Capacities, explanation and the possibility of disunity
Abstract
Nancy Cartwright argues that so-called capacities, not universal laws of nature, best explain the often complex way events actually unfold. On this view, science would represent a world that is fundamentally "dappled", or disunified, and not, as orthodoxy would perhaps have it, a world unified by universal laws of nature. I argue, first, that the problem Cartwright raises for laws of nature seems to arise for capacities too, so why reject laws of nature? Second, that in so far as there is a problem, it concerns the role of counterfactuals in explanation; I then briefly propose a simple model of counterfactual explanation. Finally, I investigate how a sophisticated version of the regularity theory of laws of nature (that of Ramsey-Lewis) can be neutral between the empirical hypotheses that the world is unified, and that the world is disunified.
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van der Waa et al. randomly sample or generate a data set in the neighbourhood local to the data point in question.
“Similarly, van der Waa et al. randomly sample or generate a data set in the neighbourhood local to the data point in question [159].”
From A Survey of Contrastive and Counterfactual Explanation Generation Methods for Explainable Artificial Intelligence (2021) · cites this paper as [159]
A decision tree is then trained to select the foil based on the minimum number of nodes between the original data point and the candidate foils.
“A decision tree is then trained to select the foil based on the minimum number of nodes between the original data point and the candidate foils.”
From A Survey of Contrastive and Counterfactual Explanation Generation Methods for Explainable Artificial Intelligence (2021) · cites this paper as [159]
Single-sentence textual counterfactual explanations answer end-user's inquiries with respect to the automatic decision in question.
“They also answer end-user's inquiries with respect to the automatic decision in question [128], [159].”
From A Survey of Contrastive and Counterfactual Explanation Generation Methods for Explainable Artificial Intelligence (2021) · cites this paper as [159]
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Stepin, I., Alonso, J. M., Catala, A., & Pereira-Farina, M. (2021) · IEEE Access · doi:10.1109/access.2021.3051315 · Cited by 376 · see citing works
“Thus, he claims counterfactuals supported by laws are able to ‘‘go into contrastive explanations even though unfavourable conditions ensure that the forces they describe are not actually occurring in the way described by any law taken alone’’ [89].”
Background
- Authors
- Hohwy, J.
- Affiliations
- Aarhus University (DK)
- Corresponding author
- Hohwy, Jakob
- ORCID
- Hohwy, Jakob
- Venue
- International Studies in the Philosophy of Science
- Publisher
- Informa UK Limited
- Published
- 2003-07
- Volume
- 17
- Issue
- 2
- Pages
- 179-190
- ISSN
- 0269-8595 (ISSN-L)
- 1469-9281
- OpenAlex
- W2076075557
- Cited by
- 1
- References
- 22
- Citations by year
- 2021: 1
- FWCI
- 0.00
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- International Studies in the Philosophy of Science (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › History and Philosophy of Science › Philosophy and History of Science
- Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › History and Philosophy of Science › Philosophy, Science, and History
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Experimental and Cognitive Psychology › Philosophy and Theoretical Science
- Keywords
- capacity, laws of nature, disunity, Nancy Cartwright, counterfactual explanations, explanation
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