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Relevance, Not Invariance, Explanatoriness, Not Manipulability: Discussion of Woodward’s Views on Explanatory Relevance

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Cyrille Imbert
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Abstract

According to Woodward’s causal model of explanation, explanatory information is relevant for manipulation purposes and indicates by means of invariant causal relations how to change the value of certain target explanandum variables by intervening on others. Therefore, the depth of an explanation is evaluated through the size of the domain of invariance of the generalization involved. In this article, I argue that Woodward’s account of explanatory relevance is still unsatisfactory and claim that the depth of an explanation should be explicated in terms of the size of the domain of circumstances which it designates as leaving the explanandum unchanged.

Type
General Philosophy of Science
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 80 , Issue 5 , December 2013 , pp. 625 - 636
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association

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Footnotes

†

I want to thank Andrea Woody for past discussions about the issue of scientific explanation and for her help and patience as an editor. All remaining shortcomings are mine.

References

Hitchcock, Christopher. 1995. “Discussion: Salmon on Explanatory Relevance.” Philosophy of Science 62:304–20.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kitcher, Philip, and Salmon, Wesley. 1989. Scientific Explanation. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
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Woodward, James 2003. Making Things Happen: A Theory of Causal Explanation. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar