Explaining Explanation, Part 1: Theoretical Foundations

This is the first in a series of essays that addresses the manifest programmatic interest in developing intelligent systems that help people make good decisions in messy, complex, and uncertain circumstances by exploring several questions: What is an explanation? How do people explain things? How might intelligent systems explain their workings? How might intelligent systems help humans be better understanders as well as better explainers? This article addresses the theoretical foundations.

[1]  Karolin Baecker,et al.  Inference to the Best Explanation: , 2021, The Material Theory of Induction.

[2]  B. Haig.  An abductive theory of scientific method. , 2005, Psychological methods.

[3]  Tina A. Grotzer.  Learning to Understand the Forms of Causality Implicit in Scientifically Accepted Explanations , 2003 .

[4]  Robert R. Hoffman,et al.  Causal reasoning: initial report of a naturalistic study of causal inferences , 2009 .

[5]  K. Holyoak,et al.  The Oxford handbook of thinking and reasoning , 2012 .

[6]  S. Mumford,et al.  Getting Causes from Powers , 2011 .

[7]  G. Harman.  The Inference to the Best Explanation , 1965 .

[8]  S. Sloman.  Causal Models: How People Think about the World and Its Alternatives , 2005 .

[9]  J. D. Trout.  Scientific Explanation And The Sense Of Understanding* , 2002, Philosophy of Science.

[10]  R. Hogarth,et al.  Judging probable cause. , 1986 .

[11]  T. Lombrozo.  Explanation and Abductive Inference , 2012 .

[12]  Atocha Aliseda,et al.  Abductive Reasoning: Logical Investigations into Discovery and Explanation , 2006 .

[13]  Gary Shank.  The Extraordinary Ordinary Powers of Abductive Reasoning , 1998 .

[14]  Gary Klein,et al.  Naturalistic investigations and models of reasoning about complex indeterminate causation , 2011, Inf. Knowl. Syst. Manag..

[15]  Ute Fischer,et al.  Informed by knowledge : expert performance in complex situations , 2011 .

[16]  Gary Klein.  Flexecution, Part 2: Understanding and Supporting Flexible Execution , 2007, IEEE Intelligent Systems.

[17]  M. Bergman,et al.  Nordic Studies in Pragmatism Helsinki | 2010 Gerhard Minnameier “ The Logicality of Abduction , Deduction and Induction ” , 2011 .

[18]  Robert Cowley.  What if? : the world's foremost military historians imagine what might have been , 2000 .

[19]  Arthur W. Burks,et al.  Peirce's Theory of Abduction , 1946, Philosophy of Science.

[20]  G. J. Klein,et al.  The role of mental simulation in problem solving and decision making , 2018 .

[21]  Barbara Wolfe Jancar,et al.  The Philosophy of Aristotle , 1980 .