Abstract
Most explanations are either about events (why things
happen), or about properties (why objects have the enduring
characteristics that they do). Explanations of events have been
studied extensively in philosophy and psychology, whereas
the explanations of properties have received little or no
attention in the literature. The present study is an exploration
of the ways in which we explain various types of properties.
Ten participants provided explanations of 45 properties by
completing sentences of the form: “Xs have p because…”
where p is a property of the concept X. When coded into three
traditional kinds of explanation (i.e. causal, purposive,
categorical), nearly half of the explanations did not fit into
any of these categories and were classified as “other”.
Different patterns of preference for explanations emerged
across the various property types for each domain. A
qualitative analysis of the other kind revealed that the most
frequent form of explanation involved another property of the
object, as in ‘Xs have property p because they have property
q”. Explanations of properties showed a homeostatic
character. Simply relating two properties of a concept seems
sufficient as an explanation of a property.