This is not solipsism, nor the denial of an external world, but an insistence that the world we inhabit is inseparable from the activity of consciousness that renders it intelligible. And that, of course, is the bridge to both phenomenology and enactive cognition. — Wayfarer

If you mean this literally, it's absurd because it assumes the actual, external world depends on (human?) consciousness. If you believe that, I doubt you could provide a reasonable justification for that belief.

It would not be absurd to say the world as we perceive and understand it is inseparable from our consciousness. Although it's trivial.

It seems to me that the limits you assume to our abilities to understand the external world makes your position self-defeating: it implies that our knowlwdge of the world is too limited to judge that it's too limited.

If the reality we experience is the only thing that we have experienced, how do we know that there isn’t anything beyond our reality? — an-salad

We can't "know" there's more (in the strict sense of "knowlwdge"). But we innately have a sense that there is a world beyond ourselves, and this constitutes a rational basis. Given that we have this belief, it is rational to maintain it unless it is defeated by other facts and valid reasoning. The mere fact that it is possibly false is not a defeater.

this rewind possibility is the standard framing. — Mijin

I believe you're referring to the PAP: Principle of Alternative Possibilities, which suggests a rewind could have produced a different choice.

But LFW does not necessarily require that. One could agree that the rewind can't produce another choice, but if the choice is not the product of natural determinism- it is still a product of free will.

This is the view of molinists; it entails a means of rationalizing free will with God's foreknowledge of choices you will make. William Lane Craig (a molinist) explicitly rejects the PAP on these grounds, while still insisting that choices are freely willed. This is not, of course, a good reason to believe in LFW; rather, it's a rationalization of LFW (assumed to exist in order to justify accountability to God) with divine foreknowledge.

I'm an atheist, so I reject the molinist rationalization, but it does make a bit of sense to decouple LFW from the PAP.

As far as I can tell, consciousness (=experiencing being conscious) entails the set of sensory sensations, thoughts and feelings one has in the present, where "the present" is a short period of time, not an instant of time.

These are all intertwined. Sensations and feelings can induce thoughts, and thoughts can induce feelings. It is the feelings aspect that the hard part, of the "hard problem". Most aspects of consciousness seem amenable to programming in software. Feelings are not amenable to this. IMO, feelings are the one aspect of consciousness that is inconsistent with what we know about the physical world. That doesn't mean it's necessarily inconsistent with naturalism - it could just mean that there are aspects of the natural world that are not understood and may be inscrutable.

If "free will" just means that we make some choices without being forced by something external to ourselves, then indeed we have free will.

If "free will" means that our will operates independently of the laws of nature (wholly or partly), then it's impossible to know that.

I think the only meaningful question is "why does the universe exist?" — Ciceronianus

Why must there be a reason?

Why is this an open universe? My gut tells me a bilateral infinite series towards both poles doesn't accommodate discrete boundaries. What sort of boundaries contains the now? Time is the universal solvent that keeps us in the now. What ever stops time? — ucarr

It's at least logically possible the universe is finite to the past, and therefore closed to the past. My personal opinion is that this is indeed the case, because an infinite past would entail a completed series of steps of finite duration (call these "days"). It is not logically possible to add up to infinity through increments of finite duration.

Being open to the future doesn't have any problems I can think of. Proceding forward in time, each day is a new "now", but the process will never "reach" infinity. In this context, an infinite future just entails an unending process. I guess if you embrace B-theory of time ("block" time), it would be a problem because it would entail a block that is infinite in extent - but IMO, this is an argument against block time.

“Why not nothing?” elicits the reasoning that reveals that math, logic, and science are incomplete and also that the universe is open (it didn’t start from nothing) and cannot be closed. — ucarr

Gödel proved that any mathematical system is necessarily incomplete, but this does not imply the "universe is open". Given the fact that there is a universe, it follows that there is not, and never was, a 'state of nothingness", that preceded it (temporally or causally). The reasoning is parallel to your support of your premise 1.

I suspect you wish to assume there did exist a prior state of "God sans universe". That's logically possible, but it's an unwarranted assumption. Here's why:

Define ToE: The Totality of Existence. If naturalism is true then ToE={the universe}; if deism is true then ToE={universe+God}

In either case (ToE) was not preceded by a "state of nothingness", for the reason I just mentioned: it is logically impossible for a "state of nothingness" to precede that which exists.

So, feel free to assume a God exists - but don't fool yourself into believing you can prove it to be the case.

Premises:

[1] Epistemically, belief and thought are identical.
[2] Preexisting attachment to an idea motivates a rhetorical shift from “I think” to “I believe,” implying a degree of veracity the idea lacks.
[3] This implication produces unwarranted confidence.
[4] Insisting on an idea’s truth beyond the limits of its epistemic warrant is irrational.


Conclusion ∴ All belief is irrational. — Millard J Melnyk

In [1], you seem to be suggesting that saying "I think X" is equivalent to saying "I believe X".
But then in [2], you seem to be implying the "I think X" and "I believe X" mean different things.

Then in [3], you're noting that when a person says "I think X" they're conveying a belief that is unwarranted.

But this means [4] applies exclusively to statements "I think X", and not necessarily to all expressions of belief. This makes your conclusion non-sequitur.

Independent of this analysis, I'll point out that your conclusion has an absurd implication: that all beliefs are equally irrational - and therefore all beliefs are equally arbitrary. That's prima facie absurd: it implies it's just as reasonable for a pedestrian at an intersection to walk straight into traffic as it is to wait for the light to change and oncoming traffic to stop.

So there can be warranted confidence in a belief - and that's what we ought to strive for.

Oh, OK. That weakens their claim to be real, perhaps, perhaps not. Maybe they are real, but not in the sense of having an independent existence from the systems they govern. I'm not familiar with the view. — bert1

It's not weak at all. It's referred to as existing "immanently". In metaphysics, an immanent property is one that exists within an object itself, as opposed to a transcendent property that would exist beyond or outside it.

The -1 electric charge of an electron exists immanently in an electron. It seems to me that immanent properties make more sense then having properties be independent things because then you'd have to account for how these properties attach, and explain what they're attaching to (are they attaching to a thing lacking any properties at all?!)

The attraction between an electron and proton is a relational property that exists imminently in an electron-proton pair. There's no evidence that their attraction is contingent on anything other than the properties of each of the objects and their proximity.

- is the generation of objects governed by laws, or do the laws only exist once the object exist? — bert1

Yes and no.

The laws exist iff the set of objects exists in the arrangement that exhibits the law. If inflation theory is correct, then there was a time in the universe in which no particles existed - so there were no electron-proton pairs, and thus no laws could be exhibited between them.

However, the fact that such a law would be exhibited when protons and electrons came about would have been baked into the physics of the quantum fields - so ultimately (and assuming reductionism is true) the electron-proton law is just exhibiting more fundamental natural law that would always have been present.

Why does the same type of law always occur with the same type of objects?

Remember that the existence of laws of nature is a hypothesis, one that best explains the empirical evidence. I argue that this hypothesis is an "inference to best explanation" for these regularities. You could counter this claim by presenting an alternative hypothesis that you can show to be a better explanation. The hypothesis seems to be consistent with what we know about the world through physics.

But GIVEN the hypothesis that there are laws of nature, it is the case that a set of objects arranged in a particular way that exhibits a law of nature will do so necessarily. That's simply what it means to be a law: it is a necessary relation that exists between types of things.

Why is there consistency across space and time?

Because the relevant objects in the past are the same sort of objects that exist in the present and future.

But it raises a lot of questions about the details of this objective, but invisible and all-powerful, existence that laws partake of. Are the laws all omnipresent? If so, how does that fit with them being numerically distinct? Or is there really one big law that explains everything? Do laws change? Eternal god(s) without the personality? — bert1

"All powerful"? Whatever gives you that idea?

According to the theory, laws are relations between types of objects. These relations exist when and where these types exist. This removes the mystery associated with a platonic view of laws, by proposing they exist as part of the ontological structure of the world.

There's no reason to think they would change. Bare possibilities are irrelevant, because the theory is an inference to best explanation of regularities we observe in the world. The theory isn't dependent on the tentative current state of the discipline of physics; if an apparent "law of physics" were to change, it would be imply there's more to this "law of physics" than we thought.

Is there one big law? That might be the case if monism is true. But these questions are irrelevant to the theory.

Because laws are descriptive and don't really explain anything. — bert1

That is not the view of law realists. They suggests there to be an ontological basis for the observed regularities.

Example: two objects with opposite electric charge (e.g. electron & proton) have a force of attraction between them. This force is a necessary consequence of their properties. The properties and force are ontological.

That's pretty much correct.

But are laws of nature not codifications of observed invariances? — Janus

No. The hypothesis I discussed is that laws of nature are ontological.

I distinguish laws of nature from so-called "laws of physics". These are, at worst, codifications of these invariances. But they are more than that. when they make predictions that are later confirmed, predictions about things not previously observed. These give us good reasons to think the law of physics may be a true law of nature.

But it still may be they later become falsified by new evidence. This only means the law of physics isn't an accurate description of the ontological law of nature. .

I'm trying to make sense of this in a 2 step process, because it avoids directly leaping from a set of evidence of past things to claims about the future, without any clear reason. Laws of nature provide the reason.

The reasoning I'm conveying is not something I made up. It has been presented as a reasonable answer to Hume by some notable philosophers who call themselves "law realists" (e.g. Michael Tooley, Ernest Sosa, David Armstrong, and many who have built upon their work). Tooley and Sosa edited, and contributed to, a book of essays on causation in the book Causation (the link takes you to a PDF of the book).

It's also pretty well accepted physics that the universe has been expanding since the big bang, and will continue to do so on into the future - consistent with general relativity. Someone would have to be explain why this should be rejected as a good means of predicting aspects of both the past and the future.

That doesn't falsify anything I said. My belief in laws of nature is justified by being the best explanation of observed regularities (if you disagree, provide a BETTER explanation).

The existence of these laws of nature entail aspects of the future.

It seems you are conflating an explanation of facts past and present and a prediction of facts future. So you have arrived at your best explanation, and then you make a prediction based on the idea that there have been these laws in the past, and ...the future will be like the past, because the future will be like the past — unenlightened

This objection falls away when we consider what a law is, and how we arrive at the hypothesis.

What we observe directly (past and present) is causation between particulars. But we also observe that these token acts of causation follow patterns, such that particulars of a certain type and arrangement have an effect of a certain type. This leads to the hypothesis of what a law is: a causal relation between types that has an effect of a certain type. The causal relation is necessitated by the properties associated with each respective type; time is not a factor in the law, other than with respect to the elapse of time associated with the act of causation.

To suggest that laws (so defined) come and go over time is ad hoc, because there's no evidence for this. Types of particulars may come into or out of existence, but if they exist - the associated laws will necessarily exist.

The concept of plenary powers isn't new. For example, a President has the plenary power to grant pardons over federal crimes. But you're right, that the Trump administration is trying to expand his powers in many other areas.

Some of these claims will be heard by SCOTUS in this term.

I infer from the success of physics that there exist laws of nature in our world, many of which are (at least) approximated by physics; laws that necessitate the regularities we observe (nomological necessity). Therefore the regularities will necessarily continue into the future.

I suggest there is no better explanation for the success of physics (i.e. it's an IBE), and this is my justification for believing it.

So...she proves something I never disputed. Did you not read the last part of section 1? She says:

"Suppose that claims about the past and the present never entail claims about the future (what we might call “Hume’s 2nd Law.”) Is it reasonable to conclude that we are forced to accept that we have intuitive access to future truths, or instead that we can never have justified beliefs with respect to the future? No, in this case it seems much more likely that we have some non-deductive justification."

Not once have I suggested empirical evidence can ENTAIL universal conclusions. I've consistently been discussing BELIEFS. Russell, at least, acknowledges that we can have justified beliefs with respect to the future,despite the fact that these will be justified non-deductively.

:up: :up: :up: :up:

The “presumption of regularity” is long-standing judicial principle that presumes government officials have acted lawfully, properly, and in good faith unless proven otherwise. It places the burden of proof on the party challenging the government's action to show that it was arbitrary, capricious, or unlawful. It entails a presumption that attorneys representing the government in court will provide truthful information in court, and will make a good faith effort to comply with court orders. It also entails that administrative actions will be made in good faith, rather than in an arbitrary and capricious manner. An analysis posted in the JUSTSECURITY website documents over 400 instances in which the Trump administration has eroded this presumption of regularity. They details 3 categrories of irregularity:

1)Compliance with Court orders. They document 16 instances in which the government failed to fully comply. They contrast this with history over the past 70 years – there’s only one prior instance of the government failing to comply with a court order: in the 1960s, a judge ordered a cessation of bombing in the Cambodian War. In this case, the non-compliance by the DOJ lasted only for a matter of hours.

2) Presenting false or misleading information in Court – 35 cases are described.

3)Arbitrary and capricious administrative action: 50 cases

If anyone is interested, the full report is here.

The lead author is Ryan Goodman, a law professor at New York University, who has worked with the State Department and the National Institute of Military Justice.

I consider this analysis extremely important because it identifies behavior by the Trump administration unrelated to partisanship, but firmly entrenched in the law. No one, of any ideological perspective, should consider this behavior acceptable.

What the heck is wrong with that guy? — jorndoe

He's an effective propagandist - effective at telling like-minded people what they want to here. It's especially appealing to those who are still in shock at the assassination of Mister Kirk.

Your response, pointing to actual analysis that falsifies what he says, seems to me the correct one, but none of his audience would be at all interested in researching it.

Semantics is important, to ensure points are understood as intended.

I notice that the Wikipedia article on justification mentions warrant as "proper" justification for a belief.

Some epistemologists use "warrant" to refer to a justification sufficient for knowledge. The conditions that make it so are open to debate. Nevertheless, I was just treating warrant as synonymous with justification.

Model theory omits a link to ontology. It defines what truth is semantically, but does not relate it to anything in the world.

Truthmaker theory does this: a truthmaker is that aspect of reality to which a true statement corresponds. Tarski agreed that the statement, "snow is white" is true, because snow is white. This is standard deflation, but he omits identifying the italicized phrase with a truthmaker.

In my earlier post, I was referring to a model of reality. You were referring to a language model. But you can't get truth out of language without a connection to reality- an ontological grounding. So what I said about a model of reality stands, and I'll apply it here:

It's not true by definition that the future will, or even likely will, resemble the past because it always has — Janus

I agree. However, we could draw inferences about the nature of reality by examining the past, and apply that analysis (that model of reality) to making predictions. This is, of course, the nature of physics.

In model theory, a model is a structure that makes a formal system’s sentences true — Banno

But they don't, really- unless you embrace a "relativist" theory of truth.

No, not to explain induction. Rather, I'm suggesting that the development of a model is rooted in induction.

I see a 2 step process: 1) infer elements of a model from induction, based on the conjunction of empirical evidence; 2) cast a specific inference (eg "all swans are white") from this element of a model.

This seems consistent with science. When an innovator proposes a hypothesis at odds with the current conventional wisdom, he is setting aside that conventional model and presenting an element of an alternative model.

The “normative” aspect here does not consist in a choice among alternatives, but in adherence to what follows from the model itself. — Banno

If conforming to a model solves the problem, then simply infer a model on the basis of the constant conjunction of the empirical evidence. Under the framework of the model, the (otherwise) inductive inference s necessitated by the model.

I alluded to this earlier.

Valid deductive arguments are contingent on their premises. The conclusion is only "objectively best" if the argument is sound.

Except for arguments whose premises are necessary truths, it is impossible to prove a deductive conclusion is "objectively best". It's an unattainable goal. So why criticize only abductive reasoning for being unable to attain the unattainable?

You could say the deductive conclusion is "objectively best" given the premises, but we could add premises to an abduction that similarly identifies the contingency.

I'm not denying there's a problem of induction:we can't conclude strict impossibility based on a conjunction of evidence. But neither can we conclude a deductive conclusion is a necessary truth, in most cases. This doesn't imply we should all adopt extreme skepticism.

Maybe I misunderstand, but you seem to be implying that humans have the magical power to select the objectively best explanation from the third realm of abstract objects.

Rather, the "best explanation" has been selected subjectively; the subject has judged it to be the "best" explanation from among the ones he's considered. That is not "any" explanation; it is not arbitrary. But it is subjective, and cannot be otherwise.

The subject may, or may not, have been sufficiently rigorous - he may have overlooked facts; he may have not considered the plausibility of the assumptions he's made or that are entailed; he may have jumped to an unjustified biased conclusion....it's just his judgement.

But surely SOME IBEs, that SOME people make are sufficient to warrant a belief. If not, then nobody has much in the way of warranted beliefs, except for some analytic truths. A corrollary of my claim: a belief can be warranted even if it is possibly false.

The best explanations are the ones which are rationally justified, — Banno

Here's your error. The "best" in an IBE is not necesarily warranted (rationally justified). It just means it was chosen as "best" because it was subjectively judged to be better than alternatives that were considered.

Isn't "warranted" just another way of saying "best"? — Banno

No. Being warranted means to be rationally justified.
A subjective "best" inference may, or may not, be warranted.

Well, I won't disagree, but point out that "the best" remains ill-defined. If we are in agreement as to which explanation is the best, then we should accept it; but here, "the best" might just be "the one we accept"... — Banno

"The best" is always the one we accept. But if the ensuing belief is warranted, that's all that matters. There's isn't a recipe for warrant.

Good. Then we are agreed that abduction, considered as inference to the "best" explanation, does not determine one explanation, and is not itself a rational process. Do we also agree that as a result it doesn't serve to answer Humes Scepticism — Banno

Do you agree that inference to the best explanation can warrant a belief? This of course is only if it was done rationally.

If so, then explain how this doesn't answer Hume's scepticism.

And yes, I am discussing the use of the term, and so its meaning. What I would bring out is that it is not so easy as some might suppose to set out what is a conspiracy theory and what isn't. That the detail is important. — Banno

Are there NO easy cases, in your opinion?

You just seem to be objecting to use of the term. Don't use it, if you don't want to. But when I refer to something as a "conspiracy theory", I have a certain sort of epistemic framework in mind that renders it irrational. We could discuss this further in another thread, but it seems moot to the points I'm trying to make here.

it is more common that there are multiple inferences that satisfy the evidence at hand. — Banno

I agree, but when that is the case - we aren't warranted in choosing only one of them. But we would be warranted in excluding those that don't fit the evidence so well.

And yet we are often obliged to choose. The evidence is insufficient for the choice to be determined, so there are other things at play, including our other beliefs, and the practices we share with those around us. Our epistemic choices are guided by more than evidence; they include the whole form of the life in which we are engaged. — Banno

I agree, and I alluded to that when I mentioned the role of our background beliefs. Because they are beliefs, we are treating them a factual (truths) - at least to the extent that the beliefs are categorical (not expressions of certainty). This is perfectly fine most of the time. We should strive for consistency in our beliefs. There are times when we should question our background beliefs, but it's impractical to do so constantly.

And here Feyerabend's thoughts come in to play. What he shows is that sometimes we infer, not to the best explanation, but to some other explanation - and that this can be a very good thing. You will come across many examples in his book, so I will not list them here. — Banno

Like Galileo? Copernicus? As I see it, they are simply dropping the background assumptions of the then-current conventional wisdom, and developing new hypotheses freed of those constraints. I join Feyerabend in applauding that. The question is: how and when should we apply that? I suggest "the how" is in terms of reconsidering certain background beliefs. The "when" is...I don't know, but it can't be constantly. Similarly, scientists DO often operate within the current conventional wisdom of their field, and I expect this is more often than not.

Now the problem with calling inference to the best explanation, abduction, and listing it alongside deduction and induction, is the air of logical determinism that is given to what is in reality a practice fraught with ambiguity and guesswork. There's a lot going on here that is plainly irrational. — Banno

Either you're misunderstanding me, or I'm misunderstanding you. But you seem to be inferring that IBE determines an answer, just like deduction does. I don't think that at all (see the first point in this post).

Sure, there's ambiguity and guesswork, and we should be honest about when we are guessing and when there is ambiguity.

I have said an IBE is not necessarily rational. But it can be. Again, I'm discussing belief: my position is that most beliefs are established by IBE, but only a subset of these are warranted beliefs. We often draw conclusions based on irrational reasons. The IBE model provides a framework for discussion between people with different views, a discussion that can expose irrationality on either side.

By ackowledging our beliefs are warranted by abduction, a discussion is feasible, and can be productive for both sides. Productive in various ways: undercutting the other guys belief ("proving" him wrong, in an abductive sense); or simply helping both sides to understand the other's point of view - when both positions are defensible. — Relativist

Perhaps it is necessary to bear in mind that it is possible for two incompatible interpretations of data to be right, or at least not wrong. — Ludwig V

Absolutely, and I've acknowledged this in several posts.

Yes, a single, specific real explanation isn't always possible. A more general explanation may still be possible, or at least some may be ruled out. It can be appropriate to reserve judgement. — Relativist

Yes. But we seem to prefer to reach a conclusion, even when we don't need to decide. Perhaps we just don't like the uncertainty of indecision. — Ludwig V

I agree, but it can still be debated as to whether or not one is warranted (rationally justified) in believing that conclusion.

You could give a clear definition of deduction and then persuasively argue that, given the large number of beliefs each person holds, very few of them are arrived at via deduction. But I would say that the same thing holds for inference. If we give a clear definition of inference then we will find that, given the large number of beliefs each person holds, very few of them are arrived at via inference. This includes inference to the best explanation. So as noted earlier, it seems that by "inference to the best explanation" you mean something exceedingly broad and also rather vague. — Leontiskos

I do mean this broadly, and I don't claim that simply being an "IBE" makes it a justifiable belief.

It's reported that Trump has declared Portland Oregon a "war zone". I believe that he did say that. It's been reported in multiple sources, and I saw a video in which he made that statement. I could be wrong: I have not checked the sources, and haven't verified the video wasn't a deepfake. But IMO, the best explanation for the evidence is that he really did say that, despite the fact that the statement itself is implausible. We don't typically think through these things in this detail, but they're implicit in accepting something as fact. So in this case, I'd argue that my belief that Trump made the statement is warranted, despite the fact that it's possibly false. What other basis could there be to claim this is warranted, other than a valid IBE?

By contrast, I heard from one source* that Trump based his "war zone" comment on watching a video of riots in Portland that occurred in 2022. Suppose that's true. He made an IBE, but failed to do any due diligence to validate that what is saw does actually reflect current conditions, so I'd say it's an unwarranted belief on his part.

____
* I'm not fully buying this yet, since it's just one source. So I'm reserving judgement.

If we are talking about the practical way that most people arrive at beliefs, then I think the best work on the subject is John Henry Newman's An Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent, where he develops his "illative sense" among other things. If we are talking about this practical matter, then I don't think deduction or inference or basic beliefs are the right answer, especially in isolation. — Leontiskos

I found the essay online, and asked Claude (AI) to summarize the chapter on "The Sanction of the Illative Sense". Here's a link to the summary, also pasted below:

Main Argument
Newman introduces the concept of the "Illative Sense" - a natural faculty of judgment that allows us to reach certainty in concrete matters where formal logic alone cannot take us. He argues against both extreme skeptics who deny we can have certitude, and rationalists who believe only formal logic can justify beliefs.
Key Points
1. The Nature of the Illative Sense

It's the mind's ability to judge correctly in concrete, real-world matters
Similar to how we exercise judgment in morality (Aristotle's phronesis), aesthetics, or social conduct
Each person must exercise it individually - it's personal, not mechanical
It operates throughout reasoning: at the start (identifying first principles), during arguments (weighing evidence), and at conclusions (determining when proof is sufficient)

2. Why We Need It

Formal logic deals with abstract propositions, but life requires judgments about concrete realities
The gap between probable evidence and certain conclusions can't be bridged by syllogisms alone
We naturally possess certitude about many things despite lacking mathematically rigorous proofs

3. Its Legitimacy

Newman argues we should accept our mental faculties as we find them, just as we accept physical nature
The widespread human capacity for certitude proves it's not a mistake or weakness
God gave us these faculties, and they're adequate for discovering truth when properly used
4. Practical Applications
Newman illustrates how the Illative Sense works in historical inquiry, showing how respected scholars (Niebuhr, Grote, Lewis, etc.) reach different conclusions from the same evidence because they operate from different assumptions, viewpoints, and judgments about what constitutes reasonable interpretation.
Philosophical Significance
Newman is defending common-sense certainty against both radical skepticism and narrow rationalism, arguing that legitimate knowledge requires personal judgment guided by developed intellectual habits, not just formal proofs. — Claude

Nothing he says conflicts with my claims. He focuses only on deduction, makes vague claims about "common-sense" and asserts that it's fine to accept the product of theses senses. Abduction is consistent with "common sense", but is better positioned for criticism, correction, and debating conflicting views where two individuals' "common sense" leads them to different conclusions. Philosophers of history that came after Newman point to abduction as a key process of historians (see this). Abductive conclusions by historians are sources of debate among them.

But a critical difference is that Newman doesn't discuss warrant - justifying the belief (as far as I can tell). He just assumes the "illiative sense" is reliable.

If everything is an IBE, then what sense does it make to exhort someone to engage in IBE? Or to argue in favor of IBEs? — Leontiskos

It frames a discussion. Have you never encountered a guy who makes some assertion, then says, "prove me wrong"? This establishes an unreachable goalpost. By ackowledging our beliefs are warranted by abduction, a discussion is feasible, and can be productive for both sides. Productive in various ways: undercutting the other guys belief ("proving" him wrong, in an abductive sense); or simply helping both sides to understand the other's point of view - when both positions are defensible.

Let me put it this way: if some explanations are better and some are worse, then what are they better or worse in relation to? — Leontiskos

In relation to each other, but based on thorough, valid reasoning and more plausible assumptions, that are least ad hoc. Extreme example: misplacing your car keys vs the keys having been sucked into an interdimensional portal. The latter depends on implausible assumptions.

1. If there are better and worse explanations, then they must be better or worse relative to some standard
2. The standard is the true explanation
3. The true explanation is not an IBE
4. Therefore, not everything is an IBE — Leontiskos

The IDEAL is a true explanation, but since we don't have direct access to truth, it can't be the standard(not directly). Rather, we should apply truth directed approaches: valid reasoning (avoiding contradiction; recognizing entailments), meeting the necessary explanatory scope, considering the plausibility of background assumptions, avoid force fitting data to the hypothesis,...

The process is analogous to being on a jury, charged with weighing evidence to reach a verdict. Your vote is your IBE.

If Sherlock Holmes is working a case then he has any number of candidate theses floating around his head. Some are better than others. Also, something actually happened in reality that he is trying to understand. The best explanation will (arguably*) be the one which most closely approximates the thing that happened in reality. That is what his spectrum of worst/worse/better/best is aiming at. — Leontiskos

Again, we don't have access to the truth. It could very well be that the available evidence supports a false conclusion more than (the unknown) true one. But the evidence is all we have to go on, and (more often than not) it will be true (if we use good, consistent standards)

My point is that if you try to make everything an IBE, then IBEs make no sense. An inference to the best explanation presupposes the possibility of the real explanation. Depending on our questions and their level of specificity, a single real explanation may not be possible, but in many cases it is possible, and especially so in a theoretical or conceptual sense. — Leontiskos

Yes, an IBE presupposes there is a true explanation.

Yes, a single, specific real explanation isn't always possible. A more general explanation may still be possible, or at least some may be ruled out. It can be appropriate to reserve judgement.