Explanation

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stuart Glennan
Keyword(s):  
Scientific Explanation ◽  
Alternative Conceptions ◽  
Natural Phenomena ◽  
Multiple Targets ◽  
Causal Explanations ◽  
Mechanistic Explanations

This concluding chapter offers an abstract account of explanation as such, arguing that explanations involve the construction of models that always show what the targets of explanation depend upon (dependence), and sometimes show how multiple targets depend upon similar things (unification). It then suggests, in light of this account, how Salmon’s three conceptions of scientific explanation are not alternative conceptions, but are in fact complementary aspects of successful explanation. Explanations of natural phenomena are then divided into three kinds—bare causal, mechanistic, and non-causal. Bare causal explanations show what depends upon what, while mechanistic explanations show how those dependencies arise. Non-causal explanations in various forms show non-causal dependencies, which arise from features of the space in which mechanisms act.

Seneca's Scientific Fictions: Models as Fictions in theNatural Questions

2014 ◽  
Vol 104 ◽  
pp. 155-180
Author(s):  
Courtney Ann Roby
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Science ◽  
Scientific Explanation ◽  
Scientific Models ◽  
Natural Phenomena ◽  
Functional Mechanisms

AbstractSeneca'sNaturales Quaestionesexplains the causes and functional mechanisms of natural phenomena, from common sights like rainbows to exotically out-of-reach ones like comets. The vividness with which he brings them all within the reader's grasp is certainly a literary feat as much as a scientific one, but the rhetorical power of his explanations does not cost them their epistemological validity. Analyses drawn from current philosophy of science reveal elements of fictionality omnipresent in scientific models and experiments, suggesting an approach to Seneca's ‘scientific fictions’ not as failed analogies but as a sophisticated expansion of the tradition of analogical scientific explanation.

scholarly journals From dual systems to dual function: rethinking methodological foundations of behavioural economics

2019 ◽  
Vol 35 (3) ◽  
pp. 403-422 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carsten Herrmann-Pillath
Keyword(s):  
Computational Neuroscience ◽  
Behavioural Economics ◽  
Dual Function ◽  
Relative Speed ◽  
Dual Systems ◽  
Causal Explanations ◽  
Mechanistic Explanations ◽  
Neuroscience Research ◽  
Methodological Assessment ◽  
Dual Functions

AbstractBuilding on an overview of dual systems theories in behavioural economics, the paper presents a methodological assessment in terms of the mechanistic explanations framework that has gained prominence in philosophy of the neurosciences. I conclude that they fail to meet the standards of causal explanations and I suggest an alternative ‘dual functions’ view based on Marr’s methodology of computational neuroscience. Recent psychological and neuroscience research undermines the case for a categorization of brain processes in terms of properties such as relative speed. I defend an interpretation of dualities as functional, without assigning them to specific neurophysiological structures.

scholarly journals Kognition og kultur: Boyer versus Wittgenstein

2005 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lars Albinus
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Science ◽  
Ludwig Wittgenstein ◽  
Scientific Explanation ◽  
Social Reality ◽  
The Other ◽  
Human Language ◽  
Cognitive Capacities ◽  
Causal Explanations ◽  
The One ◽  
Psychological Activity

Cognitive science typically insists on procuring causal explanations for psychological activity on a pre-cultural level. In this article it is claimed that the price for doing so may be too high and that it escapes philosophical justification in the first place. A more specific criticism is directed against what thus seems to be an ignorant notion of culture in Religion Explained by Pascal Boyer. Drawing on Ludwig Wittgenstein and Meredith Williams, who is a lucid reader of his work, the psychological attempt to explain feelings and memories on the grounds of innate cognitive capacities is found to be profoundly misleading. The question is how to understand, on the one hand, human language and, on the other, the possible scope of scientific explanation. Arguing for an irreducible level of social reality, this article focuses on the limitations of cognitive science, while also bringing out the aporia caused by an epistemological trap of self-referentiality.

scholarly journals Focus on How it Works: A Mechanistic Emphasis Enhances Elementary Student Learning Outcomes

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicole Betz ◽  
Frank Keil
Keyword(s):  
Elementary School ◽  
Learning Outcomes ◽  
Formal Education ◽  
Age Groups ◽  
Learning Goals ◽  
Elementary Student ◽  
Science Content ◽  
Causal Explanations ◽  
Mechanistic Explanations ◽  
K 12

Biologists, lay adults, and children alike value understandings of how biological entities work, prioritizing these mechanistic explanations in learning choices from at least five years of age and onwards. Despite this, formal education of young children has historically lacked mechanistic content, reserving these types of causal explanations for older students. We explored strategies by which mechanistic explanations may be emphasized to learners, identifying asymmetries between teacher intuitions and the influence of a mechanistic focus on young children’s science learning. In Study 1, we contrasted K-12 teacher intuitions about two types of learning goals—mechanistic or labels—in elementary school biology lessons, assessing general preferences and beliefs about which goal would maximize learning. Teachers preferred labels-focused learning goals when considering first and second grade lessons, but increasingly shifted to mechanistic learning goals for third through fifth grade lessons. In Study 2, children ages 6 to 11 were given either a mechanistic or a labels-focused learning goal prior to watching a video lesson about the heart. In Study 3, children ages 6 to 9 heard either a mechanism-focused or labels-focused description of the small intestine prior to viewing the target heart lesson. For both learning studies, children of all sampled age groups guided to focus on mechanism performed better on a learning assessment than those guided to focus on labels. While teachers believe that younger students benefit more from superficial goals such as labels, we find that mechanistic goals enhance learning even among the youngest children. We discuss implications of initial emphasis of mechanistic science content in early elementary school to boost subsequent learning outcomes and science interest.

scholarly journals Searching for Non-Causal Explanations in a Sea of Causes

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alisa Bokulich
Keyword(s):  
Scientific Explanation ◽  
Causal Explanation ◽  
Causal Explanations ◽  
Explanatory Pluralism ◽  
Sand Ripples ◽  
Scientific Explanations ◽  
Model Based ◽  
Aeolian Geomorphology

In the spirit of explanatory pluralism, this chapter argues that causal and non-causal explanations of a phenomenon are compatible, each being useful for bringing out different sorts of insights. First the chapter reviews the author’s model-based account of scientific explanation, which can accommodate causal and non-causal explanations alike. Then it distills from the literature an important core conception of non-causal explanation. This non-causal form of model-based explanation is illustrated using the example of how Earth scientists in a subfield known as aeolian geomorphology are explaining the formation of regularly-spaced sand ripples. The chapter concludes that even when it comes to everyday “medium-sized dry goods” such as sand ripples, where there is a complete causal story to be told, one can find examples of non-causal scientific explanations.

Descartes’s Mechanical but not Mechanistic Physics

2019 ◽  
pp. 123-137
Author(s):  
Helen Hattab
Keyword(s):  
Natural Phenomena ◽  
Mechanistic Explanations ◽  
Physical Phenomena

Descartes is commonly characterized as the arch-mechanist who rejected the syllogistic demonstrations sought in Scholastic Aristotelian physics, and instead aimed at purely “mechanistic explanations” of natural phenomena. Typical accounts of physical phenomena found in his scientific works, such as that of the properties of salt, are thus interpreted as no more than structural explanations that posit one of many possible arrangements of variously shaped microscopic particles to account for the observed effects. By examining Descartes’s own statements about the different ways in which his physics is “mechanical”, and by placing these in the context of the Renaissance revival of the geometrical demonstrations found in the Aristotelian Questions of Mechanics, this chapter shows that, and in what way, Descartes aimed at mathematical and mechanical, but not mechanistic, demonstrations of physical phenomena like salt.

Scientific Explanation

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brad Skow
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Science ◽  
Statistical Models ◽  
Scientific Explanation ◽  
Causal Explanation ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Causal Explanations ◽  
Pragmatic Theory ◽  
Causal Theories

This chapter argues that the notion of explanation relevant to the philosophy of science is that of an answer to a why-question. From this point of view it surveys most of the historically important theories of explanation. Hempel’s deductive-nomological, and inductive-statistical, models of explanation required explanations to cite laws. Familiar counterexamples to these models suggested that laws are not needed, and instead that explanations should cite causes. One theory of causal explanation, David Lewis’s, is discussed in some detail. Many philosophers now reject causal theories of explanation because they think that there are non-causal explanations; some examples are reviewed. The role of probabilities and statistics in explanation, and their relation to causation, is also discussed. Another strategy for dealing with counterexamples to Hempel’s theory leads to unificationist theories of explanation. Kitcher's unificationist theory is presented, and a new argument against unificationist theories is offered. Also discussed in some detail are Van Fraassen’s pragmatic theory, and Streven’s and Woodward’s recent theories of causal explanation.

scholarly journals Hierarchy, causation and explanation: ubiquity, locality and pluralism

2011 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 115-125 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alan C. Love
Keyword(s):  
Scientific Inquiry ◽  
Scientific Explanation ◽  
Prima Facie ◽  
Negative Answer ◽  
Top Down ◽  
Bottom Up ◽  
Causal Explanations ◽  
Causal Responsibility ◽  
Hierarchical Relations ◽  
Hierarchical Representations

The ubiquity of top-down causal explanations within and across the sciences is prima facie evidence for the existence of top-down causation. Much debate has been focused on whether top-down causation is coherent or in conflict with reductionism. Less attention has been given to the question of whether these representations of hierarchical relations pick out a single, common hierarchy. A negative answer to this question undermines a commonplace view that the world is divided into stratified ‘levels’ of organization and suggests that attributions of causal responsibility in different hierarchical representations may not have a meaningful basis for comparison. Representations used in top-down and bottom-up explanations are primarily ‘local’ and tied to distinct domains of science, illustrated here by protein structure and folding. This locality suggests that no single metaphysical account of hierarchy for causal relations to obtain within emerges from the epistemology of scientific explanation. Instead, a pluralist perspective is recommended—many different kinds of top-down causation (explanation) can exist alongside many different kinds of bottom-up causation (explanation). Pluralism makes plausible why different senses of top-down causation can be coherent and not in conflict with reductionism, thereby illustrating a productive interface between philosophical analysis and scientific inquiry.

scholarly journals Correlation/causation in ecology: towards mechanistic explanations for the Species-Area Relationship

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andersonn Prestes
Keyword(s):  
Species Richness ◽  
Positive Relationship ◽  
Abiotic Factors ◽  
Causal Explanations ◽  
Biotic And Abiotic Factors ◽  
Mechanistic Explanations ◽  
Species Area ◽  
Species Area Relationship ◽  
Per Se ◽  
Recurrent Patterns

There is a common intuition in biology that strict laws are very difficult to be found. Still, there are recurrent patterns in nature, suggesting broad generalizations and understanding of phenomena. The problem is that many generalizations in biology, especially in the form of correlations, might be decoupled from causality, weakening their power of explanation. Here, I bring an example on the Species-Area Relationship (SAR). The SAR is a well-known generalization in biology. The recurrent pattern states a positive relationship between area size and species richness. Understanding the mechanisms why there is a correlation between area and diversity remains a major challenge. I suggest an explicitly focus on mechanistic explanations for the SAR. I propose to use the integration, comparison and interpretation of other (associated or secondary) natural patterns in the searching for causal explanations. Area per se might not account for causality in species diversification or absolute species richness in larger regions. Biotic and abiotic factors of a given area might be studied in order to discover the causal underpinnings of the SAR.

scholarly journals A deductive-nomological model for mathematical scientific explanation

2020 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-27
Author(s):  
Eduardo Castro
Keyword(s):  
Hamiltonian Systems ◽  
North American ◽  
Scientific Explanation ◽  
Laws Of Nature ◽  
Mathematical Explanation ◽  
Causal Explanations ◽  
Scientific Explanations ◽  
The North

I propose a deductive-nomological model for mathematical scientific explanation. In this regard, I modify Hempel’s deductive-nomological model and test it against some of the following recent paradigmatic examples of the mathematical explanation of empirical facts: the seven bridges of Königsberg, the North American synchronized cicadas, and Hénon-Heiles Hamiltonian systems. I argue that mathematical scientific explanations that invoke laws of nature are qualitative explanations, and ordinary scientific explanations that employ mathematics are quantitative explanations. I analyse the repercussions of this deductivenomological model on causal explanations.

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