What is computational explanation? Many accounts treat it as a kind of causal explanation. I argue against two more specific versions of this view, corresponding to two popular treatments of causal explanation. The first holds that computational explanation is mechanistic, while the second holds that it is interventionist. However, both overlook an important class of computational explanations, which I call limitative explanations. Limitative explanations explain why certain problems cannot be solved computationally, either in principle or in (...) practice. I argue that limitative explanations are not plausibly understood in either mechanistic or interventionist terms. One upshot of this argument is that there are causal and non-causal kinds of computational explanation. I close the paper by suggesting that both are grounded in the notion of computational implementation. (shrink)

The dynamics of intractability, frame multiplicity and intense controversy not only characterize policy formation struggles, as described by Schön and Rein, but also affect the evaluation of policies and government action. Policy analysts play an important part in the politics of policy evaluation. This article demonstrates that they tend to produce very different explanations for controversial, failing policies. Such differing explanations imply different causal attributions, different allocations of blame, and different lessons for future policy-making. Such differences are not random occurrences; (...) they are embedded in the analytical frames that evaluators use to reconstruct policy processes and to explain their outcomes. It is shown that at least three deep-rooted frames can be reconstructed: fiascoes as failures of public problem solving, fiascoes as institutional imbalances, and fiascoes as system artefacts. One of the great epistemological challenges is how to deal with multiple analytical frames. The final part of the article discusses various strategies. (shrink)

Resurgent interest in both mechanistic and counterfactual theories of explanation has led to a fair amount of discussion regarding the relative merits of these two approaches. James Woodward is currently the pre-eminent counterfactual theorist, and he criticizes the mechanists on the following grounds: Unless mechanists about explanation invoke counterfactuals, they cannot make sense of claims about causal interactions between mechanism parts or of causal explanations put forward absent knowledge of productive mechanisms. He claims that these shortfalls can be (...) offset if mechanists will just borrow key tenets of his counterfactual theory of causal claims. What mechanists must bear in mind, however, is that by pursuing this course they risk both the assimilation of the mechanistic theories of explanation into Woodward’s own favored counterfactual theory, and they risk the marginalization of mechanistic explanations to a proper subset of all explanations. An outcome more favorable to mechanists might be had by pursuing an actualist-mechanist theory of the contents of causal claims. While it may not seem obvious at first blush that such an approach is workable, even in principle, recent empirical research into causal perception, causal belief, and mechanical reasoning provides some grounds for optimism. (shrink)

Despite the scientific revolutions of the twentieth century, mechanistic explanations show a striking methodological continuity from early modern science to current scientific practice. They are rooted in the traditional method of analysis and synthesis, which was the background of Galileo’s resolutive-compositive method and Newton’s method of deduction from the phenomena. In early modern science as well as in current scientific practice, analysis aims at tracking back from the phenomena to the principles, i.e., from wholes to parts, and from effects to (...) causes. Vice versa, synthesis aims at explaining the phenomena from the parts and their interactions. Today, mechanistic explanations are atomistic in a generalized sense. They have in common to explain higher-level phenomena in terms of lower-level components and their causal actions or activities. In quantum physics, the lower-level components are subatomic particles, and the causes are their quantum interactions. After the quantum revolution, the approach continues to work in terms of the sum rules which hold for conserved properties of the parts and the whole. My paper focuses on the successes and limitations of this approach, with a side glance at the recent generalization of mechanistic explanations in cognitive neuroscience. (shrink)

This collection of new essays explores the nature of explanation and causality.

This paper explores the question of whether all or most explanations in biology are, or ideally should be, ‘mechanistic’. I begin by providing an account of mechanistic explanation, making use of the interventionist ideas about causation I have developed elsewhere. This account emphasizes the way in which mechanistic explanations, at least in the biological sciences, integrate difference‐making and spatio‐temporal information, and exhibit what I call fine‐tunedness of organization. I also emphasize the role played by modularity conditions in mechanistic (...) class='Hi'>explanation. I will then argue, in agreement with John Dupré, that, given this account, it is plausible that many biological systems require explanations that are relatively non‐mechanical or depart from expectations one associates with the behaviour of machines. (shrink)

Why-questions and how-possibly-questions are two common forms of explanation request. Answers to the former ones require factual assertions, but the latter ones can be answered by displaying a representation of the targeted phenomenon. However, in an extreme case, a representation could come accompanied by the assertion that it displays the only possible way a phenomenon could develop. Using several historical controversies concerning statistical modeling, it is argued that such cases must inevitably involve tacit or explicit empirical assumptions.

When I was first approached to read a paper at the conference from which this volume takes its beginning I expected that Flint Schier, with whom I had taught a course on the Philosophy of Biology in my years at Glasgow, would be with us to comment and to criticize. I cannot let this occasion pass without expressing once again my own sense of loss. I am sure that we would all have gained by his presence, and hope that he (...) would find things both to approve, and disapprove, in the following venture. (shrink)

This paper examines the justifications for using infinite systems to 'recover' thermodynamic properties, such as phase transitions (PT), critical phenomena (CP), and irreversibility, from the micro-structure of matter in bulk. Section 2 is a summary of such rigorous methods as in taking the thermodynamic limit (TL) to recover PT and in using renormalization (semi-) group approach (RG) to explain the universality of critical exponents. Section 3 examines various possible justifications for taking TL on physically finite systems. Section 4 discusses the (...) legitimacy of applying TL to the problem of irreversibility and assesses the repercussions for its legitimacy on its home turf. (shrink)

Several modern accounts of explanation acknowledge the importance of abstraction and idealization for our explanatory practice. However, once we allow a role for abstraction, questions remain. I ask whether the relation between explanations at different theoretical levels should be thought of wholly in terms of abstraction, and argue that changes of the quantities in terms of which we describe a system can lead to novel explanations that are not merely abstractions of some more detailed picture. I use the example (...) of phase transitions as described by statistical mechanics and thermodynamics to illustrate this, and to demonstrate some details of the relationship between abstraction, idealization, and novel explanation. (shrink)

Recent work on emergence in physics has focused on the presence of singular limit relations between basal and upper-level theories as a criterion for emergence. However, over-emphasis on the role of singular limit relations has somewhat obscured what it means to say that a property or behaviour is emergent. This paper argues that singular limits are not central to emergence and develops an alternative account of emergence in terms of the failure of basal explainability. As a consequence, emergence and (...) reduction, long held to be two sides of the same coin in the emergentist tradition, are largely decoupled. (shrink)

How questions and why questions interact in complex ways within biological practice. One of the most fruitful accounts to think about this relation is the widely known systemic approach, which has its origin mainly in the works of Robert Cummins (1975, 1983). As we will show, this approach effectively manages to capture much of what biologists do, especially in areas such as molecular biology, neuroscience and neuroethology. Our aim with this work is to discuss the metatheoretical status of the presuppositions (...) behind systemic analysis. We will hold that these assumptions are of an empirical nature, and that they can be reconstructed as parts of a theory. (shrink)

Ground is all the rage in contemporary metaphysics. But what is its nature? Some metaphysicians defend what we could call, following Skiles and Trogdon (2021), the inheritance view: it is because constitutive forms of metaphysical explanation are such-and-such that we should believe that ground is so-and-so. However, many putative instances of inheritance are not primarily motivated by scientific considerations. This limitation is harmless if one thinks that ground and science are best kept apart. Contrary to this view, we believe (...) that ground is a highly serviceable tool for investigating metaphysical areas of science. In this paper, we defend a naturalistic version of the inheritance view which takes constitutive scientific explanation as a better guide to ground. After illustrating the approach and its merits, we discuss some implications of the emerging scientific conception for the theory of ground at large. (shrink)

Explanations in the life sciences frequently involve presenting a model of the mechanism taken to be responsible for a given phenomenon. Such explanations depart in numerous ways from nomological explanations commonly presented in philosophy of science. This paper focuses on three sorts of differences. First, scientists who develop mechanistic explanations are not limited to linguistic representations and logical inference; they frequently employ diagrams to characterize mechanisms and simulations to reason about them. Thus, the epistemic resources for presenting mechanistic explanations are (...) considerably richer than those suggested by a nomological framework. Second, the fact that mechanisms involve organized systems of component parts and operations provides direction to both the discovery and testing of mechanistic explanations. Finally, models of mechanisms are developed for specific exemplars and are not represented in terms of universally quantified statements. Generalization involves investigating both the similarity of new exemplars to those already studied and the variations between them. (shrink)

The idea at the core of the New Mechanical account of explanation can be summarized in the claim that explaining means showing ‘how things work’. This simple motto hints at three basic features of Mechanistic Explanation (ME): ME is an explanation-how, that implies the description of the processes underlying the phenomenon to be explained and of the entities that engage in such processes. These three elements trace a fundamental contrast with the view inherited from Hume and later (...) from strict logical empiricism (see Creath 2017), focused on epistemic and formal features of science and according to which issues concerning the kind of entities and processes that lie within a theory’s domain are extraneous to science and belong instead to ontology or metaphysics. Philosophers belonging to the new mechanical philosophy believe that the received view of scientific explanation (Hempel 2001), pivoting on the notion of law of nature, overshadows this insight. Since its origin in the 17th century, mechanical philosophy aimed to explain natural phenomena by reducing them to mechanisms. Traditional attempts to define the concept of mechanism involved the identification of a limited set of fundamental elements as, for instance, contact action, action at a distance, inertial motion (see e.g. Hesse 2005), and, more recently, transmission of a mark, or of a conserved quantity (see Frisch, this volume). The new mechanical philosophy rejects this austere characterization of mechanisms and mechanistic explanation and aim at providing a novel, philosophically rigorous explication of the concept of mechanism and of its role in scientific explanation and practice. ME has been adopted with profit in philosophy of special sciences (for instance in biomedical sciences, e.g. in the explanation of chemical transmission at synapses ((Machamer, Darden and Craver 2000), MDC henceforth); but also in social sciences, e.g. the three kinds of social mechanisms in Coleman’s analysis of Max Weber’s account of the role of the Protestant ethic in the growth of capitalism (Hedström and Swedberg 1998)), where exceptionless regularities are rarely ever found. In physics, it is generally possible to formulate explanations in law-based form, with the result that the plurality of explanatory forms might be overlooked. This should not come as a surprise, given that physics was the main inspiration for logical empiricists, and, in particular, Newtonian physics was a template for Hempel’s formulation of the covering law model. However, this situation is unfortunate, since, we will argue, knowing how things work is often part of the explanation of physical phenomena. In this chapter, we provide an introduction to the basic features of ME, with specific focus on its application to physics (section 1). The main part of the chapter is devoted to the defence of two theses: on the one hand, some domains of physics are not compatible with mechanistic reasoning and explanation (section 2); on the other hand, a comprehensive account of explanation in physics can’t dispense with ME (section 3). (shrink)

There are at least two importantly different ways for a philosophical theory to account for something. Explanations account for why something exists or occurs or is the way it is. Explications account for what it is for something to exist or occur or be a certain way. Both explanation and explication do important philosophical work. I show what it takes to defend genuine philosophical explanations. The sort of explanation I am interested in is incompatible not only with eliminating (...) the target phenomenon, but also with reducing it to the explanans. I show how explication comes into play in determining whether some phenomenon can plausibly be given either a reductive or eliminative treatment. Explication helps us distinguish certain kinds of reductive and eliminative views, gives us a graded account of the philosophical cost of eliminations, and furnishes us with a certain limit upon what resources an eliminative view can plausibly claim. This last point exposes a defect in a family of eliminative views that seek to retain truths about what they eliminate. Before concluding, I offer a brief defense of common sense as a legitimate, though defeasible, source of philosophical evidence. (shrink)

Our aim in this paper is to evaluate Frank Jackson and Philip Pettit’s ‘program explanation’ framework as an account of the autonomy of the special sciences. We argue that this framework can only explain the autonomy of a limited range of special science explanations. The reason for this limitation is that the framework overlooks a distinction between two kinds of properties, which we refer to as ‘higher-level’ and ‘higher-order’ properties. The program explanation framework can account for the autonomy of (...) special science explanations that appeal to higher-level properties but it does not account for the autonomy of most of those explanations that appeal to higher-order properties. (shrink)

In recent years, an active research program has emerged that aims to develop a Humean best-system account (BSA) of laws of nature that improves on Lewis’s canonical articulation of the view. Its guiding idea is that the laws are cognitive tools tailored to the specific needs and limitations of creatures like us. While current versions of this “pragmatic Humean” research program fare much better than Lewis’s account along many dimensions, I will argue that they have trouble making sense of certain (...) key features of the practice of fundamental physics. Indeed, these features seem to go against the very idea that laws are useful for agents like us. In my view, Humeans can address these issues by paying more attention to the explanatory role of laws. Following this idea, I will propose an account on which what makes a systematization the best is a kind of explanatory power, understood along the lines of the unificationist theory of explanation. The resulting view, I will argue, can make sense of those features of laws that other pragmatic accounts of laws have trouble explaining. (shrink)

Earlier in this volume, Wesley Salmon has given a characteristically clear and trenchant critique of the account of non-demonstrative reasoning known by the slogan `Inference to the Best Explanation'. As a long-time fan of the idea that explanatory considerations are a guide to inference, I was delighted by the suggestion that Wes and I might work together on a discussion of the issues. In the event, this project has exceeded my high expectations, for in addition to the intellectual gain (...) that comes from the careful study of his essay, I have benefited enormously from the stream of illuminating emails and faxes that Wes has sent me during our collaboration. Doing philosophy together has been an education and a pleasure. Salmon's essay would place Inference to the Best Explanation beyond the pale of acceptable philosophical accounts of inference. According to Salmon, Inference to the Best Explanation has serious internal difficulties and compares very unfavourably with Bayesian approaches to these matters. My aim in the following remarks is irenic. I hope to show that a number of the claimed difficulties either are not really difficulties or are avoidable. In some cases, the avoidance will require a mild reinterpretation of the account that lies behind the slogan `Inference to the Best Explanation'; in others, it will require admitting limits to the scope of the account. For I accept at the outset that Inference to the Best Explanation cannot possibly be the whole story about the assessment of scientific hypotheses. For me, the interesting idea is simply that we sometimes decide how likely a hypothesis is to be correct in part by considering how good an explanation it would provide, if it were correct. This is the idea of explanatory considerations providing a guide to inference, and this is the idea that I will here promote. (shrink)

Recent work by Robert Batterman and Alexander Rueger has brought attention to cases in physics in which governing laws at the base level “break down” and singular limit relations obtain between base- and upper-level theories. As a result, they claim, these are cases with emergent upper-level properties. This paper contends that this inference—from singular limits to explanatory failure, novelty or irreducibility, and then to emergence—is mistaken. The van der Pol nonlinear oscillator is used to show that there can be (...) a full explanation of upper-level properties entirely in base-level terms even when singular limits are present. Whether upper-level properties are emergent depends not on the presence of a singular limit but rather on details of the ampliative approximation methods used. The paper suggests that focusing on explanatory deficiency at the base level is key to understanding emergence in physics. (shrink)

The common role of research programs in science and religion is now widely accepted. The next step in the methodology debate is to specify more concretely the shared standards for adequate explanations. The article presents a detailed account of the method of inference to the best explanation and gives examples of how the method can structure the philosophical and theological interaction with science. The resulting approach dispenses with deductive and inductive proofs of religious propositions and limits itself to (...) initially plausible hypotheses that are to be assessed according to their explanatory power. Only when a domain of data and a particular explanatory task have been specified can any serious claim be made that religious theories are equal or superior to their naturalistic alternatives. (shrink)

This paper provides a new approach to inference to the best explanation based on a new coherence measure for comparing how well hypotheses explain the evidence. It addresses a number of criticisms of the use of probabilistic measures in this context by Clark Glymour, including limitations of earlier work on IBE. Computer experiments are used to show that the new approach finds the truth with a high degree of accuracy in hypothesis selection tasks and that in some cases its (...) accuracy is greater than hypothesis selection based on maximizing posterior probability. Hence, by overcoming some of the problems with the previous approach, this work provides a more adequate defence of IBE and suggests that IBE not only tracks truth but also has practical advantages over the previous approach. Applications of the new approach to parameter estimation and model selection are also explored. (shrink)

Pure mathematics can play an indispensable role explaining empirical phenomena if recent accounts of insect evolution are correct. In particular, the prime life cycles of cicadas and the geometric structure of honeycombs are taken to undergird an inference to the best explanation about mathematical entities. Neither example supports this inference or the mathematical realism it is intended to establish. Both incorrectly assume that facts about mathematical optimality drove selection for the respective traits and explain why they exist. We show (...) how this problem can be avoided, identify limitations of explanatory indispensability arguments, and attempt to clarify the nature of mathematical explanation. (shrink)

This paper considers the problem of causal explanation in classical and statistical thermodynamics. It is argued that the irreversibility of macroscopic processes is explained in both formulations of thermodynamics in a teleological way that appeals to entropic or probabilistic consequences rather than to efficient-causal, antecedental conditions. This explanatory structure of thermodynamics is not taken to imply a teleological orientation to macroscopic processes themselves, but to reflect simply the epistemological limitations of this science, wherein consequences of heat-work asymmetries are either (...) macroscopically measurable (entropy) or calculable (probabilities), while efficient-causal relationships are obscure or indeterminable. (shrink)

We revive the idea that a deductive-nomological explanation of a scientific theory by its successor may be defensible, even in those common and troublesome cases where the theories concerned are mutually incompatible; and limiting, approximating and counterfactual assumptions may be required in order to define a logical relation between them. Our solution is based on a general characterization of limiting relations between physical theories using the method of nonstandard analysis.

In this paper I expand Eric Scerri’s notion of Popper’s naturalised approach to reduction in chemistry and investigate what its consequences might be. I will argue that Popper’s naturalised approach to reduction has a number of interesting consequences when applied to the reduction of chemistry to physics. One of them is that it prompts us to look at a ‘bootstrap’ approach to quantum chemistry, which is based on specific quantum theoretical theorems and practical considerations that turn quantum ‘theory’ into quantum (...) ‘chemistry’ proper. This approach allows us to investigate some of the principles that drive theory formation in quantum chemistry. These ‘enabling theorems’ place certain limits on the explanatory latitude enjoyed by quantum chemists, and form a first step into establishing the relationship between chemistry and physics in more detail. (shrink)

This paper looks at the neo-Kantian response to Darwinism as a historical science. I distinguish four responses to this aspect of Darwin’s thought from within the neo-Kantian tradition. The first line of response, represented by August Stadler and Bruno Bauch, views Darwin’s model of historical explanation as a fulfilment of Kant’s criteria of scientific intelligibility. The second, represented by Otto Liebmann, regards historical explanation as intrinsically limited, because it cannot tell us why nature develops as it does. The (...) third line of response questions whether we can give a historical account of qualitative change. Friedrich Lange expresses this scepticism in general terms, while Alois Riehl and Ernst Cassirer extend it to human beings specifically. A fourth line of response, represented by Heinrich Rickert, challenges the misperception that Darwinian explanatory principles such as natural selection have normative or socio-political significance. (shrink)

This paper describes an alternative to the common view that explanation in the special sciences involves subsumption under laws. According to this alternative, whether or not a generalization can be used to explain has to do with whether it is invariant rather than with whether it is lawful. A generalization is invariant if it is stable or robust in the sense that it would continue to hold under a relevant if it is stable or robust in the sense that (...) it would continue to hold under a relevant class of changes. Unlike lawfulness, invariance comes in degrees and has other features that are well suited to capture the characteristics of explanatory generalizations in the special sciences. For example, a generalization can be invariant even if it has exceptions or holds only over a limited spatio-temporal interval. The notion of invariance can be used to resolve a number of dilemmas that arise in standard treatments of explanatory generalizations in the special sciences. (shrink)

In what sense do the sciences explain? Or do they merely describe what is going on without answering why-questions at all. But cannot description at an appropriate ‘level’ provide all that we can reasonably ask of an explanation? Well, what do we mean by explanation anyway? What, if anything, gets left out when we provide a so-called scientific explanation? Are there limits of explanation in general, and scientific explanation, in particular? What are the criteria (...) for a good explanation? Is it possible to satisfy all the desiderata simultaneously? If not, which should we regard as paramount? What is the connection between explanation and prediction? What exactly is it that statistical explanations explain? These are some of the questions that have generated a very extensive literature in the philosophy of science. In attempting to answer them, definite views will have to be taken on related matters, such as physical laws, causality, reduction, and questions of evidence and confirmation, of theory and observation, realism versus antirealism, and the objectivity and rationality of science. I will state my own views on these matters, in the course of this essay. To argue for everything in detail and to do justice to all the alternative views, would fill a book, perhaps several books. I want to lead up fairly quickly to modern physics, and review the explanatory situation there in rather more detail. (shrink)

I analyze the role of infinite idealizations used in the renormalization group (RG hereafter) method in explaining universality across microscopically different physical systems in critical phenomena. I argue that despite the reference to infinite limit systems such as systems with infinite correlation lengths during the RG process, the key to explaining universality in critical phenomena need not involve infinite limit systems. I develop my argument by introducing what I regard as the explanatorily relevant property in RG explanations: linearization* property; I (...) then motivate and prove a proposition about the linearization* property in support of my view. As a result, infinite limit systems in RG explanations are dispensable. (shrink)

Imagine a universe without human beings. Now imagine a universe devoid of any creatures like human beings, beings who could think about the universe and in so doing consider it as divided up into different kinds of things that could be objects of understanding. Now imagine – this is harder – your not being there, or anyone else, to imagine such a universe. Next think about setting about describing in physical laws such a universe in line with a completist physicalist (...) program: that all the facts about the world are physical facts. But where would one begin? Why would one begin? Remember there is no-one around to take more interest in any part of the universe than any other. This contrasts with what we do now. What we do now is take chunks of the universe – stars, planets, water, trees, air, particles – and demarcate the physical laws in such a way as to explain how these objects behave against a background of other objects and ultimately the universe as a whole. But what if we were not around? Why would we there be any reason to demarcate groups of physical laws in this or any other way? My suggestion is that there would be none. The grouping of the physical laws to form complex classes and layers of explanations is parasitic upon creatures having particular interests giving them a perspective upon the universe or world, which in turn derives from the kind of limited creatures they happen to be. But the perspective itself is not a physical fact about the universe. Rather it is a way of coming to form a system of facts about the universe. Further, not only might the perspective have been otherwise, there might be none at all. In which case the demarcation of physical laws, given meaning by their application to entities picked out as having a certain significance to us, would not get off the ground. At best there might be a random bunching of laws covering regions of the universe. But such random bunchings would have no meaning; they would be unintelligible; they wouldn't really be about anything. For laws to be about things you have to have limited creatures who differentiate between parts of the universe, and for whom different parts have a variable significance and value. Things stand out for them; they literally exist . Without such creatures, things we take for granted would, in the literal sense, not exist. It is the very limitedness of our perspective and capabilities, such that things are problems for us, and wherefore we literally or metaphorically bump into things, that brings objects into existence for us. Otherwise the universe would be utterly ‘flat’ and undifferentiated. A limitation of perspective is required for there to be objects of thought, and thus for thought itself. Thus, the intelligibility of the laws of physics is logically parasitic upon our having varying interests in different segments of the universe. (shrink)

I explore a type of computational social simulation known as artificial societies. Artificial society simulations are dynamic models of real-world social phenomena. I explore the role that these simulations play in social explanation, by situating these simulations within contemporary philosophical work on explanation and on models. Many contemporary philosophers have argued that models provide causal explanations in science, and that models are necessary mediators between theory and data. I argue that artificial society simulations provide causal mechanistic explanations. I (...) conclude that in their current form, these simulations are based on methodologically individualist assumptions that could limit their potential scope of social explanation. (shrink)

Recent exchanges among Harman, Thomson, and their critics about moral explanations have done much to clarify this two-decades-old debate. I discuss some points in these exchanges along with five different kinds of moral explanations that have been proposed. I conclude that moral explanations cannot provide evidence within an unlimited contrast class that includes moral nihilism, but some moral explanations can still provide evidence within limited contrast classes where all competitors accept the necessary presuppositions. This points towards a limited version of (...) moral skepticism. (shrink)

Descartes argued that the model for genuine explanation is provided by natural philosophy and that scholastic theories that appeal to substantial forms or real qualities are pseudo‐explanations. Thus, one cannot explain mental acts by reference to a mental substance. The intractability of mind–body interaction illustrates the limits of our explanatory success to date.

It has often been claimed by philosophical theologians that the concept of God functions as an ‘ultimate explanation’ of the nature of the universe. In recent years, various theologians have regarded this notion of ‘ultimate explanation’ as one which has a central place in religious belief; and they construe the concept of God, at least in part, and sometimes mainly, as a concept which provides such an explanation. On the other hand, from the time of David Hume (...) there has been a long line of eminent philosophers who have found the whole idea of an ultimate explanation—something which completely explains absolutely everything—an incoherent one, analogous to the idea of the square of a circle. I think it worth trying to explore the possibilities and limits of the notion, and attempting to assess its importance for religious belief. First, I will briefly sketch the notion as it is found in recent work, and then offer an analysis of the notion of ‘explanation’ in general. Finally, I will try to ascertain the nature and limits of the notion in religion. (shrink)

Mathematical models provide explanations of limited power of specific aspects of phenomena. One way of articulating their limits here, without denying their essential powers, is in terms of contrastive explanation.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Language, Limits, and Beyond: Early Wittgenstein and Rabindranath Tagore by Priyambada SarkarNirmalangshu Mukherji (bio)Language, Limits, and Beyond: Early Wittgenstein and Rabindranath Tagore. By Priyambada Sarkar. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2021. Pp. xxiii + 182. Hardcover $68.45, ISBN 978-0-19-012397-0.This intriguing and original work may be viewed as something like a conjoined study of certain obscure issues in Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus and some ideas and images in (...) Rabindranath Tagore’s literary pieces, especially his mystical poems and plays. As the title suggests, the work is pretty much restricted to just one lingering theme from Wittgenstein’s Tractatus and the possibility of grasping this obscure theme in poetic terms of Tagore, rather than in terms of the standard discourse of analytic philosophy. The author deserves a round of applause for conceiving this work.The author embarks on the project by setting aside the so-called “resolute” reading of the Tractatus proposed by Cora Diamond and James Conant in the Realistic Spirit (MIT, 1991). According to Diamond and Conant, the enigmatic propositions of the Tractatus are to be viewed as a “therapy” against the human urge to philosophize. Without getting into the intricate, and often obscure, discussion that followed Diamond and Conant’s work, Sarkar simply adopts a non-resolute reading of the Tractatus under which the propositions of the Tractatus are metaphysically significant. Sarkar’s main evidence in favour of the non-resolute reading consists of a flurry of remarks from Wittgenstein himself on what he considered to be the significant aspect of the book (pp. 3-6). One is thus motivated to directly engage with the purported metaphysical significance of perhaps the most enigmatic theme in the Tractatus.The theme under study is Wittgenstein’s puzzling remark, “What we cannot talk about, we must pass over in silence.” Adopting a non-resolute understanding of the remark, the author suggests that Wittgenstein advocates a limit to what can be expressed in language. However, following the non-resolute reading, Wittgenstein cannot be viewed as advocating that whatever is thus passed over in silence lacks significance. In fact, citing Wittgenstein (pp. 6-7), Sarkar contends that drawing the limits of what can be expressed cannot indicate boundaries of thought because that will mean thinking the unthinkable. Once a limit is drawn, what falls on the unexpressed side of thought—the silent thought—necessarily becomes ineffable in the context of the language in use. One may then undertake an inquiry into the significance of the ineffable. [End Page 1]The work roughly divides into three parts. The first two chapters are devoted to Wittgenstein’s sketch of a factual language and its limits and how one may be led from the notion of limits to some notion of ineffability. As we will see, a non-resolute reading of the limits of factual language leads to two notions of language: language of facts and language of feelings. Chapters 3 and 4 illustrate different aspects of the language of feeling with individual studies of the domains of ethics, aesthetics and religion from the writings of Tagore and Wittgenstein. The concluding Chapter 5 may be viewed as a test case of how the scheme of explanation developed so far may be used to explain Wittgenstein’s abiding interest in Tagore’s mystical play The King of the Dark Chamber.To show the limits of a language, Wittgenstein develops a fragment of the familiar Principia-type logistic language to illustrate what may be said in a language. In this language, call it the “factual language” (FL), atomic propositions of FL state what is the case. A rigorous enumeration of all the propositions of FL thus constitutes what may be said in FL in terms of the truth conditions so obtained; for example, a proposition of the form not-p, where p is atomic, says what is not the case.However, there are two exceptions: propositions of the form p & not-p, a contradiction, and p v not-p, a tautology. Since tautologies are true of all facts and contradictions are true of none, the very form of these propositions suggest that they do not really amount to factual... (shrink)

In the modern age a specific lexicon has arisen to defend liberty and equality. This vocabulary has also been employed to defend misogynist positions and to justify the inequality between women and men. One clear example is Rousseau’s explanation of the sexual division of labour: women “naturally” decide to remain at home and look after the children while the men search for the resources necessary for the group. In this manner he intends to explain the relegation of women to (...) the private and domestic sphere. In the twentieth century this division entered in crisis due to the critical work of many feminist thinkers and groups. Among these Betty Friedan, Kate Millett and the Radicalesbians stand out. Their analyses put in question this division of spheres, their limits, their nature and their acceptance in society. Moreover they show the political scope and the power which underlies this division of labour, as well as the liberating possibilities resulting from the criticism of and the disobedience to the same. Betty Friedan denounces the social obstacles faced by women who wish to work outside the home and highlights the devastating consequences for the female psyche. Kate Millett puts in evidence the political system which oppresses women and how it colonises personal and intimate spaces. The Radicalesbians group underlines the freedom realised by woman-identified women. These feminists offer open and rich interpretations which are relevant in the present. (shrink)

Alan Millar examines our understanding of why people think and act as they do. His key theme is that normative considerations form an indispensable part of the explanatory framework which we use to understand each other. Millar offers illuminating discussions of reasons for belief and reasons for action, the explanation of beliefs and actions in terms of the subject's reasons, the idea that simulation has a key role in understanding people, and the limits of explanation in terms (...) of propositional attitudes. (shrink)

This paper explores the practice of explanation by status, in which a truth with a certain status is supposed to be explained by its having that status. It first investigates whether such explanations are possible. Having found existing accounts of the practice wanting, it then argues for a novel account of explanation by status as empty-base explanation. The latter notion captures a certain limiting case of ordinary explanation so that according to the empty-base account, explanation (...) by status can be fruitfully understood as a corresponding limiting case of ordinary explanation. One way in which the empty-base account is argued to be superior to other treatments of explanation by status is that it allows for a principled assessment of the possibility of particular kinds of explanation by status. Thus, one result of the present discussion is that explanation by essential status and status as a law are possible, while explanation by merely necessary status is not. (shrink)

In both cognitive science and philosophy, many theorists have recently appealed to a predictive processing framework to offer explanations of why certain individuals form delusional beliefs. One aim of this essay will be to illustrate how one could plausibly develop a predictive processing account in different ways to account for the onset of different kinds of delusions. However, the second aim of this essay will be to discuss two significant limitations of the predictive processing framework. First, I shall draw on (...) the structure of explanatory why-questions to argue that predictive processing theories can only partially explain the formation of delusional beliefs. Second, I shall argue that predictive processing theories cannot explain how implausible delusional hypotheses are generated. Yet understanding why an agent even generates a delusional hypothesis is a crucial step to understanding why she eventually comes to believe it. The final section of the essay presents three alternative ways the process of hypothesis generation might be functionally divergent in cases of delusional cognition. (shrink)

Theological fatalists contend that if God knows everything, then no human action is free, and that since God does know everything, no human action is free. One reply to such arguments that has become popular recently— a way favored by William Hasker and Peter van Inwagen—agrees that if God knows everything, no human action is free. The distinctive response of these philosophers is simply to say that therefore God does not know everything. On this view, what the fatalist arguments in (...) fact bring out is that it was logically impossible for God to have known the truths about what we would freely do in the future. And this is no defect in God’s knowledge, for infallible foreknowledge of such truths is a logical impossibility. It has commonly been assumed that this position constitutes an explanation of where the fatalist argument goes wrong. My first goal is to argue that any such assumption has in fact been a mistake; Hasker and van Inwagen have in effect said only that something does go wrong with the argument, but they have not explained what goes wrong with it. Once we see this result, we’ll see, I think, that they need such an account—and that no such account has in fact been provided. The second goal of this paper is therefore to develop— and to criticize— what seems to be the most promising such account they might offer. As I see it, this account will in fact highlight in an intuitively compelling new way what many regard to be the view’s chief liability, namely, that the truths about the future which God is said not to know will now appear even more clearly (and problematically)‘ungrounded’. (shrink)

This paper maintains that objectivism about practical reasons should be combined with pluralism both about the nature of practical reasons and about action explanations. We argue for an ‘expanding circle of practical reasons’, starting out from an open-minded monist objectivism. On this view, practical reasons are not limited to actual facts, but consist in states of affairs, possible facts that may or may not obtain. Going beyond such ‘that-ish’ reasons, we argue that goals are also bona fide practical reasons. This (...) makes for a genuine pluralism about practical reasons. Furthermore, the facts or states of affairs that function as practical reasons are not exclusively natural or descriptive, but include normative facts. That normative facts can be reasons justifies a pluralism about reason explanations, one which allows for what we call enkratic explanations in addition to teleological ones. (shrink)

Much of the popular attraction of as well as hostility to psycho-analysis, as represented in Freud's ideas, come from its iconoclastic, debunking character. What we regard as the higher things of life are, or seem to be, lowered, much of what passes as the normalities of human life are so represented as to appear under a disturbing aspect. Love is reduced to sex, human freedom is represented as an illusion, the human psyche is pictured as forever divided into warring factions (...) with the poor ego trying to keep peace by appeasements, compromises and, where these fail, by evasions and defensive manoeuvres, but without a will or convictions of its own beyond its own preservation. Moral conscience is said to be the internalized voice of a repressive authority in perpetual conflict with unruly instincts. Freud, who named it the super-ego said that it was ‘the representative of all moral restrictions, the advocate of the impulse towards perfection’. He added that it was ‘as much as we have been able to apprehend psychologically of what people call the “higher” things in human life’. (shrink)

Explainable AI (xAI) methods are important for establishing trust in using black-box models. However, recent criticism has mounted against current xAI methods that they disagree, are necessarily false, and can be manipulated, which has started to undermine the deployment of black-box models. Rudin (2019) goes so far as to say that we should stop using black-box models altogether in high-stakes cases because xAI explanations ‘must be wrong’. However, strict fidelity to the truth is historically not a desideratum in science. Idealizations (...) – the intentional distortions introduced to scientific theories and models – are commonplace in the natural sciences and are seen as a successful scientific tool. Thus, it is not falsehood qua falsehood that is the issue. In this paper, I outline the need for xAI research to engage in idealization evaluation. Drawing on the use of idealizations in the natural sciences and philosophy of science, I introduce a novel framework for evaluating whether xAI methods engage in successful idealizations or deceptive explanations (SIDEs). SIDEs evaluates whether the limitations of xAI methods, and the distortions that they introduce, can be part of a successful idealization or are indeed deceptive distortions as critics suggest. I discuss the role that existing research can play in idealization evaluation and where innovation is necessary. Through a qualitative analysis we find that leading feature importance methods and counterfactual explanations are subject to idealization failure and suggest remedies for ameliorating idealization failure. (shrink)

This volume presents over a decade of work by Mark Schroeder, one of the leading figures in contemporary metaethics. One new and ten previously published papers weave together treatments of reasons, reduction, supervenience, instrumental rationality, and legislation, to explore the nature and limits of moral explanation.