Philosophical Foundations of Explanation

University of Amsterdam, January 2024

All humans by nature desire to know why things happen. Children go through a why-phase (and some, it is said, never grow out of it). We seek to explain; to be reasonable, rational animals. What principles underlie our practice of giving and interpreting explanations? We will approach this question using tools from philosophy, logic, and linguistics. In particular, we will discuss what the words cause and because mean, and what information we take into account when we interpret them; that is, what information a causal model should contain.

This will require diving into the nature of hypothetical reasoning. For a common idea is that when we interpret an explanation, we imagine scenarios where the explanatory factor is present and scenarios where it is absent, and compare what happens in each. For example, when we interpret a sentence like “Sea levels are rising because we continue to burn fossil fuels” the thought is that we imagine scenarios where we continue to burn fossil fuels and scenarios where we do not, and compare them. In this course we will discuss the principles underlying which scenarios we choose to consider, and what exact kind of comparison we use.

Along the way we will discuss new developments in the semantics of conditionals, evaluating proposals based on similarity, premise semantics and truthmaker semantics. If time permits, we will discuss other areas where explanation plays an important role, such as the nature of moral responsibility and legal cases where there has been disagreement over how to interpret explanations. For more information, please see here.

Registration

The following students are currently registered for the project:  Louis Bunt, Flavia Caradonna, Simon Chiu, Sarah Ducik, Joris Galema, Arun Ganguly, Swapnil Ghosh, Frank Goossens, Laura Hernández Martín, Mayra Huespe, Ruiting Jiang, Flip Lijnzaad, Mees Lursen, Kirti Singh, Alex Stan, and Ștefan Zotescu. If your name is not on the list but you would like to follow the project, please send an email to d.m.mchugh@uva.nl.


Course Schedule

Plan

Week 1 Lectures, starting Monday 8 January 2024
Week 2 Lectures & collaboration sessions
Week 3 Collaboration sessions & student presentations on Wednesday 24 and Friday 26 January
Week 4 Collaboration sessions & writing final essay. The deadline is Friday 2 February at 18:00.
The collaboration sessions are designed to give you a space to discuss your ideas together and explore topics on which to collaborate. I encourage you to attend all of the collaboration sessions. I will be away January 17 and 18 to give a talk, though I nonetheless think it would be helpful for you to have a defined space where you can meet up to explore mutual areas of interest. I will be present at all of the collaboration sessions in week 3 to offer guidance in coming up with your own ideas.

Time and Space

Mon 8 Jan 15:00–18:00 SP107 F1.15 Lecture Slides: Introduction
Tue 9 Jan 16:00–18:00 SP107 F1.15 Lecture Slides: The conceptual core of causal claims
Wed 10 Jan 16:00–18:00 SP107 F1.15 Lecture Slides: Difference-making
Thur 11 Jan 16:00–18:00 SP107 F1.15 Lecture Slides: Responses to overdetermination
Fri 12 Jan 10:00–12:00 SP107 F2.01 Lecture Slides: The analysis of sufficiency

Mon 15 Jan 15:00–17:00 SP107 F1.15 Lecture Slides: Reasons & Causes / Causal selection
Tue 16 Jan 15:00–17:00 SP107 F.1.15 Lecture Slides: Decision theory
Wed 17 Jan 15:00–17:00 SP107 F1.15 Collaboration
Thur 18 Jan 15:00–17:00 SP107 F1.15 Collaboration
Fri 19 Jan 15:00–17:00 SP107 F3.20 Collaboration

Mon 22 Jan 16:00–18:00 SP107 F1.15 Collaboration
Tue 23 Jan 15:00–17:00 SP 107 F1.15 Collaboration
Wed 24 Jan 15:00–17:00 SP 107 F1.15 Collaboration
Thur 25 Jan 15:00–17:00 SP 107 F1.15 Collaboration
Fri 26 Jan 15:00–17:00 SP 107 F1.15 Student presentations

Mon 29 Jan 16:00–18:00 SP 107 F1.15 Student presentations
Fri 2 Feb 18:00 Final essay deadline

You may follow the project in person or online (free choice). Feel free to email me for the Zoom link.

Suggested Readings

For a first introduction to modality in formal semantics, I recommend Chapter 13 of Coppock & Champollion’s Invitation to Formal Semantics. The whole book is wonderfully clear, so if you would like to learn more about formal semantics in general, it is a great place to start. For a more detailed overview of modality in formal semantics, I recommend von Fintel and Heim’s Intensional Semantics.

For a fun introduction to causal modelling, have a look at Pearl & Mackenzie's The Book of Why. For a more detailed textbook overview, there is also Causal Inference in Statistics. An important development in the field came from the book Spirtes, Glymour & Scheines, Causation, Prediction, and Search. And there is also Pearl’s book Causality, which is by now a standard reference for causal modelling.

Some Themes

Contrast

Explanatory statements are contrastive, or, focus sensitive. To illustrate, match the following sentences with their continuations. 

(1) STEPHANIE took the train to Berlin ...
(2) Stephanie TOOK THE TRAIN to Berlin ...
(3) Stephanie took the train to BERLIN ...

(a) ... because air travel produces too much CO2.
(b) ... because the Munich office is currently closed.
(c) ... because her boss is sick and sent her instead.

We somehow manage to do this task successfully. What is the source of the focus sensitivity of explanations? Is it hard-wired into the meaning of words like because, or does it follow from more general principles of interpretation? Can focus sensitivity help account for the fact that (4a) sounds fine but (4b) and (4c) sound odd?

(4) a. Socrates died because he drank hemlock.
 b. Socrates died before the year 2000 because he drank hemlock.
 c. Socrates died on planet Earth because he drank hemlock.

Readings

Subjectivity and Objectivity in Modality

Reasons appear to be more subjective than causes. There may be something that is causing Robin to eat another crisp, without it being a reason for her to eat another crisp, or without her having a reason to eat another crisp. Or imagine that Samara enters a bakery looking for a croissant, but the baker is sick and couldn't make any today. Samara doesn't know this, but simply sees that there are no croissants. She orders a danish instead. Compare:

(5) a. The baker being sick caused Samara to order an danish.
 b. The reason Samara ordered a danish was that the baker was sick.
 c. Samara's reason for ordering a danish was that the baker was sick.

Reasons nonetheless have objective uses: in an uninhabited universe there may still be a reason why a leaf turned red, why a star imploded. What kinds of thing are causes and reasons? Are they parts of the world, propositions, mental states, attitudinal objects (in Friederike Moltmann's sense), or something else? How should we integrate subjectivity into theories of modality?

Readings

Reasons and Causes in the Philosophy of Action

Is a reason why someone acted also a cause of their action? Anscombe said No and Davidson said Yes. 

Readings