Conjunctive Explanations

Hartmann, Stephan und Trpin, Borut (2023): Conjunctive Explanations. A Coherentist Appraisal. In: Schupbach, Jonah N. und Glass, David H. (eds.) : Conjunctive Explanations : The Nature, Epistemology, and Psychology of Explanatory Multiplicity. Routledge studies in the philosophy of science, New York, NY: Routledge. pp. 111-142

Abstract

A conjunction of two hypotheses may provide a better explanation than either one of them individually, even if each already provides a good explanation on its own. An appropriate measure of explanatory power should reflect this, but none of the measures discussed in the literature do so because they only consider how much an explanatory hypothesis reduces our surprise at the evidence – which is problematic. This chapter introduces and defends a class of coherentist measures of explanatory power, and shows that one particular such measure that combines different intuitions underlying the epistemological notion of coherence overcomes the aforementioned problems of surprise reduction measures.

• Item Type: Book Section
• Faculties: Philosophy, Philosophy of Science and Religious Science > Chair of Philosophy of Science
• Subjects: 100 Philosophy and Psychology > 120 Epistemology
• ISBN: 978-1-032-02630-5; 978-1-003-18432-4; 978-1-032-00677-2
• Place of Publication: New York, NY
• Language: English