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Explanation as Condition Satisfaction

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Paul Humphreys
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Abstract

It is shown that three common conditions for scientific explanations are violated by a widely used class of domain-independent explanations. These explanations can accommodate both complex and noncomplex systems and do not require the use of detailed models of system-specific processes for their effectiveness, although they are compatible with such model-based explanations. The approach also shows how a clean separation can be maintained between mathematical representations and empirical content.

Type
Complex Systems
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 81 , Issue 5 , December 2014 , pp. 1103 - 1116
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association

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Footnotes

†

Helpful comments on earlier drafts of this article were provided by audiences at the PSA 2012 meeting and the University of Bielefeld. Conversations and correspondence with Mark Bedau, James Cargile, Meinard Kuhlmann, Margaret Morrison, Charles Rathkopf, and members of an informal University of Virginia seminar on mathematical models were also important.

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