Explaining explanation / by David-Hillel Ruben.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Ruben, David-Hillel.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Explanation.

Physical Description:

xii, 246 pages ; 24 cm

Edition:

Updated and expanded second edition.

Place of Publication:

Boulder [Colo.] : Paradigm Publishers, [2012]

Summary:

In Explaining Explanation, David-Hillel Ruben provides a nontechnical discussion of some of the main historical attempts to explain the concept of explanation, examining the works of Plato, Aristotle, John Stuart Mill, and Carl Hempel. Building on and developing the insights of these historical figures, he concludes with his own original and challenging view of explanation. He relates the concept of explanation to both epistemological and metaphysical issues. Not content to confine the concept to the realm of the philosophy of science, Ruben examines it within a far more broadly conceived theory of knowledge. This second edition of the influential and highly acclaimed book on the philosophy of explanation has been revised and expanded, and the author has made substantial changes in light of the extensive reviews the first edition received. Book jacket.

Contents:

I Getting our Bearings 1

Some explanations 3

Process and product 6

The methdology of explaining explanation 8

Restricting the scope of the analysis 13

Scientific and ordinary explanation 14

Partial and full explanation 17

Bad explanations and no explanations 19

Some terminology 21

Theories of explanation 23

Dispensing with contrastives 35

II Plato on Explanation 41

The Phaedo 42

Platonic explanation and explananda 47

Problems for the physical explainers 48

Some terminology 51

Plato's Principles 53

Plato's (PP2) 58

Plato's (PP1) 60

The Theaetetus 65

Summary 68

III Aristotle on Explanation 69

The doctrine of the four causes 69

Does Aristotle have a general account of explanation? 74

Incidental and per se causes 78

Necessitation and laws in explanation 83

Aristotle on scientific explanation 85

Aristotle's demonstrations 90

Summary 97

IV Mill and Hempel on Explanation 98

Mill's account of explanation: laws of coexistence and succession 102

Mill's account of explanation: the symmetry thesis 110

Mill on ultimate explanations 111

Mill on deduction and explanation 115

Hempel's account of scientific explanation 123

Hempel's methodology 126

Hempel on the symmetry thesis 129

Hempel on inductive-statistical explanation 132

Hempel on epistemic ambiguity 135

Summary 137

V The Ontology of Explanation 139

Explanation and epistemology 139

Explanation and the slingshot 139

The relata of the explanation relation 143

Explaining facts 150

The non-extensionality of facts 153

Facts: worldly or wordy? 154

The co-typical predicate extensionality of facts 155

The name transparency of facts 159

Addendum on Gideon Rosen's conception of facts 162

VI Arguments, Laws, and Explanation 166

The standard counterexamples: irrelevance 167

The standard counterexamples: symmetry 175

A proposed cure and its problems: the causal condition 176

Generalizations get their revenge 189

VII A Realist Theory of Explanation 193

Are all singular explanations causal explanations? 195

What would make an explanation non-causal? 200

Identity and explanation 201

Are there other non-causal singular explanations? 205

Disposition explanations 208

Again: determinative, high dependency, and low dependency explanations 212

Postscript on Gideon Rosen 214.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and indexes.

ISBN:

9781612050676

1612050670

9781612050683

1612050689

OCLC:

714715829