IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/h/pal/palchp/978-1-137-40386-5_15.html
   My bibliography  Save this book chapter

Evaluating Explanations through Their Conceptual Structures

In: Modes of Explanation

Author

Listed:
  • Steven Wallis

Abstract

Many scholars discuss concepts and even conceptual systems along with the importance of understanding them. As Umpleby (1994) claims, “Explicit attention to conceptual systems, or to beliefs and values, is not a new development within the social sciences.” Past investigations have been useful in helping us understand (to some extent) the place of concepts within a larger process of communication and action (the science of cognitive systems). However, we have not become adept at understanding our conceptual structures from a systemic perspective (the science of conceptual systems). Indeed, because our minds are full of conflicting mental models (Lane, 1992), our conceptual lenses are not very clear. Thus, many investigations may have been made using one fuzzy lens to evaluate the fuzziness of another lens; we do not understand conceptual structures as systems unto themselves. This, for systems thinkers, is highly problematic.

Suggested Citation

  • Steven Wallis, 2014. "Evaluating Explanations through Their Conceptual Structures," Palgrave Macmillan Books, in: Michael Lissack & Abraham Graber (ed.), Modes of Explanation, chapter 0, pages 197-202, Palgrave Macmillan.
    • Handle: RePEc:pal:palchp:978-1-137-40386-5_15
    DOI: 10.1057/9781137403865_15
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Catrinel Elena COTAE, 2015. "REGIONAL PERFORMANCES IN THE CONTEXT OF A TRANSITION TOWARDS THE CIRCULAR ECONOMY: STRUCTURING THE ASSESSMENT FRAMEWORK Abstract : In the light of the Europe 2020 strategy, a new economic concept aimi," EcoForum, "Stefan cel Mare" University of Suceava, Romania, Faculty of Economics and Public Administration - Economy, Business Administration and Tourism Department., vol. 4(Special I), pages 1-5, august.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:pal:palchp:978-1-137-40386-5_15. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.palgrave.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.