Abstract
Philosophers of science have often favoured reductive approaches to how-possibly explanation. This chapter identifies three varieties of how-possibly explanation and, in so doing, helps to show that this form of explanation is a rich and interesting phenomenon in its own right.
The first variety approaches “How is it possible that X?” by showing that, despite appearances, X is not ruled out by what was believed prior to X. This can sometimes be achieved by removing misunderstandings about the implications of one’s belief system (prior to observing X), but more often than not it involves a modification of this belief system so that one’s acceptance of X does not generate a contradiction.
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- 1.
However, the reductive perspective is often formulated and motivated rather casually: Cohen (1950, 259) requires of any explanation that it be an “appropriate answer to the question ‘why’ the explicandum is the case”; Braithwaite (1946, ii) states that an explanation is simply “any answer to a ‘why’ question which in any way answers the question, and thereby gives some degree of intellectual satisfaction to the questioner” (see Dray 1957, 156); van Fraassen (1980) echoes the remarks of these forerunners. Given their sweeping formulations, it is perhaps misleading to understand the positions of Cohen and his contemporaries as serious attempts at reduction at all.
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Its epistemic counterpart will be dealt with, briefly, at the end of the paper.
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According to Resnik, the lack of adequate empirical support is definitive of how-possibly explanation. How-possibly explanations may become how-actually explanations as science progresses. This position is reminiscent of Levi’s (2003) understanding of dispositions, since the latter’s dispositions can become real as science progresses. See also Persson (2006). Machamer et al. (2000) seem to be attracted to a similar idea.
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And, as already noted, in some places Craver and Darden might add the further restriction that the how-possibly explanation is actually false.
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It is trivial that this how-possibly explanation does not imply that the explanans is inadequate or—worse still—false.
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Of course, a number of complications should be contemplated at this point—especially the possibility that several mechanisms yielding the same outcome exist. However, these complications do not matter in the present context, where the only thing I wish to point out is the distinctness of this variety of how-possibly explanation in comparison with the other varieties I have identified.
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Persson, J. (2012). Three Conceptions of Explaining How Possibly—and One Reductive Account. In: de Regt, H., Hartmann, S., Okasha, S. (eds) EPSA Philosophy of Science: Amsterdam 2009. The European Philosophy of Science Association Proceedings, vol 1. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-2404-4_24
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