Scientific Explanation and Theories of Discovery

Gaviour教授正在研究科学问题 解释 在他的方法中，解释的概念 结构属性在上下文中是不变的。 他 他认为，这种方法是可取的，因为首先， 解释的传统目的是提供一个 发现的策略;也就是说，我们应该推测那些 提供最佳解释的假设或理论 无论相关的现象是什么。 特征， 提供结构标准，用于比较 解释提供了一个经典的前景，可以应用于 帮助发现（或为发现提供理由 在不同的调查领域， 实质内容。 如果能有这样的程序， 需要的话 其次，他认为哲学的进步是 通过推进结构哲学理论， 调查他们的局限性，而不是把他们排除在 考虑.第三，他在以前的NSF资助下， 实施的结构性标准， 帮助寻找因果解释的计算机程序 在各种不同的实质性领域。 会若 可以测试这些程序， 非常可靠。 因此，他认为这是一个合理的 推测某些结构标准， 使用的，是发现的可靠指南，但并非在所有情况下都是如此 当然，但在某些共同的背景下， 特性. 不知道的是为什么会这样。 为什么 最好的解释，或者至少是某些解释。 它在某些地方使用的形式，是一个可靠的真理指南？ 在这项资助中，Gandyour教授将试图更明确地 科学解释的特殊解释 调查为什么，如果有的话，它应该成为一个可靠的 科学调查的程序。 企业是一个 试图精确地表达那些似乎被揭示的直觉 通过一些例子，企业在一定程度上是规范的， 关注为什么偏好更好的解释是一个 理性的政策，如果一个人寻求真理。 一个完全清晰， 对解释概念的一般说明还有待于 方法学文献很少或没有 讨论为什么用它做出的推论应该是可靠的。 它 这是“明确的，一般的帐户”，这是目的， 项目

Professor Glymour is examining the issue of scientific explanation. In his approach, the notion of explanation has structural properties that are invariant across contexts. He argues that this approach is preferable first because one of the traditional aims of explanation has been to provide part of a strategy of discovery; that is, we should conjecture those hypotheses or theories that provide the best explanation of whatever the relevant phenomena may be. Characterizations that provide structural criteria for comparing the goodness of explanations offer the prospect of a canon that can be applied to aid in discovery (or to afford justification for discoveries already claimed) in areas of inquiry that differ in their substance. If such procedures can be had they are much to be desired. Second, he argues that philosophical progress is better made by advancing structural philosophical theories and investigating their limitations than by excluding them from consideration. Third, he has under previous NSF grants implemented structural criteria for goodness of explanation in computer programs that aid in the search for causal explanations in a variety of different substantive domains. Where it has been possible to test these programs they have turned out to be astonishingly reliable. He thus assumes that it is a reasonable conjecture that certain sorts of structural criteria, properly employed, are reliable guides to discovery, not in every context certainly, but in contexts that share certain general properties. What is not known is why that should be. Why should inference to the best explanation, or at least certain forms of it used in certain places, be a reliable guide to truth? In this grant, Professor Glymour will try to make more explicit a particular explanation of scientific explanation and to investigate why, if at all, it should form part of a reliable procedure for scientific inquiry. The enterprise is partly one of trying to make precise the intuitions that seem to be revealed by a number of examples, in part the enterprise is normative, and concerned with why preference for better explanations is a rational policy if one seeks the truth. An entirely clear, general account of the conception of explanation has yet to be given and the methodological literature contains little or no discussion of why inferences made with it should be reliable. It is this "clear, general account" which is the aim of this project.