The Language of Argument

2 0 3

I n f e r e n c e s t o t h e B e s t E x p l a n a t i o n

Give two competing hypotheses that might be offered to explain each of the

following phenomena. Which of these hypotheses is better? Why?

1. You follow a recipe carefully, but the bread never rises.


2. Your house begins to shake so violently that pictures fall off your walls.


3. Your key will not open the door of your house.


4. People start putting television cameras on your lawn, and a man with a
   big smile comes walking up your driveway.


5. Virtually all of the food in markets has suddenly sold out.


6. You put on a shirt and notice that there is no pocket on the front like there
   used to be.


7. A cave is found containing the bones of both prehistoric humans and
   now-extinct predators.


8. A cave is found containing the bones of both prehistoric humans and
   now-extinct herbivores.


9. After being visited by lobbyists for cigarette producers, your senator
   votes in favor of tobacco price supports, although he opposed them
   before.


10. Large, mysterious patterns of flattened wheat appear in the fields of
    Britain. (Some people attribute these patterns to visitors from another
    planet.)


11. A palm reader foretells that something wonderful will happen to you
    soon, and it does.


12. A neighbor sprinkles purple powder on his lawn to keep away tigers,
    and, sure enough, no tigers show up on his lawn.

Exercise III

1. Read a murder mystery or detective story. Is the solution based on an
   inference to the best explanation? If so, put that inference in standard form,
   and evaluate it using the tests discussed above.


2. In the Discussion Question at the end of Chapter 1, Colin Powell gives
   several arguments that in 2003 Saddam Hussein was still trying to obtain
   fissile material for a nuclear weapons program. Which of Powell’s argu-
   ments is an inference to the best explanation? How well do these arguments
   meet the standards for this form of argument?


3. Put the following inference to the best explanation in standard form, and
   then evaluate it as carefully as you can, using the tests discussed above.

Discussion Questions

(continued)

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