Sort Of Explanation Research Articles

The Kurdish Conflict in Turkey: The Central Role of Identity Recognition (or Lack Thereof)

Academics and state officials over the years have put forth a host of factors to explain armed insurrections in Turkey since the 1920s. From ‘religious reactionaries’ and ‘underdevelopment’ to ‘foreign intervention,’ ‘economic inequality’ and ‘identity-based grievances.’ What sort of explanation one subscribes to generally seems to depend on either one’s politics or simply which analysis sounds most plausible and convincing. This study looks for evidence from the insurrections in Turkey to help shed more light on the issue. We examine the stated demands and grievances of the rebels fighting the Turkish state in the major uprisings of the twentieth century (1925, 1927–1930, 1937 and 1978 onwards). Judging from their own statements, the recognition of Kurdish identity was central to all these episodes. No other issue appears so prominently in all the uprisings. The study then turns to theoretical work on protracted conflicts and ethnic conflicts to explain why identity recognition is of such importance. Following this analysis, parameters to resolve the Kurdish conflict in Turkey are examined in light of these observations. Solutions to end the conflict need to begin first and foremost with official identity recognition and acceptance of the Kurds, as Kurds. The rest consists of issues to be negotiated.

Hegel and Wittgenstein

I argue that Hegel and Wittgenstein, each in their own specific way, used the idea of God at the beginning of creation as a complex analogy for other kinds of beginning, most notably the beginning of philosophical thought. Hegel’s Logic describes God’s mind before the creation of the world, i.e. God’s pure thinking. For a philosopher, beginning afresh means resolving to consider this kind of abstraction from the existence of the world. Wittgenstein, by contrast, says that the idea of a creator of the world does not explain anything. It marks the terminus ad quem of asking for explanations; we must not ask further who created the creator of the world. Wittgenstein generalizes this for any kind of reasoning: “Explanations come to an end somewhere.” (PhilosophicalInvestigations: §1) Any sort of explanation must eventually arrive at its terminus ad quem, which means only that any kind of reasoning must have its logical beginning.

A Pantheology of Pandemic: Sex, Race, Nature, and the Virus

A Pantheology of Pandemic: Sex, Race, Nature, and the Virus

Explaining Why There is Something Rather than Nothing

It is sometimes supposed that, in principle, we cannot offer an explanation for why there is something rather than nothing. I argue that this supposition is a mistake, and stems from a needlessly myopic conception of the form explanations can legitimately take. After making this more general point, I proceed to offer a speculative suggestion regarding one sort of explanation which can in principle serve as an answer to the question “why is there something rather than nothing?” The suggestion is that there may be something rather than nothing in virtue of the truth of certain sorts of subjunctive conditionals.

The Explanatory Link Account of Normality

AbstractFew have given an extended treatment of the non-statistical sense of normality: a sense captured in sentences like “dogs have four legs,” or “hammers normally have metal heads,” or “it is normal for badgers to take dust baths.” The most direct extant treatment is Bernhard Nickel's Between Logic and the World, where he claims that the normal or characteristic for a kind is what we can explain by appeal to the right sorts of explanations. Just which explanatory strategies can ground normalities, though, is difficult to determine without inviting circularity into the account. After raising this and other worries for Nickel's account, I develop my own account according to which normal features are those which are explained by the kind of thing involved.

Infinite barbarians

AbstractThis paper discusses an infinite regress that looms behind a certain kind of historical explanation. The movement of one barbarian group is often explained by the movement of others, but those movements in turn call for an explanation. While their explanation can again be the movement of yet another group of barbarians, if this sort of explanation does not stop somewhere we are left with an infinite regress of barbarians. While that regress would be vicious, it cannot be accommodated by several general views about what viciousness in infinite regresses amounts to. This example is additional evidence that we should prefer a pluralist approach to infinite regresses.

The Formulation of Disjunctivism About φ-ing for a Reason

We can contrast rationalising explanations of the form S φs because p with those of the form S φs because S believes that p. According the Common Kind View, the two sorts of explanation are the same. The Disjunctive View denies this. This paper sets out to elucidate the sense in which the Common Kind Theorist asserts, but the Disjunctivist denies, that the two explanations are the same. I suggest that, in the light of the distinction between kinds of explanation and particular explanations, the relevant sameness thesis is ambiguous, thus giving us two distinct versions of the Common Kind View. I then argue that the only direct arguments for Disjunctivism available in the literature fail because they only succeed in undermining one version of the Common Kind View. I finish, however, by providing a fresh argument for the Disjunctive View which aims to undermine both versions of its competitor.

Extreme Betting

AbstractIt is often thought that bets on the truth of known propositions become irrational if the losing costs are high enough. This is typically taken to count against the view that knowledge involves assigning credence 1. I argue that the irrationality of such extreme bets can be explained by considering the interactions between the agent and the bookmaker. More specifically, the agent’s epistemic perspective is altered by the fact that the bookmaker proposes that unusual type of bet. Among other things, being willing to offer a bet with unnecessarily harmful losing costs is likely to undermine the baseline level of trustworthiness required for it to be rational to engage in betting exchanges. This sort of explanation does not require granting either that we assign credence lower than 1 to known propositions or that knowledge is sensitive to practical stakes. Moreover, I show that, in our ordinary lives, we frequently perform actions that we know would be disastrous if certain conditions did not obtain. This behaviour can be seen as a form of implicit extreme betting and, nevertheless, it is often rational.

Law and economics and the role of explanation: A comment of Guido Calabresi,The Future of Law and Economics

A central theme of Guido Calabresi’s The Future of Law and Economics is the way that economic analysis of law tends to reject as irrational whatever aspects of law or life do not fit its approach. Calabresi argues instead for a different approach he labels “law and economics,” which includes a greater willingness to modify economic analysis to allow it better to fit law and life. This Review Essay elaborates Calabresi’s argument, supplementing it with ideas from other sources, including Arthur Leff’s parallel response to economic analysis, “Some Realism about Nominalism,” and an earlier Calabresi article, “Supereditor or Translator.” Among the topics discussed are the role of historical/causal analysis, and the different sorts of explanation that we do expect, or should expect, from theories of law.

Dark matter \u201ctransporting\u201d mechanism explaining positron excesses

We propose a novel mechanism to explain the positron excesses, which are observed by satellite-based telescopes including PAMELA and AMS-02, in dark matter (DM) scenarios. The novelty behind the proposal is that it makes direct use of DM around the Galactic Center where DM populates most densely, allowing us to avoid tensions from cosmological and astrophysical measurements. The key ingredients of this mechanism include DM annihilation into unstable states with a very long laboratory-frame life time and their “retarded” decay near the Earth to electron-positron pair(s) possibly with other (in)visible particles. We argue that this sort of explanation is not in conflict with relevant constraints from big bang nucleosynthesis and cosmic microwave background. Regarding the resultant positron spectrum, we provide a generalized source term in the associated diffusion equation, which can be readily applicable to any type of two-“stage” DM scenarios wherein production of Standard Model particles occurs at completely different places from those of DM annihilation. We then conduct a data analysis with the recent AMS-02 data to validate our proposal.

Ultimate and proximate explanations of strong reciprocity

Strong reciprocity (SR) has recently been subject to heated debate. In this debate, the “West camp” (West et al. in Evol Hum Behav 32(4):231–262, 2011), which is critical of the case for SR, and the “Laland camp” (Laland et al. in Science, 334(6062):1512–1516, 2011, Biol Philos 28(5):719–745, 2013), which is sympathetic to the case of SR, seem to take diametrically opposed positions. The West camp criticizes advocates of SR for conflating proximate and ultimate causation. SR is said to be a proximate mechanism that is put forward by its advocates as an ultimate explanation of human cooperation. The West camp thus accuses advocates of SR for not heeding Mayr’s original distinction between ultimate and proximate causation. The Laland camp praises advocates of SR for revising Mayr’s distinction. Advocates of SR are said to replace Mayr’s uni-directional view on the relation between ultimate and proximate causes by the bi-directional one of reciprocal causation. The paper argues that both the West camp and the Laland camp misrepresent what advocates of SR are up to. The West camp is right that SR is a proximate cause of human cooperation. But rather than putting forward SR as an ultimate explanation, as the West camp argues, advocates of SR believe that SR itself is in need of ultimate explanation. Advocates of SR tend to take gene-culture co-evolutionary theory as the correct meta-theoretical framework for advancing ultimate explanations of SR. Appearances notwithstanding, gene-culture coevolutionary theory does not imply Laland et al.’s notion of reciprocal causation. “Reciprocal causation” suggests that proximate and ultimate causes interact simultaneously, while advocates of SR assume that they interact sequentially. I end by arguing that the best way to understand the debate is by disambiguating Mayr’s ultimate-proximate distinction. I propose to reserve “ultimate” and “proximate” for different sorts of explanations, and to use other terms for distinguishing different kinds of causes and different parts of the total causal chain producing behavior.

Young Children Prefer and Remember Satisfying Explanations

Research with preschool children has shown that explanations are important to them in that they actively seek explanations in their conversations with adults. But what sorts of explanations do they prefer, and what, if anything, do young children learn from the explanations they receive? Following a preliminary study with adults (N = 67) to establish materials for use with children, we addressed this question using a seminaturalistic methodology. Four- and 5-year-olds (N = 69) were dissatisfied when receiving nonexplanations to their explanatory questions, but they were satisfied when receiving explanations, and their satisfaction varied appropriately across several levels of explanatory information. Moreover, using recall as a measure of learning, whereas children typically failed to recall nonexplanations, their recall of explanatory information was consistently high and also varied appropriately across differing levels of information provided. These results confirm that children not only actively seek informative explanations in their everyday conversational interactions with adults, but they selectively retain the answers they receive.

Better Semantics for the Pure Logic of Ground

Philosophers have spilled a lot of ink over the past few years exploring the nature and significance of grounding. Kit Fine has made several seminal contributions to this discussion, including an exact treatment of the formal features of grounding [Fine, 2012a]. He has specified a language in which grounding claims may be expressed, proposed a system of axioms which capture the relevant formal features, and offered a semantics which interprets the language. Unfortunately, the semantics Fine offers faces a number of problems. In this paper, I review the problems and offer an alternative that avoids them. I offer a semantics for the pure logic of ground that is motivated by ideas already present in the grounding literature, and for which a natural axiomatization capturing central formal features of grounding is sound and complete. I also show how the semantics I offer avoids the problems faced by Fine’s semantics. Philosophers have spilled a lot of ink over the past few years exploring the nature and significance of grounding. Grounding is supposed to be a certain relation of dependence and determination among facts. This relation is linked with a certain kind of explanation. It is targeted by the sort of explanations we give sometimes when we say that some facts obtain in virtue of other facts and when we ask what makes something the case. When, for instance, ethicists ask what makes murder wrong, epistemologists ask what makes my belief that I have hands justified, chemists ask what makes alcohol miscible in water, and physicists ask what makes gravity so weak, they are asking after the worldly conditions on which the facts in question depend, and by which they are determined.

Early Education in Plato's Republic

In this paper, I reconsider the commonly held position that the early moral education of the Republic is arational since the youths of the Kallipolis do not yet have the capacity for reason. I argue that, because they receive an extensive mathematical education alongside their moral education, the youths not only have a capacity for reason but that capacity is being developed in their early education. If this is so, though, then we must rethink why the early moral education is arational. I argue that the reason is rooted in the nature of moral explanations. These sorts of explanations are rooted in the Forms and thus one can only understand those explanations when they have knowledge of the Forms. But this requires preparation – the very sort of preparation that is provided by both the mathematical and moral educations.

Grounding the Luck Objection

Many object to libertarianism by arguing that it manages to solve one problem of luck (the threat of determinism) only by falling prey to another (the threat from indeterminism). According to this objection, there is something freedom-undermining about the very circumstances that the libertarian thinks are required for freedom. However, it has proved difficult to articulate precisely what it is about these circumstances that is supposed to undermine freedom—the absence of certain sorts of explanations has perhaps been the most common complaint. In this paper, however, I argue that recent work on the metaphysics of ontological dependence provides the resources for formulating the luck objection in its strongest form.

“Meng? It Just Means Cute”: A Chinese Online Vernacular Term in Context

“Meng? It Just Means Cute”: A Chinese Online Vernacular Term in Context

El fin del trovadorismo gallegoportugués en el marco de la lírica románica: un análisis comparado y algunas cuestiones de historiografía literaria

El estudio de la literatura medieval se lleva a cabo, a menudo, a partir de los principios metodológicos que elabora la historiografía literaria. Esto se debe tanto a la naturaleza histórica de la literatura, como a su utilización como parte de los discursos identitarios sobre los que, desde el siglo xviii, se han construido las naciones contemporáneas. Sin embargo, su aplicación resulta harto problemática cuando tal metodología pretende aplicarse a una realidad prenacional, como es la medieval. El final de la lírica gallegoportuguesa constituye un buen ejemplo de tales disfunciones metodológicas, cuánto más que su ordenación historiográfica se realiza desde un sistema literario minorizado, como el gallego, en el que la historia de la literatura se carga de una funcionalidad simbólica más amplia que en aquellos otros que gozan de plenitud institucional. Uno de los recursos narrativos sobre los que la historiografía gallega explica del fin del trovadorismo será el concepto de fecha clave, que en este caso girará en torno al año 1354, en que muere don Pedro, conde de Barcelos. El análisis comparado de esta propuesta narrativa con las de otras tradiciones líricas románicas revela las limitaciones de este tipo de explicaciones y alerta acerca de la asunción acrítica de los métodos de la historiografía literaria.

Why are Normal Distributions Normal?

It is usually supposed that the central limit theorem explains why various quantities we find in nature are approximately normally distributed—people's heights, examination grades, snowflake sizes, and so on. This sort of explanation is found in many textbooks across the sciences, particularly in biology, economics, and sociology. Contrary to this received wisdom, I argue that in many cases we are not justified in claiming that the central limit theorem explains why a particular quantity is normally distributed, and that in some cases, we are actually wrong.

Charles Darwin’s Mitochondria

Charles Darwin’s long-term illness has been the subject of much speculation. His numerous symptoms have led to conclusions that his illness was essentially psychogenic in nature. These diagnoses have never been fully convincing, however, particularly in regard to the proposed underlying psychological background causes of the illness. Similarly, two proposed somatic causes of illness, Chagas disease and arsenic poisoning, lack credibility and appear inconsistent with the lifetime history of the illness. Other physical explanations are simply too incomplete to explain the range of symptoms. Here, a very different sort of explanation will be offered. We now know that mitochondrial mutations producing impaired mitochondrial function may result in a wide range of differing symptoms, including symptoms thought to be primarily psychological. Examination of Darwin’s maternal family history supports the contention that his illness was mitochondrial in nature; his mother and one maternal uncle had strange illnesses and the youngest maternal sibling died of an infirmity with symptoms characteristic of mitochondrial encephalomyopathy, lactic acidosis, and stroke-like episodes (MELAS syndrome), a condition rooted in mitochondrial dysfunction. Darwin’s own symptoms are described here and are in accord with the hypothesis that he had the mtDNA mutation commonly associated with the MELAS syndrome.

The Temptations of Theory

When students of religion are tempted to theorize, they are more apt to spread confusion than to get things right. In Believing and Acting (2012), Scott Davis offers philosophical therapy for the resulting perplexities. There is no more instructive methodological essay in the field. Because the temptations Davis identifies are real, any would-be theorist of religion, society, or culture would be well advised to take his diagnoses seriously. “Understanding religion,” according to Davis, “requires nothing more than the sensitive and imaginative reading of human phenomena informed by the best available historical narrative.” The study of religion is a tangled garden in need of “judicious pruning and weeding” (2012, 3). In some cases, the prudent gardener will need only to reshape something that goes by the name of “theory.” Davis praises Mary Douglas, Clifford Geertz, and Wayne Proudfoot for freeing earlier research programs of their theoretical excesses. These are Davis’s model gardeners, the heroes of “the pragmatic turn” he recommends. What links the three together, he argues, is that they borrow their pruning hooks from the same shed—the pragmatic philosophical tradition initiated by C. S. Peirce.1 The book has villains as well as heroes. In “cognitive studies and the postmodern hermeneutics of suspicion,” Davis finds nothing worth saving. He concludes that they “should probably be uprooted altogether” (2012, 4). In somewhat different ways, these programs fail to learn what pragmatism has to teach about studying human beings as rational agents. The lessons that figure most heavily in Davis’s critical project come from Donald Davidson.2 While I mostly agree with Davis on what those lessons are and admire the acumen with which he explicates them, I worry that he is too quick to dismiss some research programs as worthless. If we are not careful here, something valuable will end up in the compost heap. Davis argues that Peirce was basically right about how inquiry works. Inquiry is the activity in which human beings engage to resolve their doubts about what is the case and what to do. Like other things we do, it is something we can do well or poorly. Properly conducted, inquiry is part of living well.