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BEWARE THE CONVINCING EXPLANATION

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 March 2011

G. Randolph Mayes
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Extract

Most advice for sharpening our thinking skills concerns how to avoid bad arguments. But argument is only one of the two basic forms of reasoning. The other is explanation, and it is equally susceptible to abuse. You may already be familiar with certain forms of explanatory malfeasance. One of the best known is circular explanation, in which the stated cause is just a different way of describing the effect. (Why did we lose the match? Because our opponents scored more goals.) Here I'd like to introduce you to a less appreciated error of explanation. To my knowledge it has no widely accepted name, but I call it ‘the convincing explanation’.

Type
Research Article
Information
Think , Volume 10 , Issue 28 , Summer 2011 , pp. 17 - 26
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 2011

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References

Note

1 Psychologists have identified a related phenomenon called the ‘explanation effect’ in which people become more convinced that a phenomenon does occur after making up an explanation of how it could occur.