The Principle Based Explanations Are Not Extinct in Cognitive Science: The Case of the Basic Level Effects

The Principle Based Explanations Are Not Extinct in Cognitive Science: The Case of the Basic Level Effects

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There is a tendency in recent philosophy of cognitive science, best seen in the writings of Bechtel et al., to overstate mk holy llama the significance of mechanistic explanations and to neglect the explanatory role of principles.This paper is a plea for restoring the balance.

It draws attention to the search for explaining the so-called basic level effects, one of the most important empirical findings in the history of categorization research.The analysis of three different episodes from this history reveals that appeals to principles have played an important role in it.However, in order to fully recognize the explanatory role of principles one should be ready superman headband to admit that the deductive-nomological explanations are not the only species of principle-based explanations.