Explaining explanations

Explaining Preferences, Preferring Explanations?

In this paper we study the possibility of providing causal explanations for preferred answer sets, as those obtained from logic programs with ordered disjunction (LPODs). We use a recently defined multi-valued semantics for answer sets based on a causal algebra and consider its direct application to LOPDs by several illustrating examples. We also explain the limitations of this simple approach ...

Explaining Legislative Leadership Delegation : Simple Collective Action or Conditional Explanations ?

Different alternative explanations can render different information relevant to explaining an event

Scientific reasoning includes deciding whether information is relevant to explaining an event. In some cases, seeing information as relevant requires having a background theory or explanation that can make sense of the information. College students were shown a possible explanation for an event, along with two pieces of possibly relevant information (Info1 and Info2), and one of two possible al...

Explaining Midterm Election Outcomes: A New Theory and an Overview of Existing Explanations

This paper describes a theory of political participation based on loss aversion and derives its predictions for midterm Congressional elections. In addition, the paper discusses the five most prominent explanations for the midterm effect, an empirical regularity of US Congressional elections in which the president’s party tends to perform poorly. Note: Incomplete Version. 1 The Loss Aversion Th...

Explanations Count Explanations Count

In research areas such as decision support systems, one of the crucial features is the ability to automatically explain decisions. However, this ability does not typically play a large role in computer games. Here, I suggest that this situation will change: research on the automatic generation of explanations will have real import for many types of computer games. I discuss four possible ways t...