What's the Most Minimal Contrast Between a Cause and an Explanation?

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The stronger the statistical evidence that there is a relationship, the more people are willing to endorse these claims. So we wanted cases where there were causal factors where people would not and just even we think were related at all. We ask people claims like, to what extent do you agree that visiting the portrait gallery caused this person to make an optional donation as a left-of-a-museum? Or why did this person make anoptional donation when they left the museum because they visited the portrait gallery?, right? And we have the kind of matched causal claims and explanation claims.

There are few human impulses more primal than the desire for explanations. We have expectations concerning what happens, and when what we experience differs from those expectations, we want to know the reason why. There are obvious philosophy questions here: What is an explanation? Do explanations bottom out, or go forever? But there are also psychology questions: What precisely is it that we seek when we demand an explanation? What makes us satisfied with one? Tania Lombrozo is a psychologist who is also conversant with the philosophical side of things. She offers some pretty convincing explanations for why we value explanation so highly.

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Tania Lombrozo received her Ph.D. in psychology from Harvard University. She is currently a professor of psychology at Princeton. Among her awards are the Gittier Award from the American Psychological Foundation, an Early Investigator Award from the Society of Experimental Psychologists, and the Stanton Prize from the Society for Philosophy and Psychology.

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