Deep thought of the Day

[timelets]

My first line of argument in these essays denies that explanation is a guide to truth.
...
I have sometimes summarized my view about explanation this way: no inference to best explanation; only inference to most likely cause. But that is right only if we are very careful about what makes a cause 'likely'. We must have reason to think that this cause, and no other, is the only practical possibility, and it should take a good deal of critical experience to convince us of this.

-- Nancy Cartwright. How the Laws of Physics Lie (1983).