How do we go about weighing evidence, testing hypotheses, and making inferences? According to the model of Inference to the Best Explanation , we work out what to infer from the evidence by thinking about what would actually explain that evidence, and we take the ability of a hypothesis to explain the evidence as a sign that the hypothesis is correct. In Inference to the Best Explanation , Peter Lipton gives this important and influential idea the development and assessment it deserves. The second edition has been substantially enlarged and reworked, with a new chapter on the relationship between explanation and Bayesianism, and an extension and defence of the account of contrastive explanation. It also includes an expanded defence of the claims that our inferences really are guided by diverse explanatory considerations, and that this pattern of inference can take us towards the truth. This edition of Inference to the Best Explanation has also been updated throughout and includes a new bibliography.

彼得·利普頓(Peter Lipton，1954-2007)，在威斯理大學和牛津大學學習物理學和哲學，1985年獲牛津大學博士學位。先後在剋拉剋大學、威廉斯學院和劍橋大學任教，擔任漢斯·羅森教授席位、劍橋大學科學史與科學哲學係主任、國王學院院士、英國醫學科學院院士、努費爾德生物倫理學委員會主席，創立瞭Askphilosophers．tom網站。在哲學研究中的興趣集中在科學中的說明和推理之結構、科學進步的本質、社會認識論、科學與宗教的關係、生物醫學倫理等方麵。著有《最佳說明的推理》(1991年第一版，2004年增訂第二版)。