Scientific explanation Flashcards
Basic sturcte of an explanation
Explanans
Expletory relation
Explanandum
Hempels account of explanation
Arguments: an explanation is an arugment from explanans to explanandum
Covering law: an essetial part of explanans
emperical content: Explanans must make refernece to empirically testable conditions
- Law of nature
- Conditions
Thing in need of explanation
Kinds of explenations
Explanations of events
Explanations of general laws
Deductive cs statistical explanation
Kind of laws
Determenistic laws
Statistical laws
Explanation x Laws
Deductive Nomological: Solar eclipse was an explanation for a universal law by a particular event
Deductive Nomological: Kepler’s laws unversal law explained by general statments
Inductive Statistical: Penicilin leads to recovery beaucse we see it hapen particular event leads to better outcomes of recovery
Deductive Statistical: isotope half-life
Deductive-Nomological Model aka Covering law model
even if we happened never to have seen a rainbow, the explanatory information provided by the physical account would constitute good grounds for expecting or believing that a rainbow will appear under the specified circumstances.
The phenomenon in question was indeed to be expected under the circumstances!” = Nomic expectability
Deductive-Nomological Model: Four ingredients in a scientific explanation:
- Laws (L1, L2, …, Ln)
- Specific Conditions (C1, C2, …, Cn)
- A particular observation or event
- Deductive entailment between explanans and explanandum
Laws versus contigent generalizations
No car can drive faster than the fastest plane: Contingently true generalization
No car can drive faster than the speed of light: Necessarily true generalization
Humean view of laws
Laws are descriptions of what universally or regularly happens
Non-Humean view of laws:
Laws describe what necessarily happens
Contingently true generalization cannot be laws
Hempel’s view
Hempel was an empiricist:
But also denied contingently true generalisations could be laws
necessity contingency
Never resolved!
Inductive-Statistical Model
- Laws (L1, L2, …, Ln)
- Specific Conditions (C1, C2, …, Cn)
- A particular observation or event
- Explanans confers a high probability on
the explanandum
Explenatory Quality
The more phenomena that are nomologically expected by the
universal law, the better the explanation
A theory consistes of
1) Observable Terms
2) Theoretical Terms
3) Propositions
The Nagelian Model: Theory reduction
conditions for reducing theoy a to theory B
1. Laws in TA are deductive consequences of laws in TB
2. All terms in TB can be ‘connected’ to terms in TA = Bridging laws
