Topics Rationality

Question When is rational to say "I do not have an explanation for this event, but the explanation you propose is not a good one." For example, my friend (hypothetically) believes there are ghosts in her house. As proof, she tells me some weird stories of things that happened in her house. I can't think of any good explanations for the things that happen in the stories. Nonetheless, can I still dismiss her conclusion that ghosts are in her house?

Accepted:
August 22, 2009

Comments

It is rational to reject a purported explanation for a number of reasons:

1. Because a better explanation is available. (This is what you don't have in the case of strange happenings in your friend's house.)

2. Because the explanation relies on assumptions that are sufficiently doubtful for independent reasons. (The ghost explanation, for example, assumes that individual people can continue to act in the world even after their bodies disintegrate. Since we have independent reasons for believing that an individual's memories, desires, and plans all depend on the existence of appropriate brain states, we have good reason to doubt this assumption.)

3. Because it is too general, or too vague, to account for the specifics of the situation. (Explaining sounds in the night by reference to a ghost's movements, for example, doesn't say enough about why these particular sounds would be made by this particular ghost, at this particular time.)

4. Because there is a long history of similar explanations being disconfirmed, and little or no history of similar explanations being carefully studied and confirmed. (Many things that have been attributed to ghosts have turned out to have more commonplace explanations.)