The Impact Of The Domain Of Causation And The Mode Of Explanation On The Belief In Necessit

In human cognition,"necessity" can neither be perceived nor induced from experience,so its epistemological origin has become a hot topic in philosophy and psychology.Piaget believes that one of the sources of necessity is explanation.Further,explanation is inseparable from causation.On the one hand,causality plays a central role in explanation,and the necessity of explanation depends on the necessity of causality;on the other hand,some scholars believe that explanation is the cognitive base of causality,and people can only confirm the causal relation between two events after connecting them through an explanation(Kitcher,1989).Therefore,the necessity of explanation also constrains the necessity of causality.The question of the modal properties of causality is under debate.Because causality itself is an extremely difficult concept,and the related philosophical and psychological theories are quite complex,this paper first refers to three dimensions in philosophy:(1)Intrinsic vs.extrinsic tendencies of causation,(2)Singularist vs Generalist theories of causation,and(3)Causal Reductionism vs Anti-Reductionism,and introduces typical philosophical causal theories for each dimension.These three dimensions were then integrated into a larger framework: the production view vs.the dependence view.With this framework,we continue to tease out causal theories in psychology.Finally,we analyzed the modal views held by the above theories.The deterministic view of causality insists on a necessary connection between cause and effect.The probabilistic view of causality requires only that some probability criterion be satisfied between cause and effect.One of the central questions to be clarified in this paper is whether people hold domain-specific modal beliefs about causality,thus to provide a basis for how the explanation fits into the causal domain.The primary role of explanation is to facilitate understanding.Understanding can be divided into top-down and bottom-up styles.Correspondingly,the philosophy of science divides explanation into two categories,one is the Deductive-Nomological model pioneered by Hempel(1965)and the following unified explanatory model.The other is the mechanism account model proposed by Salmon(1984)and its subsequent development.The former incorporates the phenomenon to be explained under a general rule or principle;the latter reveals the underlying or deep mechanism of the phenomenon.The second core question to be answered in this paper is which explanation can provide more necessity for different causal phenomena.In the empirical study of the necessity of causality,this paper firstly criticizes the experimental paradigm of monistic determinism that underpins the Mental Model Theory,pointing out its logical fallacies and methodological flaws.On this basis,the experimental method to study causal modal properties is redesigned.The experiments comprehensively examine people’s modal beliefs about causality in different domains,using three forms of thinking—concept,judgment,and reasoning—as a hierarchical framework for design.Research one is the research on the concept of causal modality,including implicit and explicit research methods.The former implies the concept of modal in various definitions of causality;the latter uses modal words(necessary,possible)to express the relationship between cause and effect.Study 2 studies the modal properties of causality in the form of judgment,including direct judgment and indirect judgment.The former allows subjects to judge the modality of each causal relationship in a situation containing a series of causal events;the latter allows subjects to judge whether a counter-example is possible under the constraints of a causal relationship.The task of study 3 is to reason from causality as the premise.The major premise is a specific statement of causality,and the minor premise is the negation of the result.The subjects are required to infer the occurrence of the cause.Study 4 integrated the above three forms of investigation into one task,and repeated the verification using abstract experimental materials.The results of the above four studies show that people hold necessary beliefs about causality in the physical and biological domains;and hold probabilistic beliefs about causality in the psychological and social domains.This shows that people’s modal beliefs about causality are diverse and vary from domain to domain.The research on the necessity of explanation is also carried out from three levels,including descriptive research,prediction research,and control research.Study 5preliminarily investigates the necessity between "mechanism-process-based explanation" and " unified rule-based explanation" and causal phenomena in different fields.On this basis,Study 6 makes three predictions:(1)When a unified explanation and a mechanistic explanation are made for the same phenomenon at the same time,phenomena in different fields have different propensities for the two explanations in terms of the necessity index,and(2)When different levels of mechanism explanations are made for the phenomenon in the psychological field,the physiological mechanism explanation with a downward reduction produces higher necessity than the psychological mechanism explanation.(3)When the mechanism information and the law information are inconsistent,the degree of necessity of the combined explanation will produce a trade-off effect.Three experiments in Study 6 verified the above three predictions respectively.Study 7 examines the control of explanations,the necessity of explanations in the psychological and social domains are strengthened by enriching mechanistic information and reinforcing rule information.The results of the above research show that:(1)different explanation methods have different effects on the necessity of phenomena in different fields;(2)for causal phenomena in specific disciplines,the downward reduction-mechanism of(such as the reduction of psychological phenomena to physiological mechanisms)has stronger necessity than the mechanism explanation at it own level;(3)The richer information of the explanation,does not yield the more necessity,which is shown as:(1)When the mechanism and the rule information are consistent,the necessity of the explanation does not increase,(2)When the mechanism information is inconsistent with he rule information,the necessity of interpretation will be compromised;(4)The necessity of expalanation can be strengthened by enriching the mechanism and strengthening the rules.The comprehensive discussion section firstly criticizes the monistic determinism of Mental Model Theory.Criticque is carried out from three major aspects: its theoretical viewpoint,experimental evidence supporting its theoretical viewpoint and its argument logic.Secondly,it analyzes the epistemological significance of the necessity of explanation,the diversification of ways to achieve the necessity of explanation,and its corresponding to the ontology of different disciplines.Thirdly,the article connects with reality,and analyzes the connection between the necessity of causal explanation and various real problems from the aspects of daily life,discipline nature and scientific research.Finally,the article briefly sorts out the possible paths of the relationship between mechanisms,properties,natural laws,causality,and explanations.