CriticalThinkingAcademy

Table of Contents Explanation vs model Economists vs the Public Systems and Complexity Explanations Summarizing the Explanation Series The unifying thesis of the series In the first two posts, we discussed criteria for “good explanations” in general, with particular emphasis on mechanisms and causal structures. In this post, I want to turn to a more specific problem: what counts as an explanation in economics? It is often correctly asserted that microeconomic theory can fail to explain economic behavior for a variety of reasons: the wrong unit of analysis, incorrect assumptions about structure, unrealistic assumptions about human rationality, and so on. From an economist’s perspective, however, this is not necessarily a failure. The standard microeconomic model often serves as a benchmark for comparison: economists understand that it does not capture important aspects of reality and adjust the model accordingly. When strategic interaction matters, for example, we may relax...

Table of Contents I. General Standards for Good Explanation Explanation vs. Pseudo-Explanation Contrastive Explanations II. Mechanistic Explanation Good Mechanistic Explanation Yes, But What's the Mechanism? How to Identify Mechanisms Keeping Mechanism Meaningful III. Beyond Mechanisms: Other Causal Structures Pathways vs Mechanisms Cascades vs Mechanisms Social Structural Explanation and Causal Constraints IV. Explanatory Pluralism Causal Patterns and Non-Mechanistic Explanatory Styles Eight Other Questions about Explanation This is the second post in a two-part series on explanation. The first post defined what an explanation is and distinguished it from related concepts such as argument. It then established a baseline for evaluating explanations, examined the psychological and cognitive mechanisms that pull us away from ideal criteria, and closed with the social epistemology of explanation: explanations are evaluated in social environments whose incentives, identities, and info...