Probability and the Explanatory Virtues
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 8396104 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Clark Glymour (Carnegie Mellon University, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2015 |
| Volume | 66 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 591-604 |
| Publication date | 2015-09-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0007-0882 • E-ISSN: 1464-3537 |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1093/bjps/axt051 |
| OpenAlex | W2101508728 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 8 |
| References cited | 9 |
Recent literature in philosophy of science has addressed purported notions of explanatory virtues—‘explanatory power’, ‘unification’, and ‘coherence’. In each case, a probabilistic relation between a theory and data is said to measure the power of an explanation, or degree of unification, or degree of coherence. This essay argues that the measures do not capture cases that are paradigms of scientific explanation, that the available psychological evidence indicates that the measures do not capture judgements of explanatory power, and, finally, that the measures do not provide useful methods for selecting hypotheses. 1. Introduction 2. Some Proposed Measures of Explanatory Virtues 3. Descriptive Inadequacy 3.1 Excellent but false explanations 3.2 Causal explanation 4. Psychological Inadequacy 5. Finding the Truth 6. Conclusion
Causality (physics) · Coherence (philosophical gambling strategy) · Epistemology · Explanatory model · Explanatory power · Measure (data warehouse) · Philosophy of science · Probabilistic logic · Relation (database) · Statistics · Unification · Computer Science · Epistemology, Ethics, and Metaphysics · Mathematics · Philosophy · Philosophy and History of Science · Psychology · Science and Climate Studies
Coherence-based measures of explanatory power
The bayesian and the abductivist
Can there be a Bayesian explanationism? On the prospects of a productive partnership
The ecological rationality of explanatory reasoning
Explanatory Stabilization in Situations of Evidential Uncertainty
On the Evidential Import of Unification
Against Probabilistic Measures of Explanatory Quality
Coherence, Explanation, and Hypothesis Selection
Coherence measures and inference to the best explanation
Inference to the best explanation
Comparing Probabilistic Measures of Explanatory Power
A Second Look at the Logic of Explanatory Power (with Two Novel Representation Theorems)
The Logic of Explanatory Power
A Bayesian Account of the Virtue of Unification
Focused Correlation and Confirmation
| Unique citing works | 8 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,89 |
| Citation span | 2017 - 2026 (10) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 8 |