Concept
Explanation
Overview
An explanation is a set of statements usually constructed to describe a set of facts that clarifies the causes, context, and consequences of those facts. It may establish rules or laws, and clarifies the existing rules or laws in relation to any objects or phenomena examined.
In philosophy, an explanation is a set of statements which render understandable the existence or occurrence of an object, event, or state of affairs. Among its most common forms are:
Causal explanation
Deductive-nomological explanation, involves subsuming the explanandum under a generalization from which it may be derived in a deductive argument. For example, “All gases expand when heated; this gas was heated; therefore, this gas expanded".
Statistical explanation, involves subsuming the explanandum under a generalization that gives it inductive support. For example, “Most people who use tobacco contract cancer; this person used tobacco; therefore, this person contracted cancer”.
Explanations of human behavior usually rely to the subject’s beliefs, desires and other relevant facts. They operate under the assumption that the behavior in question is rational to some extent. Thus an explanation of why the subject removed his coat might cite the fact that he felt hot and desired to feel cooler, and believed that he would feel cooler if he took off his coat.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
In the original texts
Passages from public-domain books where Explanation is discussed.
The new factor, that which has not been experienced and which is unfamiliar, is excluded from the sphere of causes. Not only do we try to find a certain kind of explanation as the cause, but those kinds of explanations are selected and preferred which dissipate most rapidly the sensation of strangeness, novelty and unfamiliarity,—in fact the most ordinary explanations. And the result is that a certain manner of…
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, The Twilight of the Idols
names the idea; states what it is; opens on it
The word explanation is here used in its philosophical sense. What is called explaining one law of nature by another, is but substituting one mystery for another; and does nothing to render the general course of nature other than mysterious: we can no more assign a _why_ for the…
John Stuart Mill, A System of Logic
a chapter is titled for it; states what it is; names the idea; opens on it
VII. Hatred is pain, accompanied by the idea of an external cause. Explanation--These observations are easily grasped after what has been said in the explanation of the preceding definition (cf. also III. xiii. note). VIII. Inclination is pleasure, accompanied by the idea of something which is accidentally a cause of pleasure. IX. Aversion is pain, accompanied by the idea of something which is accidentally the cause…
Benedictus de Spinoza, Ethics
names the idea
It is here that the two different explanations come in.
G. E. Moore, Philosophical Studies
names the idea; states what it is; opens on it
_Cause and Effect._—We say it is "explanation"; but it is only in "description" that we are in advance of the older stages of knowledge and science. We describe better,—we explain just as little as our predecessors.
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, The Joyful Wisdom
names the idea; opens on it
Philosophers who discussed Explanation
Related ideas
- Belief
- Philosophy
- Wesley C. Salmon
- Rule of inference
- Rhetoric
- Critical thinking
- Justification (epistemology)
- Aristotle
- Causality
- Logical consequence
- Four causes
- Premise
- Proposition
- Axiom
- Description
- Deductive-nomological model
Opposing perspectives
Place in the tradition
Part of Mental representation.