Abstract
A number of philosophers argue for the value of abstraction in explanation. According to these prescriptive theories, an explanation becomes superior when it leaves out details that make no difference to the occurrence of the event one is trying to explain (the explanandum). explanations are not frugal placeholders for improved, detailed future explanations but are more valuable than their concrete counterparts because they highlight the factors that do the causal work, the factors in the absence of which the explanandum would not occur. We present several experiments that test whether people follow this prescription (i.e., whether people prefer explanations with abstract difference makers over explanations with concrete details and explanations that omit descriptively accurate but causally irrelevant information). Contrary to the prescription, we found a preference for concreteness and detail. Participants rated explanations with concrete details higher than their abstract counterparts and in many cases they did not penalize the presence of causally irrelevant details. Nevertheless, causality still constrained participants’ preferences: They downgraded concrete explanations that did not communicate the critical causal properties.
Highlights
A number of philosophers argue for the value of abstraction in explanation
Determining what is explanatorily relevant depends on the account of explanation one adopts, and philosophers have long debated the nature of explanation, especially in scientific practice (Hempel, 1965; Kitcher, 1981; Salmon, 1984; Strevens, 2008)
Cartwright (1983) argues that through abstraction, scientific explanations become false since they apply only in ideal conditions not found in nature
Summary
A number of philosophers argue for the value of abstraction in explanation. According to these prescriptive theories, an explanation becomes superior when it leaves out details that make no difference to the occurrence of the event one is trying to explain (the explanandum). We present several experiments that test whether people follow this prescription (i.e., whether people prefer explanations with abstract difference makers over explanations with concrete details and explanations that omit descriptively accurate but causally irrelevant information). Abstraction signifies an undesirable departure from reality On such views, an ideal explanation would mention every relevant factor at the highest degree of precision, but this quickly becomes unattainable either due to Psychon Bull Rev (2017) 24:1451–1464 incomplete knowledge or to practical limitations. For Nowak (1992), the distance from reality is progressively minimized by successive scientific theories: Starting from an abstract but false theory of a phenomenon, progress is achieved by adding more and more influencing factors and specifying them with more and more accuracy, such that the theory is brought closer and closer to reality
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