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359Learning Through SimulationPhilosophers' Imprint 20. 2020.Mental simulation — such as imagining tilting a glass to figure out the angle at which water would spill — can be a way of coming to know the answer to an internally or externally posed query. Is this form of learning a species of inference or a form of observation? We argue that it is neither: learning through simulation is a genuinely distinct form of learning. On our account, simulation can provide knowledge of the answer to a query even when the basis for that answer is opaque to the learner…Read more
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479Experiential ExplanationTopics in Cognitive Science 12 (4): 1321-1336. 2020.People often answer why-questions with what we call experiential explanations: narratives or stories with temporal structure and concrete details. In contrast, on most theories of the epistemic function of explanation, explanations should be abstractive: structured by general relationships and lacking extraneous details. We suggest that abstractive and experiential explanations differ not only in level of abstraction, but also in structure, and that each form of explanation contributes to the ep…Read more
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20Effects of explanation on children’s question askingCognition 191 (C): 103966. 2019.The capacity to search for information effectively by asking informative questions is crucial for self-directed learning and develops throughout the preschool years and beyond. We tested the hypothesis that explaining observations in a given domain prepares children to ask more informative questions in that domain, and that it does so by promoting the identification of features that apply to multiple objects, thus supporting more effective questions. Across two experiments, 4- to 7-year-old chil…Read more
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126When and why people think beliefs are “debunked” by scientific explanations of their originsMind and Language 35 (1): 3-28. 2020.How do scientific explanations for beliefs affect people's confidence that those beliefs are true? For example, do people think neuroscience-based explanations for belief in God support or challenge God's existence? In five experiments, we find that people tend to think explanations for beliefs corroborate those beliefs if the explanations invoke normally-functioning mechanisms, but not if they invoke abnormal functioning (where “normality” is a matter of proper functioning). This emerges across…Read more
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Folk theories in the moral domainIn Kurt Gray & Jesse Graham (eds.), Atlas of Moral Psychology, Guilford Press. 2018.Is morality intuitive or deliberative? The distinction can obscure the role of folk moral theories in moral judgment; judgments may arise 'intuitively' yet result from abstract theoretical and philosophical commitments that participate in 'deliberative' reasoning.
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63Explanation classification depends on understanding: extending the epistemic side-effect effectSynthese 197 (6): 2565-2592. 2020.Our goal in this paper is to experimentally investigate whether folk conceptions of explanation are psychologistic. In particular, are people more likely to classify speech acts as explanations when they cause understanding in their recipient? The empirical evidence that we present suggests this is so. Using the side-effect effect as a marker of mental state ascriptions, we argue that lay judgments of explanatory status are mediated by judgments of a speaker’s and/or audience’s mental states. Fi…Read more
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26The explanatory effect of a label: Explanations with named categories are more satisfyingCognition 168 (C): 357-369. 2017.Can opium's tendency to induce sleep be explained by appeal to a "dormitive virtue"? If the label merely references the tendency being explained, the explanation seems vacuous. Yet the presence of a label could signal genuinely explanatory content concerning the (causal) basis for the property being explained. In Experiments 1 and 2, we find that explanations for a person's behavior that appeal to a named tendency or condition are indeed judged to be more satisfying than equivalent explanations …Read more
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26Explaining the moral of the storyCognition 167 (C): 266-281. 2017.Although storybooks are often used as pedagogical tools for conveying moral lessons to children, the ability to spontaneously extract "the moral" of a story develops relatively late. Instead, children tend to represent stories at a concrete level - one that highlights surface features and understates more abstract themes. Here we examine the role of explanation in 5- and 6-year-old children's developing ability to learn the moral of a story. Two experiments demonstrate that, relative to a contro…Read more
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26An Actor's Knowledge and Intent Are More Important in Evaluating Moral Transgressions Than Conventional TransgressionsCognitive Science 42 (S1): 105-133. 2018.An actor's mental states—whether she acted knowingly and with bad intentions—typically play an important role in evaluating the extent to which an action is wrong and in determining appropriate levels of punishment. In four experiments, we find that this role for knowledge and intent is significantly weaker when evaluating transgressions of conventional rules as opposed to moral rules. We also find that this attenuated role for knowledge and intent is partly due to the fact that conventional rul…Read more
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70The Role of Explanation in Discovery and Generalization: Evidence From Category LearningCognitive Science 34 (5): 776-806. 2010.Research in education and cognitive development suggests that explaining plays a key role in learning and generalization: When learners provide explanations—even to themselves—they learn more effectively and generalize more readily to novel situations. This paper proposes and tests a subsumptive constraints account of this effect. Motivated by philosophical theories of explanation, this account predicts that explaining guides learners to interpret what they are learning in terms of unifying patt…Read more
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25Explanation constrains learning, and prior knowledge constrains explanationIn S. Ohlsson & R. Catrambone (eds.), Proceedings of the 32nd Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society, Cognitive Science Society. 2010.A great deal of research has demonstrated that learning is influenced by the learner’s prior background knowledge (e.g. Murphy, 2002; Keil, 1990), but little is known about the processes by which prior knowledge is deployed. We explore the role of explanation in deploying prior knowledge by examining the joint effects of eliciting explanations and providing prior knowledge in a task where each should aid learning. Three hypotheses are considered: that explanation and prior knowledge have indepen…Read more
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141The Instrumental Value of ExplanationsPhilosophy Compass 6 (8): 539-551. 2011.Scientific and ‘intuitive’ or ‘folk’ theories are typically characterized as serving three critical functions: prediction, explanation, and control. While prediction and control have clear instrumental value, the value of explanation is less transparent. This paper reviews an emerging body of research from the cognitive sciences suggesting that the process of seeking, generating, and evaluating explanations in fact contributes to future prediction and control, albeit indirectly by facilitating t…Read more
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74Explanation and categorization: How “why?” informs “what?”Cognition 110 (2): 248-253. 2009.Recent theoretical and empirical work suggests that explanation and categorization are intimately related. This paper explores the hypothesis that explanations can help structure conceptual representations, and thereby influence the relative importance of features in categorization decisions. In particular, features may be differentially important depending on the role they play in explaining other features or aspects of category membership. Two experiments manipulate whether a feature is explai…Read more
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97Norms Inform Mental State Ascriptions: A Rational Explanation for the Side-Effect EffectCognition 116 (1). 2010.Theory of mind, the capacity to understand and ascribe mental states, has traditionally been conceptualized as analogous to a scientific theory. However, recent work in philosophy and psychology has documented a "side-effect effect" suggesting that moral evaluations influence mental state ascriptions, and in particular whether a behavior is described as having been performed 'intentionally.' This evidence challenges the idea that theory of mind is analogous to scientific psychology in serving th…Read more
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55Inference to the Best Explanation (IBE) Versus Explaining for the Best InferenceScience & Education 24 (9-10): 1059-1077. 2015.In pedagogical contexts and in everyday life, we often come to believe something because it would best explain the data. What is it about the explanatory endeavor that makes it essential to everyday learning and to scientific progress? There are at least two plausible answers. On one view, there is something special about having true explanations. This view is highly intuitive: it’s clear why true explanations might improve one’s epistemic position. However, there is another possibility—it could…Read more
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107Editorial: Dimensions of Experimental PhilosophyReview of Philosophy and Psychology 1 (3): 315-318. 2010.Editorial: Dimensions of Experimental Philosophy Content Type Journal Article Pages 315-318 DOI 10.1007/s13164-010-0037-9 Authors Joshua Knobe, Program in Cognitive Science and Department of Philosophy, Yale University, New Haven, CT USA Tania Lombrozo, Department of Psychology, UC Berkeley, 3210 Tolman Hall, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA Edouard Machery, Department of History and Philosophy of Science, University of Pittsburgh, 1017 CL, Pittsburgh, PA 15260, USA Journal Review of Philosophy and Psych…Read more
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89Folk attributions of understanding: Is there a role for epistemic luck?Episteme 15 (1): 24-49. 2018.As a strategy for exploring the relationship between understanding and knowledge, we consider whether epistemic luck – which is typically thought to undermine knowledge – undermines understanding. Questions about the etiology of understanding have also been at the heart of recent theoretical debates within epistemology. Kvanvig (2003) put forward the argument that there could be lucky understanding and produced an example that he deemed persuasive. Grimm (2006) responded with a case that, he arg…Read more
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89The role of moral commitments in moral judgmentCognitive Science 33 (2): 273-286. 2009.Traditional approaches to moral psychology assumed that moral judgments resulted from the application of explicit commitments, such as those embodied in consequentialist or deontological philosophies. In contrast, recent work suggests that moral judgments often result from unconscious or emotional processes, with explicit commitments generated post hoc. This paper explores the intermediate position that moral commitments mediate moral judgments, but not through their explicit and consistent appl…Read more
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46Explanation and inference: mechanistic and functional explanations guide property generalizationFrontiers in Human Neuroscience 8 102987. 2014.The ability to generalize from the known to the unknown is central to learning and inference. Two experiments explore the relationship between how a property is explained and how that property is generalized to novel species and artifacts. The experiments contrast the consequences of explaining a property mechanistically, by appeal to parts and processes, with the consequences of explaining the property functionally, by appeal to functions and goals. The findings suggest that properties that are…Read more
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34Explaining prompts children to privilege inductively rich propertiesCognition 133 (2): 343-357. 2014.Two studies examined the specificity of effects of explanation on learning by prompting 3- to 6-year-old children to explain a mechanical toy and comparing what they learned about the toy’s causal and non-causal properties to children who only observed the toy, both with and without accompanying verbalization. In Study 1, children were experimentally assigned to either explain or observe the mechanical toy. In Study 2, children were classified according to whether the content of their response t…Read more
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18Putting normativity in its proper placeBehavioral and Brain Sciences 33 (4). 2010.Knobe considers two explanations for the influence of moral considerations on cognitive systems: the position, and the position. We suggest that this dichotomy conflates questions at computational and algorithmic levels, and suggest that distinguishing the issues at these levels reveals a third, viable option, which we call the position
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156Editorial: Psychology and Experimental PhilosophyReview of Philosophy and Psychology 1 (2): 157-160. 2010.Recent years have seen an explosion of new work at the intersection of philosophy and experimental psychology. This work takes the concerns with moral and conceptual issues that have so long been associated with philosophy and connects them with the use of systematic and well-controlled empirical investigations that one more typically finds in psychology. Work in this new field often goes under the name "experimental philosophy".
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27Why does explaining help learning? Insight from an explanation impairment effectIn S. Ohlsson & R. Catrambone (eds.), Proceedings of the 32nd Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society, Cognitive Science Society. 2010.
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107Effects of Manipulation on Attributions of Causation, Free Will, and Moral ResponsibilityCognitive Science 41 (2): 447-481. 2017.If someone brings about an outcome without intending to, is she causally and morally responsible for it? What if she acts intentionally, but as the result of manipulation by another agent? Previous research has shown that an agent's mental states can affect attributions of causal and moral responsibility to that agent, but little is known about what effect one agent's mental states can have on attributions to another agent. In Experiment 1, we replicate findings that manipulation lowers attribut…Read more
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27From conceptual representations to explanatory relationsBehavioral and Brain Sciences 33 (2-3): 218-219. 2010.Machery emphasizes the centrality of explanation for theory-based approaches to concepts. I endorse Machery's emphasis on explanation and consider recent advances in psychology that point to the of explanation, with consequences for Machery's heterogeneity hypothesis about concepts
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