Rethinking Explanation

If you are interested in philosophy of economics you are probably interested in philosophical issues concerning explanation. In fact you have probably read most of the basic (and maybe advanced) work on philosophy of explanation (if not you may start here!). Yet there is more interesting stuff to read.

While I was browsing the Internet for my own research, I have found an interesting book on explanation: Rethinking Explanation. And to my surprise one of the editors of the book (Petri Ylikoski) and two of the authors (Tomi Kokkonen and Jaakko Kuoriskoski) were among my new colleagues in Helsinki. The book covers a wide range of issues concerning explanation. Philosophers of economists will find the following articles interesting:

• Petri Ylikoski, The Idea of Contrastive Explanandum
• Stathis Psillos, Causal Explanation and manipulation
• Erik Weber and Jeroen Van Bouwel, Assessing the Explanatory Power of Causal Explanations
• Jaakko Kuorikoski, Explaining with Equilibria

If you are not going to read them all, read Jaakko’s article on equilibrium explanations. Very little attention has been paid to equilibrium explanations in economics, thus it may be a good idea to start thinking about them. Of course, of you did not read Elliot Sober’s piece on the subject, you should do so…

More information about the book could be found here.