
Publication details
Year: 2013
Pages: 3553-3578
Series: Synthese
Full citation:
, "Justifying inference to the best explanation as a practical meta-syllogism on dialectical structures", Synthese 190 (16), 2013, pp. 3553-3578.


Justifying inference to the best explanation as a practical meta-syllogism on dialectical structures
pp. 3553-3578
in: Synthese 190 (16), 2013.Abstract
This article discusses how inference to the best explanation (IBE) can be justified as a practical meta-argument. It is, firstly, justified as a practical argument insofar as accepting the best explanation as true can be shown to further a specific aim. And because this aim is a discursive one which proponents can rationally pursue in—and relative to—a complex controversy, namely maximising the robustness of one’s position, IBE can be conceived, secondly, as a meta-argument. My analysis thus bears a certain analogy to Sellars’ well-known justification of inductive reasoning (Sellars, In: Essays in honour of Carl G. Hempel, 1969); it is based on recently developed theories of complex argumentation (Betz, In: Theorie dialektischer Strukturen, 2010a).
Publication details
Year: 2013
Pages: 3553-3578
Series: Synthese
Full citation:
, "Justifying inference to the best explanation as a practical meta-syllogism on dialectical structures", Synthese 190 (16), 2013, pp. 3553-3578.