Method
Explication
Overview
Explication (German: Explikation) is the process of drawing out the meaning of something that is not clearly defined, so as to make explicit what is currently left implicit. In other words, "to explicate a concept is, roughly, to replace it with a similar but more theoretically useful concept". The term explication is used in both analytic philosophy and literary criticism. German philosopher Rudolf Carnap was the first to coin the term in an analytic philosophical approach in his book Logical Foundations of Probability, while the term is supplanted with Gustave Lanson's idea of Explication de Texte when referring to the analysis and criticism of different forms of literature.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Possible passages
Found by search and not yet checked by a person; they may only mention the idea in passing.
But however philosophers and the vulgar may differ in their explication of the contrariety of events, their inferences from it are always of the same kind, and founded on the same principles. A contrariety of events in the past may give us a kind of hesitating belief for the future, after two several ways. First, by producing an imperfect habit and transition from the present impression to the related idea.
David Hume, Philosophical Works, v. 1
Opens on Explication; names Explication.
But to be convinced that this explication is more popular than philosophical, we need but reflect on two very obvious principles. First, that reason alone can never give rise to any original idea, and secondly, that reason, as distinguished from experience, can never make us conclude, that a cause or productive quality is absolutely requisite to…
David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature
States what Explication is; names Explication twice.
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, Ratiocinative and Inductive
States what Explication is.
Philosophers who discussed Explication
Related ideas
Place in the tradition
Part of Metaepistemology.