Kind Of Explanation Research Articles

How-possibly explanations as genuine explanations and helpful heuristics: A comment on Forber

Recently, Forber introduced a distinction between two kinds of how-possibly explanation, global and local how-possibly explanation, and argued that both play genuinely explanatory roles in evolutionary biology. In this paper I examine the nature of these two kinds of how-possibly explanations, focusing on the question whether they indeed constitute genuine explanations. I will conclude that one of Forber’s kinds of how-possibly explanation may be thought of as a kind of genuine explanation but not as a kind of how-possibly explanation, while the other kind plays a heuristic role and should not be conceived of as a kind of explanation at all.

Lizzie Seal: Women, Murder and Femininity: Gender Representations of Women Who Kill

It is a truism that, statistically, women commit fewer murders than do men. We may, as feminists, be irritated that, when women do commit murder, their act may be regarded with more apparent severity than that shown to a male offender. We may be irritated by attempts, conscious or subconscious, to explain why a woman should have acted in a manner that appears to violate the norms of feminine behaviour. We may be tired of the depiction of women murderers as being either mad or bad—nothing in between. The canon of literature surrounding those cases of women who kill tend to concentrate on a few, well-known and seemingly ubiquitous cases in order to provide some kind of explanation why these women acted as they did, or to examine their treatment within the legal system (see for example Birch 1994; Schone 2000; Allen 1987). In ‘Women, Murder and Femininity’, Lizzie Seal moves beyond those ‘‘usual’’ cases of women who have killed in order to examine more completely the ways in which women killers are represented by the media. She also moves away from the ‘‘usual’’ kinds of murder that women commit—those of an abusive spouse or of children—to examine how women killers have been perceived and presented in our society. These violent women, as she notes, have caused anxiety in society, and she links examination of her case studies with a micro-history of her chosen period. The book is very much a sum of two distinct parts. In the first, Seal examines a number of discourses used in the presentation of women who kill. She has chosen five typologies: the masculine woman; the muse/mastermind dichotomy; the damaged personality; the respectable woman; and the witch. By discussing cases that are well known, she illustrates how the presentation of these women has been affected by their inclusion in one or more of these typologies. This is, in the main, successful. However, I was left slightly uncomfortable by the inclusion of Mary Bell as an example of a ‘‘damaged personality’’, not because I dispute the typology that Seal has applied, but

Using Marketing Muscle to Sell Fat: The Rise of Obesity in the Modern Economy

The large increase in obesity in the past 30 years has often been explained in rational choice terms; for example, a decline in food prices has engendered greater food consumption. On closer examination, this kind of explanation does not fit the facts of the current obesity epidemic. Instead, an unprecedented expansion in the scope, power, and ubiquity of food marketing has coincided with an unprecedented expansion in food consumption in predictable ways. Ongoing protestations that the causes of the recent increase in obesity are unknown may overstate the case. Ample evidence indicates that the obesity epidemic is, at least to a large degree, the result of increased marketing power over the American diet. Only by reigning in or countering marketing power can rationality be restored to the dietary choices of Americans.

Children’s Teleological Intuitions: What Kind of Explanations Do 7–8 Year Olds Give for the Features of Organisms, Artifacts and Natural Objects?

Research has shown that children usually provide teleological explanations for the features of organisms from a very early age (3–4 years old). However, it is not clear if teleology is applied selectively for organisms, or if it is generally applied to other objects as well (artifacts and non-living natural objects). The present study examined whether 7–8 year old students provided teleological explanations for particular organisms, artifacts and natural objects. We investigated whether children's familiarity with these objects influenced the types of explanations they gave. Finally, we also investigated correlations between 'teleology' and 'usefulness' in children's explanations. The results indicate that 7–8 year olds are able to distinguish between living and non-living entities, as well as that they provide teleological explanations mostly for organisms and artifacts. This may have important implications for biological education, since teleological explanations in classrooms are likely to pose important conceptual obstacles to the development of a scientific understanding of evolution.

Explanation in Biology: Reduction, Pluralism, and Explanatory Aims

This essay analyzes and develops recent views about explanation in biology. Philosophers of biology have parted with the received deductive-nomological model of scientific explanation primarily by attempting to capture actual biological theorizing and practice. This includes an endorsement of different kinds of explanation (e.g., mathematical and causal-mechanistic), a joint study of discovery and explanation, and an abandonment of models of theory reduction in favor of accounts of explanatory reduction. Of particular current interest are philosophical accounts of complex explanations that appeal to different levels of organismal organization and use contributions from different biological disciplines. The essay lays out one model that views explanatory integration across different disciplines as being structured by scientific problems. I emphasize the philosophical need to take the explanatory aims pursued by different groups of scientists into account, as explanatory aims determine whether different explanations are competing or complementary and govern the dynamics of scientific practice, including interdisciplinary research. I distinguish different kinds of pluralism that philosophers have endorsed in the context of explanation in biology, and draw several implications for science education, especially the need to teach science as an interdisciplinary and dynamic practice guided by scientific problems and explanatory aims.

Genética de la esperanza

En este documento se rebaten críticas hechas por Raventós y Jensen al artículo “Genética y comportamiento”. Cuatro temas fueron seleccionados: 1) se determina que los antipsicóticos aparecieron veinte años después de la concepción hereditaria de la esquizofrenia; 2) se considera que la discusión es altamente pertinente, para nada bizantina o irrelevante, debido que persisten prácticas epistémicas riesgosas en los investigadores genético-conductuales; 3) aunque ninguna conducta humana está exenta de influencia constitucional, el enfoque biologicista se ha propasado al pretender explicar genéticamente casi todo, desconfirmando solapadamente la importancia de la historia personal; y, 4) se plantea que la investigación biológica sobrevalora el peso de las anomalías genéticas frente a la historia social, por lo que solo aparenta cautela. Se propone investigar genéticamente la esperanza con el objetivo de saturar a la humanidad con ese tipo de explicaciones, para alcanzar más rápido una convivencia basada en la tolerancia y el respeto.

Three Philosophical Problems about Consciousness and their Possible Resolution

Three big philosophical problems about consciousness are: Why does it exist? How do we explain and understand it? How can we explain brain-consciousness correlations? If functionalism were true, all three problems would be solved. But it is false, and that means all three problems remain unsolved (in that there is no other obvious candidate for a solution). Here, it is argued that the first problem cannot have a solution; this is inherent in the nature of explanation. The second problem is solved by recognizing that (a) there is an explanation as to why science cannot explain consciousness, and (b) consciousness can be explained by a different kind of explanation, empathic or “personalistic” explanation, compatible with, but not reducible to, scientific explanation. The third problem is solved by exploiting David Chalmers“principle of structural coherence”, and involves postulating that sensations experienced by us–visual, auditory, tactile, and so on–amount to minute scattered regions in a vast, multi dimensional “space” of all possible sensations, which vary smoothly, and in a linear way, throughout the space. There is also the space of all possible sentient brain processes. There is just one, unique one-one mapping between these two spaces that preserves continuity and linearity. It is this which provides the explanation as to why brain processes and sensations are correlated as they are. I consider objections to this unique-matching theory, and consider how the theory might be empirically confirmed.

The illusion of tacit knowledge as the great problem in the development of product configurators

AbstractIn many cases, the use of product configurators provides a number of benefits for engineering-oriented companies, such as shorter lead times, the use of fewer man hours, and improved product quality. However, not all of these projects are successful. The task of defining what should be implemented into the configurator is much more complex than anticipated in many configurator projects. In the worst-case scenario, this implies that the configurator is never fully developed or it fails to support the users in a satisfactory manner. The difficulties in creating adequate specifications of what to implement in the knowledge base of a configurator have been explained in much of the configuration literature by the assumption that much of the relevant knowledge of the product experts is tacit. However, this paper shows that this kind of explanation can be misleading and may even be incorrect. This is accomplished by discussing the problems inherent in such explanations and through interviews with configuration project knowledge engineers. Therefore, according to this basis, this paper provides general recommendations concerning the use of the term tacit knowledge and outlines issues related to the acquisition of product knowledge in configuration projects.

Topological explanations and robustness in biological sciences

This paper argues that besides mechanistic explanations, there is a kind of explanation that relies upon "topological" properties of systems in order to derive the explanandum as a consequence, and which does not consider mechanisms or causal processes. I first investigate topological explanations in the case of ecological research on the stability of ecosystems. Then I contrast them with mechanistic explanations, thereby distinguishing the kind of realization they involve from the realization relations entailed by mechanistic explanations, and explain how both kinds of explanations may be articulated in practice. The second section, expanding on the case of ecological stability, considers the phenomenon of robustness at all levels of the biological hierarchy in order to show that topological explanations are indeed pervasive there. Reasons are suggested for this, in which "neutral network" explanations are singled out as a form of topological explanation that spans across many levels. Finally, I appeal to the distinction of explanatory regimes to cast light on a controversy in philosophy of biology, the issue of contingence in evolution, which is shown to essentially involve issues about realization.

On fashion and fashion discourses

While critical views inherited from the past still influence our appraisal of fashion, its pervasiveness in contemporary society calls for an explanation. In this article I attempt to show how the importance of fashion in our society is the result of a combination of a structurally modern space and Romantic cultural ideals. I conclude that, despite its frivolous appearance, fashion is not only a powerful social indicator, but also a particular means of bringing together the diverse and often contradictory demands of our human nature through a peculiar exercise of practical judgment. The prominence of fashion in our societies demands an explanation and, although this kind of explanation is usually reserved for sociologists, it is also true that changes in society have become one of the dominant issues in philosophical discourse. A glance at contemporary philosophy shows that social issues have become the starting point – and sometimes even the finishing line – for a large section of philosophical debate or, at least, of philosophical debate which is ‘relevant’ (from a sociological point of view). Whatever the case, this justifies philosophy’s novel interest in fashion, an interest that in no way replaces that of the sociologist since the philosopher approaches social life, 1. This text is the product of a re-elaboration of different materials previously published in Spanish and Italian. CSFB_1.1_Gonzalez_065-086.indd 65 10/13/10 1:24:27 PM

Flexible Wedge-Effect for Insect Flying and Fishtail-Effect for Fish Swimming

In this paper, we regard insects wing as a flexible wing and use the flexible wedge-effect to explain the reason for the creation of high lift when insects flying. We disclose the fact that the flexible wedge-effect for insects flying and the fishtail effect for fish swimming have the same core—the force needed for creature movement comes from the flexibility and rhythmic locomotion. The most important bionic meaning of this kind of explanation is that it will be the developmental trend for the driving mode of the future bionics flapping aircraft that the wing is exerted some simple rhythmic locomotion in the state of the self-adaptability distortion. The easier the bionic motion simulation is, the more stable it can be realized. The bionics flapping aircraft research team of the Southeastern University has designed and made a prototype of the bionics flapping aircraft with flexible wing and successfully finished several outdoor test-flies.

Kinds of Explanation in Social Science: Laws, Contexts, and Conceptual Breakthroughs

There are many kinds of interesting, insightful explanations in social science literature that lay claim to the honorific designation “scientific.” Weber explains, Durkheim explains, Marx explains, Keynes explains, Freud explains. Role theory explains, small-group theory explains, elite theory explains. The present paper integrates the various kinds of explanation found in social science through a problem-oriented account of social scientific methodology inspired by the philosophy of Sir Karl Popper. It also integrates explanation in the social sciences with explanation in the natural sciences. It is formulation and solution of problems that unifies science. All explanations are “efforts to deprive puzzles, mysteries, and blockages of their force, and hence, existence.” Scientific explanation, like explanation in general, removes the puzzling character of a phenomenon. A mechanism is found, the phenomenon is shown to be a specific case of a law-like generalization, or a flaws in initial conditions are discovered and corrected. A third kind of explanation, typically overlooked, is explanation by conceptual breakthrough. Breakthroughs remove the problematic character of a phenomenon by overcoming a blockage in thought. Problems or puzzles are often rooted in taken-for-granted or unconsciously-held assumptions. Scientific discovery may consist of such a wrenching away from taken-for-granted ways of thinking. Known facts or data are seen in a new way. It is thus the conceptual breakthrough, not new facts, mechanisms, or law-like generalizations that do the explaining. This article integrates a wide variety of kinds of explanation found in the social sciences by focusing on the various kinds of intellectual problems that arise in the social sciences, and the various types of explanation that solve these intellectual problems.

Cooperation for direct fitness benefits.

Studies of the evolution of helping have traditionally used the explanatory frameworks of reciprocity and altruism towards relatives, but recently there has been an increasing interest in other kinds of explanations. We review the success or otherwise of work investigating alternative processes and mechanisms, most of which fall under the heading of cooperation for direct benefits. We evaluate to what extent concepts such as by-product benefits, pseudo-reciprocity, sanctions and partner choice, markets and the build-up of cross-species spatial trait correlations have contributed to the study of the evolution of cooperation. We conclude that these alternative ideas are successful and show potential to further increase our understanding of cooperation. We also bring up the origin and role of common interest in the evolution of cooperation, including the appearance of organisms. We note that there are still unresolved questions about the main processes contributing to the evolution of common interest. Commenting on the broader significance of the recent developments, we argue that they represent a justified balancing of the importance given to different major hypotheses for the evolution of cooperation. This balancing is beneficial because it widens considerably the range of phenomena addressed and, crucially, encourages empirical testing of important theoretical alternatives.

When functions and causes compete

The discounting principle states that ‘the role of a given cause in producing a given effect is discounted if other plausible causes are present’ (Kelley, 1972, p. 8). The principle has only been tested with cases where the two explanations are of the same kind (i.e., causal explanations). However, explanations of properties of objects, people, or events often involve functions. Zebras have stripes in order to be better camouflaged. Humans have eyebrows to keep sweat from running into their eyes. Adrenaline is secreted in order to modulate fight and flight responses. Thus, what happens when we are faced with two different kinds of explanation for the same property: one functional and one causal? People evaluated explanations of properties for natural kinds and artefacts. Functional explanations were discounted in favour of causal explanations, however this was only true for properties of artefacts. The presence of an alternative explanation for properties of natural kinds did not affect the plausibility of either kind of explanation.

Marxismo e ciência social: um balanço crítico do marxismo analítico

Este artigo discute as proposicoes criticas feitas pelos marxistas analiticos ao marxismo tradicional. Apresenta-se, num primeiro momento, o conteudo dessas criticas, notadamente no que diz respeito a explicacao funcional; num segundo momento, avalia-se em que medida e possivel defender esse tipo de explicacao; em seguida, discutem-se as propostas metodologicas feitas pelos marxistas analiticos, suas vantagens e limites; por fim, apresenta-se o que, a nosso ver, deve ser levado em consideracao dessas criticas para que o marxismo se fortaleca como ciencia social.

Unsimple truths: science, complexity, and policy

The world is complex, but acknowledging its complexity requires an appreciation for the many roles context plays in shaping natural phenomena. In Unsimple Truths, Sandra Mitchell argues that the long-standing scientific and philosophical deference to reductive explanations founded on simple universal laws, linear causal models, and predict-and-act strategies fails to accommodate the kinds of knowledge that many contemporary sciences are providing about the world. She advocates instead for a new understanding that represents the rich, variegated, interdependent fabric of many levels and kinds of explanation that are integrated with one another to ground effective prediction and action. Mitchell draws from diverse fields, including psychiatry, social insect biology, and studies of climate change, to defend 'integrative pluralism' - a theory of scientific practices that makes sense of how many natural and social sciences represent the multilevel, multicomponent, dynamic structures they study. She explains how we must, in light of the now-acknowledged complexity and contingency of biological and social systems, revise how we conceptualize the world, how we investigate the world, and how we act in the world. Ultimately, Unsimple Truths argues that the very idea of what should count as legitimate science itself should change.

Supervenience arguments under relaxed assumptions

When it comes to evaluating reductive hypotheses in metaphysics, supervenience arguments are the tools of the trade. Jaegwon Kim and Frank Jackson have argued, respectively, that strong and global supervenience are sufficient for reduction, and others have argued that supervenience theses stand in need of the kind of explanation that reductive hypotheses are particularly suited to provide. Simon Blackburn’s arguments about what he claims are the specifically problematic features of the supervenience of the moral on the natural have also been influential. But most discussions of these arguments have proceeded under the strong and restrictive assumptions of the S5 modal logic. In this paper we aim to remedy that defect, by illustrating in an accessible way what happens to these arguments under relaxed assumptions and why. The occasion is recent work by Ralph Wedgwood, who seeks to defend non-reductive accounts of moral and mental properties together with strong supervenience, but to evade both the arguments of Kim and Jackson and the explanatory challenge by accepting only the weaker, B, modal logic. In addition to drawing general lessons about what happens to supervenience arguments under relaxed assumptions, our goal is therefore to shed some light on both the virtues and costs of Wedgwood’s proposal.

Comparative Law and Legal Science

This paper argues that it is useful for law students to gain some knowledge of comparative law for the following reasons: 1. A lawyer who has familiarised him or herself with the law of foreign jurisdictions is less likely to experience the 'threshold of the unfamiliar.' 2. Occasionally legal decision makers base their decisions on comparative considerations. 3. The study of comparative law broadens one’s horizon and makes it easier to relativise one’s parochial law. Moreover, the national law can be seen as one possible solution to societal problems, and not anymore as the legal structure of human society. 4. Comparative law can be a useful heuristic tool. It allows legal scientist to generate more easily valuable hypothetical answers to research questions. 5. Depending on the type of research questions one tries to answer and on one’s view of the law, comparative law can also play a role in scientific method.Such a role is indisputable for some kinds of explanation of the law’s contents (legal transplants). Comparative law in a broad sense may provide data which are relevant for questions of evaluative legal science. Comparative law can play a role in descriptive legal science too, for instance if one takes law to be the best possible regulation for collective enforcement.

Response to Mike Cheng-Yu Lee

[1] I celebrate Mike Cheng-Yu Lee's recorded performance of the first movement of Schubert's Piano Sonata, Op. 42 (D. 845; 1825)-and, indeed, his rendition of the entire sonata-as one of the most compelling interpretations of a piano work by Schubert that I have heard. With Mike Lee's essay in this volume, we witness an enactment of the kind of performance-analysis relationship to which I hope we now all aspire-a flow of communication that runs in both directions, from performer to analyst and vice versa, but with both, in this case, embodied in just one very fine musician. Whether Lee's performance intuitions about Schubert's movement have influenced his analytic decisions, or whether it was the other way around, is a question that I suspect Lee would not easily be able to answer. Whatever the case, here is a performer who has been able to tell us why he plays the movement as he does. In general we don't ask or expect that kind of explanation from performers; and so, when they provide such full and convincing answers, we can only be impressed and enlightened.[2] In the wake of Lee's performance, it is tempting to say, Why bicker about our differing analytic views? If a persuasive performance of Schubert's sonata has been Lee's essential goal, as it has been for me in the past, then, given his success, what would be the point of challenging Lee's analysis? With that perspective in mind, I shall try mainly to address certain remarkably similar views about Schubert's first movement that Lee and I share, as well a few differing outlooks that might be relevant to performance. I draw here from an article I wrote that was published in a Brazilian journal (Schmalfeldt 2002); much expanded, this essay has become the point of departure for chapter 5 in my book, In the Process of Becoming: Analytic and Philosophical Perspectives on Form in Early Nineteenth-Century Music.[3] First and foremost, let us consider Lee's courageous challenge to the 20th-century "one-tempo-only" performance attitude-a challenge that he substantiates through his study of the "non-duple" tempos in the slow introductions of Schubert's symphonies. Lee's conclusions promote unexpected support for my long-held view that Schubert invites us to hear the opening of his Op. 42 sonata as invocative of a "slow" introduction, such that the passage only retrospectively becomes the main theme. (Lee and I agree that the modulatory passage initiated at measure 26 can only be regarded in retrospect to have become the transition to the subordinate group.) But can we really regard this opening passage as genuinely "slow"? If, on the one hand, pianists observe both of Schubert's poco ritardandos, including the one at measure 3, then at what moment has there been the establishment of a stable tempo-slow or otherwise-to resume?! I do not propose, strictly speaking, that a classical "slow introduction" is at hand; but Schubert's markings encourage a marvelously reflective, even hesitant, and certainly introduction-like, performance; and that is what Lee's non-duple performance of measures 1-10 conveys.[4] Like Peter H. Smith (Smith 1995, 273-74), Mike Lee regards the entire opening passage as fundamentally dominant-prolonging-another argument in favor of the passage as introductory. Here I shall dare to disagree. As one of my long-distance colleagues has vehemently asserted to me in private, Schubert "always" establishes the tonic at the beginning of his sonatas' first movements. Might this be Schubert's exceptional case? If, as Lee insists, a structural tonic does not arise until the downbeat of measure 26, then he weakens my claim that an "Introduction becomes MT," because there will have been no initiation of a cadential progression to justify the idea of main-theme closure-only dominant prolongation throughout. (The same holds for the opening of Haydn's B-Minor String Quartet, Op. 33, No. 1, which Carissa Reddick discusses in this volume.) By contrast, I hear the implication of tonic harmony in measures 1-2. …

Cost Overruns in Large-scale Transportation Infrastructure Projects: Explanations and Their Theoretical Embeddedness

Managing large-scale transportation infrastructure projects is difficult due to frequent misinformation about the costs which results in large cost overruns that often threaten the overall project viability. This paper investigates the explanations for cost overruns that are given in the literature. Overall, four categories of explanations can be distinguished: technical, economic, psychological, and political. Political explanations have been seen to be the most dominant explanations for cost overruns. Agency theory is considered the most interesting for political explanations and an eclectic theory is also considered possible. Non-political explanations are diverse in character, therefore a range of different theories (including rational choice theory and prospect theory), depending on the kind of explanation is considered more appropriate than one all-embracing theory.