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The purpose of this essay is to defend the deductive-nomological model of explanation against a number of criticisms that have been made of it. It has traditionally been thought that scientific explanations were causal and that scientific explanations involved deduction from laws. In recent years, however, this three-fold identity has been challenged: there are, it is argued, causal explanations that are not scientific, scientific explanations that are not deductive, deductions from laws that are neither causal explanations nor scientific explanations, and causal explanations that involve no deductions from laws. The aim of the present essay is to defend the traditional identities, and to show that the more recent attempts at invalidating them fail in their object. More specifically, this essay argues that a Humean version of the deductive-nomological model of explanation can be defended as (1) the correct account of scientific explanation of individual facts and processes, and as (2) the correct account of causal explanations of individual facts and processes. The deductive-nomological model holds that to explain an event E, say that a is G, one must find some initial conditions C, say that a is F, and a law or theory T such that T and C jointly entail E, and both are essential to the deduction.
List of contents
1 / The Deductive Model of Explanation: A Statement.- 1.1. Explanation and Deduction.- 1.2. The Humean Account of Laws.- 1.3. The Evidential Worth of Law-Assertions.- 1.4. That Some Explanations Are Better than Others.- 1.5. That Technical Rules of Computation Are Laws.- 2 / The Reasonability of the Deductive Model.- 2.1. Why Ought the Deductive Model Be Accepted?.- 2.2. Are There Reasoned Predictions Which Are Not Explanations?.- 2.3. Is Correlation Less Explanatory than Causation?.- 2.4. Is Causation Inseparable from Action?.- 2.5. Are There Explanations Without Predictions?.- 2.6. Explanation and Judgment.- 3 / Explanations and Explanings.- 3.1. Explanations in the Context of Communication.- 3.2. Formalist Criticisms of the Deductive Model.- 3.3. Explanations and Explanatory Content.- 3.4. Narrative and Integrating Explanations.- 3.5. Are Laws Evidence for, or Part of, Explanations?.- 3.6. Can We Know Causes Without Knowing Laws?.- Conclusion.- Notes.- Notes to Chapter 1.- Notes to Chapter 2.- Notes to Chapter 3.- Notes to Conclusion.- Name Index.
