Uploaded August 2026 | Updated September 2026, 1 week ago
There are two different ways to try to address a strong case for some hypothesis H, and they are not sharply distinct from one another. One way is by just saying that "somehow" we have this and this and this evidence but H is not true. Another is to make a stab at actually explaining a set of evidence if H is not true. When there is a really strong case for H, what will happen is that that "stab" doesn't actually do a good job at explaining the evidence either--nowhere near as good a job as H itself. So the person denying H is forced into a "somehow" move in the end anyway, to make up for the deficiencies of his (already ad hoc) alternative explanation.
Here I discuss this point in the abstract and illustrate it from an essay by Arif Ahmed that argues for a Humean approach to the resurrection evidence. Ahmed makes crucial use of, of all things, the swoon theory.
There are two different ways to try to address a strong case for some hypothesis H, and they are not sharply distinct from one another. One way is by just saying that "somehow" we have this and this and this evidence but H is not true. Another is to make a stab at actually explaining a set of evidence if H is not true. When there is a really strong case for H, what will happen is that that "stab" doesn't actually do a good job at explaining the evidence either--nowhere near as good a job as H itself. So the person denying H is forced into a "somehow" move in the end anyway, to make up for the deficiencies of his (already ad hoc) alternative explanation.
Here I discuss this point in the abstract and illustrate it from an essay by Arif Ahmed that argues for a Humean approach to the resurrection evidence. Ahmed makes crucial use of, of all things, the swoon theory.
