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A Dialogue on ExplanationOn Explanation as Unification and Other Models of Explanation

A Dialogue on Explanation: On Explanation as Unification and Other Models of Explanation Part II On Explanation as Unification and Other Models of Explanation PHILIP: Listen, the invocation of causal notions has its costs. Hempel’s account of explanation was to be part of an empiricist philosophy of science and it could therefore only draw on those concepts that are acceptable to empiricists. If causal concepts are not permissible as primitives in empiricist analyses, then either they must be given reductions to empiricist concepts or they must be avoided by empiricists. Hempel’s work appears to stand in a distinguished tradition of thinking about explanation and causation, according to which causal notions are to be understood in terms of concepts that are themselves sufficient for analyzing explanations. Empiricist concerns about the evidence that is available for certain kinds of propositions are frequently translated into claims about conceptual priority. Thus, the thesis that we can only gain evidence for causal judgments by identifying lawlike regularities generates the claim that the concept of law is prior to that of cause, with consequent dismissal of analyses that seek to ground the notion of law in that of cause. One of Hume’s legacies is that causal judgments are epistemologically prob- lematic. For those who inherit Hume’s theses about http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png

A Dialogue on ExplanationOn Explanation as Unification and Other Models of Explanation

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Publisher
Springer International Publishing
Copyright
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2018
ISBN
978-3-030-05833-3
Pages
11 –23
DOI
10.1007/978-3-030-05834-0_2
Publisher site
See Chapter on Publisher Site

Abstract

Part II On Explanation as Unification and Other Models of Explanation PHILIP: Listen, the invocation of causal notions has its costs. Hempel’s account of explanation was to be part of an empiricist philosophy of science and it could therefore only draw on those concepts that are acceptable to empiricists. If causal concepts are not permissible as primitives in empiricist analyses, then either they must be given reductions to empiricist concepts or they must be avoided by empiricists. Hempel’s work appears to stand in a distinguished tradition of thinking about explanation and causation, according to which causal notions are to be understood in terms of concepts that are themselves sufficient for analyzing explanations. Empiricist concerns about the evidence that is available for certain kinds of propositions are frequently translated into claims about conceptual priority. Thus, the thesis that we can only gain evidence for causal judgments by identifying lawlike regularities generates the claim that the concept of law is prior to that of cause, with consequent dismissal of analyses that seek to ground the notion of law in that of cause. One of Hume’s legacies is that causal judgments are epistemologically prob- lematic. For those who inherit Hume’s theses about

Published: Jan 2, 2019

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