Boekbespreking: The art of abduction

Critical notice: The art of abduction

Review of Douven’s The Art of Abduction, also known as: inference to the best explanation. Douven eschews the crucial issues what ‘an explanation’ is and what ‘the best’ explanation is, but argues that if explanations contribute to confirmatory power, and confirmatory power is cashed out in Bayesian terms as probability-rising via updating rules, then other updating rules than the Bayesian one can be considered. Douven then shows that some updating rules perform better than Bayesian one, which judgements are achieved by considering so-called scoring rules. Our criticism is that the new updating rules need not have anything to do with abduction; other criticism is levelled against the interpretation of the results some cognitive-psychological experiment, and on Douven’s claim to throw new light on skepticism. These criticisms notwithstanding, we judge the book book to be masterful, revolutionary, and a must-read for anyone in epistemology.