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15.2.3: Causal Explanations vs. Causal Arguments

  • Page ID
    22052
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    Scientists and reporters of science present us with descriptions, explanations, and arguments. Scientists describe, for example, how ballistic missiles fall through the sky. In addition to description, scientists might also explain the phenomenon, saying why it occurs the way it does. The explanation will give the causes, and in doing so it will satisfy the following principle: Explanations should be consistent with well-established results (except in extraordinary cases when the well-established results are being overthrown with extraordinarily good evidence).

    Scientists who publicly claim to have the correct explanation for some phenomenon have accepted a certain burden of proof. It is their obligation to back up their explanation with an argument that shows why their explanation is correct. We readers of scientific news usually are more interested in the description and the explanation than in the argument behind it, and we often assume that other scientists have adequately investigated the first scientist's claim. This is usually a good assumption. Thus, reporters rarely include the scientific proof in their report, instead sticking to describing the phenomenon, explaining it, and saying that a certain scientist has proved that the phenomenon should be explained that way.

    Scientific proofs normally do not establish their conclusions as firmly as mathematical proofs do. Scientific proofs usually are inductive; mathematical proofs are deductive. So, one scientific proof can be stronger than another scientific proof even though both are proofs. In any inductive scientific proof, there is never a point at which the conclusion has been proved beyond a shadow of all possible doubt. Nevertheless, things do get settled in science. Scientists proved that the Earth is round, not flat; and even though this result is not established beyond all possible doubt, it is established well enough that the scientific community can move on to examine other issues confident that new data will not require any future revision. In fact, you haven't a prayer of getting a research grant to double-check whether the Earth is flat.


    This page titled 15.2.3: Causal Explanations vs. Causal Arguments is shared under a CC BY-NC-SA license and was authored, remixed, and/or curated by Bradley H. Dowden.

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