Questions tagged [explanation]
The explanation tag has no usage guidance.
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If the laws of nature are not metaphysically fundamental, what alternative explanations could account for the regularities observed in nature?
Suppose, for the sake of argument, that the answer to Are there laws of Nature? is "no"—there are no metaphysically fundamental laws causing the universe to behave regularly. If we rule out ...
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Is there greater explanatory power in laws governing things rather than being descriptive?
If laws merely describe things in the world, then it seems that there is no reason for a particular object to behave according to a particular law the next moment.
If laws govern/order/command reality ...
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Did Daniel Dennet plagiarize Schopenhauer?
Compare Dennett's 3 levels of explanations for behavior of objects with Schopenhauer's 3 forms of Causality.
Dennett is talking about an approach to explain the behaviour of objects.
Explanation is in ...
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Can there be a fundamental contrastive explanation to reality?
By contrastive, I mean, why is reality this way rather than another way?
No matter what sort of “fundamental” explanation grounds all of reality, or is the ultimate cause of all reality, can one not ...
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How does the Humean view of the laws of nature explain why objects behave according to laws?
The Humean view regarding the laws of nature is that laws are merely descriptions of the world. They merely describe, rather than prescribe, the behavior of objects that follow certain patterns.
But ...
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When talking about explanation / explainability in "AI", the what is the explanandum?
When talking about explainability in AI, using the Deductive-Nomological (DN) framework, the explanandum could be the (opaque) algorithm itself or the performance of the algoritm. DN, states that an ...
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Does the fact that electrons share the same property need an explanation? [closed]
Richard Swinburne in his book Is There A God? argues that this does, and further argues that the fact that there are trillions of particles sharing the same property is the height of unexplained ...
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Do hypotheses need a “how” explanation or are predictions enough to validate them?
I will try to illustrate this question with an example.
Suppose there is a person who claims to bend a spoon with his mind, and crucially, claims that somehow, someway, purely his immaterial thoughts ...
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Which conditions identify whether belief centralization should be viewed in light of its contribution to explanatory scope or hedgehogishness?
Building on Isaah Berlin's The Hedgehog and the Fox, "Superforeaster" research suggests that one of the factors most strongly correlated to an individual's ability to make correct ...
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Is the goal of science explanatory power rather than increasing our belief for true theories?
In the article here, David Deutsch argues:
By ‘Bayesian’ philosophy of science I mean the position that (1) the objective of science is, or should be, to increase our ‘credence’ for true theories, ...
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Is the persistence of unseen objects evidence of an external world? [closed]
Recently, I was playing around with the idea of using Solomonoff induction and minimum description length to try to see if I have good reason to believe in my theories.
Of course, there are no hard ...
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Do solipsism and the theory that the external world is real have equal explanatory value?
Given a recent question just asked in regards to whether or not Occam's razor supports solipsism, I thought it would be prudent to ask whether the explanatory value of both theories (solipsism vs. the ...
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Do we ever truly explain anything? [closed]
Every time we have come up with an explanation for anything, we have asked the further question of what explains that. Sure, by doing this, we make an advance in knowledge, but how does this make an ...
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What’s the term for being asked to provide a specific example of a general claim?
Whenever I make a generic observation about something, a specific person always asks me to provide an example.
Ex. He makes the claim that no one has ever gotten sick from a meal [insert place here]. ...
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Is the anthropic principle a "cop-out"?
Forgive me in advance for the provocative title. It's likely I only have a pop-science understanding of the AP and there is something important I'm missing. That's why I'm asking the question!
My ...
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Grounding vs. metaphysical explanation vs. ontological dependence vs. supervenience
Here are links to the four dedicated SEP entries regarding each topic:
Grounding
Metaphysical Explanation
Ontological Dependence
Supervenience
Determinables and Determnates
These are notoriously ...
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In what way is life special and its existence in need of explanation?
This is my last attempt at understanding fine tuning arguments. I think I know that evolution is not meant to have "explained away" a designer, but undermined some arguments for them, ...
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How do we justify that simplicity and the number of entities are not the main criteria for choosing an explanation?
How do we justify that simplicity or Occam's razor can only be applied when the explanations are equal?
How do we justify that the small number of entities an explanation has does not make the ...
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Are explanations entailments?
Some philosophers say that explanations involve an entailment relation, that is if X explains Y then that means that X entails Y. Is this a valid way of understanding explanations? If not, what does ...
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Give advice on justifying belief in the existence of other minds [duplicate]
Solipsism has the fewest entities (only my mind) and therefore it is the most minimal explanation.
Does that make it more likely than the existence of other minds? Because other minds offer billions ...
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Do we have evidence that explanations that contain a minimal number of entities are true? [closed]
Does our universe require all our explanations to be the most minimal?
For example, entropy indicates that everything in our universe tends to a minimum.
So all explanations should be as minimal as ...
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What type of reasoning is this? Abduction, inference to the best explanation, induction?
My mind is responsible for my behavior.
Other people are very similar to me biologically.
Other people have behaviors similar to mine.
Possible explanations:
Solipsism says that my mind created other ...
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Does the argument by analogy in favor of the existence of other minds lead to solipsism?
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/other-minds/#ArguAnal
I can't understand the article. Here it is said that the argument by analogy inevitably leads to solipsism. Then it is said that the argument ...
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Are there circular reasoning in these explanations? [duplicate]
Other people have minds like mine because:
1.
Other people have minds like mine:
other people are biologically very similar to me
the behavior of other people is very similar to my behavior.
my ...
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Are all arguments for the existence of other minds circular?
The argument from analogy and the best explanation argument (IBE) rely on the claim that my mental states are responsible for my behavior and then conclude that the behavior of other people is caused ...
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What does it mean for something to be "explained"?
Suppose I claim that things fall to the ground due to a force known as gravity. Is that explanation satisfactory?
Or if I propose that molecules collided randomly, leading to the formation of the ...
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Are there cases where psychology has offered successful scientific explanations for phenomena that neuroscience hasn't?
Firstly, is there a distinction between a psychological explanation and a neuroscientific one for the same phenomenon?
Imagine if I posed a question to the entire field of psychology, seeking the best ...
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What exactly is the implausibility and unconvincingness of solipsism? [closed]
Solipsism is unconvincing and implausible because it is a complex and confusing explanation.
Solipsism offers two different explanations for no reason at all: one for my behavior and one for other ...
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Do things that always existed require less explanation than things that begin to exist?
This came up from a recent discussion I was having with Conifold where I started wondering: do facts about reality that don’t seem to “start” and just potentially always existed (such as the “...
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Are deterministic theories in quantum mechanics superfluous?
There are theories in quantum mechanics that postulate deterministic ways of solving the mysteries of quantum mechanics. One of them is the many worlds interpretation, another Bohmian mechanics, and ...
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Do brute facts exist, and if so, how can we tell if a given fact is brute or requires further explanation?
In contemporary philosophy, a brute fact is a fact that cannot be explained in terms of a deeper, more "fundamental" fact. There are two main ways to explain something: say what "...
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Can we know that something exists even if we can't explain or define it?
Can a person know that something like "free will" must exist even though an exact definition in words, using language, cannot be provided, and in the absence of a complete theory that ...
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How should the footnote to BXVIII & BXIX in Kant's first Critique be understood? Does it even make sense?
Note: I am avoiding the typical use of object and subject as observed and observer since it can become exceedingly confusing in this context. I use topic in place of object.
The footnote to BXVIII &...
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Does the want to seek determinism in physics come from a fallacy that it explains more?
Many physicists even in the modern day tend to be bothered by the indeterminism within quantum mechanics. When they see the probabilistic patterns that lie at the heart of the world, they seek a ...
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Should reducing and simplifying explanations be a core aspect of Philosophical practice?
I'm an Engineer, and a Computer Programmer. But I repeat myself... For me, my life and breath is getting to the bottom of complex things and rendering an explanation or instantiation (for programs) ...
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Is "explaining away" something without offering details ever justified? How detailed should an explanation be to be considered valid?
In a recent question I asked if it was epistemologically sound to consider alternative theories of consciousness to explain the visual phenomena that people blind from birth experience during a near-...
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Understanding the difference between subject and object [closed]
Sometimes, the subject is an active thing. In the sentence, "He loves her," the subject of the sentence is active.
Other times, the subject is a passive thing. In the sentence "He is ...
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Does the possibility of incommensurable degrees of explanatory complexity hypothetically undermine appeals to Occam's razor?
There is an SEP article on the proposed incommensurability of at least some conflicting pairs of scientific theories, which goes over Kuhnian and Feyerabendian proposals regarding this ...
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Can an extraordinary hypothesis ever be the best explanation for a set of historical facts?
As a motivating example, I have in mind the minimal facts argument for the resurrection of Jesus, espoused by Christian apologists such as Gary Habermas, Michael Licona, and William Lane Craig. The ...
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Can Free Will be Explained?
Explanations are causal, at least to the extent that I'm aware. If I explain X then I basically identify and expand on the cause of X (if X involves an ontological claim the explanans is all about ...
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What determines a need for explanation?
This is a question that has been bugging me that came up on a debate about the Kalam cosmological argument between Graham Oppy and Andrew Loke, both philosophers as far as I am aware: https://www....
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Would "to avoid the class/set distinction" be, or not be, an ad hoc reason to propose a couniversal set?
Once upon a time, von Neumann proposed the axiom of limitation-of-size, which says that any class "too large to be a set" is then a "proper class," meaning that there is a ...
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Hypothesis generation & the structure of scientific theories: how (exactly) do theories constrain hypothesis generation?
How (exactly) do theories constrain the generation of various, potential hypotheses to explain something? In particular, what are the different implications of different accounts of the structure of ...
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How to explain the cosmic expansion? [closed]
We know from astrophysics that the cosmos expands, i.e. that all galaxies recede from each other. This fact is confirmed by observation. It can also be obtained as a solution of the Einstein equations....
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Books and articles on explanation
What are some resources (books, articles) discussing the topic of "explanation"? (What do we mean when we say "something is explained" or vice versa, and related topics.)
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Is predictive power a criterion for pragmatism?
Is predictive power a criterion for pragmatism?
In inference to the best explanation, one of the criteria is prognostic power.
Does this criterion refer to pragmatism?
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Explaining the existence vs. explaining the nonexistence of necessary beings
I understand that I am waiving issues like the absolute/relative simplicity/complexity distinction, the difference between the logic of existence and the logic of nonexistence per se, etc., so I ...
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What is an explanation really?
Let's consider a hypothetical 'Church of the Moon' on a distant planet with a huge moon. The members of this church base all their beliefs about the moon and their religious practices on their holy ...
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What does the IBE argument (the best explanation argument) look like in favor of the existence of other minds?
I have read several versions of the IBE argument for the existence of other minds.
But I got a little confused.
Now I'm not sure I know what it should sound like.
How should the IBE argument (argument ...
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How does the IBE arrive at the best explanation?
What is meant by the behavior of other people in argument?
Here it is said that the simplicity of the explanation is decisive in choosing the best explanation.
Solipsism has fewer entities(only my ...
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