Be Careful What You Grant

I examine the concept of granting for the sake of the argument in the context of explanatory reasoning. I discuss a situation where S wishes to argue for H1 as a true explanation of evidence E and also decides to grant, for the sake of the argument, that H2 is an explanation of E. S must then argue that H1 and H2 jointly explain E. When H1 and H2 compete for the force of E, it is usually a bad idea for S to grant H2 for the sake of the argument. If H1 and H2 are not positively dependent otherwise, there is a key argumentative move that he will have to make anyway in order to retain a place at the table for H1 at all-namely, arguing that the probability of E given H2 alone is low. Some philosophers of religion have suggested that S can grant that science has successfully provided natural explanations for entities previously ascribed to God, while not admitting that theism has lost any probability. This move involves saying that the scientific explanations themselves are dependent on God. I argue that this granting move is not an obvious success and that the theist who grants these scientific successes may have to grant that theism has lost probability.

Automated summary

This article examines the concept of granting for the sake of the argument in explanatory reasoning and argues that it is usually not a good idea to grant an explanation that competes for force in order to retain probability. It also discusses the move made by philosophers of religion to grant scientific successes while maintaining the probability of theism, questioning whether this move is a clear success.