Depth

by Strevens, Michael

• ISBN13: 9780674031838
• ISBN10: 0674031830
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2009-01-15
• Publisher: Harvard Univ Pr

Summary

What does it mean for scientists to truly understand, rather than to merely describe, how the world works? Michael Strevens proposes a novel theory of scientific explanation and understanding that overhauls and augments the familiar causal approach to explanation. What is replaced is the test for explanatorily relevant causal information: Strevens discards the usual criterion of counterfactual dependence in favor of a criterion that turns on a process of progressive abstraction away from a fully detailed, physical causal story. The augmentations include the introduction of a new, non-causal explanatory relevance relation-entanglement-and an independent theory of the role of black-boxing and functional specification in explanation.The abstraction-centered notion of difference-making leads to a rich causal treatment of many aspects of explanation that have been either ignored or handled inadequately by earlier causal approaches, including the explanation of laws and other regularities, with particular attention to the explanation of physically contingent high-level laws, idealization in explanation, and probabilistic explanation in deterministic systems, as in statistical physics, evolutionary biology, and medicine.The result is an account of explanation that has especially significant consequences for the higher-level sciences: biology, psychology, economics, and other social sciences.

Table of Contents

List of Figures and Table	p. xi
Preface	p. xiii
The Causal Approach to Explanation
Approaches to Explanation	p. 3
Causal Explanation and Explanatory Relevance	p. 3
Preliminaries	p. 6
Accounts of the Explanatory Relation	p. 11
The Causal Element in Explanation	p. 23
The Pursuit of Explanation	p. 37
Causal and Explanatory Relevance	p. 41
The Minimal Causal Account of Event Explanation	p. 41
The Problem of Relevance	p. 45
The Probabilistic Solution	p. 52
The Counterfactual Solution	p. 56
The Manipulationist Solution	p. 60
The Kairetic Account of Explanation
The Kairetic Account of Difference-Making	p. 69
Overview of the Kairetic Account	p. 69
Causal Models	p. 71
States of Affairs	p. 84
The Eliminative Procedure	p. 86
Abstraction and Optimizing	p. 96
Cohesion	p. 101
The Optimizing Procedure	p. 109
Rival Accounts of Difference-Making Reconsidered	p. 110
The Kairetic Account of Explanation	p. 117
Standalone Explanation	p. 117
Difference-Making and Transitivity in Compound Explanations	p. 121
Comparing Standalone Explanations	p. 123
Laplacean Blindness	p. 138
Extending the Kairetic Account	p. 142
Quantifying Explanatory Relevance	p. 142
Trading Off Accuracy for Generality	p. 145
The Explanatory Framework	p. 148
Black Boxes, Functional Properties, and Multiple Realizability	p. 154
Aggregative Explanation	p. 169
Contrastive Explanation	p. 174
Beyond Causal Explanation	p. 177
Event Explanation and Causal Claims	p. 181
Background Conditions versus Causes	p. 182
Preemption	p. 186
Nonevents as Difference-Makers	p. 200
Nonevents as Explananda	p. 205
Transitivity	p. 208
Three Kinds of Causation	p. 215
Explanation of Laws and Regularities
Regularity Explanation	p. 219
Approaches to Regularity Explanation	p. 219
Explaining Laws with Mechanisms	p. 222
Basing Generalizations	p. 228
Property Laws	p. 265
Other Laws	p. 279
The Metaphysics of High and Low	p. 288
Abstraction in Regularity Explanation	p. 297
Problems of Abstraction in Regularity Explanation	p. 297
Explaining Boyle's Law	p. 304
A Theory of Idealization	p. 315
Mathematically Driven Explanation	p. 329
Probabilistic Explanation
Approaches to Probabilistic Explanation	p. 335
Explanatory Questions	p. 335
Varieties of Probabilistic Explanation: Examples	p. 337
Varieties of Probabilistic Explanation: Commentary	p. 341
Accounts of Probabilistic Explanation	p. 344
Elitism versus Egalitarianism	p. 347
Probability and Determinism	p. 355
Formal Elements of the Kairetic Approach	p. 358
Kairetic Explanation of Frequencies	p. 367
Probabilistic Explanation in Deterministic Systems	p. 367
Explanation with Complex Probability	p. 368
Explanation with Quasiprobability	p. 401
Elitism versus Egalitarianism the Kairetic Way	p. 412
Regularity Explanation and Probabilistic Metaphysics	p. 418
Kairetic Explanation of Single Outcomes	p. 424
Single-Outcome Explanation	p. 424
Robustness	p. 433
Nonexplanatory Probability-Raisers	p. 437
Nonexplanatory Critical Events	p. 447
Elitism and Egalitarianism Revisited	p. 452
Valediction
Looking Outward	p. 459
Biology: Probabilistic Explanation	p. 459
Psychology: Content and Explanation	p. 464
Economics: Abstraction	p. 468
Explanatory Autonomy	p. 470
Looking Inward	p. 473
Notes	p. 477
References	p. 495
Index	p. 505
Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.