Bibliographische Detailangaben
Beteiligte: Dedrick, Don
In: Cross-Cultural Research, 39, 2005, 2, S. 111-133
veröffentlicht:
SAGE Publications
Medientyp: Artikel, E-Artikel

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Umfang: 111-133
ISSN: 1069-3971
1552-3578
DOI: 10.1177/1069397104273627
veröffentlicht in: Cross-Cultural Research
Sprache: Englisch
Schlagwörter:
Kollektion: SAGE Publications (CrossRef)
Inhaltsangabe

<jats:p> Perhaps one of the central assumptions when one comes to think about scientific explanations—an assumption made by philosophers and scientists alike—is that a causal explanation is an optimal explanation. It seems, after all, that an explanation tells us why something happens and that to do so is to specify causes. Although there is nothing wrong with causal explanations per se, many good explanations in science are not in any important sense causal. What I mean by this is that many good explanations in science are compatible with a variety of causal mechanisms and, as such, ignore the details of such mechanisms. I develop this claim in the discussion of color-naming research that follows, where I distinguish between explanation types that are (more) close to causality (actual sequence explanations) and those that are (more) removed from causal details (robust process explanations). </jats:p>