Relevance, Not Invariance, Explanatoriness, Not Manipulability
Discussion of Woodward’s Views on Explanatory Relevance
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 10705118 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Christophe Imbert (0000-0003-2313-3458), Cyrille Imbert (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2013 |
| Volume | 80 |
| Issue | 5 |
| Pages | 625-636 |
| Publication date | 2013-12-01 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Philosophy of Science (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0031-8248 • E-ISSN: 1539-767X |
| Publisher | Cambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1086/674002 |
| OpenAlex | W2177673825 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 2 |
According to Woodward’s causal model of explanation, explanatory information is relevant for manipulation purposes and indicates by means of invariant causal relations how to change the value of certain target explanandum variables by intervening on others. Therefore, the depth of an explanation is evaluated through the size of the domain of invariance of the generalization involved. In this article, I argue that Woodward’s account of explanatory relevance is still unsatisfactory and claim that the depth of an explanation should be explicated in terms of the size of the domain of circumstances which it designates as leaving the explanandum unchanged
Causal model · Domain (mathematical analysis) · Epistemology · Generalization · Invariant (physics) · Political science · Relevance (law) · Statistics · Biomedical Text Mining and Ontologies · Law · Mathematics · Philosophy · Philosophy and History of Science
| Highly cited | No |
|---|