Expressivism about explanatory relevance
Abstract Accounts of scientific explanation disagree about what’s required for a cause, law, or other fact to be a reason why an event occurs. In short, they disagree about the conditions for explanatory relevance. Nonetheless, most accounts presuppose that claims about explanatory rele...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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Springer Netherlands
2022
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| Online Access: | https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/145939 |
| _version_ | 1811073483487051776 |
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| author | Hunt, Josh |
| author2 | Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Linguistics and Philosophy |
| author_facet | Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Linguistics and Philosophy Hunt, Josh |
| author_sort | Hunt, Josh |
| collection | MIT |
| description | Abstract
Accounts of scientific explanation disagree about what’s required for a cause, law, or other fact to be a reason why an event occurs. In short, they disagree about the conditions for explanatory relevance. Nonetheless, most accounts presuppose that claims about explanatory relevance play a descriptive role in tracking reality. By rejecting the need for this descriptivist assumption, I develop an expressivist account of explanatory relevance and explanation: to judge that an answer is explanatory is to express an attitude of being for being satisfied by that answer. I show how expressivism vindicates ordinary scientific discourse about explanation, including claims about the objectivity and mind-independence of explanations. By avoiding commitment to ontic relevance relations, I rehabilitate an irrealist conception of explanation. |
| first_indexed | 2024-09-23T09:33:49Z |
| format | Article |
| id | mit-1721.1/145939 |
| institution | Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2024-09-23T09:33:49Z |
| publishDate | 2022 |
| publisher | Springer Netherlands |
| record_format | dspace |
| spelling | mit-1721.1/1459392023-06-30T16:17:34Z Expressivism about explanatory relevance Hunt, Josh Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Linguistics and Philosophy Abstract Accounts of scientific explanation disagree about what’s required for a cause, law, or other fact to be a reason why an event occurs. In short, they disagree about the conditions for explanatory relevance. Nonetheless, most accounts presuppose that claims about explanatory relevance play a descriptive role in tracking reality. By rejecting the need for this descriptivist assumption, I develop an expressivist account of explanatory relevance and explanation: to judge that an answer is explanatory is to express an attitude of being for being satisfied by that answer. I show how expressivism vindicates ordinary scientific discourse about explanation, including claims about the objectivity and mind-independence of explanations. By avoiding commitment to ontic relevance relations, I rehabilitate an irrealist conception of explanation. 2022-10-24T12:35:42Z 2022-10-24T12:35:42Z 2022-10-22 2022-10-23T03:20:40Z Article http://purl.org/eprint/type/JournalArticle https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/145939 Hunt, Josh. 2022. "Expressivism about explanatory relevance." PUBLISHER_CC en https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-022-01890-7 Creative Commons Attribution https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ The Author(s) application/pdf Springer Netherlands Springer Netherlands |
| spellingShingle | Hunt, Josh Expressivism about explanatory relevance |
| title | Expressivism about explanatory relevance |
| title_full | Expressivism about explanatory relevance |
| title_fullStr | Expressivism about explanatory relevance |
| title_full_unstemmed | Expressivism about explanatory relevance |
| title_short | Expressivism about explanatory relevance |
| title_sort | expressivism about explanatory relevance |
| url | https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/145939 |
| work_keys_str_mv | AT huntjosh expressivismaboutexplanatoryrelevance |