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  1. Explication as a Method of Conceptual Re-engineering.Georg Brun - 2016 - Erkenntnis 81 (6):1211-1241.
    Taking Carnap’s classic exposition as a starting point, this paper develops a pragmatic account of the method of explication, defends it against a range of challenges and proposes a detailed recipe for the practice of explicating. It is then argued that confusions are involved in characterizing explications as definitions, and in advocating precising definitions as an alternative to explications. Explication is better characterized as conceptual re-engineering for theoretical purposes, in contrast to conceptual re-engineering for other purposes and improving exactness for (...)
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  • The Ontic Account of Scientific Explanation.Carl F. Craver - 2014 - In Marie I. Kaiser, Oliver R. Scholz, Daniel Plenge & Andreas Hüttemann (eds.), Explanation in the special science: The case of biology and history. Dordrecht: Springer. pp. 27-52.
    According to one large family of views, scientific explanations explain a phenomenon (such as an event or a regularity) by subsuming it under a general representation, model, prototype, or schema (see Bechtel, W., & Abrahamsen, A. (2005). Explanation: A mechanist alternative. Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences, 36(2), 421–441; Churchland, P. M. (1989). A neurocomputational perspective: The nature of mind and the structure of science. Cambridge: MIT Press; Darden (2006); Hempel, C. G. (1965). Aspects of scientific (...)
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  • Grounding and metaphysical explanation: it’s complicated.Anna-Sofia Maurin - 2019 - Philosophical Studies 176 (6):1573-1594.
    Grounding theorists insist that grounding and explanation are intimately related. This claim could be understood as saying either that grounding ‘inherits’ its properties from explanation or it could be interpreted as saying that grounding plays an important—possibly an indispensable—role in metaphysical explanation. Or both. I argue that saying that grounding ‘inherits’ its properties from explanation can only be justified if grounding is explanatory by nature, but that this view is untenable. We ought therefore to be ‘separatists’ and view grounding and (...)
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  • The Logic of Explanatory Power.Jonah N. Schupbach & Jan Sprenger - 2011 - Philosophy of Science 78 (1):105-127.
    This article introduces and defends a probabilistic measure of the explanatory power that a particular explanans has over its explanandum. To this end, we propose several intuitive, formal conditions of adequacy for an account of explanatory power. Then, we show that these conditions are uniquely satisfied by one particular probabilistic function. We proceed to strengthen the case for this measure of explanatory power by proving several theorems, all of which show that this measure neatly corresponds to our explanatory intuitions. Finally, (...)
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  • Explanatory generalizations, part I: A counterfactual account.James Woodward & Christopher Hitchcock - 2003 - Noûs 37 (1):1–24.
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  • Conceptual re-engineering: from explication to reflective equilibrium.Georg Brun - 2020 - Synthese 197 (3):925-954.
    Carnap and Goodman developed methods of conceptual re-engineering known respectively as explication and reflective equilibrium. These methods aim at advancing theories by developing concepts that are simultaneously guided by pre-existing concepts and intended to replace these concepts. This paper shows that Carnap’s and Goodman’s methods are historically closely related, analyses their structural interconnections, and argues that there is great systematic potential in interpreting them as aspects of one method, which ultimately must be conceived as a component of theory development. The (...)
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  • Killing Kripkenstein's Monster.Jared Warren - 2020 - Noûs 54 (2):257-289.
    Here I defend dispositionalism about meaning and rule-following from Kripkenstein's infamous anti-dispositionalist arguments. The problems of finitude, error, and normativity are all addressed. The general lesson I draw is that Kripkenstein's arguments trade on an overly simplistic version of dispositionalism.
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  • The causal and unification approaches to explanation unified—causally.Michael Strevens - 2004 - Noûs 38 (1):154–176.
    The two major modern accounts of explanation are the causal and unification accounts. My aim in this paper is to provide a kind of unification of the causal and the unification accounts, by using the central technical apparatus of the unification account to solve a central problem faced by the causal account, namely, the problem of determining which parts of a causal network are explanatorily relevant to the occurrence of an explanandum. The end product of my investigation is a causal (...)
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  • Towards a General Theory of Reduction. Part I: Historical and Scientific Setting.C. A. Hooker - 1981 - Dialogue 20 (1):38-59.
    The Three Papers comprising this series, together with my earlier [34] also published in this journal, constitute an attempt to set out the major issues in the theoretical domain of reduction and to develop a general theory of theory reduction. The fourth paper, [34], though published separately from this trio, is integral to the presentation and should be read in conjunction with these papers. Even so, the presentation is limited in scope – roughly, to intertheoretic reduction among empirical theories – (...)
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  • Explanatory generalizations, part II: Plumbing explanatory depth.Christopher Hitchcock & James Woodward - 2003 - Noûs 37 (2):181–199.
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  • Looking down, around, and up: Mechanistic explanation in psychology.William Bechtel - 2009 - Philosophical Psychology 22 (5):543-564.
    Accounts of mechanistic explanation have emphasized the importance of looking down—decomposing a mechanism into its parts and operations. Using research on visual processing as an exemplar, I illustrate how productive such research has been. But once multiple components of a mechanism have been identified, researchers also need to figure out how it is organized—they must look around and determine how to recompose the mechanism. Although researchers often begin by trying to recompose the mechanism in terms of sequential operations, they frequently (...)
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  • Dynamical Models: An Alternative or Complement to Mechanistic Explanations?David M. Kaplan & William Bechtel - 2011 - Topics in Cognitive Science 3 (2):438-444.
    Abstract While agreeing that dynamical models play a major role in cognitive science, we reject Stepp, Chemero, and Turvey's contention that they constitute an alternative to mechanistic explanations. We review several problems dynamical models face as putative explanations when they are not grounded in mechanisms. Further, we argue that the opposition of dynamical models and mechanisms is a false one and that those dynamical models that characterize the operations of mechanisms overcome these problems. By briefly considering examples involving the generation (...)
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  • (2 other versions)The operational analysis of psychological terms.B. F. Skinner - 1984 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 7 (4):547.
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  • The Feeling of Personal Ownership of One’s Mental States: A Conceptual Argument and Empirical Evidence for an Essential, but Underappreciated, Mechanism of Mind.Stan Klein - 2015 - Psychology of Consciousness: Theory, Research, and Practice 2 (4):355-376.
    I argue that the feeling that one is the owner of his or her mental states is not an intrinsic property of those states. Rather, it consists in a contingent relation between consciousness and its intentional objects. As such, there are (a variety of) circumstances, varying in their interpretive clarity, in which this relation can come undone. When this happens, the content of consciousness still is apprehended, but the feeling that the content “belongs to me” no longer is secured. I (...)
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  • How-possibly explanations in biology.David B. Resnik - 1991 - Acta Biotheoretica 39 (2):141-149.
    Biologists in many different fields of research give how-possibly explanations of the phenomena they study. Although such explanations lack empirical support, and might be regarded by some as unscientific, they play an important heuristic role in biology by helping biologists develop theories and concepts and suggesting new areas of research. How-possibly explanations serve as a useful framework for conducting research in the absence of adequate empiri cal data, and they can even become how-actually explanations if they gain enough empirical support.
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  • Foundations of a Probabilistic Theory of Causal Strength.Jan Sprenger - 2018 - Philosophical Review 127 (3):371-398.
    This paper develops axiomatic foundations for a probabilistic-interventionist theory of causal strength. Transferring methods from Bayesian confirmation theory, I proceed in three steps: I develop a framework for defining and comparing measures of causal strength; I argue that no single measure can satisfy all natural constraints; I prove two representation theorems for popular measures of causal strength: Pearl's causal effect measure and Eells' difference measure. In other words, I demonstrate these two measures can be derived from a set of plausible (...)
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  • Causal regularities in the biological world of contingent distributions.C. Kenneth Waters - 1998 - Biology and Philosophy 13 (1):5-36.
    Former discussions of biological generalizations have focused on the question of whether there are universal laws of biology. These discussions typically analyzed generalizations out of their investigative and explanatory contexts and concluded that whatever biological generalizations are, they are not universal laws. The aim of this paper is to explain what biological generalizations are by shifting attention towards the contexts in which they are drawn. I argue that within the context of any particular biological explanation or investigation, biologists employ two (...)
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  • Pathways to biomedical discovery.Paul Thagard - 2003 - Philosophy of Science 70 (2):235-254.
    A biochemical pathway is a sequence of chemical reactions in a biological organism. Such pathways specify mechanisms that explain how cells carry out their major functions by means of molecules and reactions that produce regular changes. Many diseases can be explained by defects in pathways, and new treatments often involve finding drugs that correct those defects. This paper presents explanation schemas and treatment strategies that characterize how thinking about pathways contributes to biomedical discovery. It discusses the significance of pathways for (...)
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  • The Reasoning View and Defeasible Practical Reasoning.Samuel Asarnow - 2017 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 95 (3):614-636.
    According to the Reasoning View about normative reasons, facts about normative reasons for action can be understood in terms of facts about the norms of practical reasoning. I argue that this view is subject to an overlooked class of counterexamples, familiar from debates about Subjectivist theories of normative reasons. Strikingly, the standard strategy Subjectivists have used to respond to this problem cannot be adapted to the Reasoning View. I think there is a solution to this problem, however. I argue that (...)
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  • Induction and inference to the best explanation.Ruth Weintraub - 2013 - Philosophical Studies 166 (1):203-216.
    In this paper I adduce a new argument in support of the claim that IBE is an autonomous form of inference, based on a familiar, yet surprisingly, under-discussed, problem for Hume’s theory of induction. I then use some insights thereby gleaned to argue for the claim that induction is really IBE, and draw some normative conclusions.
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  • Ontic Explanation Is either Ontic or Explanatory, but Not Both.Cory Wright & Dingmar van Eck - 2018 - Ergo: An Open Access Journal of Philosophy 5:997–1029.
    What features will something have if it counts as an explanation? And will something count as an explanation if it has those features? In the second half of the 20th century, philosophers of science set for themselves the task of answering such questions, just as a priori conceptual analysis was generally falling out of favor. And as it did, most philosophers of science just moved on to more manageable questions about the varieties of explanation and discipline-specific scientific explanation. Often, such (...)
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  • Coherence measures and inference to the best explanation.David H. Glass - 2007 - Synthese 157 (3):275-296.
    This paper considers an application of work on probabilistic measures of coherence to inference to the best explanation. Rather than considering information reported from different sources, as is usually the case when discussing coherence measures, the approach adopted here is to use a coherence measure to rank competing explanations in terms of their coherence with a piece of evidence. By adopting such an approach IBE can be made more precise and so a major objection to this mode of reasoning can (...)
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  • Philosophy 
of 
the 
Cognitive 
Sciences.William Bechtel & Mitchell Herschbach - 2010 - In Fritz Allhoff (ed.), Philosophies of the Sciences. Malden, MA: Wiley‐Blackwell. pp. 239--261.
    Cognitive science is an interdisciplinary research endeavor focusing on human cognitive phenomena such as memory, language use, and reasoning. It emerged in the second half of the 20th century and is charting new directions at the beginning of the 21st century. This chapter begins by identifying the disciplines that contribute to cognitive science and reviewing the history of the interdisciplinary engagements that characterize it. The second section examines the role that mechanistic explanation plays in cognitive science, while the third focuses (...)
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  • What Could a Two-Way Power Be?Kim Frost - 2020 - Topoi 39 (5):1141-1153.
    Alvarez and Steward think the power of agency is a two-way power; Lowe thinks the will is. There is a problem for two-way powers. Either there is a unified description of the manifestation-type of the power, or not. If so, two-way powers are really one-way powers. If not, two-way powers are really combinations of one-way powers. Either way, two-way powers cannot help distinguish free agents from everything else. I argue the problem is best avoided by an Aristotelian view, which posits (...)
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  • Why Cognitive Science Needs Philosophy and Vice Versa.Paul Thagard - 2009 - Topics in Cognitive Science 1 (2):237-254.
    Contrary to common views that philosophy is extraneous to cognitive science, this paper argues that philosophy has a crucial role to play in cognitive science with respect to generality and normativity. General questions include the nature of theories and explanations, the role of computer simulation in cognitive theorizing, and the relations among the different fields of cognitive science. Normative questions include whether human thinking should be Bayesian, whether decision making should maximize expected utility, and how norms should be established. These (...)
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  • Reduction, integration, and the unity of science: Natural, behavioral, and social sciences and the humanities.William P. Bechtel & Andrew Hamilton - 2007 - In T. Kuipers (ed.), Philosophy of Science: Focal Issues (Volume 1 of the Handbook of the Philosophy of Science). Elsevier.
    1. A Historical Look at Unity 2. Field Guide to Modern Concepts of Reduction and Unity 3. Kitcher's Revisionist Account of Unification 4. Critics of Unity 5. Integration Instead of Unity 6. Reduction via Mechanisms 7. Case Studies in Reduction and Unification across the Disciplines.
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  • Deductive Cogency, understanding, and acceptance.Finnur Dellsén - 2018 - Synthese 195 (7):3121-3141.
    Deductive Cogency holds that the set of propositions towards which one has, or is prepared to have, a given type of propositional attitude should be consistent and closed under logical consequence. While there are many propositional attitudes that are not subject to this requirement, e.g. hoping and imagining, it is at least prima facie plausible that Deductive Cogency applies to the doxastic attitude involved in propositional knowledge, viz. belief. However, this thought is undermined by the well-known preface paradox, leading a (...)
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  • Does IBE Require a ‘Model’ of Explanation?Frank Cabrera - 2017 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 71 (2):727-750.
    In this article, I consider an important challenge to the popular theory of scientific inference commonly known as ‘inference to the best explanation’, one that has received scant attention.1 1 The problem is that there exists a wide array of rival models of explanation, thus leaving IBE objectionably indeterminate. First, I briefly introduce IBE. Then, I motivate the problem and offer three potential solutions, the most plausible of which is to adopt a kind of pluralism about the rival models of (...)
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  • Philosophy meets the neurosciences.William Bechtel, Pete Mandik & Jennifer Mundale - 2001 - In William P. Bechtel, Pete Mandik, Jennifer Mundale & Robert S. Stufflebeam (eds.), Philosophy and the Neurosciences: A Reader. Malden, Mass.: Blackwell.
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  • Response to Belot’s “Whose Devil? Which Details?‘.Robert W. Batterman - 2005 - Philosophy of Science 72 (1):154-163.
    I respond to Belot's argument and defend the view that sometimes `fundamental theories' are explanatorily inadequate and need to be supplemented with certain aspects of less fundamental `theories emeritus'.
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  • A Goal-State Theory of Function Attributions.Frederick R. Adams - 1979 - Canadian Journal of Philosophy 9 (3):493 - 518.
    The analysis of function-ascribing statements, such as “the function of x is y”, is proving to be a difficult matter. It is difficult because we are only beginning to see the complexity which is involved in ascribing functions. The process of discovery has been slow and tedious, with each newly constructed analysis of the meaning of functional ascriptions yielding insights into the structure of functional analysis and functional explanation. However, as each analysis is, in turn, dismantled, we seem to see (...)
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  • (1 other version)Bayesian Informal Logic and Fallacy.Kevin Korb - 2004 - Informal Logic 24 (1):41-70.
    Bayesian reasoning has been applied formally to statistical inference, machine learning and analysing scientific method. Here I apply it informally to more common forms of inference, namely natural language arguments. I analyse a variety of traditional fallacies, deductive, inductive and causal, and find more merit in them than is generally acknowledged. Bayesian principles provide a framework for understanding ordinary arguments which is well worth developing.
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  • The challenge of characterizing operations in the mechanisms underlying behavior.William P. Bechtel - 2005 - Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior 84:313-325.
    Neuroscience and cognitive science seek to explain behavioral regularities in terms of underlying mechanisms. An important element of a mechanistic explanation is a characterization of the operations of the parts of the mechanism. The challenge in characterizing such operations is illustrated by an example from the history of physiological chemistry in which some investigators tried to characterize the internal operations in the same terms as the overall physiological system while others appealed to elemental chemistry. In order for biochemistry to become (...)
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  • Dialectics, Evaluation, and Argument.Maurice A. Finocchiaro - 2003 - Informal Logic 23 (1).
    A critical examination of the dialectical approach, focusing on a comparison ofthe illative and the dialectical definitions of argument. I distinguish a moderate, a strong and a hyper dialectical conception of argument. I critique Goldman's argument for the moderate conception and Johnson's argument for the strong conception, and argue that the moderate conception is correct.
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  • Mental models and probabilistic thinking.Philip N. Johnson-Laird - 1994 - Cognition 50 (1-3):189-209.
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  • Theories, practices, and pluralism: A pragmatic interpretation of critical social science.James Bohman - 1999 - Philosophy of the Social Sciences 29 (4):459-480.
    A hallmark of recent critical social science has been the commitment to methodological and theoretical pluralism. Habermas and others have argued that diverse theoretical and empirical approaches are needed to support informed social criticism. However, an unresolved tension remains in the epistemology of critical social science: the tension between the epistemic advantages of a single comprehensive theoretical framework and those of methodological and theoretical pluralism. By shifting the grounds of the debate in a way suggested by Dewey's pragmatism, the author (...)
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  • Russellianism and Explanation.David Braun - 2001 - Noûs 35 (s15):253-289.
    Many philosophers think that the Substitution Objection decisively refutes Russellianism. This objection claims that sentences (1) and (2) can differ in truth value. Therefore, it says, the sentences express different propositions, and so Russellianism is false.
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  • Generative explanation in cognitive science and the hard problem of consciousness.Lisa Miracchi - 2017 - Philosophical Perspectives 31 (1):267-291.
    When cognitive scientists are looking for the neural basis of consciousness or the computational processes underlying vision, what are they looking to find? I argue for a new account of this explanatory project in cognitive science (and the special sciences more generally) on which it is best understood on close analogy with causal explanation in the special sciences. Causal explanations cite causal difference-makers: they explain how certain events causally depend on other events. Generative explanations cite generative difference-makers: they explain how (...)
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  • Explanatory schema and the process of model building.Collin Rice, Yasha Rohwer & André Ariew - 2019 - Synthese 196 (11):4735-4757.
    In this paper, we argue that rather than exclusively focusing on trying to determine if an idealized model fits a particular account of scientific explanation, philosophers of science should also work on directly analyzing various explanatory schemas that reveal the steps and justification involved in scientists’ use of highly idealized models to formulate explanations. We develop our alternative methodology by analyzing historically important cases of idealized statistical modeling that use a three-step explanatory schema involving idealization, mathematical operation, and explanatory interpretation.
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  • Causal explanation and the periodic table.Lauren N. Ross - 2018 - Synthese 198 (1):79-103.
    The periodic table represents and organizes all known chemical elements on the basis of their properties. While the importance of this table in chemistry is uncontroversial, the role that it plays in scientific reasoning remains heavily disputed. Many philosophers deny the explanatory role of the table and insist that it is “merely” classificatory (Shapere, in F. Suppe (Ed.) The structure of scientific theories, University of Illinois Press, Illinois, 1977; Scerri in Erkenntnis 47:229–243, 1997). In particular, it has been claimed that (...)
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  • A Regularist Approach to Mechanistic Type-Level Explanation.Beate Krickel - 2018 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 69 (4):1123-1153.
    Most defenders of the new mechanistic approach accept ontic constraints for successful scientific explanation (Illari 2013; Craver 2014). The minimal claim is that scientific explanations have objective truthmakers, namely mechanisms that exist in the physical world independently of any observer and that cause or constitute the phenomena-to- be-explained. How can this idea be applied to type-level explanations? Many authors at least implicitly assume that in order for mechanisms to be the truthmakers of type-level explanation they need to be regular (Andersen (...)
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  • Causal and Mechanistic Explanations in Ecology.Jani Raerinne - 2010 - Acta Biotheoretica 59 (3):251-271.
    How are scientific explanations possible in ecology, given that there do not appear to be many—if any—ecological laws? To answer this question, I present and defend an account of scientific causal explanation in which ecological generalizations are explanatory if they are invariant rather than lawlike. An invariant generalization continues to hold or be valid under a special change—called an intervention—that changes the value of its variables. According to this account, causes are difference-makers that can be intervened upon to manipulate or (...)
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  • Towards a Research Agenda for Informal Logic and Critical Thinking.Mark Weinstein - 1990 - Informal Logic 12 (3).
    Towards a Research Agenda for Informal Logic and Critical Thinking.
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  • (1 other version)Explanatory integration.Andrew Wayne - 2017 - European Journal for Philosophy of Science:1-19.
    The goal of this paper is to show how scientific explanation functions in the context of idealized models. It argues that the aspect of explanation most urgently requiring investigation is the nature of the connection between global theories and explanatory local models. This aspect is neglected in traditional accounts of explanation. The paper examines causal, minimal model, and structural accounts of model-based explanation. It argues that they too fail to offer an account of the connection with global theory that can (...)
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  • The Explanatory Structure of the Transcendental Deduction and a Cognitive Interpretation of the First Critique.Scott Edgar - 2010 - Canadian Journal of Philosophy 40 (2):285-314.
    Consider two competing interpretations of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason: the epistemic and cognitive interpretations. The epistemic interpretation presents the first Critique as a work of epistemology, but what is more, it sees Kant as an early proponent of anti-psychologism—the view that descriptions of how the mind works are irrelevant for epistemology.2 Even if Kant does not always manage to purge certain psychological-sounding idioms from his writing, the epistemic interpretation has it, he is perfectly clear that he means his evaluation (...)
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  • (1 other version)Mental mechanisms: What are the operations?William P. Bechtel - 2005
    trying to explain these reactions in terms of changes in ele- began trying to characterize physiological processes in.
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  • Russellianism and prediction.David Braun - 2001 - Philosophical Studies 105 (1):59 - 105.
    Russellianism (also called `neo-Russellianism, `Millianism, and `thenaive theory') entails that substitution of co-referring names inattitude ascriptions preserves truth value and proposition expressed.Thus, on this view, if Lucy wants Twain to autograph her book, thenshe also wants Clemens to autograph her book, even if she says ``I donot want Clemens to autograph my book''. Some philosophers (includingMichael Devitt and Mark Richard) claim that attitude ascriptions canbe used to predict behavior, but argue that if Russellianism weretrue, then this would not be so. (...)
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  • Methodological individualism, explanation, and invariance.Daniel Steel - 2006 - Philosophy of the Social Sciences 36 (4):440-463.
    This article examines methodological individualism in terms of the theory that invariance under intervention is the signal feature of generalizations that serve as a basis for causal explanation. This theory supports the holist contention that macro-level generalizations can explain, but it also suggests a defense of methodological individualism on the grounds that greater range of invariance under intervention entails deeper explanation. Although this individualist position is not threatened by multiple-realizability, an argument for it based on rational choice theory is called (...)
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  • Applying models in fluid dynamics.Michael Heidelberger - 2006 - International Studies in the Philosophy of Science 20 (1):49 – 67.
    The following article treats the 'applicational turn' of modern fluid dynamics as it set in at the beginning of the 20th century with Ludwig Prandtl's concept of the boundary layer. It seeks to show that there is much more to applying a theory in a highly mathematical field like fluid dynamics than deriving a special case from a general explanatory theory under particular antecedent conditions. In Prandtl's case, the decisive move was to introduce a model that provided a physical/causal conception (...)
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  • Syntactic Measures of Complexity.Bruce Edmonds - unknown
    1.1 - Background - page 17 1.2 - The Style of Approach - page 18 1.3 - Motivation - page 19 1.4 - Style of Presentation - page 20 1.5 - Outline of the Thesis - page 21..
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