Goal-Based Explanation Evaluation

Many theories of explanation evaluation are based on context-independent criteria. Such theories either restrict their consideration to explanation towards a fixed goal, or assume that all valid explanations are equivalent, so that evaluation criteria can be neutral to the goals underlying the attempt to explain. However, explanation can serve a range of purposes that place widely divergent requirements on the information an explanation must provide. We argue that understanding what determines explanations’ goodness requires a dynamic theory of evaluation, based on analysis of the information needed to satisfy the many goals that can prompt explanation; this view conforms to the common-sense idea that people accept and apply explanations precisely if those explanations give the information they need. We examine a range of goals that can underly explanation, and present a theory for evaluating whether an explanation provides the information an explainer needs for these goals. We illustrate our theory by sketching its implementation in the computer program ACCEPTER, which does goal-based evaluation of the goodness of explanations for surprising events in news stories.