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<p>This paper argues, in contrast to what is usually assumed in the philosophical literature, that there is no such thing as a statistical explanation (hereafter SE). By SE I mean a putative explanation in which the occurrence of an individual outcome e or a collection of these is claimed to be explained by the ascription of a probability p to the outcome or collection, where p may be less than 1. Different accounts of explanation have different implications for the existence of SEs, with the no SE position supported by a dependency or what-if-things-had-been-different account of explanation and other accounts of explanation being friendlier to SEs. Recent attempts to arguing for the existence of SEs via an appeal to inference to the best explanation (IBE) are unsuccessful. Moreover, contrary to what a number of writers claim, IBE is ill-suited to serve as a basis for probability ascriptions.</p>

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There is no such thing as a statistical explanation

  • 期刊论文

  • 发表日期：

    2025年11月27日

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  • James Woodward

摘要

This paper argues, in contrast to what is usually assumed in the philosophical literature, that there is no such thing as a statistical explanation (hereafter SE). By SE I mean a putative explanation in which the occurrence of an individual outcome e or a collection of these is claimed to be explained by the ascription of a probability p to the outcome or collection, where p may be less than 1. Different accounts of explanation have different implications for the existence of SEs, with the no SE position supported by a dependency or what-if-things-had-been-different account of explanation and other accounts of explanation being friendlier to SEs. Recent attempts to arguing for the existence of SEs via an appeal to inference to the best explanation (IBE) are unsuccessful. Moreover, contrary to what a number of writers claim, IBE is ill-suited to serve as a basis for probability ascriptions.