The causal and unification approaches to explanation unified—causally
Noûs 38 (1):154–176 (2004)
| Abstract | The two major modern accounts of explanation are the causal and unification accounts. My aim in this paper is to provide a kind of unification of the causal and the unification accounts, by using the central technical apparatus of the unification account to solve a central problem faced by the causal account, namely, the problem of determining which parts of a causal network are explanatorily relevant to the occurrence of an explanandum. The end product of my investigation is a causal account of explanation that has many of the advantages of the unification account. | |||||||||
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Todd Jones (1995). Reductionism and the Unification Theory of Explanation. Philosophy of Science 62 (1):21-30.
Michael Strevens (2008). Depth: An Account of Scientific Explanation. Harvard University Press.
Victor Gijsbers (2007). Why Unification is Neither Necessary nor Sufficient for Explanation. Philosophy of Science 74 (4):481-500.
Daniel Steel (1998). Warfare and Western Manufactures: A Case Study of Explanation in Anthropology. Philosophy of Science 65 (4):649-671.
Jennifer Wilson Mulnix (forthcoming). Explanatory Unification and Scientific Understanding. Acta Philosophica.
Erik Weber & Jeroen Van Bouwel (2009). Causation, Unification, and the Adequacy of Explanations of Facts. THEORIA. An International Journal for Theory, History and Foundations of Science 24 (3):301-320.
Todd Jones (1998). Unification, Deduction, and History: A Reply to Steel. Philosophy of Science 65 (4):672-681.
Erik Weber & Maarten Van Dyck (2002). Unification and Explanation. Synthese 131 (1):145 - 154.
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