Philosophy Dictionary of ArgumentsHome | |||
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Explanation: making a statement in relation to an event, a state, a change or an action that was described before by a deviating statement. The statement will often try to involve circumstances, history, logical premises, causes and causality. See also description, statements, theories, understanding, literal truth, best explanation, causality, cause, completeness._____________Annotation: The above characterizations of concepts are neither definitions nor exhausting presentations of problems related to them. Instead, they are intended to give a short introduction to the contributions below. – Lexicon of Arguments. | |||
Author | Concept | Summary/Quotes | Sources |
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Steven Pinker on Explanation - Dictionary of Arguments
I 54 Explanation/Pinker: bad evolutionary explanation: E.g. Humor weakens tension; - happy people find more allies. Good explanation: brings technical analysis that is independent of the explanatory part. - Begins with objectives in a world with causes and effects. To understand seeing of humans and animals, we need to look at machines. E.g. nausea in pregnancy: defense against toxins. Bad explanation: Freud: desire for oral abortion. I 124 Explanation/Pinker: here it is about according to which principles things function - not about what things are "good examples" for a well-known term. >Principles, >Laws of nature, >Causal explanation, >Understanding, >Evidence, >Observation, >Functional explanation._____________Explanation of symbols: Roman numerals indicate the source, arabic numerals indicate the page number. The corresponding books are indicated on the right hand side. ((s)…): Comment by the sender of the contribution. Translations: Dictionary of Arguments The note [Concept/Author], [Author1]Vs[Author2] or [Author]Vs[term] resp. "problem:"/"solution:", "old:"/"new:" and "thesis:" is an addition from the Dictionary of Arguments. If a German edition is specified, the page numbers refer to this edition. |
Pi I St. Pinker How the Mind Works, New York 1997 German Edition: Wie das Denken im Kopf entsteht München 1998 |