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#3836·Bart Vanderhaegen, about 7 hours agoThe criterion for HTV applied to 2 explanation is not justificationism I think. It allows to say explanation A is better than explanation B, which is equivalent to: explanation B is worse than explanation A. So it is a relative claim about an explanation, relative to another, not versus some absolute criterion of goodness. Similar to a crucial test (e.g. Eddington): we refute Newton's theory and keep Einsteins, that is not a claim about the goodness of Einsteins theory, that theory merely has survived, it has not gotten "goodness points". It could be refuted always later on by any better theory, in which case we would drop it too.
Similar to a crucial test …
But that’s exactly where HTV differs from Popper. Popper doesn’t give a theory points when it survives a crucial test. HTV does. From BoI chapter 1:
… testable explanations that have passed stringent tests become extremely good explanations …