✦ LIBER ✦

Average explanations

✍ Scribed by Alan Nelson

Publisher: Springer
Year: 1989
Tongue: English
Weight: 1024 KB
Volume: 30
Category: Article
ISSN: 1876-2514
DOI: 10.1007/bf00184814

No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.

✦ Synopsis

Good scientific explanations sometimes appear to make use of averages.

Using concrete examples from current economic theory, I argue that some confusions about how averages might work in explanations lead to both philosophical and economic problems about the interpretation of the theory. I formulate general conditions on potentially proper uses of averages to refine a notion of average explanation. I then try to show how this notion provides a means for resolving longstanding philosophical problems in economics and other quantitative social sciences.

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