Research

My primary research project concerns the ontological category that a scientific explanation belongs to. This line of inquiry focuses on developing a conception of scientific explanation that has two parts: First, what type of thing is an explanation, and second, what type of relation something must stand in to be an explanation. In my dissertation, I develop an epistemic conception of explanation that comprises two claims. First, what does the explaining is a representation formulated by human beings. Second, an explanatory relation is not purely objective but epistemic in the following respects. First, for a representation formulated by human beings to be explanatory, it must represent what we are justified in believing is a part of the world responsible for the occurrence of a target of explanation. In addition, a representation must represent what it represents in a cognitively manageable way, namely in a way that allows a human scientist to see why the target of explanation occurs. An explanation is ultimately a matter of helping people know about what the world is like. 

My research interests also include many other aspects of scientific explanation. One such topic concerns the relationship between scientific understanding and explanation, which my epistemic conception relies on. In a future paper, I plan to say more about the allegedly tight connection between understanding and explanation. Another topic concerns the possible tension between the accuracy condition of explanation and my cognitive manageability condition. I am exploring the notions of approximate truth and structural similarity to resolve the tension. I am also interested in the relation between conceptions of scientific explanation and scientific realism. I plan to clearly distinguish the various conceptions of scientific explanation offered so far, show how each may or may not fit with scientific realism, and argue why my epistemic view is better than the other views regarding scientific realism. Lastly, as one of the applications of my view, I will further develop the argument I presented in favor of Humean laws of nature in my manuscript, “Saving the Explanatory Power of Humean Laws of Nature”. Another application of my view is the notion of explainable AI, which I think can be better captured using my epistemic conception of scientific explanation.