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A Dialogue on ExplanationOn Explanatory Progress

A Dialogue on Explanation: On Explanatory Progress Part IV STUDENT: In the meanwhile, let me say a few more words about the normative side of this philosophical account of explanation—unless you think that we have exhausted the subject? PHILIP: No, the normative dimension is probably the most important one. I par- ticularly used to like Peter Railton’s notion of an ‘ideal explanatory text’. STUDENT: But this is an attempt to establish an eternal standard for judging the quality of explanations. It is so far away from the real-world explanatory practices that is in the end useless! PHILIP: First of all, ideals need not be useful to be valuable. Further, you can never proceed to the formulation of normative judgments without some kind of an ideal. STUDENT: You are right, of course, with respect to your first point. Regarding your second point, I would only partly agree: normative guidance is required for any kind of activity and also for explanatory activity. Such guidance can, but need not invoke eternal ideals and even less so single ideals. Multiple values can guide explanatory activities, and I claim that they in fact do so. PHILIP: So, value pluralism is the key notion here. STUDENT: Yes. And a fine-grained normative account http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png

A Dialogue on ExplanationOn Explanatory Progress

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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
37 –47
DOI
10.1007/978-3-030-05834-0_4
Publisher site
See Chapter on Publisher Site

Abstract

Part IV STUDENT: In the meanwhile, let me say a few more words about the normative side of this philosophical account of explanation—unless you think that we have exhausted the subject? PHILIP: No, the normative dimension is probably the most important one. I par- ticularly used to like Peter Railton’s notion of an ‘ideal explanatory text’. STUDENT: But this is an attempt to establish an eternal standard for judging the quality of explanations. It is so far away from the real-world explanatory practices that is in the end useless! PHILIP: First of all, ideals need not be useful to be valuable. Further, you can never proceed to the formulation of normative judgments without some kind of an ideal. STUDENT: You are right, of course, with respect to your first point. Regarding your second point, I would only partly agree: normative guidance is required for any kind of activity and also for explanatory activity. Such guidance can, but need not invoke eternal ideals and even less so single ideals. Multiple values can guide explanatory activities, and I claim that they in fact do so. PHILIP: So, value pluralism is the key notion here. STUDENT: Yes. And a fine-grained normative account

Published: Jan 2, 2019

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