Theory and Explanation

Question 1

What is explananda?

Answer 1

That which needs to be explained.

Question 2

What is explanans?

Answer 2

That which contains the explanation.

Question 3

What are laws in physics?

Answer 3

• Laws are considered to be explanations (i.e explanans).
• General laws, i.e. laws that apply always and everywhere.
• Laws that follow the deductive nomological model of explanation (DN), i.e. scientific explanation is subsumption under law, meaning that explanation is deduced from laws and these laws are derived from other more fundamental, natural laws.

Question 4

What are laws in psychology?

Answer 4

• Psychology not subsumption under law.
• Laws in situ (i.e. psychology does not produce general laws of nature, but laws about specific type of systems).
• Explananda, i.e. laws are considered to be explained, laws are effects that are left unexplained.
• Primary explananda: Capacities.
• Secondary explananda: Effects.
• Discovery and confirmation of effects.
• Explanations given by effects are not explanations.

Question 5

What is meant by a capacity?

Answer 5

• The primary explananda of psychology.
• Definition: A capacity is a complex dispositional.
• Capacities do not have to be discovered, but specified.
• Cognitive capacities: perception, attention, memory, knowledge, reasoning, problem-solving, decision-making, language.

Question 6

What are effects in psychology?

Answer 6

• The secondary explananda of psychology.
• Properties of how we exercise our capacities, e.g. the effect of belief bias when doing reasoning.
• Incidental to the exercise of a capacity of interest.
• Help constrain explanations.

Question 7

What are examples of effects in psychology?

Answer 7

• The McGurk effect (auditory illusions, multimodal perception, ba/ga/da)
• Reasoning error (validity of syllogisms, belief bias)
• Visual illusions
• Recency, primacy effect (memory, recall a list of words)
• Pop-out effects (similarity, features)
• Priming effect (repetition priming, semantic priming)

Question 8

What is the primary explananda in psychology?

Answer 8

Capacities are the primary explananda in psychology.

Question 9

What is the secondary explananda of psychology?

Answer 9

Effects are the secondary explananda of psychology.

Question 10

Specifying capacities is

Answer 10

1. Marr’s computational-level theory: The computation problem: The specification of a capacity into three levels: computational level, algorithmic / representational level and implementational level.
2. Non-trivial: Capacities are often non-trivial/ill-specified specifications and therefore a capacity is typically not specified as a law/effect.
   E.g. the capacity of understanding Chinese.
3. Functional analysis: Analyzing a capacity into a number of more simple capacities.
   Analogy to a line production: Production is broken down into simple tasks. The different units have the capacity to perform one or more tasks, and when the tasks are combined and organized in a specific way, you have the finished product.

Question 11

What does it mean that psychology is rich in effects?

Answer 11

Psychology is overwhelmed with things to explain (explananda). At the same time, psychology is underwhelmed with things to explain them with (explanans).

Question 12

What does it mean that psychology is poor in formal theory?

Answer 12

• Concepts are hard to measure.
• The variables are human beings.
• Lack of generalisability.
• Short history as a science (for a long time part of philosophy).
• Scientific status much discussed.
• Theory/explanation often “story-telling”, no formal training in methods or how to build theory in the curriculum of psychology.

Question 13

What are the two main problems for psychological explanation?

Answer 13

1. Leibniz’ Gap

2. The unification problem

Question 14

What is the problem of Leibniz’ Gap?

Answer 14

• Also called ‘the realization problem’.
• The problem that thoughts cannot be observed or perceived solely by examining the brain properties and processes.
• Gap between the mind and body.
• To bridge the gap, you need to find a theory that can correlate brain phenomena with pscyhological phenomena.

Question 15

What is the Unification Problem?

Answer 15

• Lack of unification.
• Functional analysis explains a particular capacity/effect, e.g. vision. However, it does not unify the capacity with other analyses from other research areas, e.g. language, emotion, reasoning.
• Explanations from one paradigm are not very translatable into explanations in other.
• Competing paradigms.
• Possible solution: Hierarchy of frameworks, or a complete new framework.

Question 16

What are the five existing explanatory paradigms in psychology?

Answer 16

1. Belief-Desire-Intention (BDI)
2. Computationalism
3. Connectionism
4. Neuroscience
5. Evolutionary explanations

Question 17

What does it mean that law and theory is not equal to statistical hypothesis?

Answer 17

Stating that data are explained by a hypothesis is misleading because: We do not distinguish between “hypothesis” in statistical analysis (i.e. difference between groups that is not due to chance) and “hypothesis” as a law/theory.

Question 18

What does it mean that explanation is not equal to confirmation?

Answer 18

Stating that data are explained by a hypothesis is misleading because: No laws are explanatory. They tell us what happens, not why or how it happens. Explanation of data in statistical analysis is more about confirmation rather than explanation. Much of the effort in psychology, and almost all of the methodology, is devoted to the discovery and confirmation of effects.

Question 19

What does it mean that explanation is not equal to prediction?

Answer 19

Systems can be well-understood yet unpredictable and vice versa. Some systems are uncontrollable.
Explanation without prediction: A falling leaf can be explained but not predicted.
Prediction without explanation: Previously, astronomy predicted seasons without understanding how the solar system works.

Question 20

What does it mean that psychological explanation is not equal to subssumption under law?

Answer 20

Instead they are laws in situ (i.e., does not produce general laws of nature, but laws about specific type of systems, e.g. cannot transfer laws about humans to laws about trees).

Question 21

What is BDI?

Answer 21

Belief-Desire-Intention (BDI)

Psychological explanation in the form of psychoanalysis, social and cognitive psychology, folk-psychology. A set of defining assumptions of how our beliefs, intentions and desires interact.

Leibniz’ Gap: Gap between BDI concepts, psychology and the brain. Studying the brain does not provide information about thoughts, beliefs, desires.

Question 22

What are evolutionary explanations?

Answer 22

Evolutionary explanations: Evolution might explain a psychological capacity/effect. Can explain why, but now how. Thus not competitor to explanatory model. Explain the occurrence of an effect/capacity in a population. Does not focus on what the mind is and how it works.

Question 23

What is implied in the sociological factor in psychology?

Answer 23

It is difficult to publish a paper that only explains an effect. People are more interested in the experiments and effects discovered than the actual explanations for effects in the discussion section.