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Explanation and Subsumption

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2022

Robert Cummins
Robert Cummins*
Affiliation:
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
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Extract

Quine once claimed that modal logic derived from a use-mention mistake (p. 196). In this paper, I will peddle an, equally outrageous claim: the thesis that subsumption is an essential goal of fundamental explanatory theorizing rests on a failure to distinguish explaining what made x happen from explaining why we believe what we do about what made x happen. I don't mean to suggest that the distinction wasn't noticed (except perhaps by Hume); only that it wasn't vigorously enforced. There have always been philosophers who assimilated a belief to its justification with malice aforethought.

Everyone knows that subsumption is not sufficient for explanation: the length of a pendulum is not explained by appeal to its period and the pendulum law, and emission spectra are not explained by Balmer's formula. But the spirit of the deductive-nomological account of explanation lives on in the belief that subsumption is an essential feature of an explanatory theory.

Type
Part V. Explanation
Information
PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association , Volume 1978 , Issue 1: Volume One: Contributed Papers 1978 , 1978 , pp. 163 - 175
Copyright
Copyright © 1978 by the Philosophy of Science Association

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Footnotes

1

I should like to thank John Koethe, Warren Ingber, David Zaret, and Paul Teller for their stimulating attempts to talk me out of most of what follows. I was similarly aided by stimulating audiences at Chicago Circle and The University of Wisconsin where I presented an earlier draft of this paper.

References

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