Hostname: page-component-669899f699-rg895 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-04-27T06:00:06.614Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Contrastive, Non-Probabilistic Statistical Explanations

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 April 2022

Bruce Glymour
Bruce Glymour*
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy, Kansas State University
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Standard models of statistical explanation face two intractable difficulties. In his 1984 Salmon argues that because statistical explanations are essentially probabilistic we can make sense of statistical explanation only by rejecting the intuition that scientific explanations are contrastive. Further, frequently the point of a statistical explanation is to identify the etiology of its explanandum, but on standard models probabilistic explanations often fail to do so. This paper offers an alternative conception of statistical explanations on which explanations of the frequency of a property consist in the derivation of that frequency from a statistical specification of the mechanism by which instances of the relevant property are produced. Such explanations are contrastive precisely because they identify the determinate causal etiologies of their explananda.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 65 , Issue 3 , September 1998 , pp. 448 - 471
Copyright
Copyright © Philosophy of Science Association 1998

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

Footnotes

†

Send reprint requests to the author, Department of Philosophy, 204 Kedzie Hall, Kansas State University, Manhattan Kansas, 66506.

‡

Thanks are due to the members of the University of Kansas Philosophy Department, to whom a version of this paper was delivered, to Brian Elliott, Clark Glymour, Philip Kitcher, Jim Lennox, Michael O'Rourke, and three referees, who all made many helpful suggestions, and to Lynn Trifanoff for help with the illustrations.

References

Barrett, Christopher (1996), “On Price Risk and the Inverse Farm Size-Productivity Relationship”, Journal of Development Economics 51: 193–215.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cheng, Patricia (1997), “From Covariation to Causation: A Causal Power Theory”, Psychological Review 104: 367–405.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chesnais, Jean-Claude (1996), “Fertility, Family and Social Policy in Contemporary Western Europe”, Population and Development Review 22: 729–739.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dowe, Phil (1995), “Causation and Conserved Quantities: A Reply to Salmon”, Philosophy of Science 62: 321–333.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hitchcock, Christopher (1996), “The Role of Contrasts in Causal and Explanatory Claims”, Synthese 107: 395–419.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Humphreys, Paul (1989), The Chances of Explanation. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Kelly, Kevin (1996), The Logic of Reliable Inquiry. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Kettlewell, Bernard (1973), The Evolution of Melanism. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Lewis, David (1986), Philosophical Papers, vol. 2. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Lipton, Peter (1990), “Contrastive Explanations”, in Knowles, Dudley (ed.), Explanation and Its Limits. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 247–266.Google Scholar
Mulvey, Gail (1997), “Can Insider-Outsider Theories Explain the Persistence of Unemployment? An Econometric Study of Two British Industries”, Manchester School of Economic and Social Studies 65: 170–191.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Railton, Peter (1978), “A Deductive-Nomological Model of Probabilistic Explanation”, Philosophy of Science 45: 206–226.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Salmon, Wesley (1970), “Statistical Explanation”, in Colodny, Robert (ed.), The Nature and Function of Scientific Theories. Pittsburgh: Pittsburgh University Press, 173–231.Google Scholar
Salmon, Wesley (1984), Scientific Explanation and the Causal Structure of the World. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Salmon, Wesley (1994), “Causality Without Conterfactuals”, Philosophy of Science 61: 297–312.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Siegenthaler, Jurg (1996), “Poverty among Single Elderly Women under Different Systems of Old-Age Security: A Comparative Review”, Social Security Bulletin 59: 31–44.Google ScholarPubMed
Tan, Hong and Batra, Geeta (1997), “Technology and Firm Size-Wage Differentials in Colombia, Mexico and Taiwan (China)”, World Bank Economic Review 11: 59–83.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
van Fraassen, Bas (1980), The Scientific Image. Oxford: Clarendon Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
van Fraassen, Bas (1989), Laws and Symmetry. Oxford: Clarendon Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Woodward, James (1990), “Supervenience and Singular Causal Claims”, in Knowles, Dudley (ed.), Explanation and Its Limits. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 211–246.Google Scholar