Expressivism about explanatory relevance
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11098_2022_Article_1890.pdf
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861.12 KB
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Adobe PDF
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c6455cac44f2cddd06f3da469d7f8ae2
Author(s)
Hunt, Josh
Date Issued
October 22, 2022
Publisher
Springer Netherlands
Citation
Hunt, Josh. 2022. "Expressivism about explanatory relevance."
Version
Final published version
Abstract
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.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Linguistics and Philosophy
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Creative Commons Attribution
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DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-022-01890-7
