The term “explanation” has been widely investigated in different disciplines such as cognitive science, knowledgebased systems, linguistics, philosophy of science, artificial intelligence, and teaching. All these disciplines consider certain aspects of the term and make clear that there is not only one such concept but a variety of concepts. This has as a consequence that there was no common ag...

This concept paper addresses communication issues arising between physicians and their patients. To facilitate the communication of essential diagnostic pathology information to patients, and address their questions and concerns, we propose that "Pathology Explanation Clinics" be created. The Pathology Explanation Clinics would provide a channel for direct communications between pathologists an...

The philosophy literature has been struggling with the problem of defining causality. There has been extensive discussion about it. Hume taught that talk of causation was metaphysics and should be consigned to the flames (D. Hume, 1748). We present a comparison between two approaches that model this notion: The first one is the normative approach which is based on an interventionist conception ...

The three cardinal aims of science are prediction, control, and explanation; but the greatest of these is explanation. Also the most inscrutable: prediction aims at truth, and control at happiness, and insofar as we have some independent grasp of these notions, we can evaluate science’s strategies of prediction and control from the outside. Explanation, by contrast, aims at scientific understan...

This paper investigates the impact of the introduction of transactional Internet banking on performance and risk profile of major credit unions in Australia. Performance was measured using linear programming technique of data envelopment analysis and regressed on relevant explanatory variables using censored normal regression. Accounting data were used to measure risk profile and regressed on r...

Although explanation is widely regarded as an important concept in the study of rational inquiry, it remains largely unexplored outside the philosophy of science. This, I believe, is not due to oversight as much as to institutional resistance. In analytic philosophy it is basic that epistemic rationality is a function of justification and that justification is a function of argument. Explanatio...