Inferring and Explaining
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Description
Contents
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Cover Page
Title Page
Copyright Page
Contents
Preface
Practical Epistemology
Critical Thinking
To My Student Readers
To My Fellow Philosophy Instructors
Two Further Debts
Notes
Chapter One. Valuing Truth
A Lofty Goal and a Practical Goal
The Skills and Values You Already Have
Truth and the Contemporary
Academic Culture
Truth and the Popular Culture:
The Need to Respect Differences
Truth and the Popular Culture:
“Fake News” and “Alternative Facts”
A Plea for Critical Thinking
Exercises
Quiz One
Notes
Chapter Two.
Skepticism
Descartes and the Arena of Reason
Confidence-Undermining
Possibilities
Dreaming and the External World
The Evil Computer Scientist
Can I Know Anything?
The Quest for Certainty
Exercises
Quiz Two
Notes
Chapter Three.
The Concept of Knowledge
Definitions and Word
Games
The Myth of Definition
The Need for Conceptual Clarity
Knowledge and Belief
The Search for the Truth
Epistemic Justification
What Does It Take to Be Justified?
An Unsolved Problem
Exercises
Quiz Three
Notes
Chapter Four. Arguments
The Importance of Arguments
What Is an Argument?
Logical Connection
Inference to the Best Explanation
A Couple of Arguments
from Sherlock Holmes
Schematizing the Argument
Start at the Bottom (Find
the Conclusion)
Find the Relevant Evidence
Another Brokenhearted Teenager
Exercises
Quiz Four
Notes
Chapter Five. Inference to the Best Explanation
Inference to the Best Explanation
Schematizing Connie’s Argument
Rival Explanations (of Connie’s Data)
Rank Ordering Explanations
(for Connie’s Argument)
Assessment of (Connie’s) Evidence
What about Ties?
The Origins of Natural Language
The Argument Schematized
Rival Explanations (of Pinker
and Bloom’s Data)
Ideal Agnostics
Rank Ordering the Explanations
(for Pinker and Bloom’s Argument)
Disagreements
Don’t Forget about the Final
Assessment of the Evidence!
A Magical Encore?
Exercises
Quiz Five
Notes
Chapter Six. New Data and Experimentation
The Crazy Philosopher’s Evidence
Why Don’t You Just Test It?
A Pretty Picture of Science
A Better, But Untidy, Picture of
Scientific Disconfirmation
A Better, But Untidy, Picture
of Scientific Confirmation
The Significance of New Data
Exercises
Quiz Six
Notes
Chapter Seven. Semmelweis and Childbed Fever: A Case Study
Childbed Fever
Ignác Fülöp Semmelweis
The Vienna General Hospital
What Was Then Known
Differences in the Divisions
“Fortuitous” New Data
An Experiment and a Treatment
Semmelweis’s Evidence
The Tragedy of Semmelweis
Exercises
Quiz Seven
Notes
Chapter Eight. Darwin and Common Descent
Making Sense of What Is Already Known
The Two Theories
Rival Explanations to Common Descent
The Expanded Age of the Earth
The Fossil Record
The Scala Naturae, or the
Natural System
Patterns of Geographical Distribution
Morphological Facts
Embryological Facts
Darwin’s Evidence for Descent
with Modification
Natural Selection
One Long Argument
Exercises
Quiz Eight
Notes
Chapter Nine. Testimony
A Letter of Recommendation
Testimony regarding Miracles
Exercises
Quiz Nine
Notes
Chapter Ten. Textual Interpretation
Sounds, Shapes, Gestures,
and Dashes and Dots
Inference to the Best Explanation
and Textual Interpretation
Authorial Intention
A Notorious Interpretation
of Hamlet
A Contemporary Psychological
Interpretation of Hamlet
Exercises and Quiz Ten
Notes
Chapter Eleven. Statistics: Making Sense of the Numbers
What Numbers Can Tell Us
Samples and Populations
Couldn’t It Just Be a Fluke?
Couldn’t the Sample Be Biased?
Naomi Oreskes’s Study
Rival Explanations of the Sample
The Best Explanation?
Exercises
Quiz Eleven
Notes
Chapter Twelve. Correlations and Causes
Correlations
Explaining the Numbers
Explaining the Correlations
CO2 and Global Temperatures
Causation and Explanation
A Sad Story
Exercises
Quiz Twelve
Notes
Chapter Thirteen. Capital Punishment and the Constitution
Arguments from Pure Principle:
For and against the Death Penalty
Constitutional Texts
Precedent
Inference to the Best
Constitutional Interpretation
Some Key Constitutional Text
Some Key Constitutional Precedent
Statistics and the Death Penalty
A Causal Explanation of the Correlation
Some Other Contingent Realities
Exercises
Quiz Thirteen
Notes
Chapter Fourteen. Evidence, Explanation, and Narrative
Legal Storytelling
O. J. Simpson
Abe and His Daughter
Stories That Make Sense of Things
Mary Ann and Wanda
Geneva and Brown v. Board of Education
Fabula and Sjuzet
Inference to the Best Narrative
Exercises
Quiz Fourteen
Notes
Chapter Fifteen. Explanatory Virtue and Truth
Two Huge Problems
Literary Darwinism
Sally and Ann
Disagreement
Truth
Exercises
Quiz Fifteen
Notes
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