The Pragmatic-Rhetorical Theory of Explanation (original) (raw)

1995: Scientific explanation: A critical survey

Foundations of Science, 1995

This paper describes the development of theories of scientific explanation since Hempel's earliest models in the 1940ies. It focuses on deductive and probabilistic whyexplanations and their main problems: lawlikeness, explanation-prediction asymmetries, causality, deductive and probabflistic relevance, maximal specifity and homogenity, tile height of the probability value. For all of these topic the paper explains the most important approaches as well as their criticism, including the author's own accounts. Three main theses of this paper are: (1) Both deductive and probabilistic explanations are important in science, not reducible to each other. (2) One must distinguish between (cause giving) explanations and (reason giving) justifications and predictions. (3) The adequacy of deductive as well as probabilistic explanations is relative to a pragmatically given background knowledge-which does not exclude, however, the possibility of purely semantic models.

[SpringerBriefs in Philosophy] Scientific Explanation || How to Study Scientific Explanation?

2013

This paper investigates the working-method of three important philosophers of explanation: Carl Hempel, Philip Kitcher and Wesley Salmon. We argue that they do three things: (i) construct an explication in the sense of Carnap, which then is used as a tool to make (ii) descriptive and (iii) normative claims about the explanatory practice of scientists. We also show that they did well with respect to (i), but that they failed to give arguments for their descriptive and normative claims. We think it is the responsibility of current philosophers of explanation to go on where Hempel, Kitcher and Salmon failed. However, we should go on in a clever way. We call this clever way the "pragmatic approach to scientific explanation." We clarify what this approach consists in and defend it.

Beyond Hempel: Reframing the Debate about Scientific Explanation

Philosophy of Science, 2022

I argue that Carl Hempel’s pioneering work on scientific explanation introduced an assumption which Hempel never motivated, namely that explanation is an aim of science. Ever since, it largely remained unquestioned in analytic philosophy of science. By expanding the historical scope of the debate on explanation to philosophers from the first half of the 20th century, I show that the debate should include a critical reflection on Hempel’s assumption. This reflection includes two problems: how to motivate one’s position on the aims of scientific knowledge and how to decide which examples count as expressions of those aims.

1995/1996: SCIENTIFIC EXPLANATION: A CRITICAL SURVEY

This paper describes the development of theories of scientific explanation since Hempel's earliest models in the 1940ies. It focuses on deductive and probabilistic why-explanations and their main problems: lawlikeness, explanation-prediction asymmetries, causality, deductive and probabflistic relevance, maximal specifity and homogenity, tile height of the probability value. For all of these topic the paper explains the most important approaches as well as their criticism, including the author's own accounts. Three main theses of this paper are: (1) Both deductive and probabilistic explanations are important in science, not reducible to each other. (2) One must distinguish between (cause giving) explanations and (reason giving) justifications and predictions. (3) The adequacy of deductive as well as probabilistic explanations is relative to a pragmatically given background knowledge-which does not exclude, however, the possibility of purely semantic models.

The Epistemic and Ontic Conceptions of Scientific Explanation

2017

While Wesley Salmon attributes the debate on scientific explanation between Carl Hempel and Peter Railton (or between the epistemic and ontic conceptions of scientific explanation, more generally) as one over which conception of explanation is correct, I claim that Hempel and Railton were responding to two different questions altogether. Hempel was addressing a question akin to ‘what is scientific explanation?’, while Railton was focused on a question more similar to ‘what is scientific explanation?’. In this paper I discuss the different questions Hempel and Railton were addressing, and how distinguishing these two questions can aid in the discussion of the requirements and adequacy of models of scientific explanation. While these two questions are clearly inter-related, I claim that we should not judge the adequacy of an answer to one of these questions on the basis of the adequacy of an answer to the other. The Epistemic and Ontic Conceptions of Scientific Explanation Kaetlin Dia...

How to Study Scientific Explanation?

This paper investigates the working-method of three important philosophers of explanation: Carl Hempel, Philip Kitcher and Wesley Salmon. We argue that they do three things: (i) construct an explication in the sense of Carnap, which then is used as a tool to make (ii) descriptive and (iii) normative claims about the explanatory practice of scientists. We also show that they did well with respect to (i), but that they failed to give arguments for their descriptive and normative claims. We think it is the responsibility of current philosophers of explanation to go on where Hempel, Kitcher and Salmon failed. However, we should go on in a clever way. We call this clever way the “pragmatic approach to scientific explanation.” We clarify what this approach consists in and defend it.

Explanation Is a Genus: An Essay on the Varieties of Scientific Explanation

Social Science Research Network, 2002

I shall endeavor to show that every physical theory since Newton explains without drawing attention to causes-that, in other words, physical theories as physical theories aspire to explain under an ideal quite distinct from that of causal explanation. If I am right, then even if sometimes the explanations achieved by a physical theory are not in violation of the standard of causal explanation, this is purely an accident. For physical theories, as I will show, do not, as such, aim at accommodating the goals or aspirations of causal explanation. This will serve as the founding insight for a new theory of explanation, which will itself serve as the cornerstone of a new theory of scientific method.

Carl Hempel, "Two Models of Scientific Explanation"

9 0 5-1 9 9 7) classic account of explanation is widely known as the "cover ing-law model. " It includ es two species : the Deductive-Nomological Expla nation and the Probabilistic-Statistical Explanation . Since its introduction in the semi nal pape r co-autho red by Hempel and Paul Oppenh eim (1948), the model has been intense ly debated and criticized in the philosophy of scien ce literat ure. For although certain experiments are always necessary to serve as a basis for reasoning, nevertheless, once these experiments are given, we shou ld derive from them everything which anyone at all could possibly derive; and we shou ld even discover what experiments rema in to be done for the clarification of all furt her doubts. That would be an admira ble help, even in political science and medicine, to steady and perfect reasoning concerning given symptoms and circumstances. For even while there will not be enough given circumstances to form an infallible judgment, we shall always be able to determine what is most pro bable on the data given. And that is all that reaso n can do.

Remarks on a Structural Account of Scientific Explanation

The problems that exist in relating quantum mechanical phenomena to classical concepts like properties, causes, or entities like particles or waves are well-known and still open to question, so that there is not yet an agreement on what kind of metaphysics lies at the foundations of quantum mechanics. However, physicists constantly use the formal resources of quantum mechanics in order to explain quantum phenomena. The structural account of explanation, therefore, tries to account for this kind of mathematical explanation in physics, and hinges on the following claims: i) scientific models are central in scientific explanation; ii) in some cases the relevant information for the explanation/understanding of a phenomenon P consists in the sole structural properties of the (models displayed by the) theory; iii) in these cases, the interpretation of the formalism in terms of a categorial framework is unessential for the explanation of P and a mathematical model can be at the base of an objective and effective scientific explanation. The present paper will carry a reflection about some issues arising from R.I.G. Hughes and Robert Clifton's works in the attempt to outline some details of structural explanation. § 1 Introduction The pervasive role of mathematics in modern science has cross-fertilized the philosophy of science in many ways. Among them, a topic of growing interest is the epistemological status of mathematical explanations of natural phenomena. An extensive literature can be found on this subject, for instance in cognitive science – concerning the so-called computational explanations (McCulloch and Pitts 1943, Piccinini 2006), where the mental capacities of the brain are explained by its computations – and in more recent times a significant number of papers have investigated the role of mathematical explanations also in biology (Berger 1998). Since the role that mathematics plays in the explanation of natural phenomena can hardly be overrated, it seems remarkably odd that such a topic has been hitherto neglected in the philosophy of physics, the mathematised science par excellence. The current state of scientific knowledge and within it of the relationship between mathematics and explanation is well illustrated by Ruth Berger: " Today's science is often concerned with the behavior of extremely complicated physical systems and with huge data sets that can be organized in many different ways. To deal with this, scientists increasingly rely on mathematical models to process, organize, and generate explanatory information. Since much of the understanding produced by contemporary science is gathered during the process of mathematical modelling, it is incumbent upon philosophical accounts of explanation to accommodate modelling explanations. This is recognized by the semantic view of theories, which identifies mathematical modelling as one of the mains explanatory engines of science. " (Berger 1998, p.308) But the acknowledgement of the central role of models in science did not correspond to the recognition of a similar role in the more restricted field of scientific explanation: " Although many philosophers accept the basic features of the semantic view of theories, there have been surprisingly few attempts to reconcile it with our best philosophical accounts of scientific explanation. […] [C]ausal accounts cannot illuminate precisely those explanatory features of science which the semantic view deems most important. Specifically, causal accounts of explanation cannot accommodate, and often obscure, the crucial role which mathematical modelling