an account of inference to the best explanation according to which it first and foremost justifies pursuing hypotheses rather than accepting them as true. This sidesteps the issue of why better explanations should be more likely to be true. I defend an account of justification for pursuit, inspired by Peirce’s mature account of abduction, and develop it as a formal decision-theoretic model. This account provides a straightforward connection between explanatoriness and justification for pursuit.