Ever since Hempel and Oppenheim's development of the Deductive Nomological model of scientific explanation in 1948, a great deal of philosophical energy has been dedicated to constructing a viable model of explanation that concurs both with our intuitions and with the general project of science. Here I critically examine the developments in this field of study over the last half century, and conclude that Humphreys' aleatory model is superior to its competitors. There are, however, some problems with Humphreys' account of the relative quality of an explanation, so in the end I develop and defend a modified version of the aleatory account.

Thesis (M.A.)--Ohio University, November, 2009. / Title from PDF t.p. Includes bibliographical references.

Children ages 5 and 8 dropped a marble into a box and made predictions about which of two doors the marble would exit. Participants provided explanations and certainty ratings for each of their predictions. A lucky charm was used in a second round of the game, in which half of participants experienced an increase in success and half did not. Results indicated that older children were more cognizant of the chance nature of the game, however both age groups exhibited misconceptions about the predictability of chance outcomes. When asked to explain their overall success in Round 2, only 8 year-olds who experienced an increase in success and a perfect success rate reliably endorsed the lucky charm. Results are discussed with reference to literature on children’s and adults’ understanding of chance. We also discuss developmental patterns in the use of luck as an explanatory tool. / text

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The problem of applied mathematics is to account for the ’unreasonable effectiveness’ of mathematics in empirical science. A related question is, are there mathematical explanations of scientific facts, in the same way there are empirical explanations of scientific facts? Philosophers are interested in the problem of applied mathematics for two main reasons. They are interested in whether the use of mathematics in empirical science is sufficient to motivate ontological conclusions. The indispensability argument suggests that the widespread application of mathematics obligates us to accept mathematical entities into our ontology. The second primary philosophical question concerns the details of the applications of mathematics. Philosophers are interested in what sort of relationship between mathematics and the physical world allows mathematics to play the role that it does. In this thesis, I examine both areas of literature in detail. I begin by examining the details of the indispensability argument as well as some significant critiques of the argument and the methodological conclusions that it gives rise to. I then examine the work of those philosophers who debate whether the widespread application of mathematics in science motivates accepting mathematical entities into our ontology. This debate centers on whether there are mathematical explanations of scientific facts, which is to say, scientific explanations which have an essential mathematical component. Both sides agree that the existence of mathematical explanations would motivate realism, and they debate the acceptability of various examples to this end. I conclude that there is a strong case that there are mathematical explanations. Next I examine the work of the philosophers who focus on the formal relationship between mathematics and the physical world. Some philosophers argue that mathematical explanations obtain because of a structure preserving ’mapping’ between mathematical structures and the physical world. Others argue that mathematics can play its role without such a relationship. I conclude that the mapping view is correct at its core, but needs to be expanded to account for some contravening examples. In the end, I conclude that this second area of literature represents a much more fruitful and interesting approach to the problem of applied mathematics.

The aim of this thesis is to examine what affect, if any, finding an argument both unanswerable yet unbelievable has on three purported first-person doxastic constraints. The three proposed constraints are the principle of truth, the principle of adequate reason and the principle of epistemic explanation. In Chapter 1, I lay out the claim of each of these constraints; differentiate them from one another, examine under what conditions they can be said to apply and provide what I take to be the strongest arguments for each of them. In Chapter 2, I explicate what I mean by finding an argument unanswerable yet unbelievable. In Chapters 3, 4 and 5, I detail how it is that finding an argument unanswerable yet unbelievable could constitute a threat to each of these constraints. I conclude that while the principle of adequate reason is undermined in the face of this threat, both the principle of truth and the principle of epistemic explanation fail to be undermined by this challenge.

The Web Ontology Language, OWL, is the latest standard in logic based ontology languages. It is built upon the foundations of highly expressive Description Logics, which are fragments of First Order Logic. These logical foundations mean that it is possible to compute what is entailed by an OWL ontology. The reasons for entailments can range from fairly simple localised reasons through to highly non-obvious reasons. In both cases, without tool support that provides explanations for entailments, it can be very difficult or impossible to understand why an entailment holds. In the OWL world, justifications, which are minimal entailing subsets of ontologies, have emerged as the dominant form of explanation. This thesis investigates justification based explanation techniques. The core of the thesis is devoted to defining and analysing Laconic and Precise Justifications. These are fine-grained justifications whose axioms do not contain any superfluous parts. Optimised algorithms for computing these justifications are presented, and an extensive empirical investigation shows that these algorithms perform well on state of the art, large and expressive bio-medical ontologies. The investigation also highlights the prevalence of superfluity in real ontologies, along with the related phenomena of justification masking. The practicality of computing Laconic Justifications coupled with the prevalence of non-laconic justifications in the wild indicates that Laconic and Precise justifications are likely to be useful in practice. The work presented in this thesis should be of interest to researchers in the area of knowledge representation and reasoning, and developers of reasoners and ontology editors, who wish to incorporate explanation generation techniques into their systems.

Nearly all of the ways philosophers currently attempt to define the terms "representation" and "function" undermine the scientific application of those terms by rendering the scientific explanations in which they occur vacuous. Since this is unacceptable, we must develop analyses of these terms that avoid this vacuity.Robert Cummins argues in this fashion in Representations, Targets, and Attitudes. He accuses "use theories" of representational content of generating vacuous explanations, claims that nearly all current theories of representational content are use theories, and offers a non-use theory of representational content which avoids explanatory vacuity. According to this theory, representations are physically instantiated structures, and represent whatever other structures are isomorphic to them, regardless of how or whether these structures are used by some cognitive system. Unfortunately, since isomorphism is a rather weak constraint, Cummins' theory underdetermines representational content so severely that it too undermines explanatory appeals to representation. One task I undertake is to develop an alternative non-use theory which avoids this difficulty.My second task is to adapt Cummins' argument to criticize most current analyses of "function," which undermine scientific explanation in an analogous way. Though Cummins does not explicitly argue in this manner, his own analysis of "function," by avoiding any appeal to use, avoids the explanatory vacuity to which they succumb. Consequently, I endorse Cummins' notion of function, both as it appears in cognitive science, and elsewhere. However, although use theories fail as analyses of the terms "representation" and "function," I argue that they can still make significant contributions to the sciences employing these terms. For, while philosophers seeking to define "representation" and "function" must avoid incorporating representational and functional uses into their definitions, scientists must still find a way to determine which representations and functions are being used. Suitably re-construed use theories of representation and function may in many cases assist them in this task by providing principles for theory choice in the face of empirical underdetermination of facts about representational and functional use.

李耀安. / 電腦打印本, 複本為複印本. / Thesis (M.A.)--香港中文大學, 1988. / Dian nao da yin ben, fu ben wei fu yin ben. / Includes bibliographical references: leaves 95-107. / Li Yao'an. / Thesis (M.A.)--Xianggang Zhong wen da xue, 1988.

An Autumn Scene of Shatin was composed between March and April, 2000. This ensemble piece is written for solo soprano, female chorus, clarinet, bassoon, violin, violoncello, piano and percussion (one player). The composition was named after the poem An Autumn Scene of Shatin, written by Prof. Yu Chung-Kwuang. The composer tried to express the images of the poem by word-painting. The designs of musical structure and the text were tightly connected. The form of this work is through-composed. It can be divided into four parts£º Adagio - Un poco animato - Chorale grandioso - Adagio. At the two-third length of the work, the composer quoted the Renaissance Mass L¡¯homme arm¨¨ to present special sound. Most of the main melodies of this piece are sung by solo soprano, and the transitions between sections are played by female chorus and instrumentalists. The manipulation of texture is an important element. The vocal pitch material is based on interval. On the other hand, the overall instrument pitch is used with tone row. The special technique of strings with overtones, pizzcato, glissando, col legno and sul ponticello are illustrated to create extraordinary effects. This exquisite piece is like a miniature tone poem with words.