Contrastive explanation and causal triangulation

Philosophy of Science 58 (4):687-697 (1991)
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Abstract

Alan Garfinkel (1981) and Bas van Fraassen (1980), among others, have proposed a contrastive theory of explanation, according to which the proper form of an explanatory why-question is not simply "Why P?" but "Why P rather than Q?". Dennis Temple (1988) has argued in this journal that the contrastive explanandum "P rather than Q" is equivalent to the conjunction, "P and not-Q". I show that the contrast is not equivalent to the conjunction, nor to other plausible noncontrastive candidates. I then consider David Lewis's (1986) proposal for the way contrasts determine an explanatory cause, which does not require recasting the contrastive explanandum. Lewis's proposal is found to be unacceptable, but it suggests an improvement that shows contrastive explanations to employ a mechanism of "causal triangulation", similar to Mill's method of difference.

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Citations of this work

What is a (social) structural explanation?Sally Haslanger - 2016 - Philosophical Studies 173 (1):113-130.
Counterfactual theories of causation.Peter Menzies - 2008 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
Against the Contrastive Account of Singular Causation.Asbjørn Steglich-Petersen - 2012 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 63 (1):115-143.
Explaining with Models: The Role of Idealizations.Julie Jebeile & Ashley Graham Kennedy - 2015 - International Studies in the Philosophy of Science 29 (4):383-392.

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References found in this work

Introduction” to his.D. Lewis - 1986 - Philosophical Papers 2.
Noncausal connections.Jaegwon Kim - 1974 - Noûs 8 (1):41-52.
Forms of Explanation: Rethinking the Questions in Social Theory.Alan Garfinkel - 1982 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 33 (4):438-441.
The contrast theory of why-questions.Dennis Temple - 1988 - Philosophy of Science 55 (1):141-151.

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