Product Description: Philosophers have been greatly concerned with the nature of explanation, but no account has been fully satisfactory within science or plausible in the wider world. The author asserts that this is due to a misplaced focus and that instead of focusing on explanation, philosophers should consider understanding...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Product Description: Explanations seem to be a large and natural part of our cognitive lives. As Frank Keil and Robert Wilson write, "When a cognitive activity is so ubiquitous that it is expressed both in a preschooler's idle questions and in work that is the culmination of decades of scholarly effort, one has to ask whether we really have one and the same phenomenon or merely different cognitively based phenomena that are loosely, or even metaphorically, related...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Product Description: What is it that troubles and preoccupies us about the anxieties and anguishes of social and private life? Have advances in the disciplines of psychoanalysis, psychology or the social sciences in general ministered to our needs in these areas? Frank Cioffi's elegantly argued essays range over Wittgenstein's treatment of Frazer's anthropological accounts of human sacrifice and other ritual practices, and Freud's dealings with dreams, jokes and mental life in general...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Offering a new approach to scientific explanation, this book focuses initially on the explaining act itself. From that act, a "product" emerges: an explanation. To understand what that product is, as well as how it can be evaluated in the sciences, reference must be made to the concept of the explaining act. Following an account of the explaining act, its product, and the evaluation of explanations, the theory is brought to bear on these issues: Why have the standard models of scientific explanation been unsuccessful, and can there be a model of the type sought? What is causal explanation, and must explanation in the sciences be causal? What is a functional explanation? The "illocutionary" theory of explanation developed at the outset is used in discussing these issues, and contrasting philosophical viewpoints are assessed.

Product Description: One of the central areas of concern in late twentieth-century philosophy is the debate between Realism and anti-Realism. But the precise nature of the issues that form the focus of the debate remains controversial. In Realism and Explanatory Priority a new way of viewing the debate is developed...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

This is the first work to condense the large literature on explanatory style -- one's tendency to offer similar sorts of explanations for different events. This cognitive variable has been related to psychopathology, physical health, achievement and success. Compiled by experts in the fields of depression, anxiety, psychoneuroimmunology and motivation, this volume details our current level of understanding, outlines gaps in our knowledge, and discusses the future directions of the field. Data from a vast number of studies are presented, including results from studies not previously reported. Coverage includes sections on cross-cultural comparisons, life-span and development issues, and gender differences; and an extensive description of the measurement of explanatory style offering questionnaire and content-analysis methods for children, college populations and adults. This work is thus a valuable tool for anyone involved in research on the etiology and treatment of depression, cognitive therapy, motivation and emotion, and the link between physical and psychological well-being.

Product Description: Explanations identify causes, back up claims and justify actions. Social scientists study them because they reveal how people understand and construct their worlds. This stimulating book offers a critical review of the major approaches to the study of everyday explaining and arguing...read more

Product Description: Explanations identify causes, back up claims and justify actions. Social scientists study them because they reveal how people understand and construct their worlds. This stimulating book offers a critical review of the major approaches to the study of everyday explaining and arguing...read more

Product Description: Can one rationally cite the existence of God or other religious entities in explaning matters of fact? Religious ideologies and scientific explanations are familiar to many of us, but could there be enough epistemic power in religion to justify interesting explanations, and enough ideology in science to cause common belief to the contrary? In arguing that there is, the author points out some legitimate differences in the cognitive value structures typical of religion as opposed to science - differences effectively broadening the requirements on explanations imposed by rationality alone, beyond what is scientifically recognized...read more

Product Description: In this book Martin Bunzl considers the prospects for a general and comprehensive account of explanation, given the variety of interests that prompt explanations in science. Bunzl argues that any successful account of explanation must deal with two very different contexts - one static and one dynamic...read more

Product Description: The aim of this series is to bring together important recent writings in major areas of philosophical inquiry, selected from a variety of sources, mostly periodicals, which may not be convenienty available to the university student or the general reader...read more

Product Description: Explaining shows what explanation is and what it aims to do. It explores the various strategies open to teachers and by a combination of activities and discussion points it helps them to build up a repertoire of techniques suitable for various situations and to evaluate the effectiveness of their explanations in the classroom...read more

Product Description: Emile Meyerson's writings on the philosophy of science are a rich source of ideas and information concerning many philosophical and historical aspects of the development of modem science. Meyerson's works are not widely read or cited today by philosophers or even philosophers of science, in part because they have long been out of print and are often not available even in research libraries...read more

Product Description: To date, the study of communicated explanations has been, at best, unsystematic. There has been little recognition that many, if not most, explanations are eventually delivered to a hearer or hearers. These potential audiences constrain the way the explanation is ultimately shaped...read more

Product Description: The first volume in a series devoted to concepts in the study of communication, this is a book mainly about thinking, concerned with the disciplined use of words, with observation of human behaviour and especially with the connection between the two...read more

Product Description: John Wisdom was Professor of Philosophy at Cambridge University through the 1950s and 1960s, holding the chair that had been Wittgenstein's. Later he taught in America, and was elected President of the American Philosophical Association, Pacific Division...read more

Product Description: John Wisdom was Professor of Philosophy at Cambridge University through the 1950s and 1960s, holding the chair that had been Wittgenstein's. Later he taught in America, and was elected President of the American Philosophical Association, Pacific Division...read more

Product Description: Kathleen Lennon provides a new approach to the philosophy of action, showing how "reasons" fit into the casual framework of the world, while defending their autonomy. She disputes the rapidly-congealing orthodoxy which maintains that explanations according to intentional states cannot be casual explanations...read more

Product Description: This book analyses the concept of scientific explanation developed by French disciples of Descartes in the period 1660-1700. Clarke examines the views of authors such as Malebranche and Rohault, as well as those of less well-known authors such as Cordemoy, Gadroys, Poisson and Régis...read more

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Product Description: Since the publication of Carl Hempel and Paul Oppenheim's ground-breaking work "Studies in the Logic of Explanation," the theory of explanation has remained a major topic in the philosophy of science. This valuable collection provides readers with the opportunity to study some of the classic essays on the theory of explanation along with the best examples of the most recent work being done on the topic...read more