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Investigating the Lay and Scientific Norms for Using “Explanation”

In: Modes of Explanation

Author

Listed:
  • Jonathan Waskan
  • Ian Harmon
  • Andrew Higgins
  • Joseph Spino

Abstract

In the mid-twentieth century, Hempel (1962, 1965) bucked posit ivist ort hodoxy and proposed that explanations have a legitimate role to play in science. Yet, when it came time to offer up a model of explanation, Hempel held fast to the positivist tendency of abstracting both from facts about human psychology and from the specific contents of claims (i.e., in favor of bare logical form). At the broadest level, he proposed that explanations are sets of true statements arranged into formally acceptable arguments. That such arguments count as explanations has, Hempel thought, nothing to do with what anyone thinks or feels; explanations are dissociable, even doubly so, from psychology.

Suggested Citation

  • Jonathan Waskan & Ian Harmon & Andrew Higgins & Joseph Spino, 2014. "Investigating the Lay and Scientific Norms for Using “Explanation”," Palgrave Macmillan Books, in: Michael Lissack & Abraham Graber (ed.), Modes of Explanation, chapter 0, pages 203-213, Palgrave Macmillan.
    • Handle: RePEc:pal:palchp:978-1-137-40386-5_16
    DOI: 10.1057/9781137403865_16
    as

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