Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy Notes to Indispensability Arguments in the Philosophy of Mathematics Notes 1. For example, if explanation is specified as the purpose, then we have an explanatory indispensability argument. Thus we see that inference to the best explanation is a special case of an indispensability argument.
Most scientific realists accept inference to the best explanation.
Indeed, it might be said that inference to the best explanation is the cornerstone of scientific realism. But, as we saw in note 1, inference to the best explanation may be seen as a kind of indispensability argument, so any realist who accepts the former while rejecting the latter is in a somewhat delicate position. If the vocabulary of the theory can be partitioned in the way that Craig's theorem requires, then the theory can be reaxiomatized so that apparent reference to any given theoretical entity is eliminated. It turns out that the details of the formulation of naturalism are crucial to the argument. The issue of how likely modern theories such as general relativity and quantum mechanics are to yield to nominalisation is a very interesting and controversial matter.