The Problem of Determining the Best Explanation

The problem of how to determine the best explanation is the final standard problem with which we will deal. The problem is obviously not general to all modes of social history, but specific to the explanatory modes, whether they be the causal, the intentional, the statistical or some combination of the three. The problem occurs when several competing explanatory theories are advanced for the same phenomena and we want to know which theory is the ‘best’; that is, which one provides the best explanans for the explananda in question.