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Our aim in this talk will be to shed light on one of the most engaging challenges concerning IBE: how to assess the explanatory power of competing hypotheses. More precisely, we will look at the link between explanatory virtues and explanatory power as it is debated and discussed in contemporary literature. Our research objective is to critically analyze how this debate is currently framed. We will insist on one of the most important shortcomings of current approaches: the underestimation of the role played by contextual elements in abductive reasoning. Our goal will be to direct attention on the principled role context can play in IBE. More precisely, we will suggest that the influence of in-situ factors is pervasive in IBE. Our claim will be that IBE's main structural elements – such as explanatory strength and virtue score – need to be articulated within a context-sensitive model. This result will lead us to ask a specific question: if context does indeed play a principled role in IBE, does it lead to a form of cognitive or epistemic relativism? So as to explore this question, we will analyze the debate about the completeness or incompleteness of quantum mechanics. Our aim will be to study how the different interpretations of quantum mechanics rest on conflicting epistemic frameworks; frameworks which differ on what “best explaining” means. Our goal will be to suggest that such a confliction – a confliction that emerges from a divergent assessment of explanatory strength – does not necessarily lead to relativism.
