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I. INTRODUCTION
then, we are so prepared because the hypothesis offers the most 'potential
understanding' (discussed below) of the data. Lipton thus links the very
idea of explanatory virtue to the notion of potential understanding, a novel
but utterly plausible move.
Lipton's book compels us to consider again the fundamental nature of
explanation and of the understanding it aims to produce. Besides construct-
ing an account of IBE, Lipton elaborates a causal account of explanation
according to which one explains some phenomenon in virtue of citing
relevant portions of its causal history (cf. his account of contrastive expla-
nation, Ch. 3 - he does not claim that all explanations are causal). A causal
theory of explanation, moreover, is tied to a particular account of under-
standing - to understand a phenomenon is to know its causal basis (32) -
we will refer to this last claim as the Causal Thesis of Understanding. But
this raises an immediate problem for Lipton's project: it seems impossible
that we base our judgements of hypothesis likeliness on the degree of actu-
al understanding we judge that the hypothesis proffers. For one could say
of a hypothesis that it gives us actual understanding of an explanandum
only if one is already prepared to endorse the theory as a likely descrip-
tion of the explanandum's causes. But this makes judgements of proffered
understanding derivative from antecedent judgements of theory likeliness
- the reverse of Lipton's view of the relationship.
This misunderstands Lipton's IBE model. For his proposal is that our
liketiness judgements are grounded not on the actual understanding pro-
vided by the hypothesis (for this would indeed involve us in the above
circularity) but of the degree of 'potential understanding' the hypothesis
provides. A hypothesis offers a high degree of potential understanding with
regard to some explanandum, for Lipton, if the hypothesis would, if true,
provide a high measure of understanding of the explanandum - he deems
those explanations which offer a high degree of potential understanding
'lovely explanations'. Thus Lipton asserts that inferences are grounded on
judgements about the ability of theories to provide potential understanding
of explananda- and thus on judgements about the degree to which putative
explanations are 'lovely' in his sense. 4 Lipton deems his model 'Inference
to the Loveliest Potential Explanation' ('ILPE'). A fuller description of
Lipton's ILPE model will be given below. 5 For the moment, let us isolate
the key point that is to serve as the focus of this paper, one that I call his
Central Thesis (though he does not use this label):
Lipton's Central Thesis: The judgement that a hypothesis is likely, in some cases and to
some extent, is based upon a prior judgement of explanatory loveliness (where 'explanatory
loveliness' is identical to 'potential understanding' as defined above).
INFERENCE TO THE LOVELIEST EXPLANATION 253
occurs, and a case in which the phenomenon does not occur but which is
otherwise largely similar to the first. In the ideal case, there will be only
one difference between the two histories. This will consist of there being
some event in the history which produces the phenomenon together with
the absence of an event of the 'same type' (in some natural sense) in the
history that fails to produce the phenomenon. Mill's Method of Difference
dictates that the event is a cause of the phenomenon.
Lipton's diagnosis of the plausibility of the Method of Difference is
based on his theory of contrastive explanation (Chap. 3). Lipton's account
of contrastive explanation contains his attempt to state the conditions for
an adequate answer to a contrastive why question, i.e., a question of the
form 'Why P rather than Q?' - Lipton deems P 'the fact' and Q 'the foil'.7
Such questions would include "Why did match 1 ignite rather than match
2?" and "Why did Lewis go to Monash rather than Oxford?" One may
explain why Lewis went to Monash (the fact) rather than his going to
Oxford (the foil) by pointing out that only Monash invited him. Had he
been invited by Oxford as well as Monash, the Monash invitation would
not have been explanatorily relevant to why he went to Monash rather than
Oxford (though it would have partially explained the Monash trip itself).
This is what Lipton calls his 'Difference Condition' for explanations of
contrastive phenomena: To explain why P rather than Q, we must cite a
causal difference between P and not-Q, consisting of a cause of P and the
absence of a corresponding event in the history of not-Q. (43, italics in
original). Thus one would explain why match 1 ignited rather than match 2
by pointing out that match 1 was dry but match 2 wasn't, and that dryness
is a cause of ignition - pointing out that match l's composition or method
of striking increased its propensity to ignite is not part of the explanation of
the ignition contrast, for these features held in match 2's history as well.
The point to appreciate, Lipton urges, is the "structural similarity"
between Mill's Method of Difference and Lipton's own Difference Condi-
tion. The Difference Condition functions as a criterion for a good explana-
tion of a contrastive phenomenon: a good explanation of 'that P rather than
Q' will do what the Difference Condition says it should do. Thus Lipton
counts the Difference Condition as establishing a criterion for explanatory
loveliness on putative contrastive explanations: putative explanations of
contrastive data (of the sort described by a fact/foil pair) that meet the
Difference Condition offer more potential understanding of that data than
those that do not (in fact, those that do not offer no understanding of the
contrast per se) - let us call this the 'Difference Condition criterion' for
explanatory loveliness. Now on Lipton's understanding of the Method of
Difference, what this inference rule directs us to do is, given contrastive
INFERENCE TO THE LOVELIEST EXPLANATION 255
effect principle stated above: we thus know that causes in the history of
P for which corresponding events in the history of not-Q also exist will
be explanatorily irrelevant to the contrastive phenomenon - such shared
events will, on this assumption, favor the occurrence of P no more than the
occurrence of Q (as, e.g., the fact that both match 1 and match 2 were of
composition C favored the occurrence of 1 's ignition no more than 2's). If
we did not assume same cause/same effect, the Difference Condition would
be unmotivated, for the same sort of event could increase the propensity
of an effect of one type in one case but fail to do so in another case of
the same type (e.g., being of composition C could thus favor l's ignition
but not 2's). 'Shared events' could well be explanatorily relevant to a con-
trast, contra the Difference Condition. Hence it is the principle of same
cause/same effect that motivates (at least in part) the Difference Condition.
So, assuming that both the Method of Difference and the Difference Con-
dition are based upon a common independent principle about the world's
causal structure, there is no reason to see either principle as grounding the
other. In this particular case, I argue, Lipton's attempt to show that infer-
ence is grounded on explanatory considerations, and to reveal the truth of
the Central Thesis, is unsuccessful. But even if this criticism is correct,
we have by no means undermined Lipton's Central Thesis, for he provides
multiple independent points on its behalf. Let us turn to some of these
nOW.
Among those differences compatible with the total evidence, Lipton argues,
we prefer those "that would mark causes we can link to the effect by some
articulated mechanism . . . " (118). Thus Lipton endorses the mechanism
criterion for explanatory loveliness: an explanation is more lovely the
more fully it describes the mechanism by which a putative cause brings
about its effect. So, given his Central Thesis, it is his suggestion that
(other explanatory virtues being equal) a hypothesis that has survived the
generation stage should be judged more likely the more fully it meets
258 ERIC BARNES
the mechanism criterion. We consider next why one might find this last
suggestion reasonable, and then examine it critically.
Lipton intends the mechanism criterion to figure in the following sort
of example. We take as our explanandum the fact that Harry hit Fido (a
dog) rather than Bozo (another dog). To determine the cause of Harry's
hitting Fido rather than Bozo we examine the histories of these two events
and check for differences, of which there will probably be many. The task
is to narrow down the list of differences to arrive at the true cause(s). Let's
consider two actual differences between the histories which ground two
possible explanations of Harry's violent behavior - one is that Fido but not
Bozo bit Harry (just before Harry hit Fido), and the other is that Fido but
not Bozo reminds Harry of a dog Harry had while a child. One possible
explanation, the Bite Hypothesis, claims that the cause of Harry's hitting
Fido rather than Bozo is that Fido, but not Bozo, had bitten Harry. The
other possible explanation, the Childhood Hypothesis, is that the cause is
that Fido, but not Bozo, reminded Harry of a dog Harry had while a child.
Now it will seem to most readers that the Bite Hypothesis is (given just the
information we have here) more likely than the Childhood hypothesis. This
is because there is a familiar mechanism that connects the event of one's
being bitten with a violent reaction like hitting: a person having suffered an
injury becomes angry or fearful and often strikes back. There is no familiar
mechanism that leads from one's being reminded of one's childhood dog
by another dog to one's hitting the latter dog (which is not to say that one
could not be imagined). Thus it would appear that the Bite hypothesis is
more lovely by the lights of the mechanism criterion - it would, if true,
offer more understanding than the Childhood hypothesis, which as it stands
would even if true leave us still puzzled as to why, precisely, Harry hit Fido
rather than Bozo. This is the reason, Lipton would presumably claim, for
our judging the Bite hypothesis relatively more likely than the Childhood
hypothesis.
This example might appear a nice illustration of the intuitive soundness
of Lipton's Central Thesis. Our tendency to regard the Bite hypothesis
as more likely does seem to derive from the existence of the familiar
mechanism linking dog bites to dog hits by way of a common psychological
disposition - and it is this latter mechanism that seems to make the Bite
hypothesis a richer source of understanding as well. So it would seem that
judgements of likeliness are grounded on judgements of likeliness at least
in cases like these. But I believe this appearance of soundness is an illusion.
I would first argue that it is a mistake to think of the Bite hypothesis itself
as offering any more potential understanding of Harry's behavior than the
Childhood hypothesis - what does offer substantial understanding is the
INFERENCE 'I'(3 THE LOVELIEST EXPLANATION 259
M' will not be judged as likely. This is just because the mechanism is
one for which there is no independent evidence of the sort we had for
the bite mechanism M - there is no common, independently well known
sequence of events typified by those we imagine to constitute mechanism
M'. This establishes that it is the independent evidence for the typicality
of the mechanism type, and not just the reference to a mechanism per se,
that grounds the enhanced probability of the Bite hypothesis. I conclude
that the mechanism criterion for explanatory loveliness cannot itself serve
as criterion for likeliness, and thus that Lipton's analysis here does not
support the Central Thesis.
reduction of the Boyle-Charles law is not all the kinetic theory did. It
also provided reductions of other empirical gas phenomena that were pre-
viously mysterious, including Graham's law of diffusion and facts about
specific heat capacities. The kinetic theory, Friedman concludes, "offers a
significant unification in what we have to accept. Where we once had three
independent brute facts ... we now have only one - that molecules obey
the laws of mechanics" (1974, 14-15). It is ultimately this reduction in the
total number of unexplained facts that Friedman thinks is the mechanism by
which scientific understanding is increased. Friedman would endorse what
I call the Unificationist Thesis of Understanding, which asserts that our
overall understanding of the world is inversely proportional to the number
of phenomena that scientists must accept as unexplained. 14 The Unifica-
tionist Thesis of Understanding has a clear implication for the nature of
scientific explanation: to say of some theory that it is a good explanation is
not to say that it provides a lot of (relevant) causal history of some partic-
ular explanandum (as the Causal Thesis of Understanding would entail),
but that adopting the theory reduces the total number of unexplained facts
in our world picture, as the adoption of the kinetic theory of gases replaced
three unexplained facts about gases with one.
Returning now to Lipton's treatment of the sympathetic powder expla-
nation, it is fairly clear how he means to apply Ffiedman's account of
explanatory unification. To posit the sympathetic powder explanation
would, as noted, increase the number of fundamental mysteries in the
world, for it would posit a phenomenon that could not be reduced to those
phenomena already accepted as real. Assuming the only phenomenon the
sympathetic powder explanation could explain is the improved healing rate
in those treated by the powder method, this posit would merely replace one
brute fact with another. 15 But to increase the total number of mysteries is,
by the lights of the Unificationist Thesis of Understanding, to decrease our
overall understanding of the world. Thus the sympathetic powder expla-
nation does poorly by the unification criterion of explanatory loveliness,
which asserts that those theories are more lovely that serve to maximize
the unified status of our world picture. But the powder explanation is
also unlikely - Lipton's position is that the unloveliness accounts for the
unlikeliness.
As with the other loveliness criteria, Lipton's attempt to convince us
that failure to meet this criterion provides a ground for a judgement of
unlikeliness leaves itself open to the charge that the unlikeliness may be
accounted for in independent ways. As to why we now find the sympathetic
powder explanation unlikely, let us note that it is strongly disconfirmed
by the totality of existing data, which provides extensive evidence that
264 ERIC BARNES
ically, the Unificationist Thesis and Causal Thesis are ultimately at odds
with one another, and thus cannot be easily conjoined (despite Salmon's
(I989, 180-5) and (1990) argument to the contrary). To see this, imagine
three independent unexplained phenomena el, e2, and e3. If we should
produce a single causal basis C that provided an explanation for each of
the three a unificationist would allow that C represents a genuine gain in
understanding, for we have reduced the number of unexplained facts from
three to one. But let us consider a different turn of events: suppose that
el, e2, and e3 are each actually the result of separate causal bases, C1,
C2, and C3 respectively (and that these three bases don't function, as far
as we know, as the causes of other known phenomena). Now, does the
adoption of CI&C2&C3 amount to a gain in understanding? Patently the
unificationist must deny any such gain, for three facts have merely been
replaced with three other facts, and no gain in unification has taken place.
But the proponent of the Causal Thesis must view the adoption of the con-
junction as representing a gain in understanding, for the conjunction truly
reveals the causal history of the three phenomena, and any time relevant
causal history is revealed, the Causalist will hold that understanding has
been procured. So the Unificationist and Causal Theses diverge in this
case - surely it is the case, moreover, that it is the Causal Thesis that is on
the side of common sense, as the conjunction surely does offer substantial
understanding! As I have argued elsewhere, and on independent grounds
(cf. Barnes 1992a, b), the Unificationist Thesis of Understanding should be
abandoned. I thus find the unificationist criterion of explanatory loveliness
objectionable qua measure of potential understanding, as well as rejecting
the claim that de-unifying theories are ipso facto unlikely.
Although Lipton does not develop the suggestion in detail, he does remark
that two criteria of explanatory loveliness are the features of"elegance and
simplicity" (68, 71). Lipton thus proposes to account for the undeniable
role of such aesthetic criteria in theory choice by committing himself to
the position that a theory offers more potential understanding of the world
the more fully its meets these aesthetic criteria - and then applying the
Central Thesis.
My reply: setting aside the notoriously complex issue of how to spell out
the notions of 'elegance' and 'simplicity', I do not understand why Lipton
thinks that theories that are elegant or simple offer more potential under-
standing of their explananda, and are thus more lovely in Lipton's sense,
than theories that lack these qualities. Complex and inelegant theories often
offer rich understanding, where causal histories of explananda happen to be
266 E~C BARNES
The aim of this paper is to determine how strongly Lipton supports his
Central Thesis that a judgement that a hypothesis is likely is grounded -
at least to some extent - upon an antecedent judgement of explanatory
loveliness, viz., a judgment o f potential understanding. We have examined
a number of cases of particular inferences in which Lipton claims that the
truth of his Central Thesis is revealed. In some of these cases, the argument
explicit or implicit in his presentation seems to be of this nature: hypothe-
ses that are intuitively likely are also those that are sanctioned in terms
relating to explanatory loveliness. The assumption that likeliness rests on
loveliness thus leads to the true conclusion that such hypotheses are to be
inferred. The Central Thesis, so Lipton argues, is thus confirmed because
it is a hypothesis that leads to true consequences about which likeliness
judgements we actually make. While this sort of empirical argument for
the Central Thesis might seem a little unusual in our present philosophical
context, there is no denying it possesses some force.
I have throughout this paper repeatedly posed the same question to
Lipton: given that there is at least a partial match between our judgements
of loveliness and our judgements of likeliness, what is the reason for
thinking that it is the loveliness judgements that provide the basis for the
likeliness judgements? Granted, if the Central Thesis is true, then m a n y
of our actual inferential practices are to be expected, but even if it is
the case that loveliness judgements drive likeliness judgements in human
subjects, is there any reason to believe that loveliness criteria are actually
truth conducive? Lipton seems to raise this very critical question (which
he deems 'Voltaire's objection') in the following passage, in which he
sketches a number of possible replies:
Given that our inferential methods are successful, why should they depend on explanatory
considerations? Well, they have to depend on something, so why not on explanation? We
have already dealt with the objection that explanatory considerations are too subjective to
serve. Perhaps their use still seems unnatural as compared to 'More of the Same'. But a
simple extrapolation model of induction will not cover the ground, since it will not account
for vertical inference, so we need some less simple account. Second, Mill's methods provide
a natural account of causal inference, though different from simple extrapolation and, as we
have seen, the structure of contrastive explanationsbuilds on this account. Lastly,Inference
to the Best Explanation does rely on finding uniformities, both in the generalization from
causal explanations of particular phenomena and in its general preference for unifying
INFERENCETO THE LOVELIEST EXPLANA~ON 267
inferences. Inferences to the best explanation are not less natural than simple extrapolation.
(128)
Perhaps in part because these points are not developed in more detail,
however, they strike me as unpersuasive. True, inference must depend on
something, but the question before is why it should depend on explanation,
and 'Why not?' just serves to make the point that there is no immediately
obvious reason for regarding the Central Thesis as false. Lipton does argue
convincingly that his loveliness criteria are not subjective in any harmful
sense, thus blocking one potential criticism of his ILPE model - but to
me this also fails to count as an answer to the question Lipton himself has
posed, for it does not show why inference 'should' rest on explanation. He
suggests that the application of criteria of explanatory loveliness in making
inferences may strike some as 'unnatural' as compared to a mere extrapo-
lation model (a model that prescribes one to infer, e.g., that all A's are B's
given that all observed A's are B's), but notes that the extrapolation model
is too simple to serve. The failure of the extrapolation model of inference,
however, is of course no reason to take the ILPE model to be true. Lipton
seems to me to argue that the application of explanatory criteria is natural
because the inferences it sanctions are themselves natural qua inferences -
as Mill's Method of Difference indeed sanctions natural inferences about
causes. But this point re-iterates what he has already shown, which is that
there are many inferences that are likely - and thus natural inferences to
make - which also happen to meet the loveliness criteria. The inferences
recommended by the ILPE model are often very natural inferences to make
- granted. The question was, I thought, in what sense it is natural to think
of the inferences as themselves grounded on explanatory criteria. That
question seems to me at this point unanswered.
In addressing the question whether it is explanatory loveliness that
grounds likeliness or the other way around, Lipton goes on to argue that
there is another reason for taking the former position. We are a species,
he points out, "obsessed with making inferences and giving explanations"
(130). That we are obsessed with making inferences is, from the stand-
point of evolutionary theory, no surprise, for the ability to make correct
inferences has much to do with a species' propensity to survive. But it is
a little surprising from this point of view why we survivors are so bent on
the construction of explanations and on the procurement of understand-
ing - what is the adaptive value, if any, of all this explanation-seeking?
Lipton apparently assumes there is no simple answer to this question.
Notice, however, that a proponent of his Central Thesis has no difficulty
explaining our natural predilection for seeking explanations, for expla-
nations have on this Thesis a key role to play in the making of reliable
268 EPIc BARNES
only some of these criteria. The various criteria he identifies thus consti-
tute for him, in part, the very idea of explanatory loveliness or potential
understanding. It is thus to be part of the very idea of potential understand-
ing that a theory that meets any of the mechanism, precision, unification,
elegance/simplicity criteria offers more potential understanding of some
explanandum than a competing explanatory theory that fails to meet that
criterion (the theories otherwise being explanatorily equal).
It is my view that there is something wrong about this characterization
of the notion of explanatory loveliness/potential understanding. At various
points in his book, as we have observed, Lipton seems to accept the Causal
Thesis of Understanding, which asserts that to understand some (physical)
state of affairs is to know the relevant causal history that produced that state
of affairs. Now this clearly implies that the degree of actual understanding
of an explanandum a theory offers is proportional to the degree to which
the theory truly reveals this relevant causal history. But surely the Causal
Thesis has implications then for the notion of 'potential understanding' as
well - hence I offer the definition D below:
Definition D: The potential understanding/explanatory loveliness a theory offers regarding
some explanandum is proportional to the degree to which the theory would, if true, reveal
the explanandum's relevant causal history. TM
but E might just as well be assumed to result from the three (explanatorily
relevant) P-causes plus ninety seven others (in which case the potential
understanding offered by P is something like 3%). There is no answering
the question how much of E's causal history P would contain if true unless
we are prepared to make other assumptions about E's causal history -
but there is no non-arbitrary way of making such other assumptions. The
question "How much potential understanding of E does P offer?" thus
strikes me as an impossible question. So much the worse for the Central
Thesis.
Regarding (2): the various criteria of explanatory loveliness strike us as
plausible because they do seem to favor those putative explanations which
reveal substantial causal history. The mechanism criterion, e.g., prefers
theories that specify a mechanism linking putative cause to effect over
those that do not - this seems right because those explanations specify-
ing mechanisms would (if true) seem to describe more relevant causal
history than those that do not. It is important to notice, however, that the
mechanism criterion of loveliness is a fair measure of potential understand-
ing only on the contingent assumption that causes are in fact transmitted
mechanistically, i.e., that there is no action at a distance. For if some effect
were the result of just non-mechanistic causes, then one would, I claim,
understand the effect perfectly just by apprehending these causes - assum-
ing that one understands an event perfectly if one knows all its relevant
causal history (as the Causal Thesis entails). It would not be true, in such
a case, that a putative explanation meeting the mechanism criterion would
offer more potential understanding than the explanation citing the (actual)
non-mechanistic causes, since the understanding offered by the latter is
absolute. The precision criterion of loveliness is amenable to a similar
line of analysis: the precision criterion seems reasonable because we are
prone to believe that an explanation that entails a precise description of
its explanandum must more completely specify the explanandum's histo-
ry than a putative explanation that fails to meet the precision criterion.
Well and good, provided one assumes that causal histories are absolutely
deterministic down to arbitrarily precise aspects of the their effects. But it
is perfectly conceivable that determinism is false, and that events are not
precisely determined by their causal histories - in such a world the pre-
cision criterion would not strike us as a fair measure of loveliness, for an
explanation could completely explain its exptanandum by citing all of its
relevant causes, even though these causes leave the explanandum event not
precisely determined in all its aspects. Like the mechanism criterion, the
precision criterion of loveliness depends for its plausibility on our having
already assumed certain principles about the world's causal structure.
272 E~CBA~-ZS
6. CONCLUSION
NOTES
1 I am grateful to Jesse Hobbs, Peter Lipton, and two anonymous Synthese referees for
many helpful comments and criticisms. All page references are to Lipton (1991) unless
otherwise noted.
2 The reference cited by Lipton (58) is Peirce (1931, 5.180-5.212, esp. 5.189),
3 As examples of this growing literature Lipton cites Peirce (1931,5.180-5.212,esp. 5.189);
Harman (1965); Brody (1970); Hanson (t972, Chap. 4), Thagard (1978) and Cartwfight
(1983, essay 5). See also Achir~tein (1992), Ben-Menahirn (1990), Costantini (1987),
Hanen and Kelley (1990), Kapitan (1990), Kleirnan (1989), Mafinov (t988), and Vogel
(1990). For an important recent survey of the IBE project that does not focus on Lipton's
book, but which I take to reach conclusions about the project broadly similar to the ones
reached in this paper, see Day & Kincaid (1994).
4 We must avoid the temptation to conflate Lipton's tall of "explanatory loveliness" with
traditional talk of aesthetic criteria of theory choice such as elegance or simplicity. While
Lipton does regard these latter notions as examples of explanatory loveliness (cf. Section
3.4), we should remember that to say of an explanation that it is lovely in Lipton's sense is
not to say that it is necessarily aesthetically pleasing but just that it would, if true, provide
us with much understanding of some exptananda,
5 Throughout his 1991 book Lipton refers to the model of inference he elaborates as simply
'inference to the best explanation'. I refer to his model here by the more specific'inference
to the loveliest potential explanation' because this label is more informative and distin-
guishes his model from other accounts of IBE.
6 Lipton's point is that, if something like the Central Thesis is not assumed, then accounts
of 'explanatory virtue' will be prone to simply equate such virtue with the quality of like-
liness itself (as did Harrnan's (1965), for example, in citing 'plausibility' as a criterion
274 ERIC BARNES
of explanatory virtue). But this makes the/BE project vacuous, for it then is prone to
degenerate into the truism that those hypotheses are inferred which are judged likeliest.
/nsofar as it is explanatory virtue which is supposed to provide a basis on which likeliness
judgements may rest, and given that the aim of explanation is understanding,explanatory
virtue should, Lipton argues, be construed as potential understanding.
7 For a detailed discussion of conWastive why questions see Barnes (1994a).
8 Lipton thus claims that the Method of Difference is an inferential principle which is
one component of his ILPE model: given the Central Thesis, it is desirable to infer those
hypotheses with high explanatory loveliness, so it makes sense to follow the Method of
Difference. It must be admitted, however, that the Method of Difference is limited in its
applicability to a narrow range of cases, those in which the histories that produce that
P-event and the not-Q-event are laid before us, and ideally in which there is only one
difference between the two histories. Lipton points out in particular that the Method of
Difference does not account for what he calls inferred differences (114-115). That is, the
Method of Difference only accounts for the inference that a difference between the two
histories that is independentlyknown to exist plays a causal role- it does not account for the
discovery of the difference itself. Lipton's ILPE model, however, can account for inferred
differences as well (this point will prove important below). This advantage accrues because
the model recommends that we infer that a particular causal hypothesis is true insofar as
the hypothesis would, if true, provide significant understanding of some explananda- but
this principle may be applied when the hypothesis claims that some heretofore unobserved
difference in the two histories plays a causal role, provided this hypothesis is the loveliest
of the competition (115).
9 But see Section 4 for a discussion of Lipton's arguments for the claim that we should
regard inference as 'following' explanation.
10 At this point it will be clear that there are various respects in which my reading of
Inference to the Best Explanation differs sharply from that of Jesse Hobbs as presented
in his (1993) review of Lipton's book, despite my sympathy with a few of Hobbs' points.
In writing that "Lipton's innovation is tying IBE to the constrastive analysis of explana-
tion provided by Garfinkel (1981) and van Fraassen (1980)" (679) Hobbs fails to note the
significant differences between Lipton's own account of contrastive explanation and those
of Garfinkel and van Fraassen (see Barnes (1994a) for a description of these differences).
Moreover Hobbs seems to overestimate the role of contrastive explanation in Lipton's
IBE account as a whole. The only role it plays is in motivating the Difference Condition
criterion, which is just one loveliness criterion among others. More critically, Hobbs makes
the startling claim that Lipton never identifies the method he defends as IBE. But Lipton's
two stage model (as summarized in this paper), with attendant loveliness criteria, is clearly
laid out, if at times too sketchily (as perhaps Hobbs is suggesting). He goes on to argue
that Semmelweis's research on childbed fever (Lipton's main illustration of the Difference
Condition criterion, an example similar to the one of the two matches above) is not obvi-
ously a sound application of tBE, as Semmelweis "did not infer synchronically the best
explanation over the total evidence, but diachronically the only hypothesis remaining after
each alternative had failed to explain some contrast or other." (679) As to why inferences
must by synchronic rather than diachronic to count as sound application of/BE Hobbs does
not say. Hobbs complains that Semmelweis's success "appears attributable to luck rather
than outstanding method" (679), though Lipton is far from being so naive as to suggest the
irrelevance of luck in scientific discovery.
1 One might argue that Lipton now seems committed to the curious conclusionthat the Bite
Hypothesis alone is less lovely than the conjunctionof the Bite Hypothesis together with M
INFERENCETO THE LOVELIEST EXPLANATION 275
- and thus commit Lipton to the blatantly false conclusion that the Bite Hypothesis ought
thus to be less likely than the conjunction of that Hypothesis with M, given the Central
Thesis. Lipton's response, however, would be that the Bite Hypothesis does not compete
with the conjunction of itself and M, and that his model commits him only to inferences
to the loveliest of competing hypotheses (and thus not to the claim that in any event of H t
being 'more lovely' than H2, H1 must be more likely than H2).
12 Synthese referee #1 disputes this analysis by claiming that it does not "make a very per-
suasive case for a divergence between likeliness and loveliness as it stands, since [one's]
clairvoyant powers would seem to explain why [one's] predictions are correct". This last
claim is correct, but it seems to me there is a clear difference between explaining a person's
predictive skill and explaining why what that person predicts is true. Again, my meeting
a person of precisely the same height as I predicted confirms the hypothesis that I possess
clairvoyancethough this hypothesis does not explain the meeting at all - the meeting will
be explained by the reasons or causes that brought us together at the meeting place. In
general, to explain a person's knowledge (including foreknowledge) of p is not the same as
explaining p.
t3 Lipton by no means commits himself to every aspect of the unificationistmodel of expla-
nation developed in Friedman's (1974), and notes in correspondence dated 26 August 1993
that he accepts Kitcher's (1976) criticism of the details of Friedman's law counting measure
and of what Lipton deems the 'epistemic analysis of unity' countenanced in Friedman's
article. What Lipton does accept, apparently, is the spirit of the unification approach as
briefly summarized in my remarks here.
la In Friedman's (1974) it is not phenomena in general which science tries to unify but
scientific laws - theories explain thus in virtue of reducing the number of laws which must
be accepted as unexplained,viz., underivable from more fundamentaltaws. This distinction
does not seem to affect any present concern.
15 It is worth noting that if we measure the degree of unification in our world picture by
counting the number of unexplained phenomena, the positing of the sympathetic powder
explanation need not be de-unifying,for it would consist of simply the replacement of one
mystery (the contrast in healing rate) with another (the therapeutic effect of the powder).
Thus construed, it would not be correct to say that the powder explanation actually dimin-
ishes our global understandingof the world, but merely leaves it unchanged- this suggests
that from a unificationiststandpoint, science may just as well take the powder explanationas
leave it. But this raises an important difficulty for the proponent of explanatory unification,
one that has not yet been adequately addressed - how is the unificationist to distinguish
'large' mysteries (like the baffling putatively therapeutic effect of the powder) from 'small'
ones (the merely curious observed contrast in recovery rates)?
16 Synthese referee #1 objects that conspiracy theories typically do "not fit well with back-
ground beliefs (and all the other virtues) or, if they do, then it is unclear why we would
not judge the theory likely after all". My reply is to insist that in requiring that candidate
hypotheses 'fit with background beliefs' Lipton does not require that such hypotheses be
supported by those beliefs, but only that they not clash with such beliefs. But conspiracy
theories often don't clash with background beliefs or observation: the paranoid's belief
that 'Everyone is out to get me' strikes him as plausible in part becausehe cannot observe
what everyone is doing all the time, nor does he have grounded beliefs about all of their
activities, so he is free to conjecture conspiracy theories that are not strictly ruled out by
observation or background belief. The conspiracy theorist's error is usually in supposing
that mere consistency with the latter is sufficient for warranted belief.
17 In response to my point that complex or inelegant theories may offer rich understanding
276 ERIC BARNES
Synthese referee #2 objects that "[Barnes] may be arguing for a case which is too strong
(unnecessarily strong, for): one could hold that if (contrary to actual fact, perhaps) there
were two rivals which were otherwise on equal footing but differed with respect to these
desiderata, surely we would prefer the simple and elegant one". I agree with this conditional
statement, but it simply makes the point that aesthetic criteria do function as criteria of
theory choice - my point is that theories that meet such criteria do not offer more potential
understanding of their explananda than theories that do not.
18 It is important to emphasize that this Definition does not entail that our potential under-
standing of some explanandum is proportional merely to the amount of information about
its causal history we possess, for much of the explanandum's causal history may well be
non-explanatory (as many facts constitutive of the causal history of Bush's 1992 election
are not explanatory of that election result- e.g., the presence of oxygen in the United States
in 1992, that the United States conducts elections, Bush's existence, etc.). What matters
regarding potential understanding is how much of the 'relevant' causal history a putative
explanation provides, where 'relevant' just means 'explanatory'. The task of describing
which portions of an explanandum's causal history are explanatory is of course a task that
any proponent of a causal theory of explanation must face.
19 Synthese referee #1 replies in defense of Lipton's position here that "understanding is
influenced not just by how much of a causal history is specified, but how it is described.
That is, if we simply refer to the total cause as 'the total cause', then we have referred to
the full cause yet provided little if any understanding". I agree, of course, that a hypothesis
like 'The total cause of E is the total cause of E' supplies no potential understanding of
E, but of course this is perfectly compatible with Definition D, as the latter requires that
true explanations reveal relevant portions of causal history, and this tautology reveals no
history at all (though it does refer to such history). I will thus take the expression 'C' to
be referentially transparent, as referring to some event(s) or fact(s) which are fully appre-
hended by the subject who uses the expression 'C'.
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Department of Philosophy
Southern Methodist University
Dallas, TX 75275-0142
USA