An epistemic analysis of explanations and causal beliefs

Logos Universality Mentality Education Novelty: Philosophy and Humanistic Sciences, 2017

One of our main activities, as human beings, consists of the attempt to explain and to understand what is not known (yet) by what is already known and familiar. Our explanations are often causal which is why it is frequently considered that to explain a phenomenon means to describe its causes. But we must keep in mind the idea that explaining what is new and we do not know yet through known notions is a complex and risky process. Some of the most common risks consist of the fact that sometimes, through such explanation we don't succeed to bring any extra knowledge and other times we fail to grasp the real causal connections between the phenomena, which lacks our judgments of truth value. The modifications of the concept of causality due to the new discoveries of physics added to our tendency to invent causal explanations is confusing in science as well as in philosophy. In the case of the judicial philosophy for instance, the manner in which the relations and social phenomena are understood and explained have direct influence over the legal regulation, making the law enforcement more or less efficient. In this paper we intend to analyze to what extent our willingness to provide explanations for everything that happens affects the concept of causation and whether these difficulties can be related to causal inference. In classical logic, the specialists analyzed the causal inferences and the logical rules implied in order to achieve reliable conclusions and we will refer to them with the purpose of avoiding errors.

Humana.Mente: Journal of Philosophical Studies, 2015

After a concise description of issues concerning the causal and the deductive-nomological models of explanation, the flaws in the alternative view centred on relevance-to-context are examined. The paper argues for the need of a wider spectrum of options which takes into account both the Local/Global and the Internal/External aspects in order to determine the sense and the adequacy of any explanation. As a test for this argument, some specific problems are considered about the range of causal bonds, the admission of top-down causation, the appeal to emergence, the shift from explanation to explainability, the equivalence classes referred to as "cause" and "effect". Finally, the paper deals with the comparison between inequivalent explanations and lists three remaining issues to complete the picture.

We defend a pragmatic approach in the philosophy of causation and explanation. Our approach is grounded in the more general pragmatic stance that we take towards the goals of the sciences. By means of our pragmatic view on explanation and causal reasoning we primarily want to do justice to the diversity in scientific practice. We show how this approach leads us to the defence of explanatory and causal pluralism. We further argue that a pragmatic approach, at least in the philosophy of causation and explanation, can lead to knowledge that is better achievable, more interesting, and more useful for practice, in comparison with the traditional approach which is routed in monistic presuppositions and which denies the diversity of scientific practice.

Springer eBooks, 2007

Explanation is one of the most discussed notions in philosophy of science. This may be because there is little consensus among specialists on how explanation in a scientific context should be characterised. Three main approaches appear to be alive today: the formal-logical view, the ontological view, and the pragmatic view. Between these three classes of theories little agreement seems possible. Beyond the expectation that explanation is meant to provide a particular kind of information about facts of matter, there seems to be little agreement at all. Given this, the pragmatic view has at least one advantage, namely, its ability to accept the others. Alternative conceptions of explanation may be construed as promoting wholly possible goals of a given scientific explanation in so far as the pragmatic situation determines that it is appropriate to pursue these goals. What pragmatists deny is that any of these other views tell us what scientific explanation is or that they cover all forms of scientific explanation, i.e., that there is any one goal of scientific explanation. 1.1 Various approaches The formal-logical approach considers scientific explanation as something quite distinct and very different from ordinary explanation. It holds that every scientific explanation should have certain objective features by which it can be completely characterised and understood. Following Carl Hempel, a scientific explanation is to be construed as an argument with a propositional structure, i.e., an explanandum is a proposition that follows deductively from an explanans. This kind of approach gives us a prescriptive account of explanation in the sense that a proposition counts as a scientific explanation if, and only if, it fulfils certain formal requirements. As Hempel remarked, summarising his own position, "Explicating the concept of scientific explanation is not the same thing as writing an entry on the word 'explain' for the Oxford English Dictionary." 1 His approach offers certain norms with respect to which we can demarcate scientific explanations from other forms of explanation. Apart from Hempel's original covering law model this view includes approaches

2013

This article compares causal and constitutive explanation. While scientific inquiry usually addresses both causal and constitutive questions, making the distinction is crucial for a detailed understanding of scientific questions and their interrelations. These explanations have different kinds of explananda and they track different sorts of dependencies. Constitutive explanations do not address events or behaviors, but causal capacities. While there are some interesting relations between building and causal manipulation, causation and constitution are not to be confused. Constitution is a synchronous and asymmetric relation between relata that cannot be conceived as independent existences. However, despite their metaphysical differences, the same key ideas about explanation largely apply to both. Causal and constitutive explanations face similar challenges (such as the problems of relevance and explanatory regress) and both are in the business of mapping networks of counterfactual dependence – i.e. mechanisms – although the relevant counterfactuals are of a different sort. In the final section the issue of developmental explanation is discussed. It is argued that developmental explanations deserve their own place in taxonomy of explanations, although ultimately developmental dependencies can be analyzed as combinations of causal and constitutive dependencies. Hence, causal and constitutive explanation are distinct, but not always completely separate forms of explanation.

Philosophical Studies, 2015

Causal accounts of scientific explanation are currently broadly accepted (though not universally so). My first task in this paper is to show that, even for a causal approach to explanation, significant features of explanatory practice are not determined by settling how causal facts bear on the phenomenon to be explained. I then develop a broadly causal approach to explanation that accounts for the additional features that I argue an explanation should have. This approach to explanation makes sense of several aspects of actual explanatory practice, including the widespread use of equilibrium explanations, the formulation of distinct explanations for a single event, and the tight relationship between explanations of events and explanations of causal regularities.

2021

ions of the world’s entities we come to experience and know. Facts, in this view are occurrences or states of affairs and may be a descriptive part of an explanation, but not the deep Why. Aristotle’s view, such as in Posterior Analytics provides a more familiar view of explanation as part of a logical, deductive, process using reason to reach conclusions. Aristotle proposed 4 types of causes (αι’τία) to explain things. These were from either the thing’s matter, form, end, or changeinitiator (efficient cause) (Falcon, 2006). Following Descartes, Leibniz and especially Newton, modern deterministic causality using natural mechanisms became central to causal explanations. To know what causes an event means to employ natural laws as the central means to understand and explain why it happened. As this makes clear, some notions of the nature of knowledge, namely, how we come to know something and the nature of reality, are parts of explanation. For example, John Stuart Mill provides a ded...

Existence and Explanation, 1991

Social Science Research Network, 2002

I shall endeavor to show that every physical theory since Newton explains without drawing attention to causes-that, in other words, physical theories as physical theories aspire to explain under an ideal quite distinct from that of causal explanation. If I am right, then even if sometimes the explanations achieved by a physical theory are not in violation of the standard of causal explanation, this is purely an accident. For physical theories, as I will show, do not, as such, aim at accommodating the goals or aspirations of causal explanation. This will serve as the founding insight for a new theory of explanation, which will itself serve as the cornerstone of a new theory of scientific method.

Erkenntnis, 2013

In 1991 The Pogues, a Celtic punk band, released a compilation album with the well-chosen name The Best of the Pogues. It contained fourteen brilliant songs many of which are still part of our collective memory. Soon after that, they proudly presented another compilation album-this time entitled The Rest of the Best-with songs which were all as splendid as their predecessors. Twenty years later, in September 2011, philosophers of science, logicians, mathematicians, biologists, social scientists, computer scientists and the like gathered at Ghent University to discuss the relation between causality and explanation: Causality and Explanation in the Sciences (CaEitS2011). 1 In the course of 3 days, a range of topics were discussed. Different accounts of causality and explanation, such as Jim Woodward's interventionist account, Michael Strevens' kairetic account, and the mechanistic account. The relation between causality, explanation and understanding. The nature and status of causality and explanation in biology, in the social sciences, in medicine, in physics and in mathematics. The relation between causal and constitutive explanation. How causal relations can be discovered and what we can infer from our causal knowledge. Five of the many brilliant contributions at CaEitS2011 have been published in a special issue of Theoria (vol. 27, no. 2, 2012). If that issue deserves the nickname The Best of CaEitS2011, then the present issue of Erkenntnis can rightly be called The Rest of the Best. We are happy to say that the eight papers below are all as splendid as their predecessors.