Explaining Explanation

by Ruben,David-Hillel

• ISBN13: 9781612050683
• ISBN10: 1612050689
• Edition: 2nd
• Format: Nonspecific Binding
• Copyright: 2012-08-30
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

This second edition of David-Hillel Ruben's 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. Ruben's views on the place of laws in explanation has been refined and clarified. What is perhaps the central thesis of the book, his realist view of explanation, describing the way in which explanation depends on metaphysics, has been updated and extended and engages with some of the work in this area published since the book's first edition.

Author Biography

David-Hillel Ruben is Emeritus Professor of Philosophy, University of London. Most recently, he has published numerous articles in action theory and the philosophy of science.

Table of Contents

Preface and Acknowledgments	p. ix
Preface to the Second Edition	p. xi
Getting our Bearings	p. 1
Some explanations	p. 3
Process and product	p. 6
The methdology of explaining explanation	p. 8
Restricting the scope of the analysis	p. 13
Scientific and ordinary explanation	p. 14
Partial and full explanation	p. 17
Bad explanations and no explanations	p. 19
Some terminology	p. 21
Theories of explanation	p. 23
Dispensing with contrastives	p. 35
Plato on Explanation	p. 41
The Phaedo	p. 42
Platonic explanation and explananda	p. 47
Problems for the physical explainers	p. 48
Some terminology	p. 51
Plato's Principles	p. 53
Plato's (PP2)	p. 58
Plato's (PP1)	p. 60
The Theaetetus	p. 65
Summary	p. 68
Aristotle on Explanation	p. 69
The doctrine of the four causes	p. 69
Does Aristotle have a general account of explanation?	p. 74
Incidental and per se causes	p. 78
Necessitation and laws in explanation	p. 83
Aristotle on scientific explanation	p. 85
Aristotle's demonstrations	p. 90
Summary	p. 97
Mill and Hempel on Explanation	p. 98
Mill's account of explanation: laws of coexistence and succession	p. 102
Mill's account of explanation: the symmetry thesis	p. 110
Mill on ultimate explanations	p. 111
Mill on deduction and explanation	p. 115
Hempel's account of scientific explanation	p. 123
Hempel's methodology	p. 126
Hempel on the symmetry thesis	p. 129
Hempel on inductive-statistical explanation	p. 132
Hempel on epistemic ambiguity	p. 135
Summary	p. 137
The Ontology of Explanation	p. 139
Explanation and epistemology	p. 139
Explanation and the slingshot	p. 139
The relata of the explanation relation	p. 143
Explaining facts	p. 150
The non-extensionality of facts	p. 153
Facts: worldly or wordy?	p. 154
The co-typical predicate extensionality of facts	p. 155
The name transparency of facts	p. 159
Addendum on Gideon Rosen's conception of facts	p. 162
Arguments, Laws, and Explanation	p. 166
The standard counterexamples: irrelevance	p. 167
The standard counterexamples: symmetry	p. 175
A proposed cure and its problems: the causal condition	p. 176
Generalizations get their revenge	p. 189
A Realist Theory of Explanation	p. 193
Are all singular explanations causal explanations?	p. 195
What would make an explanation non-causal?	p. 200
Identity and explanation	p. 201
Are there other non-causal singular explanations?	p. 205
Disposition explanations	p. 208
Again: determinative, high dependency, and low dependency explanations	p. 212
Postscript on Gideon Rosen	p. 214
Notes	p. 217
Bibliography	p. 235
Reviews of the First Edition of Explaining Explanation	p. 240
Name Index	p. 241
Subject Index	p. 243
About the Author	p. 246
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