Switch to: Citations

Add references

You must login to add references.
  1. How Quantum Theory Helps Us Explain.Richard Healey - 2012 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science (1):axt031.
    I offer an account of how the quantum theory we have helps us explain so much. The account depends on a pragmatist interpretation of the theory: this takes a quantum state to serve as a source of sound advice to physically situated agents on the content and appropriate degree of belief about matters concerning which they are currently inevitably ignorant. The general account of how to use quantum states and probabilities to explain otherwise puzzling regularities is then illustrated by showing (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   13 citations  
  • Aspects of scientific explanation.Carl G. Hempel - 1965 - In Carl Gustav Hempel (ed.), Aspects of Scientific Explanation and Other Essays in the Philosophy of Science. New York: The Free Press. pp. 504.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   851 citations  
  • Aspects of Scientific Explanation and Other Essays in the Philosophy of Science.Carl Gustav Hempel - 1965 - New York: The Free Press.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   687 citations  
  • How scientific models can explain.Alisa Bokulich - 2011 - Synthese 180 (1):33 - 45.
    Scientific models invariably involve some degree of idealization, abstraction, or nationalization of their target system. Nonetheless, I argue that there are circumstances under which such false models can offer genuine scientific explanations. After reviewing three different proposals in the literature for how models can explain, I shall introduce a more general account of what I call model explanations, which specify the conditions under which models can be counted as explanatory. I shall illustrate this new framework by applying it to the (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   171 citations  
  • (1 other version)Scientific Explanation and the Causal Structure of the World.Wesley C. Salmon - 1984 - Princeton University Press.
    The philosophical theory of scientific explanation proposed here involves a radically new treatment of causality that accords with the pervasively statistical character of contemporary science. Wesley C. Salmon describes three fundamental conceptions of scientific explanation--the epistemic, modal, and ontic. He argues that the prevailing view is untenable and that the modal conception is scientifically out-dated. Significantly revising aspects of his earlier work, he defends a causal/mechanical theory that is a version of the ontic conception. Professor Salmon's theory furnishes a robust (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1052 citations  
  • Explanatory unification and the causal structure of the world.Philip Kitcher - 1962 - In Philip Kitcher & Wesley C. Salmon (eds.), Scientific Explanation. Univ of Minnesota Pr. pp. 410-505.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   518 citations  
  • Depth: An Account of Scientific Explanation.Michael Strevens - 2008 - Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
    Approaches to explanation -- Causal and explanatory relevance -- The kairetic account of /D making -- The kairetic account of explanation -- Extending the kairetic account -- Event explanation and causal claims -- Regularity explanation -- Abstraction in regularity explanation -- Approaches to probabilistic explanation -- Kairetic explanation of frequencies -- Kairetic explanation of single outcomes -- Looking outward -- Looking inward.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   479 citations  
  • Making things happen: a theory of causal explanation.James F. Woodward - 2003 - New York: Oxford University Press.
    Woodward's long awaited book is an attempt to construct a comprehensive account of causation explanation that applies to a wide variety of causal and explanatory claims in different areas of science and everyday life. The book engages some of the relevant literature from other disciplines, as Woodward weaves together examples, counterexamples, criticisms, defenses, objections, and replies into a convincing defense of the core of his theory, which is that we can analyze causation by appeal to the notion of manipulation.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1663 citations  
  • (1 other version)The devil in the details: asymptotic reasoning in explanation, reduction, and emergence.Robert W. Batterman - 2002 - New York: Oxford University Press.
    Robert Batterman examines a form of scientific reasoning called asymptotic reasoning, arguing that it has important consequences for our understanding of the scientific process as a whole. He maintains that asymptotic reasoning is essential for explaining what physicists call universal behavior. With clarity and rigor, he simplifies complex questions about universal behavior, demonstrating a profound understanding of the underlying structures that ground them. This book introduces a valuable new method that is certain to fill explanatory gaps across disciplines.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   265 citations  
  • (1 other version)Causation with a human face.James Woodward - 2007 - In Huw Price & Richard Corry (eds.), Causation, Physics and the Constitution of Reality: Russell’s Republic Revisited. New York: Oxford University Press.
    What is the relationship between, on the one hand, the sorts of causal claims found in the special sciences (and in common sense) and, on the other hand, the world as described by physics? A standard picture goes like this: the fundamental laws of physics are causal laws in the sense that they can be interpreted as telling us that realizations of one set of physical factors or properties “causes” realizations of other properties. Causal claims in the special sciences are (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   67 citations  
  • Explanations at multiple levels.Alexander Rueger - 2001 - Minds and Machines 11 (4):503-520.
    The preference for `reductive explanations', i.e., explanations of the behaviour of a system at one `basic' level of sub-systems, seems to be related, at least in the physical sciences, to the success of a formal technique –- perturbation theory –- for extracting insight into the workings of a system from a supposedly exact but intractable mathematical description of the system. This preference for a style of explanation, however, can be justified only in the case of `regular' perturbation problems in which (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   8 citations  
  • (1 other version)Studies in the logic of explanation.Carl Gustav Hempel & Paul Oppenheim - 1948 - Philosophy of Science 15 (2):135-175.
    To explain the phenomena in the world of our experience, to answer the question “why?” rather than only the question “what?”, is one of the foremost objectives of all rational inquiry; and especially, scientific research in its various branches strives to go beyond a mere description of its subject matter by providing an explanation of the phenomena it investigates. While there is rather general agreement about this chief objective of science, there exists considerable difference of opinion as to the function (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   716 citations  
  • (1 other version)Studies in the Logic of Explanation.Carl Hempel & Paul Oppenheim - 1948 - Journal of Symbolic Logic 14 (2):133-133.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   532 citations  
  • Physical Causation.Phil Dowe - 2000 - New York: Cambridge University Press.
    This book, published in 2000, is a clear account of causation based firmly in contemporary science. Dowe discusses in a systematic way, a positive account of causation: the conserved quantities account of causal processes which he has been developing over the last ten years. The book describes causal processes and interactions in terms of conserved quantities: a causal process is the worldline of an object which possesses a conserved quantity, and a causal interaction involves the exchange of conserved quantities. Further, (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   235 citations  
  • Scientific Explanation and the Causal Structure of the World.Ronald N. Giere - 1988 - Philosophical Review 97 (3):444.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   357 citations  
  • Reexamining the Quantum-Classical Relation: Beyond Reductionism and Pluralism.Alisa Bokulich - 2008 - Cambridge University Press.
    Classical mechanics and quantum mechanics are two of the most successful scientific theories ever discovered, and yet how they can describe the same world is far from clear: one theory is deterministic, the other indeterministic; one theory describes a world in which chaos is pervasive, the other a world in which chaos is absent. Focusing on the exciting field of 'quantum chaos', this book reveals that there is a subtle and complex relation between classical and quantum mechanics. It challenges the (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   76 citations  
  • Scientific Explanation and the Causal Structure of the World. Wesley Salmon.James H. Fetzer - 1987 - Philosophy of Science 54 (4):597-610.
    If the decades of the forties through the sixties were dominated by discussion of Hempel's “covering law“ explication of explanation, that of the seventies was preoccupied with Salmon's “statistical relevance” conception, which emerged as the principal alternative to Hempel's enormously influential account. Readers of Wesley C. Salmon's Scientific Explanation and the Causal Structure of the World, therefore, ought to find it refreshing to discover that its author has not remained content with a facile defense of his previous investigations; on the (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   158 citations  
  • How Quantum Theory Helps Us Explain.Richard A. Healey - 2015 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 66 (1):1-43.
    I offer an account of how the quantum theory we have helps us explain the enormous variety of phenomena it is generally taken to explain. The account depends on what I have elsewhere called a pragmatist interpretation of the theory. This rejects views according to which a quantum state describes or represents a physical system, holding instead that it functions as a source of sound advice to physically situated agents like us on the content and appropriate degree of belief about (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   14 citations  
  • Asymptotic reasoning.M. Redhead - 2004 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part B: Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics 35 (3):527-530.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   11 citations  
  • Explanatory generalizations, part II: Plumbing explanatory depth.Christopher Hitchcock & James Woodward - 2003 - Noûs 37 (2):181–199.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   113 citations  
  • Idealization and modeling.Robert W. Batterman - 2009 - Synthese 169 (3):427-446.
    This paper examines the role of mathematical idealization in describing and explaining various features of the world. It examines two cases: first, briefly, the modeling of shock formation using the idealization of the continuum. Second, and in more detail, the breaking of droplets from the points of view of both analytic fluid mechanics and molecular dynamical simulations at the nano-level. It argues that the continuum idealizations are explanatorily ineliminable and that a full understanding of certain physical phenomena cannot be obtained (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   91 citations  
  • (1 other version)The Devil in the Details: Asymptotic Reasoning in Explanation, Reduction, and Emergence.Robert W. Batterman - 2001 - New York, US: Oxford University Press USA.
    Batterman examines a form of scientific reasoning called asymptotic reasoning, arguing that it has important consequences for our understanding of what physicists call universal behavior, as well as of the scientific process as a whole.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   27 citations  
  • Whose Devil? Which Details?Gordon Belot - 2005 - Philosophy of Science 72 (1):128-153.
    Batterman has recently argued that fundamental theories are typically explanatorily inadequate, in that there exist physical phenomena whose explanation requires that the conceptual apparatus of a fundamental theory be supplemented by that of a less fundamental theory. This paper is an extended critical commentary on that argument: situating its importance, describing its structure, and developing a line of objection to it. The objection is that in the examples Batterman considers, the mathematics of the less fundamental theory is definable in terms (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   42 citations  
  • On the explanatory role of mathematics in empirical science.Robert W. Batterman - 2010 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 61 (1):1-25.
    This paper examines contemporary attempts to explicate the explanatory role of mathematics in the physical sciences. Most such approaches involve developing so-called mapping accounts of the relationships between the physical world and mathematical structures. The paper argues that the use of idealizations in physical theorizing poses serious difficulties for such mapping accounts. A new approach to the applicability of mathematics is proposed.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   127 citations  
  • (1 other version)Causation with a human face.Jim Woodward - 2007 - In Huw Price & Richard Corry (eds.), Causation, Physics and the Constitution of Reality: Russell’s Republic Revisited. New York: Oxford University Press.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   16 citations  
  • Can asymptotic models be explanatory?Mark Pexton - 2014 - European Journal for Philosophy of Science 4 (2):233-252.
    Asymptotic models in which singular limits are taken are very common in physics. They are often used to investigate the general behaviour of systems undergoing rapid, discontinuous, changes. The singularities in the mathematics of these systems have no physical counterparts; these models operate by containing non-physically interpretable fictional elements. As such there is an intuition that states that asymptotics only offer descriptions of systems not explanations of them. By contrast, in different areas of science other models containing fictional elements which (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   3 citations  
  • (2 other versions)Aspects of Scientific Explanation.Asa Kasher - 1965 - Journal of Symbolic Logic 37 (4):747-749.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   449 citations  
  • (1 other version)Physical Causation.D. Ehring - 2003 - Mind 112 (447):529-533.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   73 citations  
  • Scientific Explanation.Philip Kitcher & Wesley C. Salmon (eds.) - 1962 - Univ of Minnesota Pr.
    Studdert-Kennedy, Gerald, Evidence and Explanation in Social Science. ... Kauffman, Stuart, "Articulation of Parts Explanation in Biology and the Rational ...
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   107 citations  
  • Phil Dowe, Physical Causation. [REVIEW]Phil Dowe - 2002 - Erkenntnis 56 (2):258-263.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   232 citations  
  • Aspects of Scientific Explanation and Other Essays in the Philosophy of Science. Carl G. Hempel. [REVIEW]Henry Veatch - 1970 - Philosophy of Science 37 (2):312-314.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   106 citations  
  • Review of Scientific Explanation and the Causal Structure of the World. [REVIEW]James Woodward - 1988 - Noûs 22 (2):322-324.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   146 citations  
  • Physical Causation.Phil Dowe - 2003 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 67 (1):244-248.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   275 citations