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The Quartercentenary Model of D–N Explanation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2022

D. A. Thorpe
D. A. Thorpe*
Affiliation:
The John Hopkins University
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Extract

This paper presents a new formal model for D–N explanation that gives intuitive criteria of acceptability, avoids the known trivializations, and links explanation with confirmation theory. Although set in the twenty-five year tradition of attempts to formalize D–N explanation, it proposes a new direction for the model that is to be distinguished from the syntactical and informational approaches by its introduction of restrictions which derive from the use which the D–N model can have in hypothesis testing. This model, illustrating the verificational approach, revises the classic H–O requirements and amends the notion of partial self-explanation to meet a criticism to which the H–O notion is vulnerable.

Type
Discussion
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 41 , Issue 2 , June 1974 , pp. 188 - 195
Copyright
Copyright © 1974 by The Philosophy of Science Association

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Footnotes

†

I would like to thank Professor Peter Achinstein for his suggestions and comments on preparing this paper.

References

REFERENCES

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