Logos & Episteme

Volume 10, Issue 4, 2019

Michael J. Shaffer
Pages 409-432

The Availability Heuristic and Inference to the Best Explanation

This paper shows how the availability heuristic can be used to justify inference to the best explanation in such a way that van Fraassen's infamous "best of a bad lot" objection can be adroitly avoided. With this end in mind, a dynamic and contextual version of the erotetic model of explanation sufficient to ground this response is presented and defended.