Abstract
This paper explores some major conceptions of non-deductive explanations, with special reference to the ability of these conceptions to account for some important types of psychological explanations. The central focus is on a kind of tendency generalization and the nature of the explanations that are made possible by generalizations of this sort. It is argued that although these generalizations cannot plausibly be cast in the Hempelian form ‘P(G, F) = r’, they are lawlike, and the explanations they ground can have a degree of explanatory power commensurate with exhibiting the phenomenon to be explained as ‘nomically expectable’.
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Audi, R. Inductive-nomological explanations and psychological laws. Theor Decis 13, 229–249 (1981). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00126281
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00126281