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Problems can arise in parsimony analyses when data sets contain characters that are not applicable across all terminals. Examples of such characters are tail colour when some terminals lack tails, or positions in DNA sequences in which gaps are present. Focusing on regular single-column characters as classically used in phylogenetic analysis, Farris characterized parsimony as a method that maximizes explanatory power in the sense that most-parsimonious trees are best able to explain observed similarities among organisms by inheritance and common ancestry. This led De Laet to formulate parsimony analysis as two-item analysis, whereby parsimony maximizes the number of observed pairwise similarities that can be explained as identical by virtue of common descent, subject to two methodological constraints: the same evidence should not be taken into account multiple times, and the overall explanation must be free of internal contradictions. In this chapter, the way this formulation can be used to deal with the problem of inapplicables is discussed vis-à-vis the optimization of entire nucleotide sequences as complex characters in a tree alignment.

Some proponents of the truthmaker principle claim that it has an explanatory power, such as that of explaining why idealism is false, or explaining the mind-independence of truth. Other proponents of the truthmaker principle claim that describing things as truthmakers has explanatory power, such as that of formulating and solving the problem of universals. This chapter makes a case for scepticism about claims of both kinds. First, it is argued that the truthmaker principle fails to have the alleged explanatory power, and its supposed benefits can be had without it. Second, it is argued that talk of ‘truthmakers’ and of ‘the ontological ground of truth’ are empty metaphors without explanatory content.

Explanatory power is a complex theoretical virtue, not reducible to empirical strength or adequacy, which includes other virtues as its own preconditions. Since this virtue provides one of the main criteria by which theories are evaluated, it presents thus a challenge to any empiricist account of science. After a critical account of attempted explications of the concept of scientific explanation, this chapter offers a pragmatic account that identifies explanations with answers to why‐questions. Since such questions are set by the questioner, and have their family of relevant direct answers determined by the presuppositions, values, and interests involved in the questioning, that makes explanation relative to contextual factors. On this understanding, evaluations of scientific explanation cannot play the role required for their use in support of scientific realism––and, incidentally, the large array of standard puzzles in the literature on this subject are solved.

Methodological realism accepts the axiological view that truth is one of the essential aims of science. Following Popper and Levi, truthlikeness as the aim of science, combines the goals of truth and information. This chapter discusses the relations between truthlikeness and other epistemic utilities like explanatory power (Hempel), problem‐solving capacity (Laudan), and simplicity (Reichenbach). While rationality in science can be defined relative to the goals accepted within scientific communities at different times, a critical realist defines scientific progress in terms of increasing truthlikeness. It is argued that progress in this sense can be assessed, relative to empirical evidence, by the notion of expected verisimilitude. An abductive argument is formulated to defend realism as the best (and even the only) explanation of the empirical and practical success of science.

This chapter motivates why, and under which circumstances, the explanatory power of a scientific hypothesis with respect to a body of evidence can be explicated by means of statistical relevance. This account is traced back to its historic roots in Peirce and Hempel and defended against its critics (e.g., contrasting statistical relevance to purely causal accounts of explanation). Then we derive various Bayesian explications of explanatory power using the method of representation theorems and we compare their properties from a normative point of view. Finally we evaluate how such measures of explanatory power can ground a theory of Inference to the Best Explanation (IBE).

Scientific theories do much more than answer empirical questions. This can be understood along empiricist lines only if those other aspects are instrumental for the pursuit of empirical strength and adequacy, or serving other aims subordinate to these. This chapter accordingly addresses four main questions: (1) Does the rejection of realism lead to a self‐defeating scepticism? (2) Are scientific methodology and experimental design intelligible on any but a realist interpretation of science? (3) Is the ideal of the unity of science, or even the practice of using distinct theories in conjunction, intelligent on an empiricist view? (4) What sense can an empiricist position accord to those theoretical virtues––such as simplicity, coherence, explanatory power––that are not reducible to empirical strength or adequacy? The answers to these questions rely strongly on the pragmatics of scientific inquiry, and advocate a ‘Clausewitz doctrine’ of experimentation as a continuation of theorizing by other means.

The structural-equations framework is used to provide a definition of causal explanation. Essentially, an explanation is a fact that is not known for certain but, if found to be true, would constitute an actual cause of the fact to be explained, regardless of the agent's initial uncertainty. This definition is shown to handle well a number of problematic examples from the literature. It can also be extended in a natural way to provide several notions of partial explanation and explanatory power.

Despite decades of focused philosophical investigation, inference to the best explanation still lacks a precise articulation and compelling defense. The primary reason for this is that it is not at all clear what it means for a hypothesis to be the best available explanation of the evidence. This chapter first seeks to rectify this problem by developing a formal explication of the explanatory virtue of power. A resulting account of inference to the best explanation is then evaluated as a form of uncertain inference. Overall, the chapter offers a precise account and novel defense of one important version of inference to the best explanation.

Chapter two makes the case for timing theory’s value. Timing offers a simple but powerful gestalt shift, from taking “times” as existential givens or temporalities as subjective and subordinate constructs to a rigorous framework for tracing how practices and symbolic language interact to produce all the times of our lives—from our innermost experiences to the rhythms of the universe. These only become “real” and “natural” if they work for us almost by second nature. Timing theory also resolves several thorny problems with our grasp of time. Within IR, timing theory offers superior explanatory power while accommodating and often clarifying the way that other time studies approach their subject matter. It further stands apart in its ability to integrate IR’s two dominant cultures of time—Western standard time and the problem of Time. Finally, it exposes basic issues in IR as matters of timing, from concerns with change and surprise, to scholarly practices and knowledge development, to central disciplinary discussions like the “neo-neo debate.”

This chapter develops the notion of degrees of metaphysical inference, giving content to a number of widely used but only vaguely specified metaphors regarding what it could mean to “naturalize” metaphysical inferences by “grounding” them in scientific knowledge, and what it could mean to “derive” ontological conclusions from scientific work, or use such work as a “constraint” on ontological theorizing. It examines the prospects of demarcating scientific ontology from non-scientific, philosophical ontologically, the nature of a priori presuppositions and inferences and their possible roles in this demarcation, and the idea of naturalizing metaphysical inferences. In conclusion, it considers whether there is, in fact, anything like an objective distinction to be made between genuinely theorizing and merely speculating about ontology.

This chapter briefly summarizes some the main results obtained from more than three decades of studies on the conjunction fallacy. It shows that this striking and widely discussed reasoning error is a robust phenomenon that can systematically affect the probabilistic inferences of both laypeople and experts, and it introduces an explanation based on the notion of evidential impact in terms of contemporary Bayesian confirmation theory. Finally, the chapter tackles the open issue of the greater accuracy and reliability of impact assessments over posterior probability judgments and outlines how further research on the role of evidential reasoning in the acceptability of explanations might contribute to the development of effective human-like computing.

Chapter 8 summarizes the main empirical implications discussed in the governance theory. It points toward public policy options for reshaping prison social order and also argues that prison ethnographers should incorporate more comparative analysis into their work. There is a large body of literature on methods and methodology of making comparisons, especially in the field of comparative politics and comparative historical sociology. Incorporating more comparative methods will increase the importance and usefulness of individual ethnographic studies and open up a large number of new research questions.

OVER THE LAST FEW decades there has been much debate in the philosophy of science over the attractiveness—and potential costs—of supervenience. As philosophers well know, supervenience burst onto the scene as the “Davidson debate” in the philosophy of mind began to raise some provocative questions over whether it was desirable to think of mental events as in some way irreducible to physical events, while still being firmly rooted in material dependence. After some initial misunderstanding over the question of whether supervenience was committing us to a sort of ontological break between the mental and the physical, it was finally settled that the autonomy one was after need not be metaphysical; an epistemological break would do just fine. After this the merits of supervenience could be clearly considered, for it allowed one to have it “both ways” in the dispute over mental states: mental explanations could be epistemically autonomous from physical ones (and thus probably not reducible to them), even while one preserved the notion of the ontological dependence of the mental on the physical (thus avoiding any embarrassing entanglements in supernatural or other spiritually based accounts of causal influence). Davidson himself, of course, never really bought into the non-reductive materialist craze that he started, preferring to champion his own idiosyncratic view of anomalous monism, which allowed the mental to continue to exist as irreducible, even while he gave it no causal or explanatory work to do. Since then Jaegwon Kim—the person who has done most to shed light on Davidson’s view and demonstrate how the concept of supervenience could recast it as a more legitimate contender among the many proposals on the merits of non-reductive materialism—has appeared to repudiate his own earlier views about explanation and now wholeheartedly endorses a type of physicalist-based account that is even more conservative than Davidson’s. In his recent work, Kim has argued not only for the elimination of any mentally based causal descriptions (or laws) of human behavior, but also seems to call into question the very idea that in pursuing scientific explanation we need to pay much attention to secondary-level descriptions.

In a world where metrics and quantification become the measure of our value, it is important to remind ourselves of our values. Why do we do sociology, but also what does sociology do to us? Do we just accept the judgments of those we don’t rate (pun intended)? Or do we do sociology for different reasons? This chapter makes the case for only doing sociology if we do it with passion, curiosity and politics. It argues for putting concepts to work, for trying them out with different audiences, but also being cognizant of how concepts work on us. Remaining open and curious are promoted as key virtues in a sociological toolkit. As is remembering whose side we are on.

A well-known argument of David Hume is presented and refuted. The argument concerns the notion that the natural world may be self-contained, for all we know, and religious claims are superfluous. This is essentially the position also advocated by Richard Dawkins, in slightly different terms. These arguments are presented, and then it is explained that they fail, owing to what amounts to a false premise. This is subtle because the false premise is in the very way the discussion is framed. If one assumes that when we are talking about God we are talking about abstract intellectual tools, then one goes wrong. Various witnesses are invoked to show that thoughtful religious language operates differently.

Chapter 3 spells out the analytic method used in Part II to evaluate theories of right action suggested by the African tradition. The central criteria invoked to ascertain whether a general moral principle counts as African and philosophically justified are the extent to which it entails and explains two classes of intuitions. One sort consists of particular moral judgements that are salient amongst sub-Saharan peoples or at least their philosophical exponents, for instance that reconciliation is the proper end of criminal justice and that consensus is apt in politics. The other sort comprises particular moral judgements widely accepted across the globe, especially as they figure into English-speaking philosophical discussions of morality, e.g., racial epithets are wrong. The (secular) moral theory that best entails and explains these two groups of intuitions is advanced as both African and justified in respect of a multicultural audience of moral philosophers.

This chapter examines six arguments in favour of the idea that combinations and coalitions are apt to bear duties. The first five arguments assert that combinations’ or coalitions’ duties are the best way to solve some problem: the problem of explaining individuals’ duties, of explaining intuitions about group responsibility, of capturing convictions, of distributing the duties correlative to human rights, or of avoiding overdemandingness. The sixth argument claims that some combinations or some coalitions are moral agents—and are, therefore, apt to bear duties by their very nature. Each of the six arguments is shown to be problematic. The result is a stalemate: we have no compelling arguments in favour of combinations’ and coalitions’ propensity to bear duties, yet we also have no arguments against that propensity.