Explanation and Scientific Understanding

Friedman, Michaël

doi:10.2307/2024924

Cited by 896 publications

(396 citation statements)

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“…In response to the points I just made in section 2, Levy might respond that he has a better way of explaining the data that are of mutual interest, and in light of that better way, the notion of factual belief should be reconceived in a way that makes sense of his statements. On Levy's view, there is one broad kind of descriptive belief that encompasses religious and factual belief alike, and "shifting" and "lability" are explained by disfluency and un--intuitiveness across the board; he is aiming for explanatory unity (Friedman, 1974). We saw in section 1, however, that Levy does not have a promising way of explaining much data it should explain.…”

Section: Future Directionsmentioning

confidence: 93%

Two paradigms for religious representation: The physicist and the playground (a reply to Levy)

Leeuwen

2017

Cognition

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Section: Future Directionsmentioning

confidence: 93%

Two paradigms for religious representation: The physicist and the playground (a reply to Levy)

Leeuwen

2017

Cognition

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“…Friedman (1974) seems to be using a version of this pattern when he argues that the kinetic theory of gasses, which is a "typical scientific theory" (p. 14), effects a significant unification of our view of nature. He then concludes that "this is the crucial property of scientific theories we are looking for; this is the essence of scientific explanation" (p. 15).…”

Section: Why Choose An Empirical Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…There is general agreement that constructing and evaluating explanations is a very important part of what practicing scientist do, but there is less agreement on how and why they do it. Many of the classical studies of scientific explanations aim to answer the question of how scientific explanations differ from nonscientific explanations by providing accounts of the characteristics of scientific explanations regardless of which part of science they originate from (Friedman, 1974;Hempel, 1965;Salmon, 1998). Against this overall project Van Fraassen argued that there are no interesting common features in explanations across all the sciences (Van Fraassen, 1980).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

An Empirical Method for the Study of Exemplar Explanations

Goddiksen

2015

Studies in Applied Philosophy, Epistemology and Rational Ethics

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Abstract. The most common way of studying explanations in philosophy of science and science education is through case studies. Recently these have been supplemented with studies based on empirical methods. This chapter provides an empirical method for collecting and comparing exemplar explanations across scientific disciplines with the aim of exposing possible qualitative differences between them. The method is based on the use of science textbooks as sources of explanations. I discuss a number of possible strategies for identifying explanations in these sources, and specify a set of reliable linguistic indicators that can be used for this purpose. A pilot study is presented to illustrate the method and its limitations.

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“…Given that what constitutes an explanation is a matter of long-standing (Hempel and Oppenheim 1948), the Statistical Relevance model (Salmon 1971), the Unificationist model (Friedman;1974;Kitcher 1989), the Causal model (Salmon 1984;Woodward 2003), etc.-does not seem to do any real justificatory work. Rather, the feature that justifies any application of IBE is that the hypothesis does well with respect to the various virtues listed above.…”

Section: ) ( | ) ( ) ( | ) + (~) ( |~)mentioning

confidence: 99%

Can there be a Bayesian explanationism? On the prospects of a productive partnership

Cabrera

2015

Synthese

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In this paper, I consider the relationship between Inference to the Best Explanation (IBE) and Bayesianism, both of which are well-known accounts of the nature of scientific inference. In section 1, I give a brief overview of Bayesianism and IBE. In section 2, I argue that IBE in its most prominently defended forms is difficult to reconcile with Bayesianism because not all of the items that feature on popular lists of "explanatory virtues"-by means of which IBE ranks competing explanations-have confirmational import. Rather, some of the items that feature on these lists are "informational virtues"-properties that do not make a hypothesis H1 more probable than some competitor H2 given evidence E, but that, roughly-speaking, give that hypothesis greater informative content. In section 3, I consider as a response to my argument a recent version of compatibilism which argues that IBE can provide further normative constraints on the objectively correct probability function. I argue that this response does not succeed, owing to the difficulty of defending with any generality such further normative constraints. Lastly, in section 4, I propose that IBE should be regarded, not as a theory of scientific inference, but rather as a theory of when we ought to "accept" H, where the acceptability of H is fixed by the goals of science and concerns whether H is worthy of commitment as research program. In this way, IBE and Bayesianism, as I will show, can be made compatible, and thus the Bayesian and the proponent of IBE can be friends.

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Explanation and Scientific Understanding

Cited by 896 publications

References 0 publications

Two paradigms for religious representation: The physicist and the playground (a reply to Levy)

Two paradigms for religious representation: The physicist and the playground (a reply to Levy)

An Empirical Method for the Study of Exemplar Explanations

Can there be a Bayesian explanationism? On the prospects of a productive partnership

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