Lipton I B E Ch 2 Explanation
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Summary
Similarly to the problems associated with inductive inference in the previous chapter, we again run into issues to do with justification and description of our explanations.
Justification - Very difficult to give objective criteria via which the quality of an explanation can be assessed. - However, we certainly don’t face a sort of infinite regress of why questions (in which our explanations are themselves in need of explanation and so on) as often one level is enough to provide a satisfactory explanation. — e.g. crop failure can be explained by drought without drought also needing to be explained. — [[crimson At least, this shows that we don’t generally have an infinite regress. But arguably the history of fundamental physics looks like a regress. I wonder whether there are any in ethics, too. Jason ]]
Description Lipton gives 5 problematic accounts of explanation here with the aim of introducing a better one, the causal model, in the next chapter.
- “reason” - an explanation provides a reason to believe that a phenomenon occurs — Runs into problem regarding self-evidencing explanations (i.e. where A explains B and B gives evidence for A): if explanation is the provision of reason(s), then self-evidencing explanations are circular.
- “familiarity” - two versions: — 1. An explanation connects unfamilar phenomena with ones that are already familiar. — Prob. re: how do we get “bedrock” familiar phenomena? — Prob. re: how exactly does this “connection” work? — 2. Unfamiliar => a tension with other beliefs, explanation removes this tension. — Does not fit the situation in which we want to explain something that is already familiar. — Prob re: explanations that involve other unfamiliar things.
- ” Deductive - Nomological” - explain by deducing phenomena from premises including at least one necessary law. — Prob re: scientific practice often fails to do this. — Prob. re: doesn’t account for explanatory asymmetry. — Prob. re: inheritance of disjuntive inclusion and logical equivalence problems from the hypothetico-deductive inference model
- “unification” - explain by unifying with other phenomena. — Prob. re: gaining a clear understanding of unification. — Prob re: interpreting causal explanations in a unifying way.
- “necessity” - explain by showing that phenomena had to occur. — Prob. re: logical necessity is rarely used in scientific explanation and it is unclear how one may weaken the necessity requirement. — Prob. re: doesn’t account for all causal explanations.
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What do I think? - Lipton makes a good point against Bandu’s argument in this chapter: “the issue is not whether the explanation is true, but whether the truth really explains”. P 22 - Is explanation our first step in hypothesis formulation? And hence, the why-regress desire arises out of a need to put the potential hypothesis on a more rigorous footing (or at least to connect with other elements of our belief system). - Can one account for causal explanations under the unification model by treating a causal explanation as a unification in the sense that it incorporates the phenomena into the broader category of “caused things”?
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