{"id":224,"date":"2025-04-07T15:47:24","date_gmt":"2025-04-07T15:47:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2025\/04\/07\/explanation-again\/"},"modified":"2025-04-07T15:47:24","modified_gmt":"2025-04-07T15:47:24","slug":"explanation-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2025\/04\/07\/explanation-again\/","title":{"rendered":"Successful Explanation Again"},"content":{"rendered":"

Returning once again to the article<\/a> by Tomas Bogardus, with a 'hat tip' to him for writing it and to Malcolm Pollack for bring it to my attention, let us reconsider his  premise (2), about which I raised some questions in earlier posts:<\/span><\/p>\n

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2. Any explanation can be successful only if it crucially involves no element that calls out for explanation but lacks one.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I suggested earlier that an explanation might count as successful even if it does contain one or more unexplained elements. Suppose a man is found dead. Why did he die? What was the salient cause of his death? (I  assume a distinction between a salient cause and circumambient causal factors.)* Did the man die from stroke, heart attack, gunshot, smoke inhalation while asleep?  Suppose the latter.  Why was there smoke in his bedroom? Because his house caught on fire. Why did it catch on fire? Because the house was hit by lightning.  <\/span><\/p>\n

My question<\/em>: Couldn't a successful explanation of the man's death stop right here? If we were to stop here would we not have achieved sufficient understanding of the man's death for practical purposes (purposes of ordinary life and the law). We would know why the man died and we would be able to rule out foul play. We would know that he did not die from ill health, suicide, or from such foolish behavior as smoking in bed. Bear in mind that the topic here is explanation, not causation, even in this case in which the explanation is a causal explanation.  <\/span><\/p>\n

If I understand (2), it implies a negative answer to my question.  (2) seem to be telling us that one cannot provide a successful causal explanation of  any particular empirical fact unless (i) it is possible in principle to explain every temporally antecedent salient event and causal factor in the series of events  and factors culminating in the fact to be explained (the man's death in the example) subject to the proviso  that (ii) the explanation cannot 'bottom out' in brute  or unexplainable facts.<\/span><\/p>\n

This amounts to saying that to explain successfully  any<\/em> contingent thing or event it must be possible in principle — logically possible — to explain every<\/em> contingent thing or event in the causal ancestry of the thing or event to be explained.  I say 'possible in principle' because no finite person has the ability to explain every thing or event in the causal ancestry of the thing or event to be explained.<\/span><\/p>\n

In endnote 18 of his paper, Bogardus entertains something like my  objection  to his (2) and makes a reply:<\/span><\/p>\n

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Or suppose a meal appears before you, from nothing, with no explanation. You eat it, satisfying your hunger. Surely, you can now successfully explain your satiety by reference to the meal you ate, even if that meal itself has no explanation, yet calls out for one. [. . .]<\/span><\/p>\n

Response: I deny that I would have a successful explanation of . . . the satiety. <\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The problem with this response is that I could not know that the meal appeared ex nihilo, <\/em>and thus without a cause. If I were seated at table and a meal were suddenly to pop into existence before me, I would lose my appetite from fear! (No appetite, no sating thereof.) I would very reasonably believe that I was either hallucinating or losing my mind or that a preternatural event had occurred from a preternatural cause, and that either angelic or demonic  or divine or some other kind of paranormal agency was involved.  I would have no good reason to think that the meal sprang into existence out of nothing without cause.  <\/span>The counterexample works only if I know or reasonably believe that the meal sprang into existence ex nihilo<\/em> without cause.  But I do not know or reasonably believe that.  So how does the magic meal show that a successful explanation must regress back to an unexplained explainer? How does it show that there cannot be brute facts? <\/span> I do not see that TB's  response to my dead man  counterexample to (2) 'cuts the mustard' — to remain with the prandial theme.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

______________<\/span><\/p>\n

*For example, the salient cause of a forest fire is not the presence of oxygen in the atmosphere, which is merely a causal factor without which the fire could not have occurred.    A salient proximate cause might be lightning, the actions of an arsonist. or the carelessness of a camper who did not properly douse his campfire.)<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Returning once again to the article by Tomas Bogardus, with a 'hat tip' to him for writing it and to Malcolm Pollack for bring it to my attention, let us reconsider his  premise (2), about which I raised some questions in earlier posts: 2. Any explanation can be successful only if it crucially involves no … Continue reading “Successful Explanation Again”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[224],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-224","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-explanation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=224"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=224"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=224"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=224"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}