Are formal explanations mere placeholders or pointers?

Tautological formal explanations: does prior knowledge affect their satisfiability?

“…According to Prasada’s theory ( Rivera et al, 2023 ), the satisfiability of formal explanations is based on establishing principled connections between a category and an exemplar of that category: a formal explanation will be deemed satisfactory if it explains features that are “principled” to the category. Therefore, this assumes the presence of adequate categorical knowledge.…”

“…Thus, some researchers argue that formal explanations, though seemingly devoid of meaning on their own, indicate communal knowledge of the category ( Sloman and Rabb, 2016 ; Hemmatian and Sloman, 2018 ; Hemmatian et al, 2019 ; Sloman, 2022 ) or suggest an underlying cause yet to be discovered ( Gelman et al, 2018 ). Others consider formal explanations as a distinct mode of explanation that emphasizes principled attributes ( Rivera et al, 2023 ) and corresponds to human essentialism, a significant aspect of cognition ( Ahn et al, 2001 ; Rangel and Keller, 2011 ; Cimpian and Salomon, 2014 ). While researchers investigate the potential tautological nature of such explanations and seek plausible reasons for their paradoxical persuasiveness, it is important to note two features of previous experiments in the literature.…”

“…From a common interpretation, to which we shall also align in this article, tautology is an “unnecessary repetition, usually in close proximity, of the same word, phrase, idea, argument” ( Oxford English Dictionary, 2023 ). Thus, examples like “that flies because it is a bird” ( Gelman et al, 2018 ), “he holds a poorly-paid job because he is an immigrant” ( Vasilyeva and Lombrozo, 2020 ), or “Fido has four legs because he is a dog” ( Rivera et al, 2023 ) are technically not tautologies. The word “bird” does not equate to “being able to fly,” the word “immigrant” does not equate to “having a low-paying job,” and the word “dog” does not equate to “having four legs.” Such explanations, could be regarded as uninformative, and it is unsurprising that the authors perceive their resemblance to tautologies ( Gelman et al, 2018 ).…”

“…Finally, the existing body of research has not yet directly assessed the potential cultural and linguistic effects on the evaluation of formal explanations. Previous experiments have mainly focused on native English speakers (e.g., Gelman et al, 2018 ; Hemmatian and Sloman, 2018 ; Rivera et al, 2023 ) leaving a gap in our understanding of how this effect manifests in different languages and populations. In this context, the present research aims to contribute to enhancing our understanding of the possibilities for generalizing the effect by comparing results cross-culturally and cross-linguistically.…”