Abstract
Although explanation is widely regarded as an important concept in the study of rational inquiry, it remains largely unexplored outside the philosophy of science. This, I believe, is not due to oversight as much as to institutional resistance. In analytic philosophy it is basic that epistemic rationality is a function of justification and that justification is a function of argument. Explanation, however, is not argument nor is belief justification its function. I argue here that the task of incorporating explanation into the theory of rational inquiry poses a serious challenge to our basic concept of epistemic rationality as well as the a priori method of inquiry that still lies at the heart of analytic philosophy. Specifically, it pushes us toward a much stronger form of naturalism than is generally thought necessary, one in which argument and explanation are recognized as distinct and equally fundamental cognitive processes whose dynamic relationship is one of the central issues in the theory of rationality.
Similar content being viewed by others
REFERENCE
Belnap and Steele: 1976, The Logic of Questions and Answers, Yale University, New Haven.
Bromberger, S.: 1966, 'Why-Questions', in Baruch A. Brody (ed.), Readings in the Philosophy of Science, Prentice Hall, Inc., Englewood Cliffs, 66–84.
Churchland, Paul: 1989, A Neurocomputational Perspective, MIT Press, Cambridge.
Copi, I.: 1978, Introduction to Logic, Macmillan Publishing Co., New York.
Copi, I. and B. Cohen: 1990, Introduction to Logic, Prentice Hall, New Jersey.
Duhem, P.: 1962, The Aim and Structure of Physical Theory, Atheneum, New York.
Goldman, A.: 1988, Empirical Knowledge, University of California Press, Berkeley.
Hempel, C. and P. Oppenheim: 1948, 'Studies in the Logic of Explanation,' Philosophy of Science 15, 135–175.
Hempel, C.: 1965, Aspects of Scientific Explanation and Other Essays in the Philosophy of Science, Free Press, New York.
Harman, G.: 1986, Change in View, The MIT Press, Cambridge.
Holland, J., et al.: 1986, Induction: Processes of Inference, Learning and Discovery, MIT Press, Cambridge.
Kim, J.: 1988, 'What is Naturalistic Epistemology?', Philosophical Perspective 2, 381–405.
Kuhn, T.: 1962, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, University Press, Chicago.
Lehrer, K.: 1990, Theory of Knowledge, Westview Press, Boulder, CO.
Leplin, J.: 1984, Scientific Realism, University of California Press, Berkeley.
Popper, C.: 1959, The Logic of Scientific Discovery, Basic Book, New York.
Quine, Q. V.: 1961, 'Two Dogmas of Empiricisms', in From a Logical Point of View, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 20–46.
Quine, Q. V.: 1969, 'Epistemology Naturalized', in Ontological Relativity and Other Essays, Columbia University Press, New York, 69–90.
Salmon, M., et al.: 1992, Introduction to the Philosophy of Science, Prentice Hall, New Jersey.
Thagard, P.: 1989, 'Explanatory Coherence', Behavioral and Brain Sciences 12, 453–502.
van Fraassen, Bas C.: 1980, The Scientific Image, Clarendon Press, Oxford.
van Fraassen, Bas C.: 1989, Laws and Symmetry, Clarendon Press, Oxford.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Mayes, G.R. Resisting Explanation. Argumentation 14, 361–380 (2000). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1007897325732
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1007897325732