The Role of Chance in Explanation
Name
Skow_The role.pdf
Size
172.26 KB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
f161318a06d3af161ad43d2d74282875
Author(s)
Skow, Bradford
Date Issued
May 2013
Journal
Australasian Journal of Philosophy
Publisher
Taylor & Francis
Citation
Skow, Bradford. “The Role of Chance in Explanation.” Australasian Journal of Philosophy 92, no. 1 (January 2, 2014): 103–123.
Version
Author's final manuscript
Abstract
‘Those ice cubes melted because by melting total entropy increased and entropy increase has a very high objective chance.’ What role does the chance in this explanation play? I argue that it contributes to the explanation by entailing that the melting was almost necessary, and defend the claim that the fact that some event was almost necessary can, in the right circumstances, constitute a causal explanation of that event.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Linguistics and Philosophy
Terms of Use
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike
Persistent DSpace Link
DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1080/00048402.2013.790913
