DiMarco, Marina (2020) Wishful Intelligibility, Black Boxes, and Epidemiological Explanation. In: UNSPECIFIED.

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Abstract

Epidemiological explanation often has a ``black box" character, meaning the intermediate steps between cause and effect are unknown. Filling in black boxes is thought to improve causal inferences by making them intelligible. I argue that adding information about intermediate causes to a black box explanation is an unreliable guide to pragmatic intelligibility because it may mislead us about the stability of a cause. I diagnose a problem that I call wishful intelligibility, which occurs when scientists misjudge the limitations of certain features of an explanation. Wishful intelligibility gives us a new reason to prefer black box explanations in some contexts.

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Item Type:	Conference or Workshop Item (UNSPECIFIED)
Creators:	Creators Email ORCID DiMarco, Marina marina.dimarco@pitt.edu
Keywords:	black box, opacity, epidemiology, understanding, explanation, intelligibility
Subjects:	General Issues > Causation Specific Sciences > Medicine > Epidemiology General Issues > Explanation Specific Sciences > Medicine General Issues > Values In Science
Depositing User:	Unnamed user with email marinarosedimarco@gmail.com
Date Deposited:	18 Oct 2020 02:40
Last Modified:	18 Oct 2020 02:40
Item ID:	18252
Subjects:	General Issues > Causation Specific Sciences > Medicine > Epidemiology General Issues > Explanation Specific Sciences > Medicine General Issues > Values In Science
Date:	2020
URI:	https://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/id/eprint/18252

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