Abstract

One of the most difficult problems facing anyone who would discuss Professor Carl Hempel's thesis about explanation is the following: which of the many objections that have been made are actually relevant to the thesis? Professor Hempel has claimed that several of these objections are not relevant at all. In order to evaluate such replies, let me first state what I take to be the three claims which constitute Professor Hempel's thesis.His first claim is that all adequate scientific explanations possess a certain property:... all scientific explanations and their everyday counterparts claim or presuppose at least implicitly the deductive or inductive subsumability of whatever is to be explained under general laws or theoretical principles.