Research
My work is thoroughly informed by science, and I even use empirical methods such as text mining. In my current and future work, I am trying to map out the explanatory landscape of neuroscience, and develop an account of the pragmatics of explainable AI.
In the last six years I developed the systematic and comprehensive account of the so-called topological or network explanations. My account provides necessary and sufficient conditions under which network models provide genuine explanations. The first condition ensures proper scientific explananda and explanantia. The second condition secures explanatoriness, i.e., it captures counterfactual dependency relations. Finally, the third condition provides contextual criteria for using the counterfactual, which emerge from different question asking perspectives.
This last condition is the core of my account of the pragmatics of explanation. It is based on the idea that certain perspectival inferential patterns determine both the explanation seeking questions and the space of possible answers to them. According to this view, explanation seeking questions can be conclusions in arguments that show how a question arises from certain contexts. Explanation seeking questions, derived in this way, restrict the range of possible direct answers to them, and in that way provide explanatory relevance criteria.
In the last six years I developed the systematic and comprehensive account of the so-called topological or network explanations. My account provides necessary and sufficient conditions under which network models provide genuine explanations. The first condition ensures proper scientific explananda and explanantia. The second condition secures explanatoriness, i.e., it captures counterfactual dependency relations. Finally, the third condition provides contextual criteria for using the counterfactual, which emerge from different question asking perspectives.
This last condition is the core of my account of the pragmatics of explanation. It is based on the idea that certain perspectival inferential patterns determine both the explanation seeking questions and the space of possible answers to them. According to this view, explanation seeking questions can be conclusions in arguments that show how a question arises from certain contexts. Explanation seeking questions, derived in this way, restrict the range of possible direct answers to them, and in that way provide explanatory relevance criteria.