Inferentialism, Bayesianism and Scientific Explanation

解释是科学合理性的基石。但什么是有效的解释推理？什么时候有效的解释推理是真理的向导？尽管这些问题引起了很多争论，但没有得到一致接受的答案。我们的研究计划旨在打破不同哲学解释理论之间争论的僵局，并发展一种解释推理的新说法。为此，提出的研究计划综合了语言哲学（推理主义）和形式认识论（贝叶斯主义）的方法。首先，我们将诉诸推理主义来证明对解释的解释是正当的，作为论证，通过提供理由来促进对解释的推断。其次，我们将使用贝叶斯理论在概率方面定量地重建解释推理的动态。最后，我们将探讨系统整合这两种方法的可能性，以证明科学实践中常用的解释模式的合理性，即最佳解释推理。我们的结果将通过对两个案例的深入分析来获得：一个来自经济学，即对金融风格化事实的解释；另一个来自生物学，即对生物功能的解释，其解释价值很难用传统的科学解释理论来解释。推理主义和贝叶斯主义的结合使用，以及在案例研究中的应用，将使我们能够从创新的角度来解决传统的任务，即从规范和科学的角度来解释科学解释。

Explanation constitutes a cornerstone of scientific rationality. But what is valid explanatory reasoning? And when is valid explanatory reasoning a guide to truth? Although these questions have generated much debate, no unanimously accepted answers have emerged. Our research program aims to break the deadlock in the debate between different philosophical theories of explanation and to develop a new account of explanatory reasoning. To do so, the proposed research program synthesizes approaches from philosophy of language (inferentialism) and formal epistemology (Bayesianism). First, we will appeal to inferentialism to justify the interpretation of explanations as arguments that facilitate the inference to the explanandum by providing reasons. Secondly, we will use Bayesianism to quantitatively reconstruct the dynamics of explanatory reasoning in probabilistic terms. Finally, we will investigate the possibility to systematically integrate the two approaches in order to vindicate the rationality of an explanatory pattern commonly used in scientific practice, viz. inference to the best explanation. Our results will be informed by an in depth analysis of two case studies: one from economics, viz. the explanation of the stylized facts of finance, and one from biology, viz. the explanation of biological functions, whose explanatory value is hard to account for by reference to traditional theories of scientific explanation. The combined use of inferentialism and Bayesianism and the application to the case studies will allow us to tackle the traditional task of interpreting scientific explanation from an innovative perspective, both normatively and scientifically informed.