Two key ideas of scientific explanation−explanation as causal information and explanation as unification-have frequently been set into mutual opposition. This paper proposes a “dialectical solution” to this conflict, by arguing that causal explanations are preferable to non-causal ones, because they lead to a higherdegree of unification at the level of explaining statistical regularities. The core axioms of the theory of causal nets (TC) are justified because they offer the best if not the only unifying explanation of two statistical phenomena: screening (...) off and linking up. Alternative explanations of the two phenomena are discussed and it isshown why they don’t work. It is demonstrated that although the core axioms of TC are empirically vacuous, extended versions of TC have empirical content by means of which they can generate independently testable predictions.Con frecuencia se han planteado como contrapuestas dos ideas clave en la explicacion cientifica (explicacion como informacion causal y explicacion como unificacion). El presente articulo propone una “solucion dialectica” argumentando que las explicaciones causales son preferibles a las no-causales porque aquellas comportan un mayor grado de unificacion en la explicacion de regularidades estadisticas. Los axiomas centrales de la teoria de redes causales (TC) estan justificados porque ofrecen la mejor, si no la unica, explicacion unificada de dos fenomenos estadisticos: neutralizacion (screening off) y vinculacion (linking up). Se discuten las explicaciones alternativas de estos dos fenomenos y se razona por que no funcionan. Se demuestra ademas que aunque los axiomas centrales de TC son empiricamente vacuos, las versiones extendidas de TC tienen un contenido empirico gracias al cual pueden generar predicciones independientemente contrastables. (shrink)

Karl Popper is famous for having proposed that science advances by a process of conjecture and refutation. He is also famous for defending the open society against what he saw as its arch enemies – Plato and Marx. Popper’s contributions to thought are of profound importance, but they are not the last word on the subject. They need to be improved. My concern in this book is to spell out what is of greatest importance in Popper’s work, what its failings (...) are, how it needs to be improved to overcome these failings, and what implications emerge as a result. The book consists of a collection of essays which dramatically develop Karl Popper’s views about natural and social science, and how we should go about trying to solve social problems. Criticism of Popper’s falsificationist philosophy of natural science leads to a conception of science that I call aim-oriented empiricism. This makes explicit metaphysical theses concerning the comprehensibility and knowability of the universe that are an implicit part of scientific knowledge – implicit in the way science excludes all theories that are not explanatory, even those that are more successful empirically than accepted theories. Aim-oriented empiricism has major implications, not just for the academic discipline of philosophy of science, but for science itself. Popper generalized his philosophy of science of falsificationism to arrive at a new conception of rationality – critical rationalism – the key methodological idea of Popper’s profound critical exploration of political and social issues in his The Open Society and Its Enemies, and The Poverty of Historicism. This path of Popper, from scientific method to rationality and social and political issues is followed here, but the starting point is aim-oriented empiricism rather than falsificationism. Aim-oriented empiricism is generalized to form a conception of rationality I call aim-oriented rationalism. This has far-reaching implications for political and social issues, for the nature of social inquiry and the humanities, and indeed for academic inquiry as a whole. The strategies for tackling social problems that arise from aim-oriented rationalism improve on Popper’s recommended strategies of piecemeal social engineering and critical rationalism, associated with Popper’s conception of the open society. This book thus sets out to develop Popper’s philosophy in new and fruitful directions. The theme of the book, in short, is to discover what can be learned from scientific progress about how to achieve social progress towards a better world. (shrink)

Coherence is a measure of how much our beliefs hang together. Understanding is achieved when we see that something is not just a brute, isolated fact. This suggests that it might be possible to use the extant probabilistic measures of coherence to formulate a measure of understanding. We attempt to do so, but it turns out that a coherence theory runs into trouble with the asymmetry of understanding. We identify four difficulties and show how they have been solved by a (...) unification approach to explanation. We also identify four advantages of the coherence approach, and assess the possibilities of reconciling the strengths of the two approaches.La coherencia es una medida sobre cuanta interdependencia hay entre nuestras creencias. La comprension se obtiene cuando vemos que algo no es un hecho bruto, aislado. Esto sugiere la posibilidad de usar las medidas probabilisticas de coherencia al uso para elaborar una medida de la comprension. Explorare esta posibilidad, a pesar de que una teoria de la coherencia tropieza con problemas aqui dado el caracter asimetrico de la comprension. Identifico cuatro dificultades al respecto y muestro como han sido resueltas mediante un enfoque de la explicacion basado en la nocion de unificacion. Tambien identifico cuatro ventajas en la aproximacion desde la coherencia y examino que perspectivas hay de reconciliar los puntos fuertes de ambos planteamientos. (shrink)

This dissertation starts with a concise overview of what philosophers of science have written about unification and its role in scientific explanation during the last 50 years to provide the reader with some background knowledge. In order to bring unification back into the picture, I have followed two strategies, resulting respectively in Parts I and II of this dissertation. In Part I the idea of unification is used to refine and enrich the dominant causalmechanist and causal-interventionist accounts of scientific explanation. (...) In this part of the dissertation I bracket the classical ideas about unification: deduction and derivation. I do grant, for the sake of argument, that explanations are causal and argue that unification is important from within this causalist perspective. In Part II I continue my strategy of digging into scientific practice to find cases of ontological unification. But here I distance myself from the dominant literature that all explanations must be causal. I will investigate whether explanatory unification is possible in non-causal explanations. Part III contains some further reflections and conclusions. I will formulate my primary results, and I will elaborate on their implications for thinking about unification and explanation. The different forms of ontological unification were quite diverse. This relates to the method I have used. Throughout this dissertation the types of unification that were discussed emerged from digging into scientific practice. This philosophy-of-science-practice approach steered me towards a pluralistic view on unification and on explanation. In this dissertation I do not try to develop a new model of explanation and compare it to existing models. The aim is to show that there are important types of explanatory practice which cannot be properly analyzed if we neglect unification as a desideratum for explanations. (shrink)