Scientific Explanation
Much of my work on scientific explanation describes a new causal account of explanation called the kairetic account, presented in Depth, to be published by Harvard University Press in 2008. The account is used to answer questions concerning, among other things, the role of idealization in explanation, the nature of causal claims (claims of the form "A was a cause of B"), and probabilistic explanation. See also causation.
My work also includes pieces on explanation that are independent of the kairetic account, concerning the explanatory significance of a probability's size, the unification account of explanation, and the explanatory role of representation and similar notions.
Published Work
- Why High-Level Explanations Exist
- The Structure of Asymptotic Idealization
- The Whole Story: Explanatory Autonomy and Convergent Evolution
- The Explanatory Role of Aggregate Properties
- The Mathematical Route to Causal Understanding
- Special-Science Autonomy and the Division of Labor
- The Reference Class Problem in Evolutionary Biology: Distinguishing Selection from Drift (an explanation-based solution to the reference class problem)
- How Idealizations Provide Understanding
- No Understanding without Explanation
- The Explanatory Role of Irreducible Properties
- A symposium on Depth in Philosophy and Phenomenological Research
- Depth: An Account of Scientific Explanation
- The Causal and Unification Accounts of Explanation Unified – Causally. Noûs 38, 154–179, 2004.
- Do Large Probabilities Explain Better? Philosophy of Science, 67, 366–90, 2000.