Best Explanationism and Justification for Beliefs About the Future

Abstract

Earl Conee and Richard Feldman have recently argued that the evidential support relation should be understood in terms of explanatory coherence: roughly, one's evidence supports a proposition if and only if that proposition is part of the best available explanation of the evidence (2008). Their thesis has been criticized through alleged counterexamples, perhaps the most important of which are cases where a subject has a justified belief about the future (Byerly 2013; Byerly and Martin forthcoming). Kevin McCain has defended the thesis against Byerly's counterexample (2013, 2014a). I argue that McCain's defense is inadequate before pointing toward a more promising solution for explanationism. The Byerly-McCain exchange is important because it casts light on the difficult issues of the standards for justification and the nature of epistemic support. Furthermore, McCain's defense of explanationism about epistemic support represents an important recent development of the burgeoning explanationist program in epistemology and philosophy of science.

The Explanatory Role of Concepts

“…The explanationist approach to determining the natural kind-hood of concept fails to recognise this point, because even where explanationism accepts the plasticity of explanations and explanatory methods, it must assume that the best explanations-and, hence, the 'correct' specifications of the explananda-can always be agreed upon (Poston 2016). But since there are no theory-neutral standards of epistemic justification by which to compare explanations and explananda-specification, this assumption is misguided (Appley and Stoutenburg 2017;Stoutenburg 2015). As a result, there can be no straightforward explanationist determination of the natural kind-hood of concept.…”

Think of the Children! Epistemic Justification and Cognitively Unsophisticated Subjects

“…I use the notion of a propositional guise as part of a strategy to undermine another argument for lowered epistemic standards in Stoutenburg, 2015.…”