A Definition of Good Explanations and the Challenges Explaining LLM Outputs

Louis Mahon; Elliot Ford; Callum Hackett

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arXiv · 2606.14838

A Definition of Good Explanations and the Challenges Explaining LLM Outputs

Louis Mahon·Elliot Ford·Callum Hackett

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Abstract

How to define a good explanation is a long-standing philosophical debate which has found recent renewed interest in the context of AI outputs. Explainability is crucial for AI adoption in many contexts, but in order to produce good explanations of AI systems, we must first have an understanding of what good explanations are. In this paper we propose a definition inspired by the notion of counterfactual explanations, however we argue that one must also take into account the interlocutor's prior beliefs in each fact that could be offered in an explanation. We explore the ramifications of this definition for AI explainability and, in particular, why LLM outputs are difficult to produce good explanations for.

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Louis Mahon, Elliot Ford, Callum Hackett. 2026-06-12. A Definition of Good Explanations and the Challenges Explaining LLM Outputs. https://arxiv.org/abs/2606.14838

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