Yes, I agree there are a lot of definitions or descriptions masquerading as explanations, especially in medicine and psychology. I think maybe insurance has a lot to do that. If you just describe a lot of symptoms, insurance won't know whether to cover it or not. But if you authoritatively name that symptom set as "BWZK syndrome" or something, and suddenly switch to assuming "BWZK syndrome" is a thing, the unknown cause to the symptoms, then insurance has something it can deal with.
But this description->explanation thing, whatever the reason, is just another error people make. It's not that different from errors like "vaccines cause autism". Any dataset collecting causal claims people make is going to contain a lot of nonsense.
Comments
Yes, I agree there are a lot of definitions or descriptions masquerading as explanations, especially in medicine and psychology. I think maybe insurance has a lot to do that. If you just describe a lot of symptoms, insurance won't know whether to cover it or not. But if you authoritatively name that symptom set as "BWZK syndrome" or something, and suddenly switch to assuming "BWZK syndrome" is a thing, the unknown cause to the symptoms, then insurance has something it can deal with.
But this description->explanation thing, whatever the reason, is just another error people make. It's not that different from errors like "vaccines cause autism". Any dataset collecting causal claims people make is going to contain a lot of nonsense.