Abstract

Explanations are often probabilistic or statistical in nature. This chapter explores the contexts in which such explanations occur and provides accounts of their structure. The inductive-statistical model and models invoking intrinsic probabilistic causation are described and criticized, and the uses of statistical explanation in science are discussed. The subsumption model of statistical explanation and some of its demands and results are explored along with proposals that causation is essential even to statistical explanation and that statistical explanations are founded on irreducible stochastic dispositions. Indeterminism is outlined, and the chapter suggests that a notion of “robustness” is a requirement of a probabilistic explanation.