Casting inference to the best explanation's lot with active inference

Abstract

AbstractThis paper draws on the resources of computational neuroscience (an account of active inference under the free energy principle) to address Bas van Fraassen's bad lot objection to the inference to the best explanation (IBE). The general assumption of this paper is that IBE is a finessed form of active inferences that self‐organising systems perform to maximise the chance of their survival. Under this assumption, the paper aims to establish the following points: first, the capacity to learn to perform explanatory inferences comes with evolutionary privileges; second, adaptive actions guide beliefs and beliefs are action‐oriented; and third, IBE is not inconsistent with (approximate) Bayesianism but plays a heuristic role to it.