Inferring and Explaining

- 2 InferrIng and exPlaInIng as a procedure for distinguishing good evidence from poor, weak, or even nonexistent evidence. Tere is something almost paradoxical about both my goals. I’m going to spend the next cou- ple of hundred pages laying out this approach to evidence and truth and hopefully luring you into the arena of reason by showing you that it’s fun, interesting, and valuable. Te potential paradox lies in my absolute conviction that you are already frmly ensconced in the arena of reason—that you already value truth and that you are already an accomplished evaluator of evidence. So why bother writing my book? Consider an analogy. You are skilled at something—playing the piano or playing golf. But you are also frus- trated. You are not as good at it as you’d like to be. You decide to go to a music teacher or golf pro to improve your playing. If you are lucky enough, you’ll fnd someone who can take that skill you already have and hone it, help you break some bad habits, show you some new tricks, encourage you to practice, and voilà, sig- nifcantly improve your game. I’d be a joke as a golf instructor, and I don’t play music at all, but I guess I’m arrogant enough to think I might be a pretty good critical thinking coach. The Skills and Values You Already Have Perhaps you abhor politics, think that history is boring, or believe that contemporary science is completely beyond you. I hope to change your mind about all that. But even if I fail, you’re still stuck in the arena of reason. You care about the truth or, in less pretentious jargon, what is true and what is not. Someone tells you your lover is unfaithful. Is he right, maliciously lying, or simply misinterpreting quite innocent remarks and actions? You certainly care about the answers to those questions. Your doctor tells you not to worry about the symptoms you describe and that you’ll be just fne. You’d be crazy not to care if she’s an expert in that area of medicine or if she hasmisdiagnosed your condition. A friend tells you that class is canceled today, but if a good gradematters to you, you’ll care a lot whether he knows what he’s talking about. Consider the case of poor Connie. She thinks her boyfriend is—in the kind of innocent sense of 1950s high school—cheating on her. He claims he’s innocent. She cares a heck of a lot whether her theory is true. But her suspicions are not simple paranoia; she believes she has some good evidence and is so sure she’s right that she is going to break upwith him. She lays out her case in a poem (well, really a corny pop song). Lyrics to “Lipstick on Your Collar” can be found here : https://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/ conniefrancis/lipstickonyourcollar.html. C on nie Francis performing her song can be found here: https://youtu.be/YMlALAaEwfA. Here’s her story in a nutshell. She and her boyfriend had gone to a record hop. He excused himself, saying he wanted to get a soda. But he was gone for a half hour. When he returned, Connie spotted a lipstick stain on his shirt collar. He told her that it was her lipstick. She thought about this but realized that her lipstickwas baby pink, while the stain on his shirt was bright red. Just as she was fguring this all out, her best friend, Mary Jane, walked in, and Connie saw that Mary Jane’s lipstickwas all messed up. Con- nie concludes that her boyfriend and Mary Jane