Chapter 7: Glossary

This glossary follows the organization of the textbook and other areas of this Web site and contains short definitions for all the important terms and concepts from the chapter. You will also find hyperlinks to Websites relevant to the study of these terms and concepts. You should employ good critical thinking when evaluating the merit of any information you find on the World Wide Web, including what you find by following these links.

Alternative Explanation:  A second explanation of phenomenon, whose existence casts doubt on the necessary truth of the original explanation.

Behavioral Explanation:  An explanation of individual or group human behavior, by means of information drawn from the social sciences, whether that information is technical or common-sensical.

Circularity:  An explanation's repetition of the thing to be explained.  Circularity adds no information to explanations.

Consistency With Well-Established Theory:.  A highly desirable feature of an explanation; the explanation's agreement (or lack of disagreement) with what is known or justifiably believed to be th4e case; related to initial plausibility.

Explanation:  A claim that seeks to tell why or how a given claim should be true; distinct from an argument for a claim and from a justification of an action.

Explanatory Comparison: Also called an analogy; a type of comparison that clarifies an unfamiliar thing by juxtaposing it to something more familiar that it resembles.

Explanatory Power:  The capacity of an explanation to account for more phenomena than another explanation.

Functional Explanation:  An explanation of what an object or event does, or what part it plays in some context.

Physical Explanation:  An explanation of an event by means of information drawn from the natural sciences, whether that information is technical or commonly known.

Relevance:  An explanation's appropriate relationship to the thing being explained. An explanation is fully relevant if it permits us to predict the phenomena's occurrence. 

Reliability:  The success of an explanation when facing further tests (see testability).  reliability cannot be seen in the explanation itself, but must be ascertained through further checking.

Testability:  The openness of an explanation to verification or refutation in further cases; a necessary feature of explanations.  An untestable explanation has as evidence only the individual event it seeks to explain.

Unnecessary Assumption: An implausible entity or event invoked by an explanation; an undesired feature of explanation.

Vagueness:  An undesired feature of explanations.