Explanations in Software Engineering: The Pragmatic Point of View [Book Review]
Minds and Machines 20 (2):277-289 (2010)
Abstract
This article reveals that explanatory practice in software engineering is in accordance with pragmatic explanatory pluralism, which states that explanations should at least partially be evaluated by their practical use. More specifically, I offer a defense of the idea that several explanation-types are legitimate in software engineering, and that the appropriateness of an explanation-type depends on (a) the engineer’s interests, and (b) the format of the explanation-seeking question he asks, with this format depending on his interests. This idea is defended by considering examples that are representative for explanatory practice in software engineering. Different kinds of technological explanation are spelled out, and the dependence of their appropriateness on interests and question-formats is extensively illustratedDOI
10.1007/s11023-010-9190-2
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Citations of this work
What do we want from Explainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI)? – A stakeholder perspective on XAI and a conceptual model guiding interdisciplinary XAI research.Markus Langer, Daniel Oster, Timo Speith, Lena Kästner, Kevin Baum, Holger Hermanns, Eva Schmidt & Andreas Sesing - 2021 - Artificial Intelligence 296 (C):103473.
A pragmatic account of mechanistic artifact explanation.Jan De Winter - 2011 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 42 (4):602-609.
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