III.—On Causal Explanation

Factors in Causal Explanation

The construction of explanations is a key process in human understanding, having many applications for internal tasks such as learning through to external tasks such as diagnosis and image interpretation. In this paper we introduce ve orthogonal dimensions along which any explanation task can be characterised and show how their identiication gives rise to a new model of explanation construction...

Causal Explanation and Manipulation

Causal explanation proceeds by citing the causes of the explanandum. Any model of causal explanation requires a specification of the relation between cause and effect in virtue of which citing the cause explains the effect. In particular, it requires a specification of what it is for the explanandum to be causally dependent on the explanans and what types of things (broadly understood) the expl...

Naturalism and Causal Explanation

Causal Explanation from Mathematical Models

Decision support systems may require the use of existing complex mathematical models. It is desirable to reduce the equations of such a model to an explanatory causal form to support decision making, for example in making decisions about the greenhouse effect. This paper presents an approach to constructing causal explanation from existing complex mathematical models. The method combines inform...

Causal and constitutive explanation compared

This article compares causal and constitutive explanation. While scientific inquiry usually addresses both causal and constitutive questions, making the distinction is crucial for a detailed understanding of scientific questions and their interrelations. These explanations have different kinds of explananda and they track different sorts of dependencies. Constitutive explanations do not address...